Michelet likens Greece to a trap having three compartments. You entered, and found yourself taken first in Macedonia, then in Thessaly, then between the Thermopylæ and the isthmus. But the difficulties increase beyond the isthmus, and Lacedæmonia remained impregnable for a long time. At an epoch when the navigation even of a land-locked sea like the Ægean was attended with danger, Greece found herself sufficiently protected against the invasions of oriental nations; but, at the same time, no other country held out such inducements to the pacific expeditions of merchants. Gulfs and harbours facilitated access to her Ægean coasts, and the numerous outlying islands were available as stations or as places of refuge. Greece, therefore, was favourably placed for entering into commercial intercourse with the more highly civilised peoples who dwelt on the opposite coasts of Asia Minor. The colonists and voyagers of Eastern Ionia not only supplied their Achæan and Pelasgian kinsmen with foreign commodities and merchandise, but they also imparted to them the myths, the poetry, the sciences, and the arts of their native country. Indeed, the geographical configuration of Greece points towards the east, whence she has received her first enlightenment. Her peninsulas and outlying islands extend in that direction; the harbours on her eastern coasts are most commodious, and afford the best shelter; and the mountain-surrounded plains there offer the best sites for populous cities. … The most distinctive feature of Hellas, as far as concerns the relief of the ground, consists in the large number of small basins, separated one from the other by rocks or mountain ramparts. The features of the ground thus favoured the division of the Greek people into a multitude of independent republics. Every town had its river, its amphitheatre of hills or mountains, its acropolis, its fields, pastures, and forests, and nearly all of them had, likewise, access to the sea. All the elements required by a free community were thus to be found within each of these small districts, and the neighbourhood of other towns, equally favoured, kept alive perpetual emulation, too frequently degenerating into strife and battle. The islands of the Ægean Sea, likewise, had constituted themselves into miniature republics. Local institutions thus developed themselves freely, and even the smallest island of the Archipelago has its great representatives in history. But whilst there thus exists the greatest diversity, owing to the configuration of the ground and the multitude of islands, the sea acts as a binding element, washes every coast, and penetrates far inland. These gulfs and numerous harbours have made the maritime inhabitants of Greece a nation of sailors—amphibiæ, as Strabo called them. From the most remote times the passion