Why it was that the Greeks were thus specially stimulated beyond their brethren we do not know.  It has long been one of the commonplaces of history to declare them the result of their environment.  It is pointed out that in Greece they lived amid precipitous mountains, where, as hunters, they became strong and venturesome, independent and self-reliant.  A sea of islands lay all around; and while an open ocean might only have awed and intimidated them, this ever-luring prospect of shore beyond shore rising in turn on the horizon made them sailors, made them friendly traffickers among themselves.  Always meeting new faces, driving new bargains, they became alert, quick-witted, progressive, the foremost race of all the ancient world.

They do not seem to have been a creative folk.  They only adapted and carried to a higher point what they learned from the older nations with whom they now came in contact.  Phoenicia supplied them with an alphabet, and they began the writing of books.  Egypt showed them her records, and, improving on her idea, they became historians.  So far as we know, the earliest real “histories” were written in Greece; that is, the earliest accounts of a whole people, an entire series of events, as opposed to the merely individual statements on the Egyptian monuments, the personal, boastful clamor of some king.

Before we reach this period of written history we know that the Greeks had long been civilized.  Their own legends scarce reach back farther than the first founding of Athens,[13] which they place about B.C. 1500.  Yet recent excavations in Crete have revealed the remains of a civilization which must have antedated that by several centuries.

[Footnote 13:  See Theseus Founds Athens, page 45.]

But we grope in darkness!  The most ancient Greek book that has come down to us is the Iliad, with its tale of the great war against Troy.[14] Critics will not permit us to call the Iliad a history, because it was not composed, or at least not written down, until some centuries after the events of which it tells.  Moreover, it poetizes its theme, doubtless enlarges its pictures, brings gods and goddesses before our eyes, instead of severely excluding everything except what the blind bard perchance could personally vouch for.

[Footnote 14:  See Fall of Troy, page 70.]

Still both the Iliad and the Odyssey are good enough history for most of us, in that they give a full, outline of Grecian life and society as Homer knew it.  We see the little, petty states, with their chiefs all-powerful, and the people quite ignored.  We see the heroes driving to battle in their chariots, guarded by shield and helmet, flourishing sword and spear.  We learn what Ulysses did not know of foreign lands..  We hear Achilles’ famed lament amid the dead, and note the vague glimmering idea of a future life, which the Greeks had caught perhaps from the Egyptians, perhaps from the suggestive land of dreams.