CHAPTER, IX.
OE THE ANCIENT AND MODERN INHABITANTS >OF THE CÓTTN-
"TRIES..SITUATED BETWEEN THE DANÜBE AND
MOUNT TAURUS.
S ection I.-— General purvey.
T h e countries bordering on both side& of the Hellespont
and Bosphorus have been connected from the earliest? periods
of history by social and political relations. On these opposite
shores, to which the names of Europe and Asia -perhaps ifirst
belonged, the same tribes of people, appear-to . have been
spread in every age. The intervening straits have been often
passed, from either side, in warlike expeditions, undertaken on
a smaller scale for objects of plunder, or on a greater for»conquest
and colonisation; and while the Asiatics Vere more .civilised
and powerful than the people of Europe, no formidable
barrier seems to have opposed the progress of invaders #11
they reached the chain of Mount Hsemus, defended by precipitous
heights and by warlike and barbarous hordes. Even
this boundary, as well as that of the Danube, is said to have
been passed by various conquerors, either African or Asiatic,
but no permanent impression was made on the countries further
northward until a comparatively late period. Beyond
the Danube were the vast plains of Scythia, called in later
times Sarmatia, which were so little known in the days of
Herodotus that the whole region was said by the Thracians to
be inhabited by bees; The historian obtained information
that it belonged'.tcrthe Sigynnse, a nomadic people who were
drawn over their plains by small horses in cars or wagons, and
extended their journeys* as far as th e country of the Heneti,
at the bottom-Of the .Adriatic gulf. The ethnography of the
region to the southward1 dff the Danubia is tolerably well known
from the time of- -Herodotus,- That writer has given us a
general survéy^of .-the inhabitants, which has been illustrated
by notices scattered through the'works of o t h e r historians,
and filledimp'witb 'tolerablëiaccuracy -by-Strabo, whose account
•of the tribes' of Greeks and Thracians, and Epirots and Illyrians,
is-one of the1 most carefully written parts of his great
Work. From these sources we-collect that four distinct races
or groupes-óf nations, betweenjwhom it does mori appear to
have* béer£’supposed by the,-»ancients that any affinity however
rèmdté^ existed, divided between them all the countries in Europe
lately;beldn^iug -to the Ottoman erfepire. Of these the
Thracians'’wdite the most numeroustaffd/ extensive. They occupied
all the eastern parts of the European'region above
diêscribedjlas Well as the central--plains to the southward of
the»Danube, and in-AsiafxMmora still more extensive tract.
Todhefwestward of the Thracians, and reaching from thence
io^the Adriatic,. were Illyrian* tribes,a nation of barbarous
mountaineers. To the southward of the Illyrians were the
Epirotic tribes, whol possessed, a tract ofc hillrcountry reaching^
from the Ionianr.Seaido.Macedonia, and cutting- off the
western parts of - Greece from- the Illy rian territory . The
fourth nation are |theiGreeks, who were hemmed in towards
the north by the- Epirots on the wester ri, and by the Thracians
on the!eastern side. Of these-four nations the Greek® alone
can be said to ha ve left undoubted - posterity, preserving still
the language and perpetuating the stock of their forefathers.
There are, however, other races in the sapae countries who in
all probability have sücèeeded- in like manner tó the Thracians
and Illyrians, though> the .evidence of their .descent is not so
unequivocal, since they are nc^' withoiiÉjSome research distinguishable
from th é various,colonies- who have passed the
Danube and settled themselves to thè &outhward of that river
in later times, after pjartjally dispossessing the,earlier inhabitants.
The earliest of, these inva®ngs:®ibri.ons came from the