Il6 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



the phenomenon under consideration. Before I come to this instance, I shall 

 notice but one subordinate case. The Galatians, to whom St. Paul addressed 

 one of his Epistles, were confessedly the descendants of Gauls who had forced a 

 passage into Greece and thence into Asia ; and, above six hundred years after, 

 in the time of Hieronymus, their posterity, according to this divine, spoke nearly 

 as good German as the inhabitants of the city of Treves ; — a circumstance which 

 he puts very prominently forward in the exordium to his commentary on the 

 Epistle just alluded to.* But a far more extensive irruption of Northerns into 

 Asia, and earlier by about four hundred years, is upon record ; the account given 

 of which by Herodotus, in different parts of his celebrated work,t is so well 

 known that I consider it unnecessary to quote what he has stated upon the sub- 

 ject, and shall confine myself to the following abstract of his narrative. The 

 Cimmerians, who were a European people, flying from the Scythians, and, some- 

 how or other, getting out of the way of their pursuers, took a westerly direction, 

 and seized on the territories of the king of Lydia, which at that time extended 

 over nearly the whole of Asia Minor. The Scythians, on the other hand, swept 

 like a torrent over the countries that were more to the east, and pushed their 

 conquests towards the south as far as the confines of Egypt, from entering which 

 kingdom they were prevented only by large presents from Psammetichus. After 

 they had kept possession for twenty-eight years of what the historian calls Asia, 

 they were, by far the greatest number of them, destroyed in Media by means of 

 a treacherous stratagem, in the time of Cyaxares, great grandfather of Cyrus ; 

 and the Cimmerians probably held Lydia about as long, since they were thence 

 driven by a prince who was the cotemporary of Cyaxares. Of the Scythians 

 who escaped from the general massacre of their tribe by the Medes, some fled to 

 Lydia, where they were hospitably received, and others returned to their native 

 country ; but with respect to the Cimmerians, we are not told what became of 

 them after their expulsion from Lydia. As, however, it is not stated that these 

 latter barbarians were much reduced in force, there is no reason whatever for 



• Unum est quod inferimus et promissum in exordio reddimus, Galatas, excepto sermone Graeco 

 quo omnis Oriens loquitur, propriam linguam eandem pene habere quam Treviros. — S. Hieronymi 

 Operum, torn, iv, p. 256. 



t See, in this work, Book i, chapters 15, 16, 72, 74, 103, 104, 105, 106, and Book iv, chapters 

 1,3,4. 



