The Dorians rose to the rank of the most powerful race of Greece: and the Ionians, their sole rivals, possessed only on the continent the narrow soil of Attica, though their colonies covered the fertile coast of Asia Minor.

Greece thus reduced to two main tribes, the Doric and the Ionian, historians have justly and generally concurred in noticing between them the strongest and most marked distinctions,--the Dorians grave, inflexible, austere,--the Ionians lively, versatile, prone to change.

The very dialect of the one was more harsh and masculine than that of the other; and the music, the dances of the Dorians, bore the impress of their severe simplicity.
The sentiment of veneration which pervaded their national character taught the Dorians not only, on the one hand, the firmest allegiance to the rites of religion--and a patriarchal respect for age--but, on the other hand, a blind and superstitious attachment to institutions merely on account of their antiquity--and an almost servile regard for birth, producing rather the feelings of clanship than the sympathy of citizens.

We shall see hereafter, that while Athens established republics, Sparta planted oligarchies.

The Dorians were proud of independence, but it was the independence of nobles rather than of a people.