WE have travelled rather far in our study of Greek
science, and yet we have not until now come to
Greece itself. And even now, the men whose names
we are to consider were, for the most part, born in out-lying portions of the empire; they differed from the
others we have considered only in the fact that they
were drawn presently to the capital. The change is
due to a most interesting sequence of historical events.
In the day when Thales and his immediate successors
taught in Miletus, when the great men of the
Italic school were in their prime, there was no single
undisputed Centre of Greek influence. The Greeks
were a disorganized company of petty nations, welded
together chiefly by unity of speech; but now, early in
the fifth century B.C., occurred that famous attack upon
the Western world by the Persians under Darius and his
son and successor Xerxes. A few months of battling
determined the fate of the Western world. The Orientals
were hurled back; the glorious memories of Marathon,
Salamis, and Plataea stimulated the patriotism
and enthusiasm of all children of the Greek race. The
Greeks, for the first time, occupied the centre of the
historical stage; for the brief interval of about half a
century the different Grecian principalities lived
together in relative harmony. One city was recognized
as the metropolis of the loosely bound empire; one city
became the home of culture and the Mecca towards
which all eyes turned; that city, of course, was Athens.
For a brief time all roads led to Athens, as, at a later
date, they all led to Rome. The waterways which
alone bound the widely scattered parts of Hellas into
a united whole led out from Athens and back to
Athens, as the spokes of a wheel to its hub. Athens
was the commercial centre, and, largely for that reason,
it became the centre of culture and intellectual influence
also. The wise men from the colonies visited the
metropolis, and the wise Athenians went out to the
colonies. Whoever aspired to become a leader in
politics, in art, in literature, or in philosophy, made his
way to the capital, and so, with almost bewildering
suddenness, there blossomed the civilization of the age
of Pericles; the civilization which produced Æschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, and Thucydides; the
civilization which made possible the building of the
Parthenon.
