Argolis, the last named (Lycosura) and Eleusis could be ascribed to Lycian hands? There are thirty-three Cyclopian cities or foundations in the Peloponese; ten of these were in Argolis, viz., Argos, Asine, Hermione, Hysia, Mycenæ, Media, Nauplia, Enoe, Tiryns, Hyria. Argos was sometimes Kurλwπeia: Thebes had also Cyclopian walls; in that city was the archaic "couch of Alcmena," which, like the temple of Neptune Hippios there, was an enclosure of oak palings. The Delphic temples were, it is said, in succession, first of laurel boughs, the second of wax and feathers, the third of brass, and the fourth stone. (M., " Orch.," 238.) Strabo says Lycosura was built by the seven Cyclops. (Ibid.) The tomb of Alcmena, near the lake, was found to contain records in a foreign character, styled "Egyptian" by the Greeks. (Ibid.) It must appear from these notices that traditions of the rudest and earliest structures in Greece, accompanied with circumstances of sanctity, were preserved at certain localities, the rudest sometimes occurring (Pausan.) under the title, "Dædalian "-a name explained above, though his wings of wax and feathers, materials of the Delphic temple according to the early tradition, must be thrown together for inquiry.

The wonderful monuments of archaic masonry in Greece have, by the industry of modern travellers, been rescued from neglect that attaches even to classic authors. Spon and Wheeler have restored to light the subterranean conduits of Orchomenos-works required for the circumstances of the district about the Lake Copais (the name properly attaches to one of its bays, Copa,, a hollow), and of a magnitude commensurate with the importance and resources of the wealthy state of Orchomenos. (Consult Müller, "Orch.," 45-62.) These principal conduits, five or six, debouch on the Strait of Euboea, close to the ancient Opus of the Epienemidian Locrians (the place is now " Thalanse"); they lead from the N.E. of the lake towards Larymna, now Larni. There are also fifty canals coming out at the

Katabothron, at the distance of three hours from the Athamanian field and Akrapha. Among the places submerged by the overflowing of the lake, we have traditions of one called "Eleusis," and "Athene," and "Triton," which were said to have been in existence at the era of "Cecrops :" this name seems referrible, in the latter member, to "Europe" (y), which is applied to Greece north of the Peloponese in the Homeric hymn to Apollo (1. 251, 291); as hereafter observed, the first syllable is Persian, Kakh, "earth." The strategical position of Boeotia, called by Epaminondas, "The Ball-room of Mars," is minutely and comprehensively described by Müller. ("Orchom.," c. 3.) No schoolboy is ignorant of its girdling mountains, Parne, Cythæron, Helicon, Parnassus, to the northern Æta, and the key to its position, the Doric tetrapolis, with the oft-attempted passes on the west bordering Etolia. The same scholar realizes, in copious description, the palmy days of the Boeotian state, when its flute-reeds, a sure crop only every ninth year, were essential to, and apparently marked, the nine-year cycle of Hellenic feasts (p. 67), as its supplies of maize and fish stocked Athenian markets; its Egyptian scene of floating islands; its palms, a peculiar vegetation for this spot in all Greece; and other circumstances, when this state was connected politically with the sea, or great roadstead of Pegasæ, and its harbours and inland treasures of agriculture and grazing—the wealthy Orchomenos of the "Iliad," the province of still earlier renown, and of the race of the "Athamantidæ " or the "Cadmeans "-an era lost in the record of its latest events, the "Epigoniad," or " Peloponesian war," in favour of the ancient line, or of an usurper of the honours of Cadmus; and when the earliest cento (Argonautica) of the Hindu-Hellenic poems caught up the foreign titles, Athamas, Ea, Eolic, Hierus, to mingle them with their "Augeas" or "Lycus," while their Pan, or Bacchus, or Poseidon (at the temple of Iton), and their ethnical "Andrais," confused the earlier topography and institutions,

and displaced the ancient ownership to the wealthy Orchomenos and all "Cecropia." This last term is of local application in Boeotia. (Müller, "Orch.")

To define the compass of the Persian power, settlements, or era in Hellas, is not for the present attempt: we know so little of any of the races, states, and empires on the Asiatic shore of the Ægean, that we cannot expect, in joining those to the western settlements of a very remote epoch, to ascertain the conditions very accurately. In the account of Herodotus of the events in Asia Minor, we wonder at the formidable exertions of the Lydian Halyattes, rival of the Mede Cyaxares (Herod., i., 74-79); yet the Lydian Heracleidæ had predecessors, in Midas and Gyges, of equally surprising influence on their times; and "Lydia ” is a name secondary to " Moones," meaning apparently ruins, "y, perhaps those intended to have been described in the "Iliad." "Neleus," name for the conductor or era of the Ionian and Æolian migrations or return to Asia, may report the Persian "Nelide" or "Neride," meaning people (Fellowes, "Xan.") -a word which may also be implied in Nireus, from Syme, the most beautiful of men. (II. B.) But Nireus and Milyas and Solymi (Herod., i., 173), the two latter meaning Lycian and the former from Lycia; and Balbec and the "princes of Lebanon" (of old or modern time), are mysteries and mysterious is the antiquity of Ems and Damascus, and of that "Dor" (perhaps Dar, Persian for place), on the Syrian shore, near Tyre, whose ruins excited the admiration of Hieronymus (ap Reland);-these and other archaic remains and names, from Syria to Macedon, which also desires to know its own origin-these are and will remain difficulties for the inquirer into the affairs of Western Asia. What then! Were we to have passed over the ruins of states and empires east and south of Mount Taurus, in a territory that led on enterprise so far, to precipitate it among the narrows of the border-peninsulas, shutting out return, while Time closed up the path behind them; and, in the dark earth," or Hellas," shall we refuse to

66

acknowledge the wanderers of Iran, the civilization of that race, and monuments ruined at the era of the “ Iliad," but claiming the hands and exhibiting the arts of people and times we read of elsewhere, but find not in the classics? Are we to admit a Hindu race, language, and civilization in Europe, but deny the claim of Asia west of the Indus? Thales of Miletus had calculated the eclipse that parted the battle of Cyaxares and Halyattes; and Phryxus' Ram, sprung of "Pan and Erope," or Hindus and Europe, betrays an astronomical expression.

CHAPTER V.

Introduction.-§ i. Detached Mythical Titles and Symbols.-§ ii. The same referred to Races or Territories.-Thracian, Phrygian, Teucrian, Etolian, Carduchian.—§ iii. These several Places and Tribes referred to an Original.-§ iv. Inquiry on the Era of the Celtic Events.

MYTHICAL traditions, it must appear, comprise facts, the evolving of which is more or less impeded by something superfluous, that refuses all treatment, repels the other constituents, nor will suffer any unity of result. In the Argonauticâ, Müller rejects all that relates to Colchis (a place not on historical record, he says, until 800 B. C.), to which many other accessories may be cast: that great scholar's idea is confirmed by the Minyan Argonauts, traceable to Iolchos, the supposed port of embarcation, being not discoverable in the further progress of the expedition, while neither Sphinx, Errinys, Onka, the Graces, nor many other Orchomenian and Minyan or Æolian particulars, enter at all into the Argonautica; neither, in Pindar nor Apollodorus, are there any places between Colchos and Iolchos mentioned in the narrative. So the "Iliad," in the twofold description of the Trojan camp, as in the catalogue, and in the description of Dolon, is quite at variance with itself, as has been often felt and allowed. Other mythical events and characters, the Gorgon, Pallas, Carnean, Apollo, and the Trophonius of the Egyptian and Boeotian tale, contrasted with the Giantbuilder and deity of the same name and title, are among exceptional myths demanding separation and retrenchment.

Now there are, on the other hand, historical excerpta, that appear to be bare reports without details or apparent results,