In the highest degree a passionate lover of every kind of exhibition of strength, even in so trivial a thing as a cockfight, the Greek always con , sidered the most positive element in such exhibition, whatever the par ticular example; that is to say, he valued the victor rather than the victory. This feeling gave a most decided direction to human culture, and enabled it when in danger of error to recover the right path. The same spirit, leading him to spend his leisure hours in the gymnasium looking on or taking part in the exercises, caused him to admire the fresh glowing beauty of the youth of his native city. Even in the market-place, which was the political rendezvous and mercantile exchange of those times, he found food for his love of the ideal, for there was concentrated the religious life of the people, and their political deliberations and designs were undertaken under the immediate influence of their glorious historical past.
The Agora of the older cities is not to be conceived as a place regu larly laid out and built up; the later colonies first made the spot an orna ment to the city. In the closely-built capitals the market-place often became, in course of time, too small, and larger places had to be provided for the popular assemblies. In Athens the Pnyx served this purpose. It was a semicircular space on the declivity of a hill opposite the judgment place of the Areopagus, bounded by the hewn natural rock of the hill and by walls, and containing opposite the semicircle the bona, or stand for the speakers. When at length this place became too small, the assem blies were held in the theatre of Dionysus.
We may remark here that Athens possessed in the second century E. c., in the so-called "Tower of the Winds," a sun-dial and a water-clock, and also a vane in the form of a triton which turned to show the direction of the wind; the possession of these was held to be an advantage by no means everywhere attainable. This tower is well preserved, and is delineated in Vol. IV. (54 8).
The .S'iow are finally to be mentioned. These were porticos, closed with a wall on one side and presenting an open hall on the other. At times they consisted of two halls running parallel with the interior wall; sometimes they were built so that pillars, occasionally as many as five rows, alone supported the roof. They were especially used as meeting places for the philosophers, to which circumstance, indeed, one school, that of the Stoics, owed its name, but they also served for other assemblies and as public promenades.
The Religious Life of the Greeks, with its hopes and fears, its longings and beseechings, as is true of so many other institutions, was developed from the contemplation of Nature. Heroes and gods had their origin in the powers of Nature, which the youthful, creative fancy of the people made incarnate and supplied with symbols, just as we found was the case with the most ancient peoples. But the mighty spirit of independence in
the Greek character rebelled against the condition of restraint which is the foundation of all religious life, and settled the question of religion by entrusting its treatment not to a priesthood, but to the poets and artists. Herodotus himself had already come to the conclusion that the poets had created the gods for the people. But this observation is only half true. There was indeed a world of the gods created by the poets and represented by the artists, but it did not claim to be anything more than what it actually was—a creation of poetry, a subject for art known to every cultivated person and having a reflex influence upon the beliefs of the people. But so much of ancient tradition was retained that the latter continued to furnish the essential element, and the form alone for the most part was ennobled by art.
worship of local deities was so prevalent in Greece, and the ceremonies connected therewith were often so naturalistic as con trasted with the aesthetic Olympus imagined by the poets, that its original derivation could not remain a secret. The essential character of the latter, in which the soaring intellectual impulses of the nation were con centrated, lay in the distinct assertion of pure humanity beside the forces and operations of Nature symbolized as attributes of divinity, and mani fested in its qualities and even in its caprices. Thus the Grecian mythology received that intellectual impress which was the special source of its sub sequent fame. We refrain from describing the different gods, their rela tions to one another, and their histories, since every cultivated person may be presumed to have a sufficient knowledge of classical mythology. Plate 27 contains a view of their splendid forms, copied from antique models.
the course of its intellectual growth, Greece also reached a point where intelligence rejected the simple ancestral faith, and, as in all similar cases, the process was negative as well as positive. This process and its consequences belong indeed to the History of Culture, but, like many cognate subjects, they must be omitted from the present sketch.
The Greek colonies spread the national civilization, manners, and mode of living over a great part of the then known world; especially was this influence felt in Southern Italy, which was in consequence called Magna Grzecia, and in Asia Minor, where Greek culture remained widely preva lent and deeply rooted until overwhelmed by Mohammedanism. Before proceeding to the consideration of the elements of development of more Western nations, it will be of advantage to turn again to the East, where manifold peculiarities and bleedings demand a passing glance.