Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/65



cannot date the arrival of the Hellenes in Greece, nor the composition of the Homeric poems, the popularity of which did so much to fix the language and to secure unity. We can only say that about B.C. 800 they were there—in European Greece, the Islands, and Asia Minor—and were beginning to send out colonies east, west, and north; that the divisions of Greece had obtained the names which we know; and that among these Hellenes there were recognised three families or divisions distinguished by dialect, though of the same mother tongue, and by certain moral and political characteristics Æolians, Ionians, and Dorians.