Berenger, the French poet, fables that it was Cyprus wine which first gave birth to the gods of Greece—stating that Hesiod had warmed his veins with the liquor before he began to embody his Olympian theories. But Hesiod, after all, only transcribed and touched up the popular belief; it was the bright, sensuous genius of Greece, transfiguring the happy elements of the clime, that brought forth the theogonies—peopled with immortal dwellers the
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes, Beyond heaven’s constellated wilderness.
The Greeks deified the best attributes of mankind, and adored the Supreme Spirit in the reflections of their own cheerful and elevated minds. In the vastness and power of the sea they saw Poseidon on his car, drawn by sea-horses, and girt by his conch-bearing Tritons, sounding in response to what the old Greek dramatist calls “the innumerable laughter of the waves”—_anarithmon kymaton gelasma_—Jupiter thundered from the acroceraunian top of Olympus,
Soaring all snow-clad through his native sky In the wild pomp of mountain majesty;
Phœbus-Apollo and Diana, his sister, moved, beautiful unspeakably, in the sun and moon; gods blew in the four great winds and in the breeze; every fountain had its Naiad, and every oak its Hamadryad. Pan shouted on the mountains—especially whenever good came to Greece; and on the day of Marathon his mighty vociferations were heard at wonderful distances!—and the Fauns, Satyrs, Dryads, Oreads and so forth, his subjects and followers, wandered over every meadow, and were seen peeping from the glades and openings of every forest.
Much of the power and civilization of Greece grew from her commerce and maritime enterprise—from the sea. Dr. Arnold, the historian, says very truly, that the sea has always been one of the greatest agents of liberty and civilization. The supremacy of Athens over Sparta, then, and in the memory of all future time, was due to the port of the Piræus. The crowning glories of the Attic metropolis—her immortal sculptures and temples and her splendid philosophies—were owing to a refining intercourse with other peoples, and to the maritime exactions, somewhat tyrannically levied from those sea-born states that, from the waters and shores of the Mediterranean, looked to Athens as their mother city and protectress. Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse and other seaports—ancient and modern—have owed their wealth, celebrity and distinguishing character to their respective geographical positions.