From the Grecian settlements on the coast of Asia Minor and on the adjacent islands, our attention must now be turned to those non-Hellenic kingdoms and people with whom they there came in contact.

Our information with respect to all of them is unhappily very scanty. Nor shall we improve our narrative by taking the catalogue, presented in the Iliad, of allies of Troy, and construing it as if it were a chapter of geography: if any proof were wanting of the unpromising results of such a proceeding, we may find it in the confusion which darkens so much of the work of Strabo—who perpetually turns aside from the actual and ascertainable condition of the countries which he is describing, to conjectures on Homeric antiquity, often announced as if they were unquestionable facts. Where the Homeric geography is confirmed by other evidence, we note the fact with satisfaction; where it stands unsupported or difficult to reconcile with other statements, we cannot venture to reason upon it as in itself a substantial testimony. The author of the Iliad, as he has congregated together a vast body of the different sections of Greeks for the attack of the consecrated hill of Ilium, so he has also summoned all the various inhabitants of Asia Minor to co-operate in its defence, and he has planted portions of the Kilikians and Lykians, whose historical existence is on the southern coast, in the immediate vicinity of the Troad.

In the preceding chapters I have been under the necessity of presenting to the reader a picture altogether incoherent and destitute of central effect—to specify briefly each of the two or three hundred towns which agreed in bearing the Hellenic name, and to recount its birth and early life, as far as our evidence goes—but without being able to point out any action and reaction, exploits or sufferings, prosperity or misfortune, glory or disgrace, common to all. To a great degree, this is a characteristic inseparable from the history of Greece from its beginning to its end, for the only political unity which it ever receives is the melancholy unity of subjection under all-conquering Rome. Nothing short of force will efface in the mind of a free Greek the idea of his city as an autonomous and separate organization: the village is a fraction, but the city is an unit,—and the highest of all political units, not admitting of being consolidated with others into a ten or a hundred, to the sacrifice of its own separate and individual mark. Such is the character of the race, both in their primitive country and in their colonial settlements—in their early as well as in their late history—splitting by natural fracture into a multitude of self-administering, indivisible, cities.

Northward of the tribes called Epirotic lay those more numerous and widely extended tribes who bore the general name of Illyrians, bounded on the west by the Adriatic, on the east by the mountain-range of Skardus, the northern continuation of Pindus, and thus covering what is now called Middle and Upper Albania, together with the more northerly mountains of Montenegro, Herzegovina, and Bosnia. Their limits to the north and northeast cannot be assigned, but the Dardani and Autariatæ must have reached to the north-east of Skardus and even east of the Servian plain of Kossovo; while along the Adriatic coast, Skylax extends the race so far northward as to include Dalmatia, treating the Liburnians and Istrians beyond them as not Illyrian: yet Appian and others consider the Liburnians and Istrians as Illyrian, and Herodotus even includes under that name the Eneti or Veneti at the extremity of the Adriatic Gulf. The Bulini, according to Skylax, were the northernmost Illyrian tribe: the Amantini, immediately northward of the Epirotic Chaonians, were the southernmost. Among the southern Illyrian tribes are to be numbered the Taulantii – originally the possessors, afterwards the immediate neighbours, of the territory on which Epidamnus was founded. The ancient geographer Hekatæus (about 500 b.c.) is sufficiently well acquainted with them to specify their town Sesarêthus: he also named the Chelidonii as their northern, the Encheleis as their southern, neighbours; and the Abri also as a tribe nearly adjoining.

In the preceding chapter an account has been given, the best which we can pick out from Herodotus, of the steps by which the Asiatic Greeks became subject to Persia; and if his narrative is meagre, on a matter which vitally concerned not only so many of his brother Greeks, but even his own native city, we can hardly expect that he should tell us much respecting the other conquests of Cyrus. He seems to withhold intentionally various details which had come to his knowledge, and merely intimates in general terms that while Harpagus was engaged on the coast of the Ægean, Cyrus himself assailed and subdued all the nations of Upper Asia, “not omitting any one of them.” He alludes to the Baktrians and the Sakæ, who are also named by Ktêsias as having become subject partly by force, partly by capitulation; but he deems only two of the exploits of Cyrus worthy of special notice—the conquest of Babylon, and the final expedition against the Massagetæ. In the short abstract which we now possess of the lost work of Ktêsias, no mention appears of the important conquest of Babylon; but his narrative, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded on data altogether different.

That vast space comprised between the rivers Strymon and Danube, and bounded to the west by the easternmost Illyrian tribes, northward of the Strymon, was occupied by the innumerable subdivisions of the race called Thracians or Threïcians. They were the most numerous and most terrible race known to Herodotus: could they by possibility act in unison or under one dominion (he says), they would be irresistible. A conjunction thus formidable once seemed impending, during the first years of the Peloponnesian war, under the reign of Sitalkês king of the Odrysæ, who reigned from Abdêra at the mouth of the Nestus to the Euxine, and compressed under his sceptre a large proportion of these ferocious but warlike plunderers; so that the Greeks even down to Thermopylæ trembled at his expected approach. But the abilities of that prince were not found adequate to bring the whole force of Thrace into effective co-operation and aggression against others.

Numerous as the tribes of Thracians were, their customs and character (according to Herodotus) were marked by great uniformity: of the Getæ, the racter. Trausi, and others, he tells us a few particularities.

Hitherto the history of the Asiatic Greeks has flowed in a stream distinct from that of the European Greeks. The present chapter will mark the period of confluence between the two.

At the time when Darius quitted Sardis on his return to Susa, carrying with him the Milesian Histiæus, he left Artaphernês his brother as satrap of Sardis, invested with the supreme command of Western Asia Minor. The Grecian cities on the coast, comprehended under his satrapy, appear to have been chiefly governed by native despots in each; and Milêtus especially, in the absence of Histiæus, was ruled by his son-in-law Aristagoras. That city was now in the height of power and prosperity—in every respect the leading city of Ionia. The return of Darius to Susa may be placed seemingly about 512 b.c., from which time forward the state of things above described continued, without disturbance, for eight or ten years—“ a respite from suffering,” to use the significant phrase of the historian.

It was about the year 506 b.c. that the exiled Athenian despot Hippias, after having been repelled from Sparta by the unanimous refusal of the Lacedæmonian allies to take part in his cause, presented himself from Sigeium as a petitioner to Artaphernês at Sardis.

Among the Ionic portion of Hellas are to be reckoned (besides Athens) Eubœa, and the numerous group of islands included between the southernmost Eubœan promontory, the eastern coast of Peloponnesus and the north-western coast of Krête. Of these islands some are to be considered as outlying prolongations, in a south-easterly direction, of the mountain-system of Attica ; others, of that of Eubœa; while a certain number of them lie apart from either system, and seem referable to a volcanic origin. To the first class belong Keôs, Kythnus, Serīphus, Pholegandrus, Sikinus, Gyarus, Syra, Paros, and Antiparos; to the second class, Andros, Tênos, Mykonos, Dêlos, Naxos, Amorgos ; to the third class, Kimôlus, Mêlos, Thêra. These islands passed amongst the ancients by the general name of the Cyclades and the Sporades ; the former denomination being commonly understood to comprise those which immediately surrounded the sacred island of Dêlos,—the latter being given to those which lay more scattered and apart. But the names are not applied with uniformity or steadiness even in ancient times : at present, the whole group are usually known by the title of Cyclades.

The population of these islands was called Ionic —with the exception of Styra and Karystus in the southern part of Eubœa, and the island of Kyth-nus, which were peopled by Dryopes, the same tribe as those who have been already remarked in the Argolic peninsula; and with the exception also of Mêlos and Thêa, which were colonies from Sparta.

The preceding volume brought down the history of Sparta to the period marked by the reign of Peisistratus at Athens; at which time she had attained her maximum of territory, was confessedly the most powerful state in Greece, and enjoyed a proportionate degree of deference from the rest. I now proceed to touch upon the three Dorian cities on and near to the Isthmus—Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara, as they existed at this same period.

Even amidst the scantv information which has reached us, we trace the marks of considerable maritime energy and commerce among the Corinthians, as far back as the eighth century b.c. The foundation of Korkyra and Syracuse, in the eleventh Olympiad, or 734 b.c. (of which I shall speak farther in connection with Grecian colonization generally), by expeditions from Corinth, affords a good proof that they knew how to turn to account the excellent situation which connected them with the sea on both sides of Peloponnesus : and Thucydides, while he notices them as the chief liberators of the sea in early times from pirates, also tells us that the first great improvement in ship-building— the construction of the trireme, or ship of war, with a full deck and triple banks for the rowers—was the fruit of Corinthian ingenuity. It was in the year 703 b.c, that the Corinthian Ameinoklês built four triremes for the Samians, the first which those islanders had ever possessed: the notice of this fact attests as well the importance attached to the new invention, as the humble scale on which the naval force in those early days was equipped.

On the coast of Asia Minor to the north of the twelve Ionic confederated cities, were situated the twelve Æolic cities, apparently united in a similar manner. Besides Smyrna, the fate of which has already been described, the eleven others were— Têmnos, Larissa, Neon-Teichos, Kymê, Ægæ, Myrina, Gryneium, Killa, Notium, Ægiroëssa, Pitanê. These twelve are especially noted by Herodotus as the twelve ancient continental Æolic cities, and distinguished on the one hand from the insular Æolic Greeks, in Lesbos, Tenedos, and Hekatonnesoi— and on the other hand from the Æolic establishments in and about Mount Ida, which seem to have been subsequently formed and derived from Lesbos and Kymê.

Of these twelve Æolic towns, eleven were situated very near together, clustered round the the Elæitic Gulf: their territories, all of moderate extent, seem also to have been conterminous with each other. Smyrna, the twelfth, was situated to the south of Mount Sipylus, and at a greater distance from the remainder—one reason why it was so soon lost to its primitive inhabitants. These towns occupied chiefly a narrow but fertile strip of territory lying between the base of the woody mountain-range called Sardênê and the sea : Gryneium, like Kolophôn and Milêtus, possessed a venerated sanctuary of Apollo, of older date than the Æolic immigration: Larissa, Têmnos, and Ægae were at some little distance from the sea; the first at a short distance north of the Hermus, by which its territory was watered and occasionally inundated, so as to render embankments necessary; the last two upon rocky mountain-sites, so inaccessible to attack, that the inhabitants were enabled, even during the height of the Persian power, to maintain constantly a substantial independence.

Some notice must be taken of those barbarous or non-Hellenic nations who formed the immediate neighbours of Hellas, west of the range of Pindus, and north of that range which connects Pindus with Olympus—as well as of those other tribes, who, though lying more remote from Hellas proper, were yet brought into relations of traffic or hostility with the Hellenic colonies.

Between the Greeks and these foreign neighbours, the Akarnanians, of whom I have already spoken briefly in my preceding volume, form the proper link of transition. They occupied the territory between the river Achelôus, the Ionian Sea, and the Ambrakian Gulf: they were Greeks, and admitted as such to contend at the Pan-Hellenic games, yet they were also closely connected with the Amphilochi and Agræi, who were not Greeks: in manners, sentiments, and intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and half-Epirotic—like the Ætolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. Even down to the time of Thucydidês, these nations were subdivided into numerous petty communities, lived in unfortified villages, were frequently in the habit of plundering each other, and never permitted themselves to be unarmed: in case of attack, they withdrew their families and their scanty stock, chiefly cattle, to the shelter of difficult mountains or marshes. They were for the most part light-armed, few among them being trained to the panoply of the Grecian hoplite; but they were both brave and skilful in their own mode of warfare, and the sling in the hands of the Akarnanian was a weapon of formidable efficiency

Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, the Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among themselves, and a hill near the Amphilochian Argos, on the shores of the Ambrakian Gulf, had been fortified to serve as a judgmentseat, or place of meeting for the settlement of disputes.