The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging from east and west and commencing with the Ægean Sea or the Gulf of Therma near the fortieth degree of north latitude, is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon until it touches the Adriatic at the Akrokerannian promontory. The country south of this chain comprehended all that in ancient times was regarded as Hellas proper, but it also comprehended something more. Hellas proper (or continuous Hellas, to use the language of Scylax and Dicsearchus) was understood to begin with the town and Gulf of Ambracia: from thence 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 Ætolians and Akarnanians 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.

At a point about midway between the Ægean 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), which is divided only by the narrow valley containing the river Drin from the limestone of the Albanian Alps.

The territory indicated in the last chapter—south of Mount Olympus, and also of the line which connects the city of Ambracia with Mount Pindus—was occupied during the historical period by the central stock of the Hellens or Greeks, from which their numerous outlying colonies were planted out.

Both metropolitans and colonists styled themselves Hellens, and were recognised as such by each other; all glorying in the name as the prominent symbol of fraternity,—all describing non-Hellenic men or cities by a word which involved associations of repugnance. Our term barbarian, borrowed from this latter word, does not express the same idea; for the Greeks spoke thus indiscriminately of the extra-Hellenic world with all its inhabitants, whatever might be the gentleness of their character, and whatever might be their degree of civilization: the rulers and people of Egyptian Thebes with their ancient and gigantic monuments, the wealthy Tyrians and Carthaginians, the philHellene Arganthonius of Tartêssus, and the welldisciplined patricians of Rome (to the indignation of old Cato), were all comprised in it. At first it seemed to have expressed more of repugnance than of contempt, and repugnance especially towards the sound of a foreign language; afterwards a feeling of their own superior intelligence (in part well-justified) arose among the Greeks, and their term barbarian was used so as to imply a low state of the temper and intelligence; in which sense it was retained by the semi-hellenised Romans, as the proper antithesis to their state of civilization.

SECTION I.—RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS INTO PELOPONNESUS

In one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the descending series of the two most distinguished mythical families in Peloponnêsus—the Perseids and the Pelopids: we have followed the former down to Hêraklês and his son Hyllus, and the latter down to Orestês son of Agamemnôn, who is left in possession of that ascendency in the peninsula which had procured for his father the chief command in the Trojan war. The Herakleids or sons of Hêraklês, on the other hand, are expelled fugitives, dependent upon foreign aid or protection: Hyllus had perished in single combat with Echemus of Tegea, (connected with the Pelopids by marriage with Timandra sister of Clytæmnêstra,) and a solemn compact had been made, as the preliminary condition of this duel, that no similar attempt at an invasion of the peninsula should be undertaken by his family for the space of 100 years. At the end of the stipulated period the attempt was renewed, and with complete success; but its success was owing not so much to the valour of the invaders as to a powerful body of new allies. The Herakleids re-appear as leaders and companions of the Dorians,—a northerly section of the Greek name, who now first come into importance,—poor indeed in mythical renown, since they are never noticed in the Iliad, and only once casually mentioned in the Odyssey, as a fraction among the many-tongued inhabitants of Crête—but destined to form one of the grand and predominant elements throughout all the career of historical Hellas.