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62 ANCIENT GREECE.[ cnAP vCHAPTER V.THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE HEBOIC AGE. MIGRATIONS.ORIGIN OP REPUBLICAN FORMS OF GOVERNMENT,AND THEIE CHARACTER.LIKE the age of chivalry in western Europe, the heroic ageof the* Greeks began and ended without our being able todefine either period by an exact date. Such a phenomenonis the fruit of causes which are rooted deeply and of continuing influence, and it neither suddenly ripens nor suddenly decays. The heroic age was not immediately terminated by the Trojan war ; yet it was during that period inits greatest glory/ It was closely united with the politicalconstitution, of the times ;the princes of the tribes were thefirst of the heroes.When the constitution of the tribes waschanged, the ancient heroic world could not continue. Nonew undertaking was begun, which was so splendidly executed and closed. Although, therefore, heroic charactersmay still have arisen, as in the times of Achilles and Agamemnon, no similar career of honour was opened to them ;they were not celebrated in song like the Atridse and theircompanions ;and though they may have gained the praiseof their contemporaries, they did not live, like the latter, inthe memory of succeeding generations.In the age succeeding the Trojan war, several events tookplace, which prepared and introduced an entire revolutionin the domestic and still more in the publiclife of theGreeks. The result of these revolutions was the origin andgeneral prevalence of republican forms of government amongthem ;and this decided the whole future character of theirlifepublic as a nation.It is still possible for us to show the general causes of thisgreat change; but when we remember that these eventstook place before Greece had produced an historian, and whentradition was the only authority, we give up all expectationof gaining perfect and unbroken historical accounts ;and1Hesiod limits his fourth age, the age of heroes, to the times immediatelybefore and after the Trojan war. Op. et Dies, 156, etc.