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Cassopæi, who are Epirots; to the right hand, the Athamanes, who are Greeks.* Above these, namely the Cassiopæi, were the Amphilochi, who were also reckoned among the Epirotic nations. To the same race are referred likewise by Strabo the Molossi, the Athamanes, the Aethices, the Tymphæi, the Orestæ, the Paroræi, and the Atintanes. Some of these are near the borders of Macedonia, towards the interior; others bordering on the Ionian Sea. Theopompust enumerated fourteen Epirotic nations; of these the Chaones and the Molossi were, according to him, the most noble. The Chaones had dominion over all the Epirot tribes, and after them the Molossi. Both these nations were governed by princes of the family of the acide; and the Molossi especially obtained influence by means of the oracle of Dodona, which was in their territory.‡

It seems that the Epirotic tribes were borderers on the northern Greeks, who occupied the narrow tract of mountainous country beyond the Corinthian gulf. The Acarnanians, the Etolians, Locrians, Phocians were the tribes in this region who claimed the Hellenic name. The Epirots were clearly distinguished as barbaric or semi-greek nations. Nor were they Pelasgi. The Chaones however were said by several writers, and by Aristotle in a passage already cited, to have been closely allied to the Oenotri on the opposite side of the Adriatic, and it is not improbable that the nations of Epirus may have been more nearly akin to the Italic nations than to the Greeks.

SECTION V. Further Inquiries into the History of the Thracian and Illyrian Races. Of the Nations who are supposed to be descended from them, namely, the Wallachs and the Albanians or Skipetares.

Paragraph 1.-Observations on the history of the Thracian language.

It appears from a passage of the Gothic historian Jornandes,

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that the Thracian language was yet extant in his time. The Bessi, a Thracian tribe who inhabited Mount Hamus, spoke in the age of that writer a peculiar idiom, in which they termed the Danube by its original name of Istros, probably derived by the ancient Greeks from the Thracians who dwelt upon its banks.*

Before the age of Trajan it is probable that the Thracian language was spoken throughout Dacia by the descendants of the ancient Getæ, who, as we have seen, were a Thracian people; but after the establishment of the province of Dacia it gave way to the idiom of the Roman colonists, and was finally extinguished by the invading nations, chiefly of Slavic origin, who permanently occupied the countries between the Danube and Mount Hæmus. The only specimens to be discovered of this ancient language are in the names of men and places, and in particular words scattered through the works of the classical writers or preserved by lexicographers, such as Suidas and Hesychius. On these data, scanty as they are, some opinions have been founded by modern writers as to the affinity of the Thracians with several nations of antiquity with whom they may be conjectured to have been allied in origin and in language.+

* Jornandes de Rebus Get. c. 12.

† Adelung has collected many such words and terminations of words. See Mithridates, ii. p. 344. He cites Apuleius de Herbis, and the Interpolator of Dioscorides. He observes, that the proper name of Cotys is found among Cimmerians, Thracians, Paphlagonians, and Lydians, and Cotiso among the Getæ. Names ending in cetes, in the feminine ceta, occur among Thracians, Getes, and Bithynians, as Doricetes, Miltocetes, Smethices, Deliceta, Etazeta. No ending occurs more frequently in local names among all the nations supposed to be allied to the Thracians than those of issa, essus, assa. That of dava occurs among the Getes, Masians, and Illyrians, from which the proper Thracians have dama. Taba in the Lydian language meant "rock" or "hill." Thunmann has pointed out two places in the Illyrian territory bearing this Thracian termination in dava, namely, Thermidava, near Scodra, in Ptolemy, and Quemedava, in the Dardanian territory, mentioned by Procopius.

In particular it has been inferred that the ancient Cimmerians and their supposed descendants the Tauri of Herodotus, and the people subject to the kings of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, among whom the Thracian names of Cotys, Rhescuporis, Rhæmetalces, Masades, Berisades, Medosades are found, were of Thracian origin. See Cary's Hist. des Rois du Bosphore Cimmérien; and Adelung, Mithridat. th. ii. p. 352. et seqq.

It seems very probable that the Thracians were originally of the same race as the Pelasgi and other tribes who were the ancestors of the Greeks. The undoubted remains of the Thracian language are perhaps hardly sufficient for elucidating this question, but if, as we have found in the testimony of ancient authors some reason to believe, the Macedonians and the Thessalians were a Thracian people, we find some confirmation of this opinion in a few words accidentally preserved.*

It has often been observed that many circumstances in the ancient history of the Greeks indicate a much nearer relation to have existed between them and the neighbouring nations of Thrace and of Phrygia, than we can well explain on any other hypothesis than that which represents these races as originally of kindred origin and speaking a common language.†

The Macedonians had δάνος death, δαίνειν to kill; compare θάνατος, θανεῖν,—ἐέλδω (έλδωρ in Homer), in Greek ἐθέλω : ἀδραία for αἰθρία, in which θ loses its aspiration, as ᾧ does in κεβαλὴ: ἀβροῦτις for ὀφρύς (brow): Βίλιππος, Balarpos, &c. Professor K. Otfried Müller has observed, that some words existed in the Macedonian dialect which, though not extant in Greek, are preserved in the Latin language, as yáρkav virgam, iλe iler, and he refers to a copious collection of these words in Sturz de Dialecto Macedonico.

+ It has been observed by many writers, particularly by Adelung, that Homer represents the Thracians, Greeks, and Trojans as understanding each other without difficulty. We hear nothing of interpreters, which might be expected in fictitious narratives so true to nature and reality as are those of the Iliad and Odyssey. It is observable that in the instance of the Lotophagi on the African coast, who would not be intelligible to the Greeks, there is no mention of conversation, but when the Greeks and Trojans meet they always converse. Likewise when Pelops, a Phrygian or Lydian, came to the Peloponnesus, and Bellerophon from Corinth to Lycia, they were received as among people of their own kindred.

It is likewise observable that Grecian traditions uniformly derived the original poetry of Greece, as well as the art of music, from Thracians or others, foreigners, though neighbours of Greece. Homer represents the Thracian Thamyris, often termed in a definite manner an Edonian, contending in song with the nine Muses. The Muses themselves, not only according to Hesiod, but according to a tradition which remained unaltered to the time of Strabo, came from Pieria. Strabo, indeed, asserts that the worship of the Muses on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, and the cave there dedicated to the Leibethrian nymphs, proved that region to have been occupied by Thracians; and he adds that these Thracians were Pieriansthe people who consecrated the land of Pieria, at the northern foot of Olympus, and Leibethrum, and Pimpleia. It was among the Thracians that the popular representations of the Greeks placed the origin of Grecian poetry. Orpheus was, according to general report, a Thracian. Linius, whose pupil was Orpheus, is

Paragraph 2.-Of the Wallachs.

Professor Thunmann, the first writer who made any accurate researches into the history of the eastern nations of Europe, advanced the opinion that the Albanians are the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, and that the people termed Wallachians or Wallachs, are the posterity of the old Thracian and Dacian or Getic tribes. Vlach or Wlach is a name given by Slavonians, according to Dobrowsky, to all Celtic people termed by the Germans Welsch, and as the latter name was extended to the Italians, so Vlach was probably applied to romanised nations. The Wallachs term themselves Rumanje, or Rumakje, meaning Romans, being in part, as it appears, descended from Roman colonists in Dacia, who though few in number in comparison with the Dacian or Getic inhabitants, appear to have introduced their language in the populous towns upon the Danube. The Wallachs are inhabitants both of the ancient province of Dacia, namely, of Wallachia, and a part of the territory of Siebenburg, and of Moldavia, and of districts in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly.* Their present idiom is a mixture of the "Romana rustica" with a variety of other languages. Thunmann found that about one-half of the words used by the Wallachs of Thrace are Latin, and that the other half are partly Greek, Gothic, and Turkish, but

said to have been a native of Chalcedon. Olympus, the father of Grecian music, as such held in the highest regard in the time of Plato, and even in the age of Plutarch, was a Phrygian. Strabo (lib. iv. p. 471,) says that the inventors of Grecian music, Orpheus, Musæus, Thamyris, and Eumolpus, were all Thracians. Herodotus relates that at the introduction of the worship of Apollo in Delos, hymns in praise of that god were sung by Olen, a Lycian. Pausanias declares that the Delians chanted the hymns of Olen. He terms the Lycians the oldest composers of Grecian hymns, and it appears from a comparison of the passages above cited from Herodotus, that this is the same Olen who is said to have been the inventor of the hexameter verse. Many accounts of these ancient poets and musicians may have become mystical legends in the days of Plato and Aristotle, but the writers last mentioned must have seen at least some of the powers ascribed to Orpheus, and Pausanias speaks of hymns of Pampus and Musæus as existing in his time. The fact that poetical compositions in the Greek language were in so many instances the production of Thracians, or of persons belonging to tribes akin to the Thracians, seems to prove that the native idiom of Thrace was a dialect of the Greek language.

* Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der östlichen europäischen Völker, Leipzig, 1774.

principally Slavonian.*

It is remarkable that the former

portion approximates to the Italian,† and since no connexion can be traced between the modern Italians and the Wallachs, it must be supposed that the vulgar Latinity which was the basis of both languages had many characteristics in common. Adelung conjectures that a part of this striking resemblance between the Wallachian and the modern Italian may be attributed to the influence of Italian monks employed by Gregory II. to bring the people from the Greek to the Romish Church. The mixture of Slavonian words in the Wallachian language is easily explained by the intercourse of the people with Slavic tribes, who, from the time of the emperor Heraclius, are known to have had possessions to the southward of the Danube. The extension of the Wallach people over Siebenburg and Moldavia, is accounted for by political events in their history. It is known that king Ladislaus gave settlements on the Theiss, and in other parts of the Hungarian territory, in 1284, to numerous Wallachs from the countries conquered by Turkey, and that in 1290 the same people founded a state of their own under Rudal the Black, in the present Wallachia, which was for a time dependent on Hungary, and afterwards subject to the Turks.

Paragraph 3.-Of the Albanians or Skipetarians.

The people generally known in Europe by the name of Albanians, by the Turks called Arnauts, and by themselves Skipetares, which means in their language "mountaineers" or "dwellers on rocks," inhabit the greater part of the ancient Illyricum and Epirus. They are a hardy and warlike people, and pay only a nominal obedience to the Ottoman Porte. They have a peculiar language, and constitute, as we have observed, a particular race, which is very distinct from the Slavonian inhabitants of the country which borders on them towards the north, as well as from their Turkish and

• Thunmann, ubi supra.

Thus noi, voi, and vi, lui, lor, miei, are Wallachian pronouns; tu ai, noi avem, avut, trei, frate, are Wallachian expressions. (Adelung, Mithridat. th. ii.) Adelung, loc. cit.

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