HISTORY; ANCIENT TO 146 B.C.: GENERAL The present article is not intended to supply an "Outline of Greek History." The plan followed in these volumes, in which the subject of Greek history is treated of in a large number of sep arate articles, allows of the narrative of events being given in a more satisfactory form under such headings as ATHENS, SPARTA, PELOPONNESIAN WAR (qq.v.). The character of the history itself suggests a further reason why a general article upon Greek history should not be confined to, or even attempt, a narrative of events. A sketch of Greek history is not possible in the sense in which a sketch of Roman history, or even of English history, is possible. Greek history is not the history of a single state. When Aristotle composed his work upon the constitutions of the Greek states, he found it necessary to extend his survey to no less than 158 states.
Greek history is thus concerned with more than 15o separate and independent political communities. Nor is it even the history of a single country. The area occupied by the Greek race extended from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus, and from southern Russia to northern Africa. It is inevitable, therefore, that a mere narra tive should give a false perspective. Such a sketch is apt to resolve itself into the history of a few great movements and of a few leading states, and to confine itself, at any rate for the greater part of the period dealt with, to the history of Greece in the narrower sense, i.e., of the Greek peninsula. For the identification of Greece with Greece proper there may be some degree of excuse when we come to the 5th and 4th centuries. In the period that lies behind the year 50o B.C. Greece proper forms but a small part of the Greek world. In the 7th and 6th centuries we must look outside Greece for the most active life of the Greek people and the most brilliant manifestations of the Greek spirit. The present article, therefore, will be concerned with the causes and conditions of events, rather than with the events themselves; it will attempt analysis rather than narrative.