The preceding sketch of that important system of foreign nations—Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians—who occupied the south-eastern portion of the (oíκovμévη) inhabited world of an early Greek, brings them down nearly to the time at which they were all absorbed into the mighty Persian empire. In tracing the series of events which intervened between 700 B.C. and 530 B.C., we observe a material increase of power both in the Chaldæans and Egyptians, and an immense extension of Grecian maritime activity and commerce—but we at the same time notice the decline of Tyre and Sidon, both in power and traffic. The arms of Nebuchadnezzar reduced the Phenician cities to the same state of dependence as that which the Ionian cities underwent half a century later from Crœsus and Cyrus, while the ships of Milêtus, Phôkæa and Samos gradually spread over all those waters of the Levant which had once been exclusively Phenician. In the year 704 B.C, the Samians did not yet possess a single trireme : down to the year 630 B.C, not a single Greek vessel had yet visited Libya; but when we reach 550 B.C, we find the Ionic ships predominant in the Ægean, and those of Corinth and Korkyra in force to the west of Peloponnesus—we see the flourishing cities of Kyrênê and Barka already rooted in Libya, and the port of Naukratis a busy emporium of Grecian commerce with Egypt.

The interval between 776—560 b.c. presents to us a remarkable expansion of Grecian genius in the creation of their elegiac, iambic, lyric, choric, and gnomic poetry, which was diversified in a great many ways and improved by many separate masters. The creators of all these different styles—from Kallinus and Archilochus down to Stesichorus—fall within the two centuries here included; though Pindar and Simonidês, “the proud and high-crested bards,” who carried lyric and choric poetry to the maximum of elaboration consistent with full poetical effect, lived in the succeeding century, and were contemporary with the tragedian Æschylus. The Grecian drama, comic as well as tragic, of the fifth century b.c., combined the lyric and choric song with the living action of iambic dialogue—thus constituting the last ascending movement in the poetical genius of the race. Reserving this for a future time, and for the history of Athens, to which it more particularly belongs, I now propose to speak only of the poetical movement of the two earlier centuries, wherein Athens had little or no part. So scanty are the remnants, unfortunately, of these earlier poets, that we can offer little except criticisms borrowed at second-hand, and a few general consideration on their workings and tendency.

In the preceding chapter I have followed the history of Central Greece very nearly down to the point at which the history of the Asiatic Greeks becomes blended with it, and after which the two streams begin to flow to a great degree in the same channel. I now revert to the affairs of the Asiatic Greeks, and of the Asiatic kings as connected with them, at the point in which they were left in my seventeenth chapter.

The concluding facts recounted in that chapter were of sad and serious moment to the Hellenic world. The Ionic and Æolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and made tributary by the Lydian king Crœsus: “down to that time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free.” Their conqueror Crœsus, who ascended the throne in 560 b.c., appeared to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unassailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east: on the other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyagês, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising in a south-eastern direction Persis proper or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the west by the line of Mount Zagros (the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey).

There existed at the commencement of historical Greece in 776 B.C., besides the Ionians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve Ionian cities of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides a few others less important. Enumerated from south to north, they stand—Milêtus, Myûs, Priênê, Samos, Ephesus,Kolophôn, Lebedus,Teôs, Erythræ, Chios, Klazomense, Phôkæa.

That these cities, the great ornament of the Ionic name, were founded by emigrants from European Greece, there is no reason to doubt. How or when they were founded, we have no history to tell us: the legend, which has already been set forth in a preceding chapter, gives us a great event called the Ionic migration, referred by chronologists to one special year, 140 years after the Trojan war. This massive grouping belongs to the character of legend—the Æolic and Ionic emigrations, as well as the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested with unity and imprinted upon the imagination as the results of a single great impulse. But such is not the character of the historical colonies : when we come to relate the Italian and Sicilian emigrations, it will appear that each colony has its own separate nativity and causes of existence. In the case of the Ionic emigration, this large scale of legendary conception is more than usually conspicuous, since to that event is ascribed the foundation or re-peopling both of the Cyclades and of the Asiatic Ionian cities.

On the eastern side of the Ionian Sea were situated the Grecian colonies of Korkyra, Leukas, Anaktorium, Ambrakia, Apollonia, and Epidamnus.

Among these, by far the most distinguished, for situation, for wealth, and for power, was Korkyra—now known as Corfu, the same name belonging, as in antiquity, both to the town and the island, which is separated from the coast of Epirus by a strait varying from two to seven miles in breadth. Korkyra was founded by the Corinthians, at the same time (we are told) as Syracuse. Chersikratês, a Bacchiad, is said to have accompanied Archias on his voyage from Corinth to Syracuse, and to have been left with a company of emigrants on the island of Korkyra, where he founded a settlement. What inhabitants he found there, or how they were dealt with, we cannot clearly make out: the island was generally conceived in antiquity as the residence of the Homeric Phæakians, and it is to this fact that Thucydidês ascribes in part the eminence of the Korkyrsean marine: according to another story, some Eretrians from Eubœa had settled there, and were compelled to retire; a third statement represents the Liburnians as the prior inhabitants—and this perhaps is the most probable, since the Liburnians were an enterprising, maritime, piratical race, who long continued to occupy the more northerly islands in the Adriatic along the Illyrian and Dalmatian coast. That maritime activity, and number of ships both warlike and commercial, which we find at an early date among the Korkyræans, and in which they stand distinguished from the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, may be plausibly attributed to their partial fusion with preexisting Liburnians; for the ante-Hellenic natives of Magna Grsecia and Sicily (as has been already noticed) were as unpractised at sea as the Liburnians were expert.

In the preceding chapter, I indicated the point of confluence between the European and Asiatic streams of Grecian history—the commencement of a decided Persian intention to conquer Attica; manifested first in the form of a threat by Artaphernês the satrap, when he enjoined the Athenians to take back Hippias as the only condition of safety, and afterwards converted into a passion in the bosom of Darius in consequence of the burning of Sardis. From this time forward, therefore, the affairs of Greece and Persia come to be in direct relation one with the other, and capable of being embodied, much more than before, into one continuous narrative.

The reconquest of Ionia being thoroughly completed, Artaphernês proceeded to organise the future government of it, with a degree of prudence and forethought not often visible in Persian proceedings. He convoked deputies from all the different cities, and compelled them to enter into a permanent convention, for the amicable settlement of disputes, so as to prevent all employment of force by any one against the others: moreover he caused the territory of each city to be measured by parasangs (each parasang was equal to thirty stadia, or about three miles and a half), and arranged the assessments of tribute according to this measurement, without any material departure, however, from the sums which had been paid before the revolt.

The islands of Rhodes, Kôs, Symê, Nisyros, Kasus, and Karpathus, are represented in the Homeric catalogue as furnishing troops to the Grecian armament before Troy. Historical Rhodes, and historical Kôs, are occupied by Dorians, the former with its three separate cities of Lindus, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Two other Dorian cities, both on the adjacent continent, are joined with these four so as to constitute an Amphiktyony on the Triopian promontory or south-western corner of Asia Minor —thus constituting an Hexapolis, including Halikarnassus, Knidus, Kôs, Lindus, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Knidus was situated on the Triopian promontory itself; Halikarnassus more to the northward, on the northern coast of the Keramic Gulf: neither of the two are named in Homer.

The legendary account of the origin of these Asiatic Dorians has already been given, and we are compelled to accept their Hexapolis as a portion of the earliest Grecian history, of which no previous account can be rendered. The circumstance of Rhodes and Kôs being included in the Catalogue of the Iliad leads us to suppose that they were Greek at an earlier period than the Ionic or Æolic settlements: it may be remarked that both the brothers Antiphus and Pheidippus from Kôs, and Tlêpolemus from Rhodes, are Herakleids,—the only Herakleids who figure in the Iliad: and the deadly combat between Tlêpolemus and Sarpêdôn may perhaps be an heroic copy drawn from real contests, which doubtless often took place between the Rhodians and their neighbours the Lykians.