Usually the state was only a city with a
strip of shore and a harbor, or some villages scattered in the plain
around a citadel. From one state one sees the citadel, mountains, or
harbor of the next state. Many of them count their citizens only by
thousands; the largest included hardly 200,000 or 300,000.
The Hellenes never formed one nation; they never ceased to fight and
destroy one another. And yet all spoke the same language, worshipped
the same gods, and lived the same sort of a life. In these respects
they recognized the bonds of a common race and distinguished
themselves from all other peoples whom they called barbarians and
regarded with disdain.
THE HELLENES BEYOND SEA
=Colonization.=--The Hellenes did not inhabit Greece alone. Colonists
from the Greek cities had gone forth to found new cities in all the
neighboring countries. There were little states in all the islands of
the Archipelago, over all the coast of Asia Minor, in Crete and
Cyprus, on the whole circumference of the Black Sea as far as the
Caucasus and the Crimea, along the shore of Turkey in Europe (then
called Thrace), on the shore of Africa, in Sicily, in south Italy, and
even on the coasts of France and Spain.
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