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286 Mirage of Greek Continuity
Others emphasized the importance of physical, political, or
cultural isolation. Physical isolation for the Maniots who live
‘among those inaccessible mountains which are the ancient
Mount Taygetus’ (Pococke 1743–5, i. 178), ‘sous l’abri des
rochers qui repoussent les vices’ (Choiseul-Gouffier (1782),
p. viii), and were therefore able to escape the taint of intermarriages
(Morritt (1794/1985), 194–5), but also for the inhabitants
of the Ionian islands who ‘preserve more of the Grecian manners
and character than much of the region more properly
included in that denomination’ (Douglas (1813), 10), their
blood being even more ‘pure’ than the Maniots’ according to
Douglas (1813, 43). The political isolation of those who live
‘loin du siège de l’empire’ (Choiseul-Gouffier (1782), p. ix),
that is, in the countryside, in the islands or even in Athens,
results in their being ‘plus originaux, plus vrais et moins corrompus
par les Mahométans’ (Riedesel (1774/1802), 319). The
cultural isolation of the common people is such that they ‘refine
but little and are ever tenacious of the traditions handed down
to them by their forefathers and are so much attached to their
customs, that they bear with them the force of so many laws’
(Guys (1772), i. 146).
Readers of The Spirit of the Laws may also, like Charlemont
(1749/1984, 112, 119), ‘subscribe to the opinion and fundamental
maxim laid down by the Great Montesquieu that ‘‘physical
causes never cease to operate and to produce their effects,
notwithstanding the total subversion of every moral cause’’ ’.
Given that Greece ‘has not lost the gifts of nature, why then
should its inhabitants not retain their native genius?’ Guys
voices the same opinion in lyrical terms: ‘the same sun which
formerly enlivened this country continues to shine with undiminished
splendour . . . the pureness of the air, the softness
of the climate, the serenity of the day inspire ideas superior to
any thing, but the objects to be met within this country. Every
woman I meet conveys to my imagination a Venus from the
chisel of a Praxiteles or the pencil of an Apelles’ (1772, iii. 21).
But the validity of these explanations is also questioned or
seriously qualified. Tournefort, for one, compared the Greeks
‘who are unmerciful talkers’ and the Turks who ‘pride themselves
on sincerity and modesty more than on eloquence’ (1718,
i. 156), and concluded that ‘though those two nations are born