sixth century Sparta attracted poets from the colonies in Asia Minor, but the only form of literature which Sparta rewarded and encouraged was choral lyric. No such narrowness characterised Athens, and when she established herself as the intellectual capital of Greece, all men of genius received a welcome there, and we find all forms of literature deserting their native homes, even their native dialects, to come to Athens. … As long as literature had many centres, there was no danger of all falling by a single stroke; but when it was centralised in Athens, and the blow delivered by Philip at Chæronea had fallen on Athens, classical Greek literature perished in a generation. It is somewhat difficult to distinguish race-qualities from the characteristics impressed on a people by the conditions under which it lives, since the latter by accumulation and transmission from generation to generation eventually become race-qualities. Thus the Spartans possessed qualities common to them and the Dorians, of whom they were a branch, and also qualities peculiar to themselves, which distinguished them from other Dorians. … The ordinary life of a Spartan citizen was that of a soldier in camp or garrison, rather than that of a member of a political community, and this system of life was highly unfavourable to literature. … Other Dorians, not hemmed in by such unfavourable conditions as the Spartans, did provide some contributions to the literature of Greece, and in the nature of their contributions we may detect the qualities of the race. The Dorians in Sicily sowed the seeds of rhetoric and carried comedy to considerable perfection. Of imagination the race seems destitute: it did not produce poets. On the other hand, the race is eminently practical as well as prosaic, and their humour was of a nature which corresponded to these qualities. … The Æolians form a contrast both to the Spartans and to the Athenians. The development of individuality is as characteristic of the Æolians as its absence is of the Spartans. But the Æolians, first of all Greeks, possessed a cavalry, and this means that they were wealthy and aristocratic. … This gives us the distinction between the Æolians and the Athenians: among the former, individuality was developed in the aristocracy alone; among the latter, in all the citizens. The Æolians added to the crown of Greek literature one of the brightest of its jewels-lyric poetry, as we understand lyric in modern times, that is, the expression of the poet's feelings, on any subject whatever, as his individual feeling. … But it was the Ionians who rendered the greatest services to Greek literature. They were a quick-witted race, full of enterprise, full of resources. In them we see reflected the character of the sea, as in the Dorians the character of the mountains. The