ABSTRACT
I. As one who has been journeying through the dark1 begins at length to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so that the forms of
things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume an exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds,—so now,
through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline of the heroic age. The careful and sceptical Thucydides has left us, in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture of the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevate the possessor to the rank of a demigod;—times of unsettled law and indistinct control;—of adventureof excitement;—of daring qualities and lofty crime. We recognize in the picture features familiar to the North: the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the sea, descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder a profession of honour, remind us of the exploits of the Scandinavian Her-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greece tempted to piratical adventures: their numerous isles, their winding bays and wood-clad shores proffered ample enterprise to the boldample booty to the rapacious; the voyages were short for the inexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages, valour is the true virtue-it dignifies the pursuits in which it is engaged, and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourable in the Ægæan as among the bold rovers of the Scandinavian race.2 If the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion and alarm, neither were the interior recesses of the country more protected from the violence of marauders. The various tribes that passed into Greece, to colonize or conquer, dislodged from their settlements many of the inhabitants, who, retreating up the country, maintained themselves by plunder, or avenged themselves by outrage. The many crags and mountains, the caverns and the woods, which diversify the beautiful land of Greece,
afforded their natural fortresses to these barbarous hordes. The chief who had committed a murder, or aspired unsuccessfully to an unsteady throne, betook himself, with his friends, to some convenient fastness, made a descent on the surrounding villages, and bore off the women or the herds, as lust or want excited to the enterprise. No home was safe, no journey free from peril, and the Greeks passed their lives in armour. Thus, gradually, the profession and system of robbery spread itself throughout Greece, until the evil became insufferable-until the public opinion of all the states and tribes, in which society had established laws, was enlisted against the freebooter-until it grew an object of ambition to rid the neighbourhood of a scourge-and the success of the attempt made the glory of the adventurer. Then naturally arose the race of heroes-men who volunteered to seek the robber in his hold-and, by the gratitude of a later age, the courage of the knight-errant was rewarded with the sanctity of the demigod. At that time too, internal circumstances in the different states-whether from the predominance of, or the resistance to, the warlike Hellenes, had gradually conspired to raise a military and fierce aristocracy above the rest of the population; and as arms became the instruments of renown and power, so the wildest feats would lead to the most extended fame.
