Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/483

 BALTIC MYTHOLOGY

HE closest kindred of the Slavs are the Baltic peoples—the Prussians and Yatvyags (both long extinct), the Lithuanians, and the Letts. Their early history is unknown, but we have reason to believe that they are the Aestii of Tacitus$1$ and Jordanes;$2$ and two divisions of them, the Galindae and Sudeni, are mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy$3$ as living south of the Venedae, i.e. the Slavs who were later driven from the Baltic shores. Like the Slavs, the Baltic peoples seem to have been part of the Aryan hordes of Sarmatians who formed a portion of the ethnological congeries somewhat vaguely termed Scythians;$4$ and since those Scythians with whom we are here concerned were very closely related to the Indo-Iranian race, in certain regards Baltic religion is strikingly similar to the Iranian, as it is set forth in our earliest documents. Arrived on the Baltic coast, these peoples became subject, like so many other invaders, to the influences of the races whom they found settled there, this being especially marked in the case of the Letts, who, near neighbours of the Finno-Ugric Esthonians, received marked changes in their religion; while Scandinavian elements, from Norse sojourners and traders, must not be overlooked.

The territory of the Baltic peoples stretched, roughly speaking, from the Vistula to the Dvina, and occupied approximately the districts now known as East Prussia, Courland, Kovno, Pskov, Vitebsk, Vilna, Suwalki, and Grodno, though the boundaries have fluctuated widely and have shown a constant tendency to contract. With the exception of the Lithuanians, who erected a considerable kingdom in the Middle Ages, only to share the unhappy fate of Poland, the Baltic peoples have