GREECE. The relations of the Hebrews with the Greeks were always of a distant kind, until the Macedonian conquest of the East : hence in the O. T. the mention of the Greeks is naturally rare. It appears by Cruden's Concordance that Tubal and Javan,' in connection, are named four times, Dan and Javan once (Ezek. xxvii. 19), and Javan, translated by us Greece and Greeks, five times, of which three are in the book of Daniel. Of these passages, that which couples Dan and Javan is generally referred to a different tribe [see JAvAN] ; in the rest Javan is understood of Greece or its people. The Greek nation had a broad division into two races, Dorians and Ionians : of whom the former seem to have long lain hid in continental parts, or on the western side of the country, and had a temperament and institutions more approach ing to the Italic. The Ionians, on the contrary, retained many Asiatic usages and tendencies, wit nessing that they had never been so thoroughly cut off as the Dorians from Oriental connection. When afterwards the Ionic colonies in Asia Minor rose to eminence, the Ionian race in spite of the competi tion of the half Doric YEol'ians, continued to attract most attention in Asia ; and it is not wonderful that the Ionian name (for Yavan is the same word as 'Idwp) should have maintained its extensive ap plication in Oriental usage. Just so in the `Persx' of the tragic poet YEschylus 078, 564), the Persians are inade to style all the Greeks Moves, i.e., Javan.
The few dealings of the Greeks with the He brews seem to have been rather unfriendly, to judge by the notice in Zech. ix. 13. In Joel. iii. 6, the Tyrians are reproached for selling the children of Judah and Jerusalem to the Grecians : but at what time, and in what circumstances, must de pend on the date assigned to the book of Joel [see JoEq. With the Greeks of Cyprus or Chittim, the Hebrews were naturally better acquainted ; and this name, it would seem, might easily have ex tended itself in their tongue to denote the whole Greek nation. Such at least is the most plausible explanation of its use in Maccab. 1, and viii. 9.
The Greeks were eminent for their appreciation of beauty in all its varieties : indeed their religious :reed owed its shape mainly to this peculiarity of their mind ; for their logical acuteness was not exercised on such subjects until quite a later period. The puerile or indecent fables of the old mythology may seem to a modern reader to have been trre very soul of their relig,ion ; but to the Greek him self these were a mere accident, or a vehicle for some embodiment of beauty. He thought little whether a legend concerning Artemis or Apollo was true, but much whether the dance and music celebrating the divinity were solemn, beautiful, and touching. The worship of Apollo, the god of
youth and beauty, has been regarded as charac terising the Hellenic in contrast with the older Pelasgian times ; nor is the fact without signifi cance, that the ancient temple and oracle of Jupiter at Dodona fell afterwards into the shade in com parison with that of Apollo at Delphi. Indeed the Dorian Spartans and the Ionian Athenians alike regarded Apollo as their tutelary god, who was 'Ar6XXcoP 7rarpcpos at Athens, and 'Arr6XXon, Kapveios at Amyclae. Whatever the other varieties of Greek religious ceremonies, no violent or fren zied exhibitions arose out of the national mind ; but all such orgies (as they were called) were im ported from the East, and had much difficulty in establishing themselves on Greek soil. Quite at a late period the managers of orgies were evidently regarded as mere jugglers of not a very reputable kind (see Demosth. De Carand, sec. 79, p. 313) ; nor do the Greek States, as such, appear to have patronized them. On the contrary, the solemn religious processions, the sacred games and dances, formed a serious item in the public expenditure ; and to be permanently exiled from such spectacles would have been a moral death to the Greeks. Wherever they settled they introduced their native institutions, and reared temples, gymnasia, baths, porticoes, sepulchres, of characteristic simple ele gance. The morality and the relig,ion of such a people naturally were alike superficial ; nor did the two stand in any close union. Bloody and cruel rites could find no place in their creed, be cause faith was not earnest enough to endure much self-abandonment. Religion was with them a sentiment and a taste rather than a deep-seated conviction. On the loss of beloved relatives they felt a tender and natural sorrow, but unclouded with a shade of anxiety concerning a future life. Through the whole of their later history, during Christian times, it is evident that they had little power of remorse, and little natural firmness of conscientious principle : and, in fact, at an earlier and critical time, when the intellect of the nation was ripening, an atrocious civil war, that lasted for twenty-seven years, inflicted a political and c,cial demoralization, from the effects of which they could never recover. Besides this, their very admiration of beauty, coupled with the degraded state of the female intellect, proved a frightful source of corruption, such as no philosophy could have adequately checked. From such a nation then, whatever its intellectual pretensions, no healthful influence over its neighbours could flow, until other and higher inspiration was infused into its sentiment.