Home life in Hellas, Greece and the Greeks - eBooks4Greeks.gr

TYPES AND TRAITS 143mainly from the particular island to which theybelong.In a former chapter a passing remark was madecomplexions of many of the Greeksas to the fairin the Peloponnesus. Professor Mahaffy in hisRambles and Studies in Greece has a passage inwhich he notes his astonishment at finding inArgos every second child fair with blue eyes, likea transplanted Northern, and he goes on to saythat, after the deep brown children of SouthernItaly, nothing is more curious than these fairerchildren under a hotter sky. It reminded him ofHomer's King of Sparta, with fair skin and yellowhair, and it seemed to him to be most common indistricts where the blood was unmixed. It maybe so. The colour on statues showed that theancients tinted the hair gold and the eyes blue.is most prevalent in the southern parts of thePeloponnesus, and recurs in the Sphakiotes ofCrete, who are supposed to be of old Hellenicstock, and in the village of Apeiranthos in theisland of Xaxos, whose inhabitants are probably ofSphakiote origin. No contrast can be greaterthan that between the fair people of Central andSouthern Peloponnesus and the dark folk in theextreme north of Thessaly, whose sharp featuresfrequently remind one of the figures on Assyrianmonuments.Both types may be seen in Athensthe latter among the itinerant vendors of sweets,the former among the shoeblacks.ItThese blonde,blue-eyed lads come from Arcadia or Messenia,