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. Greece, at the same time, does not share the disadvantage of Turkey, which is almost cut off from the western world by a mountain region difficult to cross. The Ionian Sea, to the west of the Peloponnesus, it is true, is, comparatively speaking, a desert; but farther north the Gulf of Corinth almost cuts in two the Greek peninsula, and the sight of the distant mountains of Italy, which are visible from the Ionian Islands, must have incited to an exploration of the western seas. The Acarnanians, who knew how to build vaults long before the Romans, were thus brought early into contact with the Italians, to whom they imparted their {38} knowledge, and at a subsequent period the Greeks became the civilisers of the whole western world of the Mediterranean. 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.