In the organization of the administrative machinery of these kingdoms, the higher power of the Hellene to adapt and combine had been operative; they were organisms of a richer, more complex type than the East had hitherto known.
It was not till the great colonizing epoch of the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., when the name " Hellene " came into use as the antithesis of " barbarian," that the Greek race came to be conscious of itself as a peculiar people; it was yet some three centuries more before Hellenism stood fully declared in art and literature, in politics and in thought.