While the Greek colonies on the coast of Asia were flourishing in freedom, commerce, wealth, arts and arms, a power was growing up by their side, which, strong in their disunion, gradually encroached on their territory, and in the end crushed their independence. Between the foot of mount Tmolus and the river Hermus, on the right bank of the torrent Pactolus, rises a lofty hill, looking down on a broad and fruitful plain, into which the vales of the Hermus and the Cayster open toward the East. This hill, steep on all sides, on one precipitous, had been from very early times the citadel of a race of kings who reigned over the surrounding region, and the city of Sardis had sprung up at its foot. The people whose capital Sardis had become in the period when Grecian history begins to be genuine and connected, were the Lydians; but their settlement in this tract was comparatively recent: for some generations after the Trojan war the Mæonians, apparently a Pelasgian tribe, occupied the same seats; and the Lydian monarchy seems to have been founded on a conquest, by which the ancient inhabitants were either expelled or subdued. This revolution however is nowhere expressly recorded: it can only be inferred from the silence of Homer as to the Lydians, from the probability that the Mæonians, as most of the other tribes that were scattered over the western side of Asia Minor before the Trojan war, were more nearly allied to the Greeks than the Lydians, and finally from the certain fact, that in the period to which the Lydian conquest of Mæonia, if admitted, must be referred, great changes frequently occurred in the population of this part of Asia.

The history of the Greek colonies is connected but partially, and in varying degrees, with that of the mother country. A complete description and enumeration of them would be foreign to our present purpose. But a general survey of them is necessary to give an adequate conception of the magnitude of the Grecian world, when, dilated beyond its original bounds, it comprised extensive tracts of coast on the seas inclosed by the three ancient continents; and a sketch of the most prominent features of their ordinary condition, and relations to their parent states, is requisite to place them in the proper light, and will contribute to illustrate the Greek character, and its habits of thinking and feeling. Some of them, however, will demand more particular notice, partly on account of the effects produced by them on the course of events in Greece, and partly on account of the impulse which they gave to the intellectual progress of their nation, and of the human race.

We pass over the doubtful legends of the colonies planted by several of the heroes on or after their return from the siege of Troy, as by Agamemnon and Calchas on the coast of Asia, by the sons of Theseus in Thrace, by Ialmenus in the Euxine, by Diomed, Philoctetes, Epeus, Menestheus, and others in Italy, and by the never-resting wanderer Ulysses in the remoter regions of the West.

The period included between the first appearance of the Hellenes in Thessaly, and the return of the Greeks from Troy, is commonly known by the name of the heroic age, or ages. The real limits of this period cannot be exactly defined. The date of the siege of Troy is only the result of a doubtful calculation; and, from what has been already said, the reader will see that it must be scarcely possible to ascertain the precise beginning of the period: but stilly so far as its traditions admit of any thing like a chronological connection, its duration may be estimated at six generations, or about two hundred years. We have already described the general character of this period, as one in which a warlike race spread from the north over the south of Greece, and founded new dynasties in a number of little states; while, partly through the impulse given to the earlier settlers by this immigration, and partly in the natural progress of society, a similar state of things arose in those parts of the country which were not immediately occupied by the invaders; so that every where a class of nobles entirely given to martial pursuits, and the principal owners of the land — whose station and character cannot perhaps be better illustrated than when compared to that of the chivalrous barons of the middle ages — became prominent above the mass of the people, which they held in various degrees of subjection.

The Trojan war, as we find it described, was not, according to any conception that may be formed of the magnitude of the expedition and the conquest, an event that necessarily produced any important effects on the condition of Greece. There is no apparent reason why, as soon as it was ended, all the surviving princes and chiefs might not have returned to their dominions, to enjoy the fruits of their victory in honourable repose, and have transmitted their sceptres in peace to their children. The Odyssey accordingly represents parts of Greece as continuing, after the war, under the rule of the heroes who fought at Troy; and we might infer from this description, that the great national struggle was followed by a period of general tranquillity. On the other hand, the poet signifies that, after the fall of Troy, the victors incurred the anger of the gods, who had before espoused their cause. The Odyssey is filled with one example of the calamities which the divine wrath brought upon the Greeks, in the person of Ulysses, king of Ithaca. Menelaus himself, though we find him in the poem reigning in great prosperity at Lacedæmon, was only permitted to reach home after a long course of wandering over distant seas and lands. Ajax, son of Oileus, perished in the waves. Agamemnon was murdered, on his return to Argos, by Ægisthus, who in his absence had seduced his wife Clytæmnestra, and who usurped the throne of the murdered king, which was not recovered before the end of several years by Orestes, the rightful heir.

We now return to the Dorians of Peloponnesus, whose history, scanty as is the information transmitted to us concerning its earlier ages, is still somewhat less obscure, and much more interesting, than that of the other Greek tribes during the same period. Our attention will for some time be fixed on the steps by which Sparta rose to a supremacy above the rest of the Dorian states, which was finally extended over the whole of Greece. This is the most momentous event of the period intervening between the Return of the Heracleids and the Persian wars. It was in part an effect of the great addition which Sparta made to her territory, by swallowing up that of her western neighbour. But this conquest may itself be regarded as a result of those peculiar institutions, which, once firmly established, decided her character and destiny to the end of her political existence, and which are in themselves one of the most interesting subjects that engage the attention of the statesman and the philosopher in the history of Greece.

Before we attempt to describe the Spartan constitution, it will be necessary to notice the different opinions that have been entertained as to its origin and its author. It has been usual, both with ancient and modern writers, to consider it as the work of a single man — as the fruit of the happy genius, or of the commanding character, of Lycurgus, who has generally been supposed to have had the merit, if not of inventing it, yet of introducing and establishing it among his countrymen.

A very slight acquaintance with the works of the authors from whom we have received our accounts of the earliest ages of Grecian history, will be sufficient to lead any attentive reader to observe the extreme proneness of the Greeks to create fictitious persons for the purpose of explaining names, the real origin of which was lost in remote antiquity. Almost every nation, tribe, city, mountain, sea, river, and spring, known to the Greeks, was supposed to have been named after some ancient hero, of whom, very often, no other fact is recorded. These fictions manifestly sprang up not accidentally, but from the genius of the people, which constantly tended to embody the spiritual, and to personify the indefinite. When therefore we are seeking, not for poetry, but for historical facts, we cannot but feel a great distrust of every such legend, and the more, in proportion to the distance of the period to which it carries us back. On the other hand, it would be rash to pronounce that every legend which refers the origin and the name of a Greek tribe to an individual, is on that account incredible. Causes may certainly be imagined, through which the name of a chief might sometimes be transferred to his people. But still it will always be the safest rule to withhold our belief from such traditions, whenever they are not supported by independent trustworthy evidence; and we shall have the stronger reason for rejecting them, the earlier the period to which they relate, and the more obscure the person whose name they record.

All we know about the earliest inhabitants of Greece, is derived from the accounts of the Greeks themselves. These accounts relate to a period preceding the introduction of letters, and to races more or less foreign to that which finally gave its name to the country. On such subjects tradition must be either vague and general, or filled with legendary and poetical details. And therefore we cannot wonder that, in the present case, our curiosity is in many respects entirely disappointed, and that the information transmitted to us is in part scanty and imperfect, in part obscure and confused. If we only listen to the unanimous testimony of the ancients, we find that the whole amount of our knowledge shrinks into a very narrow compass: if we venture beyond this limit, we pass into a boundless field of conjecture, where every step must be made on disputable ground, and all the light we can obtain, serves less to guide than to perplex us. There are however several questions relating to the original population of Greece, which it may be fit to ask, though we cannot hope for a completely satisfactory answer — if for no other purpose, a least to ascertain the extent of our knowledge. This is the main end we propose in the following inquiry; but we shall not scruple to pursue it, even where we are conscious that it cannot lead to any certain result, so far as we see any grounds to determine our opinion on the most interesting points of a dark and intricate subject.

The series of migrations and conquests by which the Thessalians, Bœotians, and Dorians became masters of the countries which they finally occupied, was attended by changes of two kinds, one affecting the internal condition of Greece itself, the other the foreign lands in which the numerous colonies, which received their first impulse from the revolutions of the mother country, successively settled. We shall take a review of the colonies in another chapter; in the present we will notice some of the most important effects produced by the above-mentioned causes on the state of Greece. This subject will fall under two heads: we shall first consider some national institutions, which either sprang up in this new period, or assumed a new character in it; and shall then enquire into the political changes which took place within particular states, in the interval between the Return of the Heracleids, and the time when we shall see Greece first engaged in a struggle with Persia.

We have hitherto made scarcely any mention of institutions tending to embody the Greeks in one nation. In the Trojan expedition indeed, as it is described by Homer, we see them united by a common language, a common religion, and a common enterprise. The former two were permanent bonds of union; but the latter was an accidental and transitory one: nor does the poet indicate any which could supply its place.

The plan of the little work begun in this volume has been considerably enlarged since it was first undertaken, and the Author fears that a critical eye may be able to detect some traces of this variation from the original design, in the manner of treating one or two subjects. He would be glad if he might believe that this was its chief defect. But he is most desirous that the object which he has had in view should be understood.

He thought it probable that his work might fall into the hands of two different classes of readers, whose wants might not always exactly coincide, but were equally worthy of attention; one consisting of persons who wish to acquire something more than a superficial acquaintance with Greek history, but who have neither leisure nor means to study it for themselves in its original sources; the other of such as have access to the ancient authors, but often feel the need of a guide and an interpreter. The first of these classes is undoubtedly by far the largest: and it is for its satisfaction that the work is principally designed. But the Author did not think that this ought to prevent him from entering into the discussion of subjects which he is aware must be chiefly, if not solely, interesting to readers of the other description, and he has therefore dwelt on the earlier part of the history at greater length than would have been proper in a merely popular narrative.

I.—The political institutions of the heroic period were not contrived by the wisdom of legislators, but grew spontaneously out of natural causes. They appear to have exhibited in every part of Greece a certain resemblance in their general outlines, but the circumstances out of which they arose were probably not everywhere the same, and hence a notion of them, founded on the supposition of their complete uniformity, would probably be narrow and erroneous. The few scanty hints afforded to us on the transition from the obscure period which we may call the Pelasgian, to that with which Homer has made us comparatively familiar, do not enable us to draw any general conclusion as to the mode in which it was effected. We can just discern a warlike and adventurous race starting up, and gradually overspreading the land; but in what relation they stood to the former inhabitants, what changes they introduced in the ancient order of things, can only be conjectured from the social institutions which we find subsisting in the later period. These do not generally present traces of violent revolutions, and subjugating conquests, like those of which the subsequent history of Greece furnishes so many examples; yet it is natural to imagine that they took place occasionally, and here and there we meet with facts, or allusions, which confirm this suspicion. The distinction between slaves and freemen seems to have obtained generally, though not perhaps universally: but there is no distinct trace that it anywhere owed its origin to an invasion which deprived the natives of their liberty.

Toward the first olympiad (b. c. 776), Laconia was subdued and tranquil; the Spartans were united by the institutions of Lycurgus, and their warlike youth ready, and perhaps impatient, for new enterprises. Until the fall of Amyclæ, and the other conquests of Teleclus, had secured the submission of Laconia, they were probably too much occupied at home to enter into any wars with their neighbours, which might require a long-continued exertion of their strength. We find them indeed very early engaged in contests on the side of Arcadia and Argos: but these were not very vigorously prosecuted, or attended with very important results. An expedition of Sous, son of Procles, against Cleitor, in Arcadia, in which he is said to have delivered his army from jeopardy by a stratagem, stands unexplained as an isolated fact. Jealousy soon sprang up between Sparta and Argos, and disturbed the harmony which the family compact should have secured. In the reign of Echestratus, son of Agis, the Spartans had made themselves masters of Cynuria, where a remnant of the old Ionian population had preserved its independence. Having thus become neighbours, they soon became enemies of the Argives. The quarrel broke out in the reign of Prytanis, son of Eurypon; and his successors, Charilaus and Nicander, made inroads on the Argive territory: the Dryopes of Asiné were induced to aid the Spartans, whose subjects had been excited to revolt by the Argives; but the Asinæans were shortly after punished with the loss of their city, and were forced to take refuge in Laconia.

The character of every people is more or less closely connected with that of its land. The station which the Greeks filled among nations, the part which they acted, and the works which they accomplished, depended in a great measure on the position which they occupied on the face of the globe. The manner and degree in which the nature of the country affected the bodily and mental frame, and the social institutions of its inhabitants, may not be so easily determined; but its physical aspect is certainly not less important in a historical point of view, than it is striking and interesting in itself. An attentive survey of the geographical site of Greece, of its general divisions, and of the most prominent points on its surface, is an indispensable preparation for the study of its history. In the following sketch nothing more will be attempted, than to guide the reader's eye over an accurate map of the country, and to direct his attention to some of those indelible features, which have survived all the revolutions by which it has been desolated.

The land which its sons called Hellas, and for which we have adopted the Roman name Greece, lies on the south-east verge of Europe, and in length extends no further than from the thirty-sixth to the fortieth degree of latitude.