most noble tribe of the human race, on whom nature bestowed the most perfect organisation of body, with the fullest developement of all the mental powers, enabling them in a few centuries not only to outstrip all the former acquirements of the human mind, but to display in every effort of the imagination and of the intellect an admirable and unrivalled perfection. It is only in mental acquirements which call for the accumulated labour of many ages that the nations of Western Europe, and that only within the last two centuries, can enter into any comparison with the ancient Greeks. A language the most expressive and eloquent of human idioms, and the most perfect instrument of human thought, was their first production, during unknown ages; and to ages little better known belong the majesty and beauty of the unrivalled Homeric poems. Long afterwards, during the lapse of two centuries from the time of Pericles, the barren Attica brought into existence, and to scarcely imitable perfection, sculpture and painting, rhetoric and oratory, dramatic literature, dialectics, the science of ethics, the Stoic and Epicurean, the Platonic and Peripatetic systems of philosophy. In the discovery of mathematical sciences other Grecian states came in for a proportional share of fame. In considering what the Greeks collectively have contributed towards the progressive improvement of the human mind, the greatness of their achievements is truly astonishing. What is most remarkable is the fact, that they derived little or no assistance from without: other cultivated nations have obtained much aid from their neighbours or predecessors; Greece may be said to have begun and to have carried forward the culture of the human intellect to the highest perfection unaided and alone.

It is difficult to account for the superior excellence of the Greeks in all the productions of the human mind, unless we may ascribe it mainly to the superior natural endowments of the race. This race was an offset from the same stock which produced the nations who spoke the Celtic, the Gothic, and the Slavonic languages, and still more nearly allied to those whose more cultivated idioms were the Sanskrit and the Latin. Are we to attribute the difference between all these nations, and the superiority of some over others, to physical influences

depending on the local conditions of their several abodes? If this is allowed, there is still another problem to be explained. How has it come to pass that after the Greeks had, within the space of a few centuries, achieved so much more than any other nation in the world, they have been ever since that era almost entirely without any display of mental power, and that during many centuries, although possessed of singular advantages when compared with the western nations of Europe, they have appeared inferior to several of them in all the manifestations of moral and intellectual endowments? It would appear as if races, as well as individuals, have their period of growth, their acme, and their decay. The Greeks of the present time retain only the astuteness of their forefathers: they display neither their genius and mental activity, nor their magnanimity and devotion of selfish interests to high moral principles.

Paragraph 2.-Of the aborigines of Greece, and of foreign colonies.

Were the Greeks, namely, the people whose vernacular idiom was the Hellenic language, divided into its four great dialects, the aboriginal inhabitants, that is, the primitive and native people of Greece, or had that country been previously occupied by inhabitants of a different race who were subdued or expelled by their Grecian conquerors? Some of the ancient writers, among whom we reckon Strabo, declare that Greece was originally occupied wholly or in great part by barbaric nations. But before we attempt to weigh the testimony of these writers on such a question, we must consider what they

mean to assert.

Strabo, after surveying the country of the Epirots and Illyrian tribes, says, "We have thus enumerated those nations who appear worthy of notice, near the Danube and the Illyrian and Thracian mountains: they inhabit the whole coast of the Adriatic, from the utmost recess of that sea, as well as the left coast of the Euxine, from the mouth of the Danube to Byzantium. There yet remain to be described the southern tracts of that mountainous region and the places situated below them here lies Hellas, with which the barbaric country

is conterminous. Hecatæus, the Milesian, "he continues," has reported concerning the Peloponnesus, that it was occupied by barbarians before the Greeks possessed it. But nearly the whole of Greece in ancient times seems to have been inhabited by barbarians, if we may judge from the memorials handed down. For Pelops brought with him people from Phrygia into Peloponnesus, which took its name from him, as did Danaus from Egypt: and Dryopes, Caucones, and Pelasgi, Leleges, and other tribes of a similar description, obtained settlements within the isthmus. For the Thracians who had come with Eumolpus had occupied Attica and Tereus the Phocian Daulis, the Phoenicians, companions of Cadmus, Cadmeia, the Aones, Tembices, and Hyantes Boeotia, whence Pindar said,

ἦν ὅτε Ὕας Βοιώτιον ἔθνος ἔνεπον. Moreover, some of the Greek names proclaim barbarity, as Cecrops, Codrus, Aeclus, Cothus, Drymas, Crinanus, and we know that Thracians, Illyrians, and Epirots surround Greece on every side."* It seems from this that the barbaric nations said to have inhabited Greece, were chiefly the colonies which are reported to have arrived in later time, and to have contributed to civilise the formerly wild and rude inhabitants. Such were the followers of Cecrops and Danaus. The rest were the Pelasgi and tribes generally reckoned as coeval with that people, sometimes identified with them, but generally distinguished from them, as the Leleges and Caucones, the Temmices, Taphii, Teleboi, and Curetes.

Some have doubted the reality of these reported colonisations of Greece from foreign countries, such as the arrival of Danaus and Cecrops from Egypt in Argolis and in Attica, that of Cadmus from Phoenicia in Boeotia, and the settlement of Pelops from Asia Minor in Lacedæmon. But these traditions were too universal to be the product of chance or mere fiction. Their authenticity is supported, as Wachsmuth has well observed, by the existence and preservation in various Grecian states of foreign forms of worship. With these foreign rites peculiar sacerdotal races were connected, and

Strabo, vii. p. 321.

their oriental character cannot be mistaken or confounded with the prevalent ritual and religion of the Greeks. The colonists were probably never numerous, but their influence was sufficient to introduce many arts, as that of writing, which is the most palpably of foreign origin, as well as many traits of oriental culture among the native Greeks. The new colonies likewise introduced new names, as those of the Pelopidæ, Danaidæ, Cecropidæ, and Cadmeians, but no considerable change can be supposed to have taken place in the population or in the language of the primitive inhabitants.

Paragraph 3.-Of the Pelasgi and other aboriginal tribes.

Of the native tribes of ancient Greece among whom these foreign colonies acquired a settlement, the Pelasgi were by so much the most celebrated that their fame has eclipsed that of all the rest: they appear to have been at a very early period, if not from the first, possessed of the greater part of Greece, and therefore an inquiry as to the original population of Greece depends in a great measure on what we can discover concerning the Pelasgi. But it will not be difficult, before we proceed to that question, to point out nearly what countries in Greece are excepted from the domain of the Pelasgi.

We have observed that Euboea was originally inhabited by a tribe termed Abantes, who were of Thracian origin.

We are informed by Herodotus that Crete was at first inhabited by barbarians.* He does not say of what race they were, but we collect this from other quarters. Diodorus calls them Eteo-cretaans, and says that the primitive Cretans, or Eteo-cretans, were joined at a later period by Pelasgi.+

The coast of Ionia and the islands of the Ægean appear to have been inhabited, not by Pelasgi but by Leleges, who were blended or identified with the Carians. In the opinion of Herodotus, and in that of Strabo, the Carians and Leleges were one race. Herodotus says that the Carians were called Leleges while they possessed the islands of the Ægean, but that those tribes of the same race who remained on the continent retained the name of Carians. The Caunians also, who inhabited parts of

• Herod. lib. v. c. 173.

+ Diod. Siculus, Biblioth. lib. v.

the same continent, spoke the Carian language. They derived themselves from Crete, and Herodotus says that the Lycians also originated from that island. From these reports we cannot adopt the conclusion that the nations of Lesser Asia were derived from the islands, but we may infer that the coast of Lesser Asia and the islands, including those of the Ægean and Crete, were peopled by the same race who possessed Caria, Lycia, and other parts of the Asiatic coast.

Strabo confirms this account. He says that the Carians were formerly islanders and called Leleges, till with the aid of the Cretans they gained possession of the continent, and built towns in Caria and the country afterwards called Lycia.

The name of Leleges, however, belonged not only to inhabitants of the islands, but of the coast also. Antandros, on the shore southward of Troas, was, according to Alcæus, a town of the Leleges,* and on this coast they are placed by Homer.+ Strabo says that the people of the coast who were driven out by the insular Leleges, were themselves chiefly Leleges and Pelasgi. In the seventh book this geographer collects several notices of the history of these people. He says, that some supposed the Leleges to be the same as the Carians; others the inmates and near allies of that people. He adds, that all the country, afterwards called Ionia, was before inhabited by the Carians and Leleges; that dwellings remained to his time which had belonged to the Leleges; and that in many places in Caria there were tombs and solitary hillocks, which were termed Lelegia, as having belonged to the Leleges. That they were barbarians, he says, appears from their close alliance with the Carians.||

The Leleges, and their brethren the Carians, were of old closely allied to the Pelasgi, and Strabo says that their language contained a great many Greek words.

* Strabo, lib. xiii. p. 606.

Strab. ubi supra, p. 606.

+ Iliad, Þ. 87.

§ Strab. lib. vii. p. 321.

According to

|| Carians appears to have been the original name, and it seems that the same people were afterwards called Leleges. The historical traditions of Megara related that in the twelfth generation after Car, the mythical patriarch of the Carians, Lelex came from Egypt to Megara, and gave his name to the people. See Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece, i. p. 43.