Among the principal results of the causes we have enumerated were a high intellectual cultivation, the profoundest study of philosophy, the most ardent pursuit of literature, a matchless taste for the beautiful in nature and in art, an irrepressible enthusiasm in the search after knowledge of every kind, and, joined with these, as their cause sometimes, and sometimes as their consequence, an invincible and limitless craving after fame. And these characteristic qualities of the people exhibited themselves in various ways. Sometimes, as in Thessaly, men sought to distinguish themselves by their wealth and the pomp by which they were surrounded:—sometimes their ruling passion urged them to pluck, amidst blood and slaughter, the laurels of war, as in Crete and Sparta, where military discipline was carried to its utmost perfection, where men lived perpetually encamped around their domestic hearths, cultivated the habits, preferences, tastes, and feelings of soldiers, and looked upon dominion as the supreme good:—sometimes religion, with its rites and pomp and sacrifices, absorbed a whole people, as in Elis, where the worship of supreme Zeus and the celebration of sacred games conferred a sanctity upon the land and people which all men of Hellenic blood respected:—elsewhere mountaineers,[146] of indomitable valour, hired out their swords to the best bidder, and became, as it were, the journeymen of war:—elegant pleasures in many cities, and commerce and magnificence, occupied and depraved the whole community; while others,[147] of grosser minds and more sordid propensities, passed their whole lives in indolent gluttony round the festive board, amid crowds of singers, flute-players, and dancers; or else, like the Delphians, were ever seen hovering amid the smoke of the altars, whetting their sacrificial knives or feasting on the savoury victims; and yet the triumphs of the Thebans proved that even the lowest of the Greeks, when circumstances led them to cultivate the arts of war, were capable of planning and executing great designs, and acquiring lasting celebrity. The arts, however, by which the Greeks rose to greatness,[148] and became the instructors and everlasting benefactors of mankind, flourished chiefly at Athens, and in the numerous colonies which she planted in various parts of Asia and the islands. To men of Ionian race we owe, in fact, the invention and most successful culture of poetry and philosophy, and those plastic and mimetic arts which added to the world of realities another world more beautiful still. If the Greeks borrowed, as no doubt they did, certain varieties and forms of art and learning from the barbarians, they immediately so refined and improved them, that the original inventors would no longer have recognised the works of their own hands. The glory of giving birth to several of the arts and sciences belongs to them: they were the inventors of the art of war;