ANCIENT HISTORY. (See paragraph in this ar ticle under ETHNOLOGY.) The Hellenes, or later inhabitants of Greece, were a branch of the Indo European, also called Indo-Germanic, or Aryan, speech-family. They are supposed to have entered the country at a remote period from the north and northeast in successive waves of migration, and were composed of various independent tribes. It was not until after the time of Homer that they received the common name Hellenes. By Homer they are called Danalins, Argives, and Achmans, the Hellenes were in his time a small tribe in Thessaly. The name 'Greeks' was another tribal name, generalized by the Italians. The early history of the Greeks is one of fable, where in the achievements of centuries are compressed into single generations, and the movements of whole peoples are described as the adventures of heroes. To this so-called Heroic Age belong the deeds associated with such names as Heraclee, Theseus, and Perseus, and the great. undertakings known as the Argonautic Expedition, the Expedi tion of the SeVen against Thebes, and the Siege of Troy. Much light is thrown upon the civiliza tion of the early period by the remains found at Mycenx, Tiryns, and other places. (See ARCH OLOGY.) The first truly historical landmark in the his tory of Greece is offered by the so-called Dorian migration. The waves of migration which as early as the stone age had peopled Greece with the tribes from the north were continued from time to time after the country had been occupied. One such wave was that of the Dorians, who, at some time roughly placed between B.C. 1200 and 1000, de scending from their mountainous home in the central part of Northern Greece, overran the Peloponnesus and enslaved or drove out the former inhabitants of the land. One of these displaced tribes, the Achmans, settled on the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, expelling the Ionians. who took refuge in Attica. The story of these migrations is compressed into a single generation, but it doubtless represents the con quests of at least two or three centuries. One
of the effects of the movement was the coloniza tion by Greeks of the lands farther east—the islands of the YEgean Sea and the coast of Asia Minor. The expelled peoples were obliged to seek new homes, and three' important streams of colonization poured across the sea: the lEo lians, so called, who settled the islands and coast land to the north; the Ionians, who settled the islands of the central .eEgean and the middle por tion of the Asiatic coast; and the Dorians farther south, who occupied Crete and other islands and the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. Several centuries later, in the eighth and seventh cen turies n.c., another great colonizing impulse spread through the Grecian lands; the cause of this impulse, however, was not external pressure, but internal expansion. This movement carried Greek civilization to Sicily, South Italy (Magna. Grncia), Africa, and other regions.
The history of Greece is for the most part one of individual States, each fired with the spirit of independence and the desire for freedom, and each seeking to solve the problem of national development in its own way and according to its own impulses. The two States which became most prominent, and with which history has prin cipally to do, are Athens and Sparta. Sparta from early times held the lead in the Pelopon nesus, where Argos was long her rival. In the seventh century me. she subdued Messenia. Her peculiar political and social institutions are ascribed to the lawgiver Lycurgus, who, accord ing to the common tradition, lived in the ninth century B.C. At the head of the Government were two hereditary kings; hut their power was lim ited, and in historical times was confined to cer tain priestly functions, the command of the army in war and the enjoyment of a position of honor ary distinction in the State. The actual power was vested in the ephori (q.v.).