s much smaller. Usually the state was only a city with a
strip of shore and a harbor, or some villages scattered in the plain
around a citadel. From one state one sees the citadel, mountains, or
harbor of the next state. Many of them count their citizens only by
thousands; the largest included hardly 200,000 or 300,000.

The Hellenes never formed one nation; they never ceased to fight and
destroy one another. And yet all spoke the same language, worshipped
the same gods, and lived the same sort of a life. In these respects
they recognized the bonds of a common race and distinguished
themselves from all other peoples whom they called barbarians and
regarded with disdain.

THE HELLENES BEYOND SEA

=Colonization.=--The Hellenes did not inhabit Greece alone. Colonists
from the Greek cities had gone forth to found new cities in all the
neighboring countries. There were little states in all the islands of
the Archipelago, over all the coast of Asia Minor, in Crete and
Cyprus, on the whole circumference of the Black Sea as far as the
Caucasus and the Crimea, along the shore of Turkey in Europe (then
called Thrace), on the shore of Africa, in Sicily, in south Italy, and
even on the coasts of France and Spain.

=Character of These Colonies.=--Greek colonies were being founded all
the time from the twelfth century to the fifth; they issued from
various cities and represented all the Greek races--Dorian, Ionian,
and AEolian. They were established in the wilderness, in an inhabited
land, by conquest, or by an agreement with the natives. Mariners,
merchants, exiles, or adventurers were their founders. But with all
this diversity of time, place, race, and origin, the colonies had
common characteristics: they were established at one stroke and
according to certain fixed rules. The colonists did not arrive one by
one or in small bands; nor did they settle at random, building houses
which little by little became a city, as is the case now with European
colonists in America. All the colonists started at once under a
leader, and the new city was founded in one day. The foundation was a
religious ceremony; the "founder" traced a sacred enclosure,
constructed a sacred hearth, and lighted there the holy fire.

=Traditions Concerning the Colonists.=--The old stories about the
founding of some of these colonies enable us to see how they differed
from modern colonies. The account of the settlement of Marseilles runs
as follows: Euxenus,