XIV.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 545 



groupings still prevailed, and it may be taken for granted that the 

 three main branches of the Hellenic stock did not spring from a 

 particular family that rose to power in comparatively recent times 

 in the Thessalian district of Phthiotis. Whatever truth may lie 

 behind the Hellenic legend, it is highly probable that, at the time 

 when Hellen is said to have flourished (about 1500 B.C.), the 

 ^Eolic-speaking communities of Thessaly, Arcadia, Boeotia, the 

 closely-allied Dorians of Phocaea, Argos, and Laconia, and the 

 lonians of Attica, had already been clearly specialised, had in 

 fact formed special groups before entering Greece. 

 Later their dialects, after acquiring a certain polish Lan^ua^e^ 

 and leaving some imperishable records of the 

 many-sided Greek genius, were gradually merged in the literary 

 Neo-Ionic or Attic, which thus became the Koivq SiaAeKTos, or 

 current speech of the Greek world. 



Admirable alike for its manifold aptitudes and surprising vitality, 

 the language of Aeschylus, Thucydides, and the other great 

 Athenians outlived all the vicissitudes of the Byzantine empire, 

 during which it was for a time banished from southern Greece, 

 and even still survives, although in a somewhat degraded form, in 

 the Romaic or Neo-Hellenic tongue of modern Hellas. Romaic, 

 a name which recalls a time when the Byzantines were 

 known as " Romans " throughout the East, differs far less from 

 the classical standard than do any of the Romance tongues from 

 Latin. Since the restoration of Greek independence great efforts 

 have been made to revive the old language in all its purity, and 

 some modern writers now compose in a style differing little from 

 that of the classic period. 



Yet the Hellenic race itself has almost perished on the main- 

 land. Traces of the old Greek type have been detected by 

 Lenormant and others, especially amongst the women of Patras 

 and Missolonghi. But within living memory Attica was still an 

 Albanian land, and Fallmerayer has conclusively shown that the 

 Peloponnesus and adjacent districts had become thoroughly 

 Slavonised during the 6th and yth centuries 1 . "For many cen- 

 turies," writes the careful Roesler, "the Greek peninsula served 



1 Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea, Stuttgart 1830. See also G. Finlay's 

 Mediaeval Greece, and the Anthrop. Rev. 1868, VI. p. 154. 



K. 35 



