Greece proper is rugged in aspect as well as in climate. The countryis divided by barren mountain ranges. Passage by land from valley tovalley is difficult. Separate communities grew up in the fertile plains，and when the land no longer could carry their numbers， some would setout across the sea to found colonies. From the middle of the eighth tothe middle of the sixth century B.C. the shores of Sicilv Southern Italy，and the Black Sea became dotted with Greek cities. With the rise ofcolonies trade developed， and the Greeks came into renewed contactwith the East.

　　Politicall-D post-Dorian Greece underwent a regular sequence ofchanges beginning with kingship. Gradually power came into the handsof the aristocracy， which in turn was followed by a period ofnon-hereditary monarchs or tyrants. In the end， political power fell tothe citizens， which is the literal meaning of 'democracy'. Tyranny anddemocracy henceforth alternate. Pure democracy may work so long asall the citizens can be gathered into the market place. In our time itsurvives only in a few of the smaller cantons of Switzerland. The earliest and greatest literary monument of the .Greek world isthe work of Homer. About the man we know nothing definite. Someeven think there was a line of poets later called by this name. At allevents， the two great Homeric poems， the Iliad and the Odyssev seemto have been completed by about 8oo B.C. The Trojan War， aroundwhich the poems turn， took place shortly after Jzoo B.C. We thus havea post-Dorian account ofa pre-Dorian event， and hence a certain amountof inconsistencv， In their present form， the poems go back to therecession of Peisistratus， the Athenian tyrant of the sixth century B.C.Much of the brutality of the earlier period has been softened in Homer，though traces of it survive. The poems indeed reflect the rationalattitudes of an emancipated ruling class. Bodies are cremated， not buriedas we know they were in Mycenaean times. 

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