CHAPTER II - The Hellenic people generally in the early historical times

Summary

The territory indicated in the last chapter—south of Mount Olympus, and also of the line which connects the city of Ambracia with Mount Pindus—was occupied during the historical period by the central stock of the Hellens or Greeks, from which their numerous outlying colonies were planted out.

Both metropolitans and colonists styled themselves Hellens, and were recognised as such by each other; all glorying in the name as the prominent symbol of fraternity,—all describing non-Hellenic men or cities by a word which involved associations of repugnance. Our term barbarian, borrowed from this latter word, does not express the same idea; for the Greeks spoke thus indiscriminately of the extra-Hellenic world with all its inhabitants, whatever might be the gentleness of their character, and whatever might be their degree of civilization: the rulers and people of Egyptian Thebes with their ancient and gigantic monuments, the wealthy Tyrians and Carthaginians, the philHellene Arganthonius of Tartêssus, and the welldisciplined patricians of Rome (to the indignation of old Cato), were all comprised in it. At first it seemed to have expressed more of repugnance than of contempt, and repugnance especially towards the sound of a foreign language; afterwards a feeling of their own superior intelligence (in part well-justified) arose among the Greeks, and their term barbarian was used so as to imply a low state of the temper and intelligence; in which sense it was retained by the semi-hellenised Romans, as the proper antithesis to their state of civilization.