furnish a frugal subsistence for a large population,
and the mildness of the climate allowed all the more valuable products
to ripen early, and go out of season last. Such conditions, of course,
would furnish motives for skill and industry, and demand of the people
frugal and temperate habits. The luxuriance of a tropical climate tends
to improvidence and indolence. Where nature pours her fullness into the
lap of ease, forethought and providence are little needed. There is none
of that struggle for existence which awakens sagacity, and calls into
exercise the active powers of man. But in a country where nature only
yields her fruits as the reward of toil, and yet enough to the
intelligent culture of the soil, there habits of patient industry must
be formed. The alternations of summer and winter excite to forethought
and providence, and the comparative poverty of the soil will prompt to
frugality. Man naturally aspires to improve his condition by all the
means within his power. He becomes a careful observer of nature, he
treasures up the results of observation, he compares one fact with
another and notes their relations, and he makes new experiments to test
his conclusions, and thus he awakes to the vigorous exercise of all his
powers. These physical conditions must develop a hardy, vigorous,
prudent, and temperate race; and such, unquestionably, were the Greeks.
"Theophrastus, and other authors, amply attest the observant and
industrious agriculture prevalent in Greece. The culture of the vine and
olive appears to have been particularly elaborate and the many different
accidents of soil, level, and exposure which were to be found, afforded
to observant planters materials for study and comparison."[21] The
Greeks were frugal in their habits and simple in their modes of life.
The barley loaf seems to have been more generally eaten than the wheaten
loaf; this, with salt fish and vegetables, was the common food of the
population. Economy in domestic life was universal. In their manners,
their dress, their private dwellings, they were little disposed to
ostentation or display.

[Footnote 21: Grote, "Hist. of Greece," vol. ii. p. 230.]

The climate of Attica is what, in physical geography, would be called
_maritime_. "Here are allied the continental vigor and oceanic softness,
in a fortunate union, mutually tempering each other."[22] The climate of
the whole peninsula of Greece seems to be distinguished from that of
Spain a