Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/228

 212 HISTORY OF GREECE render the extent of their original domicile a matter of com- paratively little moment to verify. The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging from east and west, and commencing with the JEgean sea or the gulf of Therma, near the 40th degree of north latitude, is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon, until it touches the Adriatic at the Akrokeraunian promontory. The country south of this chain comprehended all that in ancient times was regarded as Greece, or Hellas proper, but it also com- prehended something more. Hellas proper, 1 (or continuous Hellas, to use the language of Skylax and Dikasarchus) was understood to begin with the town and gulf of Ambrakia : from thence, northward 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 .^Etolians and Akar- nanians, 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. 9 At a point about midway between the JEgean 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,)3 which is divided only 1 Diktearch, 31, p. 460, ed. Fuhr : 'H d' 'Eil/luf unb T^f 'ApppaKiae elvat 6onel Mu/Uora avvex^ I'd Trepaf avrrj 6' epxerai 'Enl rbv irorafiov Hqveibv, (if ^C^iag ypdtyeL, 'Opof re Mayv^rwv 'OftoArjv /ce/cA?//fvoj/. Skylax, c. 35. 'A/z/fya/ua kvTcv&ev upxerai i] 'E/U.uf avvexvt ftvat uixpt Iir)veiov TTOTapov, Kal 'Ofiofoov MayvriTiKTie irofauf, r) Ian irapb rbt vi 127).
 * Herod, i. 146 : ii. 56. The Molossian Alkon passes for a Hcllen (Herod
 * The mountain systems in the ancient Macedonia and Ulyricum, north