Early European History Part 20

7. Compare the position of Crete in relation to Egypt with that of Sicily in relation to the north African coast.

8. Why was the island of Cyprus a natural meeting place of Egyptian, Syrian, and Greek peoples?

9. What modern countries are included within the limits of the Balkan peninsula?

10. Describe the island routes across the Aegean (map between pages 68- 69).

11. What American states lie in about the same lat.i.tude as Greece?

12. Compare the boundaries of ancient Greece with those of the modern kingdom.

13. What European countries in physical features closely resemble Greece?

What state of our union?

14. Why is Greece in its physical aspects "the most European of European lands"?

15. What countries of Greece did not touch the sea?

16. Tell the story of the _Iliad_ and of the _Odyssey_.

17. Explain the following terms: oracle; amphictyony; helot; h.e.l.las; Olympiad; and ephors.

18. Give the meaning of our English words "ostracism" and "oracular."

19. Explain the present meaning and historical origin of the following expressions: "a Delphic response"; "Draconian severity"; "a laconic speech."

20. What is the date of the first recorded Olympiad? of the expulsion of the last tyrant of Athens?

21. Describe the Lions' Gate (ill.u.s.tration, page 70) and the Francois Vase (ill.u.s.tration, page 77).

22. Compare Greek ideas of the future life with those of the Babylonians.

23. Why has the Delphic oracle been called "the common hearth of h.e.l.las"?

24. What resemblances do you discover between the Olympian festival and one of our great international expositions?

25. Define and ill.u.s.trate these terms: monarchy; aristocracy; tyranny; democracy.

26. Why are the earliest laws always unwritten?

27. What differences existed between Phoenician and Greek colonization?

28. Why did the colonies, as a rule, advance more rapidly than the mother country in wealth and population?

29. What is the origin of the modern city of Constantinople? of Ma.r.s.eilles? of Naples? of Syracuse in Sicily?

FOOTNOTES

[1] Webster, _Readings in Ancient History_, chapter iii, "Early Greek Society as Pictured in the Homeric Poems"; chapter iv, "Stories from Greek Mythology"; chapter v, "Some Greek Tyrants"; chapter vi, "Spartan Education and Life."

[2] See pages 16-17.

[3] For the island routes see the map between pages 68-69.

[4] See page 42.

[5] See the ill.u.s.tration, page 10.

[6] See the plate facing page 70.

[7] See pages 29, 48.

[8] See page 5.

[9] See the map, page 76.

[10] The Greek name of the Black Sea.

[11] _Iliad_, xviii, 607.

[12] _Odyssey_, xiv, 83-84.

[13] _Odyssey_, xi, 488-491.

[14] See page 227.

[15] See pages 88,90.

[16] Herodotus, i, 53.

[17] See page 37.

[18] The first recorded celebration occurred in 776 B.C. The four-year period between the games, called an Olympiad, became the Greek unit for determining dates. Events were reckoned as taking place in the first, second, third, or fourth year of a given Olympiad.

[19] _Iliad_, ii, 243.

[20] _Aristocracy_ means, literally, the "government of the best." The Greeks also used the word _oligarchy_--"rule of the few"--to describe a government by citizens who belong to the wealthy cla.s.s.

[21] "Pelops's island," a name derived from a legendary hero who settled in southern Greece.

[22] Xenophon, _Polity of the Lacedaemonians_, 13.

[23] The Spartans believed that their military organization was the work of a great reformer and law-giver named Lycurgus. He was supposed to have lived early in the ninth century B.C. We do not know anything about Lycurgus, but we do know that some existing primitive tribes, for instance, the Masai of East Africa, have customs almost the same as those of ancient Sparta. Hence we may say that the rude, even barbarous, Spartans only carried over into the historic age the habits of life which they had formed in prehistoric times.

[24] See page 82.

[25] The name of an individual voted against was written on a piece of pottery (Greek _ostrakon_), whence the term _ostracism_. See the ill.u.s.tration, page 97.