18 CHAPTER II. CHAP. 11. Character istics of the Eastern GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES. § 1. The Eastern or Greek Peninsula. THE Historical Geography of Europe, if looked at in chronological order, must begin with the most eastern of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe. Here the peninsula. history of Europe, and the truest history of the world, began. It was in the insular and peninsular lands between the Ionian and Ægæan seas that the first steps towards European civilization were taken; it is there that we see the first beginnings of art, science, and political life. But Greece or Hellas, in the strict sense of the name, forms only a part of the great Eastern peninsula, though it is its leading and characteristic part. As the whole peninsular land gradually tapers southwards from the great mass of central Europe, it becomes at each stage more and more peninsular, and it also becomes at each stage more and more Greek. Greece indeed and the neighbouring lands form, as was long ago remarked by Strabo, a series of peninsulas within peninsulas. It is not easy to find a name for the whole region, as it stretches far beyond 1 See the first chapter of his eighth book (vol. ii. p. 139 of the Tauchnitz edition). He makes four peninsulas within peninsulas, beginning from the south with Peloponnêsos, and he enlarges on the general character of the country as made up of gulfs and promontories. THE EASTERN PENINSULA. of CHAP. any limits which can be given to Greece in any age of the world or according to any use of the name. But the whole land seems to have been occupied by nations more or less akin to the Greeks. The history of those nations chiefly consists of their relations to the Greeks, and all of them were brought more or less within the range of Greek influences. We may therefore not improperly call the whole land, as opposed to Italy and Spain, the Greek peninsula. Latterly it has more commonly been called the Balkan peninsula, from the great chain of mountains, the continuation of the Alps of Western Europe, which spans it from sea to sea. It has also been called the Byzantine peninsula, as nearly answering to the European part of the Eastern division of the Roman Empire, when its seat of government was at Byzantion, Constantinople, or New Rome. II. divisions. Taking the great range of mountains which di- Its chief vides southern from central Europe as the northern boundary of the eastern or Greek peninsula, it may be said to take in the lands which are cut off from the central mass by the Dalmatian Alps and the range of Haimos or Balkan. It is washed to the east, west, and south, by various parts of the Mediterranean and its great gulf the Euxine. But the northern part of this region, all that lies north of the Egaan sea, taking in therefore the whole of the Euxine coast, still keeps much of the character of the great central mass of Europe; it forms a land intermediate between that and the more strictly peninsular lands to the south. Still the boundary is a real one, for all the lands south of this range have come more or less within Greek influences, and have played their part in Greek history. 19 CHAP. II. Illyria. But when we get beyond the mountains, into the valley of the Danube, we find ourselves in lands which, excepting a few colonies on the coast, have hardly come at all under Greek influences till quite modern times. This region between Haimos and the more strictly Greek lands takes in Thrace, Paionia, and Illyria in the narrower sense. Of these, Thrace and Illyria, having a sea coast, received many Greek colonies, especially on the northern coast of the Ægæan and on the Propontis or Sea of Marmora. The Thracian part of this region, as bordering on these more distinctly Grecian seas, became more truly a part of the Grecian world than the other lands Thrace and to the west of it. Yet geographically Thrace is more widely cut off from Greece than Illyria is. For there is no such great break on the western shore of the great peninsula as that which, on the eastern side, marks the point where we must draw the line between Greece and its immediate neighbours and the lands to the north of them. This is at the point where a peninsula within a peninsula breaks off to the south, comprising Greece, Macedonia, and Epeiros. There is here no very marked break on the Illyrian coast, but the Ægæan coast of Thrace is fenced in as it were at its two ends, to the east by the long narrow peninsula known specially as the Chersonêsos, and to the west by the group of peninsulas called Chalkidikê. These have nothing answering to them on the Illyrian side unless we reckon the mere bend in the coast above Epidamnos. This last point however marks the extent of the earlier Greek colonization in those regions, and it has become a still more important boundary in later times. Beyond Chalkidikê to the west, the specially PENINSULAS AND ISLANDS. Within this pen 21 CHAP. II. proper and sulas. Greek peninsula projects to the south, being itself again composed of peninsulas within peninsulas. The Ambrakian Gulf on the west and the Pagasaian on Greece the east fence off a peninsula to the south, by which its peninthe more purely Greek lands are fenced off from Macedonia, Epeiros, and Thessaly. insula again another may be marked off by a line drawn from Thermopylai to the Corinthian gulf near Delphoi. This again shuts out to the west Akarnania, Aitolia, and some other of the more backward divisions of the Greek name. Thus Phôkis, Boiôtia, and Attica form a great promontory, from which Attica projects as a further promontory to the south-east, while the great peninsula of Peloponnêsos-itself made Peloponup on its eastern and southern sides of smaller peninsulas-is joined on by the narrow isthmus of Corinth. In this way, from Haimos to Tainaros, the land is ever becoming more and more broken up by greater or smaller inlets of the sea. And in proportion as the land becomes more strictly peninsular, it also becomes more strictly Greek, till in Peloponnêsos we reach the innermost citadel of the Greek nation. § 2. Insular and Asiatic Greece. nêsos. Hellas. Greece Proper then, what the ancient geographers called Continuous Hellas as distinguished from the Greek Continuous colonies planted on barbarian shores, is, so far as it is part of the mainland, made up of a system of peninsulas stretching south from the general mass of eastern Europe. But the neighbouring islands equally form a part of continuous Greece; and the other coasts of the Ægæan, Asiatic as well as Thracian, were so thickly strewed with Greek colonies as to form, if not part of continuous Greece, yet part of the immediate Greek world. The western coast, as it is less peninsular, is also less insular, and the islands on the western side of Greece did not reach the same importance as those on the eastern side. Still they too, the Ionian islands of modern geography, form in every sense a part of Greece. To the north of Korkyra or Corju there are only detached Greek colonies, whether on the mainland or in the islands; but all the islands of the Ægæan are, during historical times, as much part of Greece as the mainland. One island on each side, Leukas on the west and the greater island of Euboia on the east, might almost be counted as parts of the mainland, as peninsulas rather than islands. To the south the long narrow island of Crete forms a sort of barrier between Greek and barbarian seas. It is the most southern of the purely Greek lands. Sicily to the west and Cyprus to the east received many Greek colonies, but they never became purely Greek in the same way as Crete and the islands to the north of it. But, besides the European peninsulas and the islands, part of Asia must be looked on as forming part of the immediate Greek world, though not strictly of continuous Greece. The peninsula known as Asia Minor cannot be separated from Europe either in its geography or in its history. With its central mass we have little or nothing to do; but its coasts form a part of the Greek world, and its gæan coast was only less thoroughly Greek than Greece itself and the Greek islands. It would seem that the whole western coast of Asia Minor was inhabited by nations which, like the European neighbours of Greece, were more or less nearly akin to the Greeks. And the Ægaan |