The Dorians, a stern, unrelenting tribe, took possession of the southern extremity of the peninsula, called the Peloponnesus; and the city of Sparta was the head of their State. There were other States, too, in Greece, and each had its king and separate government. But although jealous of each other and almost always at war, they worshipped the same deities, consulted the same Oracles, and all alike gloried in being descended from the same gods and in being Greeks.

The two most powerful States (or cities, which meant the same thing) were Athens and Sparta. But they were as widely separated in character and habits as if they did not belong to the same family. Athens was the brain, and Sparta the rough, strong arm of Greece.

Athens delighted in poetry, music, art, and eloquence. The Spartans despised all these things. They scorned to use three words where two would do, and aimed only to make their youth fearless and terrible defenders of Greece.

When a child was born, if it did not give promise of being physically strong and perfect, it was cast into a ravine and then left to perish. When the boys who were permitted to live were seven years old, they were taken from their mothers and made to endure cold, hunger, and inhuman severities. They were beaten until the blood flowed, simply to teach them endurance, and a Spartan boy would die under the lash rather than endure the disgrace of uttering a cry of pain. There was never any family life, nor pleasure.

Every boy was trained to be a soldier; and until he was sixty years old the man belonged to the State absolutely. And all those years he ate his black broth at a public mess, seasoned only with fatigue and hunger. A witty Athenian said he did not wonder the Spartans were brave in battle, for death was preferable to their life.

The severe code of laws by which they were governed was established by Lycurgus, about 770 b.c. (before Christ).

Athens had her days of severity and cruelty, too, under Draco, who established her first laws. But the people rebelled, and in 594 b.c. Solon, a man of great sagacity, prepared a constitution, which was a model of wisdom, justice, and even of gentleness. The government established by Solon was an aristocratic Republic, in which the common people had no part. The Chief, or Archon, as he was called, was chosen by the nobles, and served for a stated time, like our Presidents.

But the supreme authority lay in the "Court of Areopagus," whose members had already served as Archons. The Areopagus really ruled the State, a Senate of four hundred members preparing the cases which were to be brought before it for decision.

Athens prospered under this rule. But an ambitious noble stirred the people to believe they were unjustly excluded from office and from power, and produced a new government, which, under the cloak of a democracy, was really a despotism, with the scheming Pisistratus at its head, or, as it was called, its "Tyrant" (meaning simply ruler).

But Lycurgus did something else besides placing an austere and merciless system upon Sparta. He helped to re-establish the famous and ancient Olympic Games (776 b.c.).

You know how we feel about our great baseball and football games; how excited we are, and how glad or how sorry if one team or the other is defeated. Well, suppose, instead of these, there was one great game every four years, in which all the country could compete. And suppose the victor in this great game was crowned and treated like a king forever afterward. That would be what the Olympic Games were in Greece.

Every four years the young Greeks from all parts of the country met at Olympia and contended for prizes in athletic games. There was running, jumping, wrestling, boxing, the throwing of javelins and quoits (the "discus"), and races of horses and chariots. For one month, during this great festival, wars were suspended throughout Greece.

The only reward of the victor was a crown of wild-olive leaves; but this was regarded as the dearest prize in life and the greatest honor a Greek could attain.

The wearer of the olive crown was carried home like a king, with processions and songs of triumph, and all his life afterward he was a privileged and honored person. He had conferred everlasting distinction upon his family and his country, and his statue was erected in the Sacred Grove of Jupiter, in whose honor these festivals occurred.

Other festivals were established afterward in honor of Apollo, called the Pythian and Isthmian games, in which there were contests, not alone in gymnastics and in chariot races, but in music, poetry, and eloquence; and these prizes were also sought as the richest rewards life could bring. The Spartans took no part in them. But it was the Olympic games which brought together all of Greece every four years, cemented the states with a common sympathy, and kept alive the fraternal spirit.

This national festival was to them what the Christian era is to us. The interval of four years between the games was called an Olympiad. And time in Greece was measured from the First Olympiad, which occurred, according to our reckoning, b.c. 776-772.

With such a stimulus for effort, every young Greek was straining every nerve and every muscle to win the olive wreath. He was training his body to the finest perfection for the one prize, and his powers of intellect and his genius for the others. This goes far to account for the physical beauty and the supreme excellence which made this race like their own progenitors of the Heroic Age, more like a race of gods than of men.

But they were great in other things besides athletics and accomplishments. The shores of Asia Minor and of the Mediterranean were soon fringed with rich Greek colonies. Every place they touched blossomed into beauty, with temples and houses adorned with sculpture and painting. One of their cities on the coast of Italy was called Sybaris, and it has given us the word "sybarite," which means a person who abandons himself to luxury.

We may form some idea of these Greek cities from Pompeii, which was still existing on the coast of Italy at the time of the Christian era, and which has been preserved in its bed of ashes as if to show to a later age refinements of luxury, so far exceeding its own.

While during five hundred years Greece had been thus developing, its separate and discordant states were held firmly together by just three things: They all had the same religion and sacred rites, they were all striving for the same prizes at the Olympic Games, and all alike revered their poet Homer. The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were, in fact, the Greek Bible. It was the final appeal in matters of religion, and it was the history of their divine origin and ancestry. Boys studied it in school, and men never ceased to study it—many Athenians being able to recite both poems from beginning to end.

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The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897

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