Chapter II (2)

As, on the one hand, a Greek will not consent to look for sovereign authority beyond the limits of his own city, so, on the other hand, he must have a city to look to: scattered villages will not satisfy in his mind the exigencies of social order, security, and dignity. Though the coalescence of smaller towns into a larger is repugnant to his feelings, that of villages into a town appears to him a manifest advance in the scale of civilization. Such, at least, is the governing sentiment of Greece throughout the historical period; for there was always a certain portion of the Hellenic aggregate—the rudest and least advanced among them—who dwelt in unfortified villages, and upon whom the citizen of Athens, Corinth, or Thebes, looked down as inferiors. Such village residence was the character of the Epirots[412] universally, and prevailed throughout Hellas itself, in those very early and even ante-Homeric times upon which Thucydidês looked back as deplorably barbarous;—times of universal poverty and insecurity,—absence of pacific intercourse,—petty warfare and plunder, compelling every man to pass his life armed,—endless migration without any local attachments. Many of the considerable cities of Greece are mentioned as aggregations of preëxisting villages, some of them in times comparatively recent. Tegea and Mantineia in Arcadia, represent, in this way, the confluence of eight villages, and five villages respectively; Dymê in Achaia was brought together out of eight villages, and Elis in the same manner, at a period even later than the Persian invasion;[413] the like seems to have happened with Megara and Tanagra. A large proportion of the Arcadians continued their village life down to the time of the battle of Leuktra, and it suited the purposes of Sparta to keep them thus disunited; a policy which we shall see hereafter illustrated by the dismemberment of Mantineia (into its primitive component villages), which Agesilaus carried into effect, but which was reversed as soon as the power of Sparta was no longer paramount,—as well as by the foundation of Megalopolis out of a large number of petty Arcadian towns and villages, one of the capital measures of Epameinondas.[414] As this measure was an elevation of Arcadian importance, so the reverse proceeding—the breaking up of a city into its elementary villages—was not only a sentence of privation and suffering, but also a complete extinction of Grecian rank and dignity.

[412] Skylax, Peripl. c. 28-33; Thucyd. ii. 80. See Dio
Chrysostom, Or. xlvii. p. 225, vol. ii. ed. Reisk,—μᾶλλον ἠροῦντο
διοικεσῖσθαι κατὰ κώμας, τοῖς βαρβάροις ὁμοίους, ἢ σχῆμα πόλεως
καὶ ὄνομα ἔχειν.

[413] Strabo, viii. pp. 337, 342, 386; Pausan. viii. 45, 1;
Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 17-37.

[414] Pausan. viii. 27, 2-5; Diod. xv. 72: compare Arist. Polit.
ii. 1, 5.

The description of the διοίκισις of Mantineia is in Xenophon,
Hellen. v. 2, 6-8: it is a flagrant example of his philo-Laconian
bias. We see by the case of the Phokians after the Sacred War,
(Diodor. xvi. 60; Pausan. x. 3, 2,) how heavy a punishment
this διοίκισις was. Compare, also, the instructive speech of
the Akanthian envoy Kleigenês, at Sparta, when he invoked
the Lacedæmonian interference for the purpose of crushing
the incipient federation, or junction of towns into a common
political aggregate, which was growing up round Olynthus (Xen.
Hellen. v. 2, 11-2). The wise and admirable conduct of Olynthus,
and the reluctance of the neighboring cities to merge themselves
in this union, are forcibly set forth; also, the interest of
Sparta in keeping all the Greek towns disunited. Compare the
description of the treatment of Capua by the Romans (Livy, xxvi.
16).

The Ozolian Lokrians, the Ætolians, and the Akarnanians maintained their separate village residence down to a still later period, preserving along with it their primitive rudeness and disorderly pugnacity.[415] Their villages were unfortified, and defended only by comparative inaccessibility; in case of need, they fled for safety with their cattle into the woods and mountains. Amidst such inauspicious circumstances, there was no room for that expansion of the social and political feelings to which protected intramural residence and increased numbers gave birth; there was no consecrated acropolis or agora,—no ornamented temples and porticos, exhibiting the continued offerings of successive generations,[416]—no theatre for music or recitation, no gymnasium for athletic exercises,—none of those fixed arrangements, for transacting public business with regularity and decorum, which the Greek citizen, with his powerful sentiment of locality, deemed essential to a dignified existence. The village was nothing more than a fraction and a subordinate, appertaining as a limb to the organized body called the city. But the city and the state are in his mind, and in his language, one and the same. While no organization less than the city can satisfy the exigencies[417] of an intelligent freeman, the city is itself a perfect and self-sufficient whole, admitting no incorporation into any higher political unity. It deserves notice that Sparta, even in the days of her greatest power, was not (properly speaking) a city, but a mere agglutination of five adjacent villages, retaining unchanged its old-fashioned trim: for the extreme defensibility of its frontier and the military prowess of its inhabitants, supplied the absence of walls, while the discipline imposed upon the Spartan, exceeded in rigor and minuteness anything known in Greece. And thus Sparta, though less than a city in respect to external appearance, was more than a city in respect to perfection of drilling and fixity of political routine. The contrast between the humble appearance and the mighty reality, is pointed out by Thucydides.[418] The inhabitants of the small territory of Pisa, wherein Olympia is situated, had once enjoyed the honorable privilege of administering the Olympic festival. Having been robbed of it, and subjected by the more powerful Eleians, they took advantage of various movements and tendencies among the larger Grecian powers to try and regain it; and on one of these occasions, we find their claim repudiated because they were villagers, and unworthy of so great a distinction.[419] There was nothing to be called a city in the Pisatid territory.

[415] Thucyd. i. 5; iii. 94. Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 6, 5.

[416] Pausanias, x. 4, 1: his remarks on the Phokian πόλις
Panopeus indicate what he included in the idea of a πόλις: εἴγε
ὀνομάσαι τις πόλιν καὶ τούτους, οἷς γε οὐκ ἀρχεῖα, οὐ γυμνάσιόν
ἐστιν· οὐ θέατρον, οὐκ ἀγορὰν ἔχουσιν, οὐχ ὕδωρ κατερχόμενον ἐς
κρήνην· ἀλλὰ ἐν στέγαις κοίλαις κατὰ τὰς καλύβας μάλιστα τὰς ἐν
τοῖς ὄρεσιν, ἐνταῦθα οἰκοῦσιν ἐπὶ χαράδρᾳ. ὅμως δὲ ὅροι γε τῆς
χώρας εἰσὶν αὐτοῖς ἐς τοὺς ὁμόρους, καὶ ἐς τὸν σύλλογον συνέδρους
καὶ οὗτοι πέμπουσι τὸν Φωκικόν.

The μικρὰ πολίσματα of the Pelasgians on the peninsula of Mount
Athôs (Thucyd. iv. 109) seem to have been something between
villages and cities. When the Phokians, after the Sacred War,
were deprived of their cities and forced into villages by the
Amphiktyons, the order was that no village should contain more
than fifty houses, and that no village should be within the
distance of a furlong of any other (Diodor. xvi. 60).

[417] Aristot. Polit. i. 1, 8. ἡ δ᾽ ἐκ πλείονων κωμῶν κοινωνία
τέλειος πόλις ἡ δὴ πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας τῆς αὐταρκείας. Compare
also iii. 6, 14; and Plato, Legg. viii. p. 848.

[418] Thucyd. i. 10. οὔτε ξυνοικισθείσης πόλεως, οὔτε ἱεροῖς καὶ
κατασκευαῖς πολυτελέσι χρησαμένης, κατὰ κώμας δὲ τῷ παλαιῷ τῆς
Ἑλλάδος τρόπῳ οἰκισθείσης, φαίνοιτ᾽ ἂν ὑποδεεστέρα.

[419] Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 2, 31.

In going through historical Greece, we are compelled to accept the Hellenic aggregate with its constituent elements as a primary fact to start from, because the state of our information does not enable us to ascend any higher. By what circumstances, or out of what preëxisting elements, this aggregate was brought together and modified, we find no evidence entitled to credit. There are, indeed, various names which are affirmed to designate ante-Hellenic inhabitants of many parts of Greece,—the Pelasgi, the Leleges, the Kurêtes, the Kaukônes, the Aones, the Temmikes, the Hyantes, the Telchines, the Bœotian Thracians, the Teleboæ, the Ephyri, the Phlegyæ, etc. These are names belonging to legendary, not to historical Greece,—extracted out of a variety of conflicting legends, by the logographers and subsequent historians, who strung together out of them a supposed history of the past, at a time when the conditions of historical evidence were very little understood. That these names designated real nations, may be true, but here our knowledge ends. We have no well-informed witness to tell us their times, their limits of residence, their acts, or their character; nor do we know how far they are identical with or diverse from the historical Hellens,—whom we are warranted in calling, not, indeed, the first inhabitants of the country, but the first known to us upon any tolerable evidence. If any man is inclined to call the unknown ante-Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is open to him to do so; but this is a name carrying with it no assured predicates, noway enlarging our insight into real history, nor enabling us to explain—what would be the real historical problem—how or from whom the Hellens acquired that stock of dispositions, aptitudes, arts, etc., with which they begin their career. Whoever has examined the many conflicting systems respecting the Pelasgi,—from the literal belief of Clavier, Larcher, and Raoul Rochette, (which appears to me, at least, the most consistent way of proceeding,) to the interpretative and half-incredulous processes applied by abler men, such as Niebuhr, or O. Müller, or Dr. Thirlwall,[420]—will not be displeased with my resolution to decline so insoluble a problem. No attested facts are now present to us—none were present to Herodotus and Thucydidês, even in their age—on which to build trustworthy affirmations respecting the ante-Hellenic Pelasgians. And where such is the case, we may without impropriety apply the remark of Herodotus, respecting one of the theories which he had heard for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed connection with the circumfluous Ocean,—that “the man who carries up his story into the invisible world, passes out of the range of criticism.”[421]

[420] Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch. viii. pp. 215, 274;
Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, book i. ch.
5; Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, vol. i. pp. 26-64, 2d ed.
(the section entitled Die Oenotrer und Pelasger); O. Müller,
Die Etrusker, vol. i. (Einleitung, ch. ii. pp. 75-100); Dr.
Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. i. ch. ii. pp. 36-64. The
dissentient opinions of Kruse and Mannert may be found in Kruse,
Hellas, vol. i. pp. 398-425; Mannert, Geographie der Griechen und
Römer, part viii. Introduct. p. 4, _seqq._

Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and genealogical traces,
many of them in the highest degree vague and equivocal, of the
existence of Pelasgi in various localities; and then, summing
up their cumulative effect, asserts (“not as an hypothesis, but
with full historical conviction,” p. 54) “that there was a time
when the Pelasgians, perhaps the most extended people in all
Europe, were spread from the Po and the Arno to the Rhyndakus,”
(near Kyzikus,) with only an interruption in Thrace. What is
perhaps the most remarkable of all, is the contrast between his
feeling of disgust, despair, and aversion to the subject, when he
begins the inquiry (“_the name Pelasgi_,” he says, “_is odious
to the historian, who hates the spurious philology out of which
the pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people
arise_,” p. 28), and the full confidence and satisfaction with
which he concludes it.

[421] Herodot. ii. 23: Ὁ δὲ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεάνου εἴπας, ἐς ἀφανὲς τὸν
μῦθον ἀνενείκας, οὐκ ἔχει ἔλεγχον.

As far as our knowledge extends, there were no towns or villages called Pelasgian, in Greece proper, since 776 B. C. But there still existed in two different places, even in the age of Herodotus, people whom he believed to be Pelasgians. One portion of these occupied the towns of Plakia and Skylakê near Kyzikus, on the Propontis; another dwelt in a town called Krêstôn, near the Thermaic gulf.[422] There were, moreover, certain other Pelasgian townships which he does not specify,—it seems, indeed, from Thucydides, that there were some little Pelasgian townships on the peninsula of Athos.[423] Now, Herodotus acquaints us with the remarkable fact, that the people of Krêstôn, those of Plakia and Skylakê, and those of the other unnamed Pelasgian townships, all spoke the same language, and each of them respectively a different language from their neighbors around them. He informs us, moreover, that their language was a barbarous (_i. e._ a non-Hellenic) language; and this fact he quotes as an evidence to prove that the ancient Pelasgian language was a barbarous language, or distinct from the Hellenic. He at the same time states expressly that he has no positive knowledge what language the ancient Pelasgians spoke,—one proof, among others, that no memorials nor means of distinct information concerning that people, could have been open to him.

[422] That Krêstôn is the proper reading in Herodotus, there
seems every reason to believe—not Krotôn, as Dionys. Hal.
represents it (Ant. Rom. i. 26)—in spite of the authority of
Niebuhr in favor of the latter.

[423] Thucyd. iv. 109. Compare the new Fragmenta of Strabo, lib.
vii. edited from the Vatican MS. by Kramer, and since by Tafel
(Tübingen, 1844), sect. 34, p. 26,—ᾤκησαν δὲ τὴν Χεῤῥόνησον
ταύτην τῶν ἐκ Λήμνου Πελασγῶν τινες, εἰς πέντε διῃρήμενοι
πολίσματα· Κλεωνὰς, Ὀλόφυχον, Ἀκροθώους, Δῖον, Θύσσον.

This is the one single fact, amidst so many conjectures concerning the Pelasgians, which we can be said to know upon the testimony of a competent and contemporary witness: the few townships—scattered and inconsiderable, but all that Herodotus in his day knew as Pelasgian—spoke a barbarous language. And upon such a point, he must be regarded as an excellent judge. If, then, (infers the historian,) all the early Pelasgians spoke the same language as those of Krêstôn and Plakia, they must have changed their language at the time when they passed into the Hellenic aggregate, or became Hellens. Now, Herodotus conceives that aggregate to have been gradually enlarged to its great actual size by incorporating with itself not only the Pelasgians, but several other nations once barbarians;[424] the Hellens having been originally an inconsiderable people. Among those other nations once barbarian, whom Herodotus supposes to have become Hellenized, we may probably number the Leleges; and with respect to them, as well as to the Pelasgians, we have contemporary testimony proving the existence of barbarian Leleges in later times. Philippus, the Karian historian, attested the present existence, and believed in the past existence, of Leleges in his country, as serfs or dependent cultivators under the Karians, analogous to the Helots in Laconia, or the Penestæ in Thessaly.[425] We may be very sure that there were no Hellens—no men speaking the Hellenic tongue—standing in such a relation to the Karians. Among those many barbaric-speaking nations whom Herodotus believed to have changed their language and passed into Hellens, we may, therefore, fairly consider the Leleges to have been included. For next to the Pelasgians and Pelasgus, the Leleges and Lelex figure most conspicuously in the legendary genealogies; and both together cover the larger portion of the Hellenic soil.

[424] Herod. i. 57. προσκεχωρηκότων αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλων ἐθνέων
βαρβάρων συχνῶν.

[425] Athenæ. vi. p. 271. Φίλιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ Καρῶν καὶ Λελέγων
συγγράμματι, καταλέξας τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων Εἵλωτας καὶ τοὺς
Θετταλικοὺς πενέστας, καὶ Κᾶράς φησι τοῖς Λέλεξιν ὡς οἰκέταις
χρήσασθαι ~πάλαι τε καὶ νῦν~.

Confining myself to historical evidence, and believing that no assured results can be derived from the attempt to transform legend into history, I accept the statement of Herodotus with confidence, as to the barbaric language spoken by the Pelasgians of his day; and I believe the same with regard to the historical Leleges,—but without presuming to determine anything in regard to the legendary Pelasgians and Leleges, the supposed ante-Hellenic inhabitants of Greece. And I think this course more consonant to the laws of historical inquiry than that which comes recommended by the high authority of Dr. Thirlwall, who softens and explains away the statement of Herodotus, until it is made to mean only that the Pelasgians of Plakia and Krêstôn spoke a very bad Greek. The affirmation of Herodotus is distinct, and twice repeated, that the Pelasgians of these towns, and of his own time, spoke a barbaric language; and that word appears to me to admit of but one interpretation.[426] To suppose that a man, who, like Herodotus, had heard almost every variety of Greek, in the course of his long travels, as well as Egyptian, Phœnician, Assyrian, Lydian, and other languages, did not know how to distinguish bad Hellenic from non-Hellenic, is, in my judgment, inadmissible; at any rate, the supposition is not to be adopted without more cogent evidence than any which is here found.

[426] Herod, i. 57. Ἥντινα δὲ γλῶσσαν ἴεσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ, οὐκ ἔχω
ἀτρεκέως εἶπαι. εἰ δὲ χρεών ἐστι τεκμαιρόμενοις λέγειν τοῖσι νῦν
ἔτι ἐοῦσι Πελασγῶν, τῶν ὑπὲρ Τυρσηνῶν Κρηστῶνα πόλιν οἰκεόντων
... καὶ τὴν Πλακιήν τε καὶ Σκυλάκην Πελασγῶν οἰκισάντων ἐν
Ἑλλησπόντῳ ... καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα Πελασγικὰ ἐόντα πολίσματα τὸ οὔνομα
μετέβαλε· εἰ τουτοῖσι δεῖ λέγειν, ἦσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον
γλῶσσαν ἱέντες. Εἰ τοίνυν ἦν καὶ πᾶν τοιοῦτο τὸ Πελασγικὸν, τὸ
Ἀττικὸν ἔθνος, ἐὸν Πελασγικὸν ἅμα τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ
τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαθε· καὶ γὰρ δὴ οὔτε οἱ Κρηστωνιῆται οὐδάμοισι
τῶν νῦν σφέας περιοικεόντων εἰσὶ ὁμόγλωσσοι, οὔτε οἱ Πλακιηνοί·
σφίσι δὲ, ὁμόγλωσσοι. δηλοῦσι δὲ, ὅτι τὸν ἠνείκαντο ~γλώσσης
χαρακτῆρα~ μεταβαίνοντες ἐς ταῦτα τὰ χωρία, τοῦτον ἔχουσι ἐν
φυλακῇ.

In the next chapter, Herodotus again calls the Pelasgian nation
βάρβαρον.

Respecting this language, heard by Herodotus at Krêstôn and
Plakia, Dr. Thirlwall observes (chap. ii. p. 60), “This language
Herodotus describes as barbarous, and it is on this fact he
grounds his general conclusion as to the ancient Pelasgian
tongue. But he has not entered into any details that might
have served to ascertain the manner or degree in which it
differed from the Greek. Still, the expressions he uses would
have appeared to imply that it was essentially foreign, had he
not spoken quite as strongly in another passage, where it is
impossible to ascribe a similar meaning to his words. When he
is enumerating the dialects that prevailed among the Ionian
Greeks, he observes that the Ionian cities in Lydia agree not
at all in their tongue with those of Karia; and he applies the
very same term to these dialects, which he had before used in
speaking of the remains of the Pelasgian language. This passage
affords a measure by which we may estimate the force of the word
_barbarian_ in the former. Nothing more can be safely inferred
from it, than that the Pelasgian language which Herodotus heard
on the Hellespont, and elsewhere, sounded to him a strange
jargon: as did the dialect of Ephesus to a Milesian, and as
the Bolognese does to a Florentine. This fact leaves its real
nature and relation to the Greek quite uncertain; and we are the
less justified in building on it, as the history of Pelasgian
settlements is extremely obscure, and the traditions which
Herodotus reports on that subject have by no means equal weight
with statements made from his personal observation.” (Thirlwall,
History of Greece, ch. ii. p. 60, 2d edit.)

In the statement delivered by Herodotus (to which Dr. Thirlwall
here refers) about the language spoken in the Ionic Greek cities,
the historian had said (i. 142),—Γλῶσσαν δὲ οὐ τὴν αὐτὴν οὗτοι
νενομίκασι, ἀλλὰ τρόπους τέσσερας παραγωγέων. Miletus, Myus, and
Priêne,—ἐν τῇ Καρίῃ κατοίκηνται κατὰ ταὐτὰ διαλεγόμεναί σφι.
Ephesus, Kolophon, etc.,—αὐται αἱ πόλιες τῇσι πρότερον λεχθείσῃσι
ὁμολογέουσι κατὰ γλῶσσαν οὐδὲν, σφὶ δὲ ὁμοφωνέουσι. The Chians
and Erythræans,—κατὰ τὠϋτὸ διαλέγονται, Σάμιοι δὲ ἐπ᾽ ἑωϋτῶν
μοῦνοι. Οὗτοι χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης τέσσερες γίγνονται.

The words γλώσσης χαρακτὴρ (“distinctive mode of speech”) are
common to both these passages, but their meaning in the one and
in the other is to be measured by reference to the subject-matter
of which the author is speaking, as well as to the words which
accompany them,—especially the word βάρβαρος in the first
passage. Nor can I think (with Dr. Thirlwall) that the meaning of
βάρβαρος is to be determined by reference to the other two words:
the reverse is, in my judgment, correct. Βάρβαρος is a term
definite and unequivocal, but γλώσσης χαρακτὴρ varies according
to the comparison which you happen at the moment to be making,
and its meaning is here determined by its conjunction with
βάρβαρος.

When Herodotus was speaking of the twelve Ionic cities in Asia,
he might properly point out the differences of speech among them
as so many different χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης: the limits of difference
were fixed by the knowledge which his hearers possessed of
the persons about whom he was speaking; the Ionians being all
notoriously Hellens. So an author, describing Italy, might say
that Bolognese, Romans, Neapolitans, Genoese, etc. had different
χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης; it being understood that the difference was
such as might subsist among persons all Italians.

But there is also a χαρακτῆρ γλώσσης of Greek generally
(abstraction made of its various dialects and diversities), as
contrasted with Persian, Phœnician, or Latin,—and of Italian
generally, as contrasted with German or English. It is this
comparison which Herodotus is taking, when he describes the
language spoken by the people of Krêstôn and Plakia, and which
he notes by the word βάρβαρον as opposed to Ἑλληνικόν: it is
with reference to this comparison that χαρακτῆρ γλώσσης, in the
fifty-seventh chapter, is to be construed. The word βάρβαρος is
the usual and recognized antithesis of Ἕλλην, or Ἑλληνικός.

It is not the least remarkable part of the statement of
Herodotus, that the language spoken at Krêstôn and at Plakia
was the same, though the places were so far apart from each
other. This identity of itself shows that he meant to speak of a
substantive language, not of a “strange jargon.”

I think it, therefore, certain that Herodotus pronounces the
Pelasgians of his day to speak a substantive language different
from Greek; but whether differing from it in a greater or less
degree (_e. g._ in the degree of Latin or of Phœnician), we have
no means of deciding.

As I do not presume to determine what were the antecedent internal elements out of which the Hellenic aggregate was formed, so I confess myself equally uninformed with regard to its external constituents. Kadmus, Danaus, Kekrops,—the eponyms of the Kadmeians, of the Danaans, and of the Attic Kekropia,—present themselves to my vision as creatures of legend, and in that character I have already adverted to them. That there may have been very early settlements in continental Greece, from Phœnicia and Egypt, is nowise impossible; but I see neither positive proof, nor ground for probable inference, that there were any such, though traces of Phœnician settlements in some of the islands may doubtless be pointed out. And if we examine the character and aptitudes of Greeks, as compared either with Egyptians or Phœnicians, it will appear that there is not only no analogy, but an obvious and fundamental contrast: the Greek may occasionally be found as a borrower from these ultramarine contemporaries, but he cannot be looked upon as their offspring or derivative. Nor can I bring myself to accept an hypothesis which implies (unless we are to regard the supposed foreign emigrants as very few in number, in which case the question loses most of its importance) that the Hellenic language—the noblest among the many varieties of human speech, and possessing within itself a pervading symmetry and organization—is a mere confluence of two foreign barbaric languages (Phœnician and Egyptian) with two or more internal barbaric languages,—Pelasgian, Lelegian, etc. In the mode of investigation pursued by different historians into this question of early foreign colonies, there is great difference (as in the case of the Pelasgi) between the different authors,—from the acquiescent Euemerism of Raoul Rochette to the refined distillation of Dr. Thirlwall, in the third chapter of his History. It will be found that the amount of positive knowledge which Dr. Thirlwall guarantees to his readers in that chapter is extremely inconsiderable; for though he proceeds upon the general theory (different from that which I hold) that historical matter may be distinguished and elicited from the legends, yet when the question arises respecting any definite historical result, his canon of credibility is too just to permit him to overlook the absence of positive evidence, even when all intrinsic incredibility is removed. That which I note as Terra Incognita, is in his view a land which may be known up to a certain point; but the map which he draws of it contains so few ascertained places as to differ very little from absolute vacuity.

The most ancient district called Hellas is affirmed by Aristotle to have been near Dôdôna and the river Achelôus,—a description which would have been unintelligible (since the river does not flow near Dôdôna), if it had not been qualified by the remark, that the river had often in former times changed its course. He states, moreover, that the deluge of Deukaliôn took place chiefly in this district, which was in those early days inhabited by the Selli, and by the people then called Græci, but now Hellenes.[427] The Selli (called by Pindar, Helli) are mentioned in the Iliad as the ministers of the Dodonæan Zeus,—“men who slept on the ground, and never washed their feet;” and Hesiod, in one of the lost poems (the Eoiai), speaks of the fat land and rich pastures of the land called Hellopia, wherein Dôdôna was situated.[428] On what authority Aristotle made his statement, we do not know; but the general feeling of the Greeks was different,—connecting Deukaliôn, Hellen, and the Hellenes, primarily and specially with the territory called Achaia Phthiôtis, between Mount Othrys and Œta. Nor can we either affirm or deny his assertion that the people in the neighborhood of Dôdôna were called Græci before they were called Hellenes. There is no ascertained instance of the mention of a people called Græci, in any author earlier than this Aristotelian treatise; for the allusions to Alkman and Sophoklês prove nothing to the point.[429] Nor can we explain how it came to pass that the Hellenes were known to the Romans only under the name of Græci, or Graii. But the name by which a people is known to foreigners is often completely different from its own domestic name, and we are not less at a loss to assign the reason, how the Rasena of Etruria came to be known to the Romans by the name of Tuscans, or Etruscans.

[427] Aristotel. Meteorol. i. 14.

[428] Homer, Iliad, xvi. 234; Hesiod, Fragm. 149, ed.
Marktscheffel; Sophokl. Trachin. 1174; Strabo, vii. p. 328.

[429] Stephan. Byz. v. Γραικὸς.—Γραῖκες δὲ παρὰ τῷ Ἀλκμᾶνι αἱ
τῶν Ἑλλήνων μητέρες, καὶ παρὰ Σοφοκλεῖ ἐν Ποίμεσιν. ἐστὶ δὲ
μεταπλασμὸς, ἢ τῆς Γραὶξ εὐθείας κλίσις ἐστίν.

The word Γραῖκες, in Alkman, meaning “the mothers of the
Hellenes,” may well be only a dialectic variety of γρᾶες,
analogous to κλᾲξ and ὄρνιξ, for κλεὶς, ὄρνις, etc. (Ahrens, De
Dialecto Doricâ, sect. 11, p. 91; and sect. 31, p. 242), perhaps
declined like γυναῖκες.

The term used by Sophoklês, if we may believe Photius, was not
Γραικὸς, but Ῥαικός (Photius, p. 480, 15; Dindorf, Fragment.
Soph. 933: compare 455). Eustathius (p. 890) seems undecided
between the two.