who did not. The Arcadian may
stand as a type of the pure Grecian landsman, with his rustic and
illiterate habits--his diet of sweet chestnuts, barley cakes, and pork
(as contrasted with the fish which formed the chief seasoning for the
bread of an Athenian)--his superior courage and endurance--his reverence
for Lacedaemonian headship as an old and customary influence--his
sterility of intellect and imagination as well as his slackness in
enterprise--his unchangeable rudeness of relations with the gods, which
led him to scourge and prick Pan if he came back empty-handed from the
chase; while the inhabitant of Phokaea or Miletus exemplifies the
Grecian mariner, eager in search of gain--active, skilful, and daring at
sea, but inferior in steadfast bravery on land--more excitable in
imagination as well as more mutable in character--full of pomp and
expense in religious manifestations toward the Ephesian Artemis or the
Apollo of Branchidae: with a mind more open to the varieties of Grecian
energy and to the refining influences of Grecian civilization.

The configuration of the Grecian territory, so like in many respects to
that of Switzerland, produced two effects of great moment upon the
character and history of the people. In the first place, it materially
strengthened their powers of defense: it shut up the country against
those invasions from the interior which successively subjugated all
their continental colonies; and it at the same time rendered each
fraction more difficult to be attacked by the rest, so as to exercise a
certain conservative influence in assuring the tenure of actual
possessors: for the pass of Thermopylae between Thessaly and Phokis,
that of Kithaeron between Boeotia and Attica, or the mountainous range
of Oneion and Geraneia along the Isthmus of Corinth, were positions
which an inferior number of brave men could hold against a much greater
force of assailants. But, in the next place, while it tended to protect
each section of Greeks from being conquered, it also kept them
politically disunited and perpetuated their separate autonomy. It
fostered that powerful principle of repulsion, which disposed even the
smallest township to constitute itself a political unit apart from the
rest, and to resist all idea of coalescence with others, either amicable
or compulsory. To a modern reader, accustomed to large political
aggregations, and securities for good government through the
representative system, it