The stream of Grecian colonisation to the westward, as far as we can be said to know it authentically, with names and dates, begins from the 11th Olympiad. But it is reasonable to believe that there were other attempts earlier than this, though we must content ourselves with recognising them as generally probable. There were doubtless detached bands of volunteer emigrants or marauders, who, fixing themselves in some situation favourable to commerce or piracy, either became mingled with the native tribes, or grew up by successive reinforcements into an acknowledged town: not being able to boast of any filiation from the Prytaneium of a known Grecian city, these adventurers might be disposed to fasten upon the inexhaustible legend of the Trojan war, and ascribe their origin to one of the victorious heroes in the host of Agamemnon, alike distinguished for their valour and for their ubiquitous dispersion after the siege. Of such alleged settlements by fugitive Grecian or Trojan heroes, there were a great number, on various points throughout the shores of the Mediterranean; and the same honourable origin was claimed even by many non-Hellenic towns.

In the eighth century B.C., when this westerly stream of Grecian colonisation begins to assume an authentic shape (735 B.C.), the population of Sicily (as far as our scanty information permits us to determine it) consisted of two races completely distinct from each other—Sikels and Sikans—besides the Elymi, a mixed race apparently distinct from both, and occupying Eryx and Egesta near the westernmost corner of the island—and the phenician colonies and coast establishments formed for purposes of trade.

That there were two long contests between the Lacedæmonians and Messenians, and that in both the former were completely victorious, is a fact sufficiently attested; and if we could trust the statements in Pausanias—our chief and almost only authority on the subject—we should be in a situation to recount the history of both these wars in considerable detail. But unfortunately, the incidents narrated in that writer have been gathered from sources which are, even by his own admission, undeserving of credit—from Rhianus, the poet of Bênê in Crete, who had composed an epic poem on Aristomenês and the second Messenian war, about B.C. 220-and from Myrên of Priênê, a prose author whose date is not exactly known, but belonging to the Alexandrine age, and not earlier than the third century before the Christian æra. From Rhianus we have no right to expect trustworthy information, and the accuracy of Myrôn is much depreciated by Pausanias himself—on some points even too much, as will presently be shown; but apart from the mental habits either of the prose writer or the poet, it does not seem that any good means of knowledge were open to either of them, except the poems of Tyrtæus, which we are by no means sure that they ever consulted. The account of the two wars, extracted from these two authors by Pausa-nias, is a string of tableaux, several of them indeed highly poetical, but destitute of historical coherence or sufficiency; and O. Möller has justly observed, that “absolutely no reason is given in them for the subjection of Messenia.”

Plutarch begins his biography of Lycurgus with the following ominous words:—

“ Concerning the lawgiver Lycurgus we can assert him? absolutely nothing which is not controverted: there are different stories in respect to his birth, his travels, his death, and also his mode of proceeding, political as well as legislative: least of all is the time in which he lived agreed upon.”

And this exordium is but too well borne out by the unsatisfactory nature of the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch himself, but in those other authors out of whom we are obliged to make up our idea of the memorable Lycurgean system. If we examine the sources from which Plutarch's life of Lycurgus is deduced, it will appear that—excepting the poets Alkman, Tyrtæus, and Simonides, from whom he has borrowed less than we could have wished—he has no authorities older than Xenophon and Plato: Aristotle is cited several times, and is unquestionably the best of his witnesses, but the greater number of them belong to the century subsequent to that philosopher. Neither Herodotus nor Ephorus are named, though the former furnishes some brief, but interesting particulars, and the latter also (as far as we can judge from the fragments remaining) entered at large into the proceedings of the Spartan lawgiver.

The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging from east and west and commencing with the Ægean Sea or the Gulf of Therma near the fortieth degree of north latitude, is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon until it touches the Adriatic at the Akrokerannian promontory. The country south of this chain comprehended all that in ancient times was regarded as Hellas proper, but it also comprehended something more. Hellas proper (or continuous Hellas, to use the language of Scylax and Dicsearchus) was understood to begin with the town and Gulf of Ambracia: from thence to the Akrokeraunian promontory lay the land called by the Greeks Epirus, occupied by the Chaonians, Molossians, and Thesprotians, who were termed Epirots and were not esteemed to belong to the Hellenic aggregate. This at least was the general understanding, though Ætolians and Akarnanians in their more distant sections seem to have been not less widely removed from the full type of Hellenism than the Epirots were; while Herodotus is inclined to treat even Molossians and Thesprotians as Hellens.

At a point about midway between the Ægean and Ionian seas, Olympus and Lingon are traversed nearly at right angles by the still longer and vaster chain called Pindus, which stretches in a line rather west of north from the northern side of the range of Olympus: the system to which these mountains belong seems to begin with the lofty masses of greenstone comprised under the name of Mount Scardus or Scordus (Schardagh), which is divided only by the narrow valley containing the river Drin from the limestone of the Albanian Alps.

The territory indicated in the last chapter—south of Mount Olympus, and also of the line which connects the city of Ambracia with Mount Pindus—was occupied during the historical period by the central stock of the Hellens or Greeks, from which their numerous outlying colonies were planted out.

Both metropolitans and colonists styled themselves Hellens, and were recognised as such by each other; all glorying in the name as the prominent symbol of fraternity,—all describing non-Hellenic men or cities by a word which involved associations of repugnance. Our term barbarian, borrowed from this latter word, does not express the same idea; for the Greeks spoke thus indiscriminately of the extra-Hellenic world with all its inhabitants, whatever might be the gentleness of their character, and whatever might be their degree of civilization: the rulers and people of Egyptian Thebes with their ancient and gigantic monuments, the wealthy Tyrians and Carthaginians, the philHellene Arganthonius of Tartêssus, and the welldisciplined patricians of Rome (to the indignation of old Cato), were all comprised in it. At first it seemed to have expressed more of repugnance than of contempt, and repugnance especially towards the sound of a foreign language; afterwards a feeling of their own superior intelligence (in part well-justified) arose among the Greeks, and their term barbarian was used so as to imply a low state of the temper and intelligence; in which sense it was retained by the semi-hellenised Romans, as the proper antithesis to their state of civilization.