DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1004#0069
OF NATURAL CAUSES. 69
The description then of physical elements which is applicable to Greece
in general, is especially appropriate to that part of it which we are now
describing. The great kingdoms of Europe are not more distinctly
severed from each other by their natural boundaries than the small pro-
vinces of the Morea are by theirs. Each of these possesses, as it were,
its own Alps and Pyrenees. Hence there is no bond of union among
them. Each of them is self-sufficient and independent. Hence, too,
their history is rather that of separate countries, than of one; and not
merely so, but of countries opposed to, as well as divided from, each other.
In looking down as we have just done from the heights of Lycasus on
the two southern provinces of the Peninsula, we mean Mcssenia and
Laconia, separated from each other by the long Apennine of Mount Tay-
getus, we cannot but remember the protracted and bitter enmity which ex-
asperated the ancient inhabitants of these two districts against each other,
and which raged the more fiercely in consequence of the opportunities for
military aggressions which their contiguity afforded, and which was only
terminated by the national extinction of one of the belligerent parties.
It would have been fortunate for Messenia if no barrier had existed
between itself and its more powerful neighbour. It then might have been
incorporated in Laconia as a part of that country, instead of being subju-
gated by it: its inhabitants might have become citizens instead of being
slaves of Sparta. They might have risen to Lacedaemonians, instead of
being depressed into Helots.
Thus locally isolated and divided from each other, the provinces of the
Peninsula never organized among themselves a national confederacy for
The description then of physical elements which is applicable to Greece
in general, is especially appropriate to that part of it which we are now
describing. The great kingdoms of Europe are not more distinctly
severed from each other by their natural boundaries than the small pro-
vinces of the Morea are by theirs. Each of these possesses, as it were,
its own Alps and Pyrenees. Hence there is no bond of union among
them. Each of them is self-sufficient and independent. Hence, too,
their history is rather that of separate countries, than of one; and not
merely so, but of countries opposed to, as well as divided from, each other.
In looking down as we have just done from the heights of Lycasus on
the two southern provinces of the Peninsula, we mean Mcssenia and
Laconia, separated from each other by the long Apennine of Mount Tay-
getus, we cannot but remember the protracted and bitter enmity which ex-
asperated the ancient inhabitants of these two districts against each other,
and which raged the more fiercely in consequence of the opportunities for
military aggressions which their contiguity afforded, and which was only
terminated by the national extinction of one of the belligerent parties.
It would have been fortunate for Messenia if no barrier had existed
between itself and its more powerful neighbour. It then might have been
incorporated in Laconia as a part of that country, instead of being subju-
gated by it: its inhabitants might have become citizens instead of being
slaves of Sparta. They might have risen to Lacedaemonians, instead of
being depressed into Helots.
Thus locally isolated and divided from each other, the provinces of the
Peninsula never organized among themselves a national confederacy for