A very slight acquaintance with the works of the authors from whom we have received our accounts of the earliest ages of Grecian history, will be sufficient to lead any attentive reader to observe the extreme proneness of the Greeks to create fictitious persons for the purpose of explaining names, the real origin of which was lost in remote antiquity. Almost every nation, tribe, city, mountain, sea, river, and spring, known to the Greeks, was supposed to have been named after some ancient hero, of whom, very often, no other fact is recorded. These fictions manifestly sprang up not accidentally, but from the genius of the people, which constantly tended to embody the spiritual, and to personify the indefinite. When therefore we are seeking, not for poetry, but for historical facts, we cannot but feel a great distrust of every such legend, and the more, in proportion to the distance of the period to which it carries us back. On the other hand, it would be rash to pronounce that every legend which refers the origin and the name of a Greek tribe to an individual, is on that account incredible. Causes may certainly be imagined, through which the name of a chief might sometimes be transferred to his people. But still it will always be the safest rule to withhold our belief from such traditions, whenever they are not supported by independent trustworthy evidence; and we shall have the stronger reason for rejecting them, the earlier the period to which they relate, and the more obscure the person whose name they record.

All we know about the earliest inhabitants of Greece, is derived from the accounts of the Greeks themselves. These accounts relate to a period preceding the introduction 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: if we venture beyond this limit, we pass into a boundless field of conjecture, where every step must be made on disputable ground, and all the light we can obtain, serves less to guide than to perplex us. There are however several questions relating to the original population of Greece, which it may be fit to ask, though we cannot hope for a completely satisfactory answer — if for no other purpose, a least to ascertain the extent of our knowledge. This is the main end we propose in the following inquiry; but we shall not scruple to pursue it, even where we are conscious that it cannot lead to any certain result, so far as we see any grounds to determine our opinion on the most interesting points of a dark and intricate subject.

The series of migrations and conquests by which the Thessalians, Bœotians, and Dorians became masters of the countries which they finally occupied, was attended by changes of two kinds, one affecting the internal condition of Greece itself, the other the foreign lands in which the numerous colonies, which received their first impulse from the revolutions of the mother country, successively settled. We shall take a review of the colonies in another chapter; in the present we will notice some of the most important effects produced by the above-mentioned causes on the state of Greece. This subject will fall under two heads: we shall first consider some national institutions, which either sprang up in this new period, or assumed a new character in it; and shall then enquire into the political changes which took place within particular states, in the interval between the Return of the Heracleids, and the time when we shall see Greece first engaged in a struggle with Persia.

We have hitherto made scarcely any mention of institutions tending to embody the Greeks in one nation. In the Trojan expedition indeed, as it is described by Homer, we see them united by a common language, a common religion, and a common enterprise. The former two were permanent bonds of union; but the latter was an accidental and transitory one: nor does the poet indicate any which could supply its place.

The plan of the little work begun in this volume has been considerably enlarged since it was first undertaken, and the Author fears that a critical eye may be able to detect some traces of this variation from the original design, in the manner of treating one or two subjects. He would be glad if he might believe that this was its chief defect. But he is most desirous that the object which he has had in view should be understood.

He thought it probable that his work might fall into the hands of two different classes of readers, whose wants might not always exactly coincide, but were equally worthy of attention; one consisting of persons who wish to acquire something more than a superficial acquaintance with Greek history, but who have neither leisure nor means to study it for themselves in its original sources; the other of such as have access to the ancient authors, but often feel the need of a guide and an interpreter. The first of these classes is undoubtedly by far the largest: and it is for its satisfaction that the work is principally designed. But the Author did not think that this ought to prevent him from entering into the discussion of subjects which he is aware must be chiefly, if not solely, interesting to readers of the other description, and he has therefore dwelt on the earlier part of the history at greater length than would have been proper in a merely popular narrative.

I.—The political institutions of the heroic period were not contrived by the wisdom of legislators, but grew spontaneously out of natural causes. They appear to have exhibited in every part of Greece a certain resemblance in their general outlines, but the circumstances out of which they arose were probably not everywhere the same, and hence a notion of them, founded on the supposition of their complete uniformity, would probably be narrow and erroneous. The few scanty hints afforded to us on the transition from the obscure period which we may call the Pelasgian, to that with which Homer has made us comparatively familiar, do not enable us to draw any general conclusion as to the mode in which it was effected. We can just discern a warlike and adventurous race starting up, and gradually overspreading the land; but in what relation they stood to the former inhabitants, what changes they introduced in the ancient order of things, can only be conjectured from the social institutions which we find subsisting in the later period. These do not generally present traces of violent revolutions, and subjugating conquests, like those of which the subsequent history of Greece furnishes so many examples; yet it is natural to imagine that they took place occasionally, and here and there we meet with facts, or allusions, which confirm this suspicion. The distinction between slaves and freemen seems to have obtained generally, though not perhaps universally: but there is no distinct trace that it anywhere owed its origin to an invasion which deprived the natives of their liberty.

Toward the first olympiad (b. c. 776), Laconia was subdued and tranquil; the Spartans were united by the institutions of Lycurgus, and their warlike youth ready, and perhaps impatient, for new enterprises. Until the fall of Amyclæ, and the other conquests of Teleclus, had secured the submission of Laconia, they were probably too much occupied at home to enter into any wars with their neighbours, which might require a long-continued exertion of their strength. We find them indeed very early engaged in contests on the side of Arcadia and Argos: but these were not very vigorously prosecuted, or attended with very important results. An expedition of Sous, son of Procles, against Cleitor, in Arcadia, in which he is said to have delivered his army from jeopardy by a stratagem, stands unexplained as an isolated fact. Jealousy soon sprang up between Sparta and Argos, and disturbed the harmony which the family compact should have secured. In the reign of Echestratus, son of Agis, the Spartans had made themselves masters of Cynuria, where a remnant of the old Ionian population had preserved its independence. Having thus become neighbours, they soon became enemies of the Argives. The quarrel broke out in the reign of Prytanis, son of Eurypon; and his successors, Charilaus and Nicander, made inroads on the Argive territory: the Dryopes of Asiné were induced to aid the Spartans, whose subjects had been excited to revolt by the Argives; but the Asinæans were shortly after punished with the loss of their city, and were forced to take refuge in Laconia.

The character of every people is more or less closely connected with that of its land. The station which the Greeks filled among nations, the part which they acted, and the works which they accomplished, depended in a great measure on the position which they occupied on the face of the globe. The manner and degree in which the nature of the country affected the bodily and mental frame, and the social institutions of its inhabitants, may not be so easily determined; but its physical aspect is certainly not less important in a historical point of view, than it is striking and interesting in itself. An attentive survey of the geographical site of Greece, of its general divisions, and of the most prominent points on its surface, is an indispensable preparation for the study of its history. In the following sketch nothing more will be attempted, than to guide the reader's eye over an accurate map of the country, and to direct his attention to some of those indelible features, which have survived all the revolutions by which it has been desolated.

The land which its sons called Hellas, and for which we have adopted the Roman name Greece, lies on the south-east verge of Europe, and in length extends no further than from the thirty-sixth to the fortieth degree of latitude.

In a comparatively late period,—that which followed the rise of a historical literature among the Greeks,—we find a belief generally prevalent, both in the people and among the learned, that in ages of very remote antiquity, before the name and dominion of the Pelasgians had given way to that of the Hellenic race, foreigners had been led by various causes from distant lands to the shores of Greece, and there had planted colonies, founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced useful arts and social institutions, before unknown to the ruder natives. The same belief has been almost universally adopted by the learned of modern times, many of whom, regarding the general fact as sufficiently established, have busied themselves in discovering fresh traces of such migrations, or in investigating the effects produced by them on the moral and intellectual character, the religious or political condition, of the Greeks. It required no little boldness to venture even to throw out a doubt as to the truth of an opinion sanctioned by such high authority, and by the prescription of such a long and undisputed possession of the public mind; and perhaps it might never have been questioned, if the inferences drawn from it had not provoked a jealous inquiry into the grounds on which it rests.

ON THE NUMBER OF THE SPARTAN TRIBES.

That before the conquest of Peloponnesus, the Dorians were divided into three tribes, which were supposed to have derived their names from Hyllus, the son of Hercules, and from Dymas and Pamphylus, sons of the Dorian king, Ægimius, seems sufficiently certain (Steph. Byz. Δυμᾶν). This, of itself, without any direct testimony, raises a presumption that the same division prevailed in all the Dorian states, where the contrary cannot be distinctly proved. Beside this, there appears to be scarcely any valid ground for assigning the same number to the Spartan tribes. Pindar's allusion to the forefathers of the Dorian race (Pyth. 1. 61.), seems not to deserve the stress which is laid upon it by Mueller (Dor. iii. 5. 1.), whose argument does not need it. It gains little from the remark of the scholiast, who introduces Dorus among the sons of Ægimius. The main question is, whether there is any reason for preferring a different number for the Spartan tribes.

It was one of the main objects of the first volume to prove that the story of Rome under the kings was altogether without historical foundation. I have sifted the legends which pass for history; such fragments of them as lay scattered about I have collected, for the sake of restoring the manifold forms they once bore: not however as though this could bring us nearer to historical knowledge: for while the grandeur of the monarchy the seat of which was on the seven hills is attested by the monuments it left behind, the recollections of its history have been purposely destroyed; and to fill up the void the events of a narrow sphere, such as the pontiffs after the Gallic irruption were familiar with, have been substituted in the room of the forgotten transactions of an incomparably wider empire. Even Fabius beyond a doubt knew nothing more than the story that has come down to us: and hardly would it have been possible for him to find any authentic records, except in the writings of forein nations; which he could never have reconciled with his own story or made any use of. On the other hand his age was in possession of a real history, though in many parts tinged with fable, since the insurrection of the commonalty: and though this has only reacht us in a very defective state, disfigured with arbitrary transformations, yet from this time forward it becomes my cheering task to undertake the restoration of a genuine, connected, substantially perfect history.

In the same year in which the orders adjusted their quarrel, the Romans ratified a perpetual league with the Latins. Peace had already been restored three years before, and had brought back a definite federal relation between the two states: but the league of Sp. Cassius did not merely confirm and explain this; it was a new treaty, substituting an acknowledgement of complete equality for the subjection introduced by Tarquinius, or else for the easy dependence to which Latium had submitted under Servius. We are not told which of these was the relation renewed at the peace; but the latter supposition is the more probable: though it is certainly possible that the Latins, through a timidity which the scantiness of our information does not permit us to explain, and because they were not so far heated by passion as to prefer an alliance with the Volscians, may have returned to their former vassalage; and yet two or three years after have been able to extort a recognition of their absolute equality, and even cessions of land and subjects, from the distress of the government, as the price of their goodwill against the insurgents. Dionysius is aware that these sacrifices were connected with the agreement between the senate and the Latins to oppose the rebels: he considers them as a reward bestowed on the Latins for their good spirit; which is the view Roman pride would take of them, and is assuredly the sole reason why the date of the league was placed after the peace of the Sacred Mount.