II
EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK STATES
The Hellenes—Æolians, Ionians, and Dorians—Greek colonisation—The Oracles and great games—First Olympiad, B.C. 776—Objections raised to the games—The Amphicityonic League—The Peloponnesus from B.C. 776—The tyrants of Corinth, Sicyon, and Argos—Sparta—Lycurgus—Spartan education—The Spartan mode of life—First Messenian war, B.C. 745-720—Second Messenian war, B.C. 685-660—Arcadia, Elis, Achaia—Central Greece—Athens—The Synoikismos of Theseus—Draco—Solon—The Seisachtheia of Solon—Pisistratus—The reforms of Cleisthenes—Literary movement at Athens—Island Greece.
We cannot date the arrival of the Hellenes in Greece, nor the composition of the Homeric poems, the popularity of which did so much to fix the language and to secure unity. We can only say that about B.C. 800 they were there—in European Greece, the Islands, and Asia Minor—and were beginning to send out colonies east, west, and north; that the divisions of Greece had obtained the names which we know; and that among these Hellenes there were recognised three families or divisions distinguished by dialect, though of the same mother tongue, and by certain moral and political characteristics Æolians, Ionians, and Dorians.
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