CHAPTER III.
The Heroic Age .-- Theseus .-- His legislative Influence upon Athens .-- Qualities of the Greek Heroes .-- Effect of a Traditional Age upon the Character of a People.
I.

As one who has been journeying through the dark [84] begins at length to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so that the forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume an exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds,--so now, through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline of the HEROIC AGE.

The careful and skeptical 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 unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of 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 wood-clad 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.