their mother
towns; they had a territory which was larger and more fertile, and in
consequence a greater population. Sybaris, it was said, had 300,000
men who were capable of bearing arms. Croton could place in the field
an infantry force of 120,000 men. Syracuse in Sicily, Miletus in Asia
had greater armies than even Sparta and Athens. South Italy was termed
Great Greece. In comparison with this great country fully peopled with
Greek colonies the home country was, in fact, only a little Greece.
And so it happened that the Greeks were much more numerous in the
neighboring countries than in Greece proper; and among these people of
the colonies figure a good share of the most celebrated names: Homer,
Alcaeus, Sappho, Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Democritus,
Empedocles, Aristotle, Archimedes, Theocritus, and many others.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] "Balmy and clement," says Euripides, "is our atmosphere. The cold
of winter has no extremes for us, and the shafts of the sun do not
wound."

[47] Autochthones.

[48] The story of the collection of the Homeric poems by Pisistratus is
without foundation--"eine blosse Fabel." Busolt, "Griechische
Geschichte." Gotha, 1893, i., 127.--ED.

[49] Probably this custom has another origin the recollection of which
was lost.--ED.

[50] Herodotus, iv., 150-158.

CHAPTER X

GREEK RELIGION

=The Gods. Polytheism.=--The Greeks, like the ancient Aryans, believed
in many gods. They had neither the sentiment of infinity nor that of
eternity; they did not conceive of God as one for whom the heavens are
only a tent and the earth a foot-stool. To the Greeks every force of
nature--the air, the sun, the sea--was divine, and as they did not
conceive of all these phenomena as produced by one cause, they
assigned each to a particular god. This is the reason that they
believed in many gods. They were polytheists.

=Anthropomorphism.=--Each god was a force in nature and carried a
distinct name. The Greeks, having a lively imagination, figured under
this name a living being, of beautiful form and human characteristics.
A god or goddess was represented as a beautiful man or woman. When
Odysseus or Telemachus met a person peculiarly great and beautiful,
they began by asking him if he were not a god. Homer in describing the
army pictured on the shield of Achilles adds, "Ares and Athena led the
army, both clad in gold, beautiful and great, as becomes the gods, for
men were smaller." Greek gods