Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/280

 264 HISTORY OF GREECE. CHAPTER XVIII. PHENICIANS. OP the Phcnicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians, rt is necessary for me to speak so far as they acted upon the condition, or occu- pied the thoughts, of the early Greeks, without undertaking to investigate thoroughly their previous history. Like the Lydi- aus, all three became absorbed into the vast mass of the Persian empire, retaining, however, to a great degree, their social char- acter and peculiarities after having been robbed of their political independence. The Persians and Medes, portions of the Arian race, and members of what has been classified, in respect of language, as the great Indo-European family, occupied a part of the vast space comprehended between the Indus on the east, and the line of Mount Zagros (running eastward of the Tigris and nearly parallel with that river) on the west. The Phenicians as well as the Assyrians belonged to the Semitic, Aramaean, or Syro-Arabian family ; comprising, besides, the Syrians, Jews, Arabians, and in part the Abyssinians. To what established family of the human race the swarthy and curly-haired Egyptians are to be assigned, has been much disputed ; we cannot reckon them as members of either of the two preceding, and the most careful inquiries render it probable that their physical type was something purely African, approximating in many points to that of the negro. 1 1 See the discussion in Dr. Prichard, Natural History of Man, sect, xvii, p. 152. Mshayxpoef Kal ovhorpixsf (Herodot. ii, 104: compare Ammian. Maroell. xxii, 16, "subfusculi, atrati." etc.) are certain attributes of the ancient Egyptians, depending upon the evidence of an eye-witness. " In their complexion, and in many of their physical peculiarities (observes Dr. Prichard, p. 138), the Egyptians were an African race. In the eastern, and even in the central parts of Africa, we shall trace the existence of various tribes in physical characters nearly resembling the Egyptians ; and ii would not be difficult to observe among many nations of that continent a gradual