Előszó
INTRODUCTION Sometime about
thirty-six or thirty-seven hundred years ago, historians say, the first
Greek tribes of whom we have any knowledge came down from the
northern mountains into the coasts and plains of what was later called
Greece. They did not call themselves Greeks but Achaeans or, some-
times, Danaans, the folk, that is, of a mythical King Danaus, prolific
in daughters. They were a bold, untamed, half-civilized race, but the
people they proceeded to conquer had for some centuries been part
of a rich Aegean civilization, centered in the southern island of Crete.
The Achaean freebooters took over the strongholds of the Aegeans
and gradually many of their arts and habits of life, keeping, however,
certain ideas and practices of their own which made their culture at
various points different from that of the Aegeans before them. It took
them years to complete the conquest. Even then they remained for a
long time a warlike breed, living off the older population of workers
on the soil. When too much peace grew monotonous, they fought
among themselves or sailed away on piratical expeditions up and
down the surrounding seas. In leisure hours they listened to tales of
their own Achaean heroes and their exploits by land and water or of
their gods and goddesses and their miraculous participations in hu-
man affairs.
So the time passed. Eventually the Achaeans grew interested in
the cultivation of their acquired fields and vineyards, their herds of
cattle, sheep and swine. They learned to combine piracy with trade
and made the acquaintance of the highly developed civilizations of
Phoenicia and Egypt. Then, somewhere about the year 1100 b.c.,
their dominion was shaken by new migrations of northern Greeks,
who came as they had once come, streaming down from the moun-
tains, through Thessaly and on to the south. But this time one in-
vasion followed hard on another. At least two centuries were filled
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