I. through deep and narrow gorges, which are the only CHAP. approaches by which the country can be invaded from the south. The coast is deficient in harbours, which abound on the opposite side of the gulf. Greece. When the necessary deduction has been made for Fertility of the inequalities of its surface, Greece may perhaps be properly considered as a land, on the whole, not less rich than beautiful. And it probably had a better claim to this character in the days of its youthful freshness and vigour. Its productions were various as its aspect and if other regions were more fertile in grain, and more favourable to the cultivation of the vine, few surpassed it in the growth of the olive, and of other valuable fruits. Its hills afforded abundant pastures: its waters and forests teemed with life. In the precious metals it was perhaps fortunately poor; the silver mines of Laurium were a singular exception; but the Peloponnesian mountains, especially in Laconia and Argolis, as well as those of Euboea, contained rich veins of iron and copper, as well as precious quarries. The marble of Pentelicus was nearly equalled in fineness by that of the Isle of Paros, and that of Carystus in Euboea. The Grecian woods still excite the admiration of travellers, as they did in the days of Pausanias, by trees of extraordinary size.1 Even the hills of Attica are said to have been once clothed with forests 2; and the present scantiness of its streams may be owing in a great measure to the loss of the shades which once sheltered them. Herodotus observes, that, of all countries in the world, Greece enjoyed the most happily tempered seasons. But it seems difficult to speak generally of the climate of a country, in which each district has its own, determined by an infinite variety of local circumstances.3 1 See Brandis, Mittheilungen, i. p. 266. Plato, Critias, p. 111. * See Ideler, Meteorologia Veterum Græcorum et Romanorum, p. 213. CHAP. 1. Volcanic changes. Both in northern Greece and in Peloponnesus the snow remains long on the higher ridges; and even in Attica the winters are often severe. On the other hand, the heat of the summer is tempered, in exposed situations, by the strong breezes from the north-west (the Etesian winds), which prevail during that season in the Grecian seas; and it is possible that Herodotus may have had their refreshing influence chiefly in view. Greece lies in a volcanic zone, extending from the Caspian-if it does not reach still further east-to the Azores, and from the 45th to the 35th degree of latitude1, the greater part of the world known to the Greeks. Though no traces of volcanic eruptions appear to have been discovered in Greece, history is full of the effects produced there by volcanic agency; and permanent indications of its physical character were scattered over its surface, in the hot springs of Thermopyla, Træezen, Ædepsus, and other places. The sea between Peloponnesus and Crete has been, down to modern times, the scene of surprising changes wrought by the same forces; and not long before the Christian era, a new hill was thrown up on the coast near Trozen, no less suddenly than the islands near Thera were raised out of the sea.2 Earthquakes, accompanied by the rending of mountains, the sinking of land into the sea, by temporary inundations, and other disasters, have in all ages been familiar to Greece, more especially to Peloponnesus. And hence some attention seems to be due to the numerous legends and traditions which describe convulsions of the same kind as occurring still more frequently, and with still more important consequences, in a period preceding connected history; and which may be thought to point to a state of elemental warfare, which must 1 Hoff, Geschichte der Veraenderungen der Erdoberflaeche, vol. ii. p. 99. 3 have subsided before the region which was its theatre could have been fitted for the habitation of man. Such an origin we might be inclined to assign to that class of legends which related to struggles between Poseidon and other deities for the possession of several districts; as his contests with Athené (Minerva) for Athens and Trozen1; with the same goddess, or with Heré (Juno) for Argos-where he was said, according to one account, to have dried up the springs, and according to another, to have laid the plain under water2; with Apollo for the isthmus of Corinth. We might be led to put a like interpretation on the poetical traditions, which spoke of a period when several of the islands between Greece and Asia-as Delos and Anaphe1, and even Rhodes 5 and Cyprus, were yet covered by the sea, out of which they rose at the bidding of some god. And still greater weight may seem to belong to a tradition preserved by the priests of Samothrace, an island famous for its ancient mystic worship, who told of a great convulsion, which had burst the barriers that once separated the Euxine from the Egean, and had opened the channels of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont.7 It would not be difficult to connect this tradition with a poetical legend, in which Poseidon was said to have struck the land called Lycaonia, or Lyctonia, with his trident, and to have scattered its fragments, as islands, over the sea.8 But the vast magnitude of the changes described by these legends, may reasonably awaken a suspicion that they were mere fictions, which did not even spring out of any popular belief, but were founded on an opinion which prevailed in the Alexandrian period of Greek literature among the learned, and which was adopted in 1 Paus. ii. 30. 6. 3 Paus. ii. 1. 6. 5 Pindar, Ol. vii. 7 Diod. v. 47. 2 Apollod. ii. 1. 4. 9. Paus. ii. 22. 4. 4 Conon. 49. Apoll. R. iv. 1718. 6 Eustath. ad Dion. P. v. 508. 8 Orph. Arg. 1287. its full extent by the elder Pliny. Thus we find Callimachus speaking generally of islands, as formed of the fragments which Poseidon had severed with his trident from the mountains.1 Pliny is more explicit: he does not hesitate to deliver, as a notorious fact, that nature had torn Sicily from Italy; Cyprus from Syria; Euboea from Boeotia2; and again, Atalanté, Macris, and Ceos3, from Euboea; and that the sea had not only burst through the straits of the Bosphorus, the Hellespont, Rhium, and Leucas-though in this last instance the channel was notoriously artificial; but that it had taken the place of the land in the Propontis, and in the gulfs of Corinth and Ambracia. We may perhaps most safely conclude, not that these late writers had access to any better information than we now possess on this subject, but that they were less afraid of raising a great pile of conjecture on a very slender basis of facts.1 1 H. in Del. 30-36. Apol. adv. G. 40. 2 N. H. ii. 90. Compare Virgil, Æn. iii. 414. and Heyne's note. Tertullian, This observation, however, does not affect the value of any inference which may be drawn from the aspect of the regions in question: on which Schoemann (Antiqu. Juris Publici Græcorum, p. 33.) perhaps justly observes : -"Ceterum harum omnium inter Græciam et Asiam insularum ea est inter se et versus objecta utrimque littora positio, littorumque ipsorum ac sinuum ea facies, vix ut dubitari possit, fuisse quondam continentem in his locis terram ingentibus motibus concussam et disruptam, ut desiderent alia in profundum et ingruentibus aquis mergerentur, alia summis tantummodo jugis prominerent, marique undique circumfuso insulæ fierent." CHAP. CHAPTER II. THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF GREECE. In Causes which render the Subject obscure. The Pelasgians. How represented by Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Strabo. Traces of the Pelasgians in Thessaly. Epirus.In Baotia. - In Peloponnesus, especially in Argolis. In Achaia and Arcadia. Pelasgian Origin of the Arcadians. Various Names of the Pelasgian Tribes. The Caucones. The Thracians. - Influence of the Thracians on Greek Poetry. Asiatic Pelasgians.— Opinions of the Greeks as to the Origin of the earliest Races. Course of the Pelasgian Migrations.—Relation between the Pelasgians and the Greeks. Observations of Herodotus on the Pelasgian Language. Language of the Pelasgians not wholly foreign to the Greeks. Inference from the Pelasgian Settlements in Italy. Civilisation of the Pelasgians. Legends of their Savage Condition. Traditions of their familiarity with the Arts of Life. - Monuments of the Pelasgians. which ren der the scure. ALL we know about the earliest inhabitants of Greece, Causes is derived from the accounts of the Greeks themselves. These accounts relate to a period preceding the in- subject obtroduction of letters, and to races more or less foreign to that which finally gave its name to the country. On such subjects tradition must be either vague and general, or filled with legendary and poetical details. And therefore we cannot wonder that, in the present case, our curiosity is in many respects entirely disappointed, and that the information transmitted to us is in part scanty and imperfect, in part obscure and confused. If we only listen to the unanimous testimony of the ancients, we find that the whole amount of our knowledge shrinks into a very narrow compass: |