Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/284

 268 HISTORY OF GREECE. few in number, in which case the question loses most of its im- portance) that the Hellenic language the noblest among the many varieties of human speech, and possessing within itself a pervading symmetry and organization is a mere confluence of two foreign barbaric languages (Phoenician and Egyptian) with two or more internal barbaric languages, Pelasgian, Lelegian, etc. In the mode of investigation pursued by different historians into this question of early foreign colonies, there is great differ- ence (as in the case of the Pelasgi) between the different authors, from the acquiescent Euemerism of llaoul Rochette to the refined distillation of Dr. Thirlwall, in the third chapter of his History. It will be found that the amount of positive knowledge which Dr. Thirlwall guarantees to his readers in that chapter is extremely inconsiderable ; for though he proceeds upon the gene- ral theory (different from that which I hold) that historical mat- ter may be distinguished and elicited from the legends, yet when the question arises respecting any definite historical result, his canon of credibility is too just to permit him to overlook the absence of positive evidence, even when all intrinsic incredibility is removed. That which I note as Terra Incognita, is in his view a land which may be known up to a certain point ; but the map which he draws of it contains so few ascertained places as to differ very little from absolute vacuity. The most ancient district called Hellas is affirmed by Aristotle to have been near Dodona and the river Achelous, a description which would have been unintelligible (since the river does not flow near Dodona), if' it had not been qualified by the remark, that the river had often in former times changed its course. He states, moreover, that the deluge of Deukalion took place chiefly in this district, which was in those early days inhabited by the Selli, and by the people then called Graeci, but now Hellenes. 1 The Selli (called by Pindar, Helli) are mentioned in the Iliad .'is the ministers of the Dodonaean Zeus, " men who slept on the ground, and never washed their feet ;" and Hesiod, in one of the lost poems (the Eoiai), speaks of the fat land and rich pastures of the land called Hellopia, wherein Dodona was situated. 2 On 1 Aristotcl. Meteorol. i. 14. 2 Homer, Iliad, xvi. 234 ; Hesiod, Fragm. 149, ed. Marktstheffel ; So- phokl. Trachin. 1174; Strabo, vii. p. 328.