On the Doric Dialect.

1. The ancient grammarians divided the Greek language into four distinct branches–the Doric, Ionic, Attic, and Æolic; the latter including all dialects not comprised under the other three heads, because only one branch of it, the Lesbian, was the written language of one species of poetry: and yet this latter division must unquestionably have contained different species less connected with each other than with some branches of the other three dialects. It is, however, pretty well agreed that the several Æolic dialects together contained more remains of the primitive Grecian or (if we will so call it) Pelasgic language, than either the Doric, Ionic, or Attic; and that at the same time many forms of the latter were preserved with great fidelity in the Latin tongue; partly because the life of the Italian husbandmen bore a nearer resemblance to that of the ancient Greeks than that of the later Greeks themselves, and because neither their literature, nor any fastidious sense of euphony and rhythm, induced them to soften and refine their language. But of the more polished dialects, that of Homer, though differing in many points, yet in others doubtless closely resembled the original language, which must once have been spoken from Thessaly to the Peloponnese, and was variously metamorphosed in the Doric, Ionic, and Attic dialects.

On the diversity of Apollo Nomius, and Apollo the father of Æsculapius, from the Doric Apollo. That Apollo was not originally an elementary deity.

1. Having now treated of the extension and propagation of the worship of Apollo, and some of the most remarkable legends and fables connected with it, our attention is next turned to the nature and character of the religion itself.

In the first place, then, we shall remind the reader of a position sufficiently established by the foregoing inquiries; viz. that the Apollo of Tempe, Delphi, Delos, Crete, Lycia, Troy, Athens, and the Peloponnese, is the same god, and not, as was very frequently the case in the religions of Greece, a combination of several deities under one name. This conclusion we supported as well by historical accounts respecting the foundation of his numerous temples, as by memorials of another kind; viz. the recurrence of the same names, rites, and symbols; such, for example, as the titles of Lycius and Lycia, Delphinius and Pythius; the oracles and sibyls; the purifications and expiations; the custom of leaping from rocks; decimations; the golden summer, and bloodless oblations; the laurel-berries; the legend of the Hyperboreans, and the cycle of eight years. Hence the theologians mentioned by Ciceroe were wrong in endeavouring without any authority to make a distinction between the Athenian, Cretan, and Hyperborean Apollo.

Domestic occupations of the Spartans. Funeral ceremonies of the Dorians. On the national character of the Dorians in general. Its varieties in the Dorians of Sparta, Crete, Argos, Rhodes, Corinth, Syracuse, Sicyon, Phlius, Megara, Byzantium, Ægina, Cyrene, Crotona, Tarentum, Messenia, and Delphi.

1. After Anacharsis the Scythian had visited the different states of Greece, and lived among them all, he is reported to have said, that “all wanted leisure and tranquillity for wisdom, except the Lacedæmonians, for that these were the only persons with whom it was possible to hold a rational conversation.” The life of all the other Greeks had doubtless appeared to him as a restless and unquiet existence, as a constant struggle and effort without any object. In addition to the love of ease, which belonged to the original constitution of the Dorians, there was a further cause for this mode of life, viz. the entire exemption from necessary labour which the Spartans enjoyed, their wants being supplied by the dependent and industrious classes. Several writers have dwelt on the tedium and listlessness of such an existence; but the Spartans considered an immunity from labour an immunity from pain, and as constituting entire liberty. But, it may be asked, what was there to occupy the Spartan men from morning to night?