FROM THE FIRST OLYMPIAD TO PEISISTRATUS
( 776 TO 560)
AN AGE OF COLONIZATION: THE EUXINE: SICILY: SOUTH ITALY: THE HOMELAND: ARGOS: SPARTA: TYRANTS AND SAGES: ATHENS
SECTION: EGYPT AND CYRENE: LYDIA, LIST OF EASTERN KINGS: THE GAMES: THE POETS
ALTHOUGH when we speak of Greek art and literature and philosophy (the three priceless legacies that Greece has left us) we instinctively think of Greece itself and especially of Athens, which in the so-called classic era was the 'eye of Hellas,' the fact is that Greece owes much of its fame to its colonies.1 Of colonial origin were Homer, Archilochus, Terpander, Arion, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Simonides, Anacreon, the younger Simonides, Theocritus, and other Greek poets. The historian Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus. All the great early philosophers were Ionians. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes were of Miletus, Heracleitus of Ephesus, Pythagoras of Samos, Xenophanes of Colophon. Of the seven sages four were colonials, and among celebrated colonial artists may be mentioned Paeonius, Pythagoras, Scopas, Polygnotus, Parrhasius, Apelles, Zeuxis. The arts of working in marble and of bronze-casting came, it is said, from Chios and Lesbos; sculpture came from Crete. The coins, too, of many of the cities of Greater Hellas, such as the beautiful Syracusan coins, were finer than any produced in the mother-country; and, lastly, many of the magnificent
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