236 HISTOEY OP GREECE. menceraent of the recorded Olympiads. To draw a picture ever, for this date, we possess no authentic materials, and are obliged to ante-date statements which belong to a later age: and this consideration might alone suffice to show how uncertified are all delineations of the Greece of 1183 B. c., the supposed epoch of the Trojan war, four centuries earlier. CHAPTER II. THE HELLENIC PEOPLE GENERALLY, IN THE EARLY HISTORICAL TIMES. THE territory indicated in the last chapter south of Mount Olympus, and south of the line which connects the city of Am- brakia 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 recognized 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 associa- tions 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 j 1 whatever might be the gentleness of their char- acter, and whatever might be their degree of civilization. The rulers and people of Egyptian Thebes, with their ancient and gigantic monuments, the wealthy Tynans and Carthaginians, the phil-Hellene Arganthonius of Tartessus, and the well-disciplined patricians of Rome (to the indignation of old Cato, 2 ) were all 1 See the protest of Eratosthenes against the continuance of the classifica- tion into Greek and Barbarian, after the latter word had come to imply rudeness (ap Strabo. ii. p. 66; Eratosth. Fragm. Seidcl. p. 85).
- Cato, Fragment, ed. Lion. p. 46 ; ap. Plin. H. N. xxii. 1. A remarkable
extract from Cato's letter to his son, intimating his strong antipathy to the
