The

speech was the Eolic dialect of the Greek language. Æolic is generally considered to be the oldest form of the Greek language, and the common original from which the other dialects deviate.

1. The Attic has several forms which are common to it and the Æolic, and which disappear in the late Attic writers, and are considered as archaisms. 2. The Ionic and Attic are

modifications of one principal dialect. "We deem," says Strabo, "the Ionic dialect to be the same with the ancient Attic; for the Attic people of those times were termed Iones, and from them originated the Iones who settled colonies in Asia, and who speak the language now termed Ionic." 3. With respect to the remaining Greek dialect, the Doric, Strabo affirms it to have been originally Æolic. He says that the Dorians inhabited a secluded tract of Mount Parnassus, and being a small tribe, and cut off from the rest of the Greeks, gradually deviated somewhat in customs and in dialect from their ancestors, who were nevertheless originally Æoles and spoke the Æolic language. Pindar confirms this remark; he calls his muse Doric and Æolic in the same ode:*

and again :

......ἀλλὰ Δωρίαν ἀπὸ φόρμιγγα πασσάλου λάμβαν....

......ἐμὲ δὲ στεφανῶσαι
κεῖνον ἱππικῷ νομῷ
Αἰοληΐδι μολπᾷ
χρῆσ

The Ionian branch of the Greek nation retained the name of Pelasgi longer than the Æolians and Dorians. Hence we find the Ionians termed in distinction Pelasgi by many writers; this is not only to be observed of the Ionians who colonised the coast of Achæa, and were termed Pelasgi of Ægialus, but also of their brethren of Attica. That the Peloponnesians, however, were originally Æolians or Pelasgians, we have seen abundantly proved.

It seems certain from these considerations that the Pelasgic language was Æolic Greek.

* Pindar, Olympic, i.

+ Herod. Polymnia, cap. 94, 95. Scymnus Chius, apud Huds. t. i.

It appears from Strabo's account, that of the four Grecian tribes the Æolians were by far the most widely spread, since they occupied originally the greater part of the Peloponnesus, and all the remainder of Greece, with the exception of Attica, where the Attic dialect prevailed, and Megara and Doris, to the northward of the Corinthian gulf, where the Doric dialect was spoken. The Ionic race, originally a branch of the Eolian, was confined to the northern parts of the Peloponnesus and Attica. The Dorians, who were the first people termed Hellenes, and by whose military power and influence that name came to be extended to the rest of the Greek nation, introduced their language into the peninsula in that celebrated invasion which changed the face of Greece. Recapitulation.

The Pelasgi appear to have been the earliest known inhabitants of several parts of Greece, particularly of the inland parts, for it was in later times that they became, or rather that some tribes of them became a seafaring people and dwelt upon the islands and coasts. In Peloponnesus they possessed Argolis and Arcadia, as likewise the northern coast, afterwards called Achaia, when they were designated Pelasgi Littorales, or Πελασγοὶ Αἰγιαλέες. That all the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus were Pelasgi we cannot affirm, but as the language of the Pelasgi was Æolic Greek, and as this was the general idiom of the peninsula, it is probable that the whole of that country was peopled by nations allied to the Pelasgi by consanguinity. The Pelasgi possessed also Attica and Thessaly. Boeotia, Locris, and Ætolia seem to have been inhabited by Leleges and been distinct from the Pelasgi.

ing maritime tribes who spread Greece and Asia Minor.

other races reported to have Some of these were wanderthemselves over the coasts of

When the people of Attica and different parts of the Peloponnesus and Boeotia, either by the accession of new colonies or by the gradual progress of social improvement, and by intercourse with more cultivated nations, had become civilised and dwelt in cities, and formed different states which assumed new names, their connexion with the old Pelasgi became loosened and gradually forgotten. The Arcadians were

the only people in the southern parts of Greece who remained unchanged. In Thessaly the aboriginal Pelasgi were overcome and expelled by more warlike and enterprising tribes, and they sought refuge, as we have seen, in the countries lying both towards the east and west.

After these revolutions and during some ages, the Grecian people had no collective name; they were termed Argives, Achæans, Danaidæ, indifferently. It was in a similar manner, and owing to the superior military influence of the Hellenes, that the name of that tribe became subsequently predominant. The account of this change given by Thucydides is well known.

The Tyrsenian or Tyrrhenian Pelasgi were particular wandering bands of the Pelasgic race, who came in time to differ in language from their stationary brethren, so that they were in the days of Herodotus unintelligible to the Greeks.

On the whole, we may conclude that the Pelasgi were the original stock from which the different stems of the Greek population ramified. That the other contributory races were originally akin to the Pelasgi, we may infer from the unity of language in all parts of Greece. The Pelasgi spoke the old dialect, the mother tongue, if we may so term it, the idiom which gave birth to all the other Grecian dialects.

SECTION VII. Of the Nations of Lesser Asia.

It is remarkable, when we consider the frequent intercourse of the Greeks with the civilised nations of Asia Minor, and their local proximity to Lydia, Phrygia, and other countries of which Hellenic colonists occupied the sea border, that we should have drawn from the Greek writers so little information respecting the history of these nations. There were several Greek authors, natives of Asia, before Herodotus, whose writings are supposed to have given assistance to that historian in composing several parts of his more celebrated work.* Among these were Hecatæus and Hellanicus of Mile

* Herodotus is said by Porphyry (Euseb. Præp. Evang. x. 2,) to have taken from Hecatæus his account of the phoenix, and that of the crocodile and hippoVOL. III.

K K

tus, and Xanthus the Lydian, who is said to have lived at the time when Sardis was taken by the Athenians, namely, in the 70th Olympiad, and to have written the history of Lydia in four books. But these works are lost, and it is only in the first book of Herodotus that we find any continuous narrative of the events of Lydian history, or of that of Asia Minor during a few ages preceding the conquests of Cyrus.

The establishment of the Persian power over Lesser Asia brought that country into immediate connection with the great empires of the East. History gives us no clear intimation of any earlier extension of the eastern monarchies in this direction, yet it is not improbable that the Semitic or Syro-Arabian dynasties had previously spread their sway into the countries bordering on the Euxine, and to the northward of Mount Taurus. Herodotus assures us that the Cappadocians were by the Greeks termed Syrians,* and Strabo declares, that the inhabitants of both Cappadocias, namely, the Pontic and that on Mount Taurus, were called, till his time, Leuco-Syri, or White Syrians, as distinguishing them from tribes to the southward of Mount Taurus, who, as he says, were said to be Eúpou Meλáves or "Black Syrians."+ Dionysius the geographer and other ancient writers place the Assyrians on the Thermodon. The Lydians have been supposed by most of the moderns who have studied the geography of the Hebrew scriptures, to be the Ludin who are mentioned in the Toldoth Beni-Noah, among the Shemite nations; and this affinity seems to derive confirmation from the tradition preserved by Herodotus, and doubtless handed down among the Lydians themselves, that, in ancient times, and before the erection of the monarchy of Sardian kings, of whom Gyges

tamus.

Strabo and Suidas testify that Herodotus borrows much from Hecatæus. We learn from Ephorus, (Athenæus, xi. 3,) that the Avdiarà of Xanthus gave occasion to the composition of the Lydian history of Herodotus.

Bibl. Græc. ed. Harles. tom. iii. p. 349.)

Herod. lib. i. cap. 72; item lib. vii. cap. 72.

+ Strabon, lib. xvi. p. 737; item lib. xii.

(See Fabricii

Dionys. Perieg. v. 772; vide Eustath. ad locum. Ptolemy has also the term Leuco-Syri, and Apollonius, lib. iii, calls Cappadocia Assyria.

was the first and Croesus the last, an earlier dynasty had ruled over the Mæonian people, founded by Agron a son of Ninus, a son of Belus.*

But the connection of these nations with the Syro-Arabian race must have been in ages of very remote antiquity. The fact that any Shemite nation reached so far to the northward is doubted by Gesenius, because no Phoenician inscriptions have been discovered in Lesser Asia or to the northward of Cilicia. The Syrians in the time of Herodotus bore, as that writer affirms, a great resemblance to the Greeks, and there seems to be strong reason to believe that the nations of Lesser Asia who are chiefly known to us were of Indo-European origin, if not intimately connected with the Greeks and Thracians.

It was a very prevalent notion among the Greeks, that several of the tribes in Asia Minor were colonists from Europe. This opinion was adopted by Xanthus, by Herodotus, and in later times by Apollodorus, Posidonius, and Strabo. I shall examine the statements of these writers after I have adverted to some considerations which tend on the other hand to prove that nations described were of great antiquity in Asia.

Three of the principal nations of Lesser Asia were the Carians, the Mysians, and the Lydians.

The Carians, Lydians, and Mysians were, according to a wellsupported tradition, branches of one stock. We are informed by Herodotus that the Carians showed at Mylassa a very ancient structure, built in honour of the Carian Jupiter. The Lydians and Mysians were admitted to partake in the sacred rites and ceremonies there celebrated, as being of the same origin with the Carians. All the three nations were reputed to belong to one kindred. An ancient myth declared that they were the offspring of three brothers, named Lydus, Mysus, and Cares. †

The affinity attested by this ancient mythos and by the association in sacred rites was further confirmed by a connection in language which extended beyond the three nations already mentioned, and included the Phrygians, a fourth powerful and widely-spread people of Lesser Asia. Xanthus the Lydian,

*Herod. loc. cit.

+ Herod. i. c. 171.