=Importance of the Colonies.=—­Wherever they settled, the colonists constituted a new state which in no respect obeyed the mother town from which they had come out.  And so the whole Mediterranean found itself surrounded by Greek cities independent one of the others.  Of these cities many became richer and more powerful than 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 are men; they have clothing, palaces, bodies similar to ours; if they cannot die, they can at least be wounded.  Homer relates how Ares, the god of war, struck by a warrior, fled howling with pain.  This fashion of making gods like men is what is called Anthropomorphism.