The inhabitants of Greece in this wider sense not only spoke the same language (whose preservation was largely due to the influence of Homer), but were also bound together by fellowship in blood, in religion, and in manners. They were hardly more distinguishable from the rude and ignorant tribes of Europe than from the more civilised Orientals who practised human sacrifice, polygamy, and the mutilation of enemies. But perhaps the most marked characteristic of the Greeks was their love of local autonomy, and their rooted aversion to anything like imperial rule, such as prevailed so widely in Asia. Their attachment to an individual city, as the capital of a small district, was doubtless due in great measure to the divided nature of the country, which is broken up by mountains and rivers and arms of the sea into numberless plains and valleys only a few miles in extent. While this had the effect of fostering a spirit of independence, combined with a sense of civic obligation, which helped to develop the energies and capacities of the individual, the proximity to each other of so many rival states bred a great amount of jealousy and strife, which frequently led to bloody and destructive wars. Such disintegrating tendencies were too much even for the consolidating force of a common language and literature, or of voluntary confederations for the purpose of worship or amusement. Occasionally a great national emergency, such as the Persian invasion, might force the Greeks to join together for the resistance of a common foe, but it was almost inevitable that sooner or later they should fall into the hands of a great military power, such as Macedonia, and lose the civic liberties of which they were so proud. The political decay of Greece, however, only widened the scope of its influence. As the dissolution of the Jewish polity was followed by the rapid spread of a religion which had its roots in the Jewish Scriptures, so the national degradation of the Greeks led to a still wider diffusion of their language, their literature, and their civilisation. CHAPTER I THE IONIAN ISLANDS AND THE “ODYSSEY” The first place in Greece on which a traveller from the West usually sets foot is Corfu, one of the Ionian Islands, which were given up by Great Britain in 1864 to gratify the patriotic aspirations of the Greeks. The sacrifice was not without its compensations, as it relieved Britain from an annual outlay of £100,000, which had been the cost of administration. The principal Ionian Islands are five in number, namely, Corfu (Corcyra), Santa Mauro (Leucas), Ithaca, Cephalonia (Cephallenia), and Zanté (Zacynthus). They represent a territory of more than 1000 square miles, with a population of about a quarter of a million, who are mainly dependent on shipping and on the trade in oil, wine, and currants.