Mȗθος—Sage—an universal manifestation of the human mind.

I have already remarked that the existence of that popular narrative talk, which the Germans express by the significant word Sage or Volks-Sage, in a greater or less degree of perfection or development, is a phænomenon common to almost all stages of society and to almost all quarters of the globe. It is the natural effusion of the unlettered, imaginative and believing man, and its maximum of influence belongs to an early state of the human mind; for the multiplication of recorded facts, the diffusion of positive science, and the formation of a critical standard of belief, tend to discredit its dignity and to repress its easy and abundant flow. It supplies to the poet both materials to recombine and adorn, and a basis as well as a stimulus for further inventions of his own; and this at a time when the poet is religious teacher, historian, and philosopher, all in one—not, as he becomes at a more advanced period, the mere purveyor of avowed, though interesting fiction.

Analogy of the Germans and Celts with the Greeks.

Such popular stories, and such historical songs (meaning by historical simply that which is accepted as history) are found in most quarters of the globe, and especially among the Teutonic and Celtic populations of early Europe. The old Go thic songs were cast into a continuous history by the historian Ablavius; and the poems of the Germans respecting Tuisto the earth-born god, his son Mannus, and his descendants the eponyms of the various German tribes, as they are briefly described by Tacitus, remind us of Hesiod, or Eumêlus, or the Homeric hymns.

Having in the preceding chapter touched upon the Greeks in their aggregate capacity, we now come to describe separately the portions of which this aggregate consisted, as they present themselves at the first discernible period of history.

It has already been mentioned that the twelve races or subdivisions, members of what is called the Amphiktyonic convocation, were as follows:—

North of the pass of Thermopylæ,—Thessalians, Perrheebians, Magnêtes, Achæans, Melians, Ænianes, Dolopes.

South of the pass of Thermopylæ,—Dorians, Ionians, Boeotians, Lokrians, Phocians.

Other Hellenic races, not comprised among the Amphiktyons, were—

The Ætolians and Akarnanians, north of the Gulf of Corinth.

The Arcadians, Eleians, Pisatans, and Triphylians, in the central and western portion of Peloponnesus: I do not here name the Achæans who occupied the southern or Peloponnesian coast of the Corinthian gulf, because they may be presumed to have been originally of the same race as the Phthiot Achaeans, and therefore participant in the Amphiktyonic constituency, though their actual connection with it may have been disused.

The Dryopes, an inconsiderable, but seemingly peculiar subdivision, who occupied some scattered points on the sea-coast—Hermionê on the Argolic peninsula; Styrus and Karystus in Eubœa; the island of Kythnus, &c.

Though it may be said, in a general, way, that our historical discernment of the Hellenic aggregate, apart from the illusions of legend, commences with 776 B.C, yet with regard to the larger number of its subdivisions just enumerated, we can hardly be said to possess any specific facts anterior to the invasion of Xerxes in 480 B.C.