Athens Its Rise and Fall Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE HEROIC AGE—THESEUS—HIS LEGISLATIVE INFLUENCE UPON ATHENS-QUALITIES OF THE GREEK HEROES-EFFECT OP A TRADITIONAL AGE UPON THE CHARACTER OF A PE... more »OPLE. I. As one who has been journeying through the Book i. dark begins at length to perceive the night Chap. breaking away in mist and shadow, so that the forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume an exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amidst the clouds, —so now, through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline of the Heroic Age. The careful and sceptical Thucydides has left us, in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture of the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates the possessor to the rank of a demigod ;—times of unsettled law, and indistinct control;—of adventure—of excitement ;-— of daring qualities and lofty crime. We recognise in the picture features familiar to the North : the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas, descended upon unBook L. guarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of Chap. plunder a profession of honour, remind us of — the exploits of the Scandinavian Her-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greece tempted to piratical adventures : their numerous isles, their winding bays, and woodclad shores, proffered ample enterprise to the bold— ample booty to the rapacious;—the voyages were short for the inexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages, valour is the true virtue—it dignifies the pursuits in which it is engaged, and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourable in the .ZEgaean, as amongst the bold rovers of the Scandinavian race. If the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion and alarm, neither were the interior recesses of the cou...« less