Natural' Historical Collections. 133 



of Asia Minor, about the year 1100 before Christ. The third extends from the 

 establishment of these colonies to the time when the intercourse with Egypt was 

 renewed, about the year 600 before Christ. The fourth period commences with 

 Thales' journey to Egypt, and comprehends the most briUiant age of Greece. 



Were we to trust to some writers of the Alexandrian school, we might suppose 

 ourselves possessed of a very correct history of ancient Greece. In them we find 

 the genealogy of the kings who reigned in that country with quite as many de- 

 tails as those of the sovereign houses of Europe. But these genealogies, in which 

 some mythological personages always figure at the head, such as Jupiter or Nep- 

 tune, have evidently been fabricated. Thus the history of the Greeks, up to the 

 time when Cadmus brought them the art of writing, is entirely conjectural. All 

 that we know is, that before the arrival of that chief, the Pelasgi were not en- 

 tirely uncivilized, but were acquainted with several of the arts. 



The Pelasgi came originally from India, of which the Sanscrit roots that are 

 found so abundantly in their language do not permit us to doubt. It is probable 

 that they passed over the mountains of Persia, and thus penetrated to Caucasus, 

 from which point, instead of continuing their route by land, they embarked on 

 the Black Sea, and made a descent upon the coasts of Greece. In that coun- 

 try they founded several cities, and at the places where they first settled, Thy- 

 rintum, Mycenas, &c. there are still seen remains of their buildings, which are 

 known by the name of cyclopean walls. At the time of Pausanias,it was already 

 known that these buildings were anterior to the arrival of the Egyptian colonies, 

 and that it was to the labours of the Pelasgi that certain gigantic works were to 

 be attributed, such as the treasuries of Minias, and the canals dug through Mount 

 PtoUs, for the purpose of giving issue to the waters of the lake Copa'is, and pre- 

 vent the inundation of Boeotia. 



The religion of the first Pelasgi was much more simple than that of the Greeks. 

 It was probably confined to the deification of the various powers of nature, and 

 their representation under sensible forms. 



The disturbances which took place in Egypt about the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries before the Christian era caused various emigrations. Those which were 

 directed towards Greece were pretty numerous. The best known are those of 

 Cecrops, Danaiis, and Cadmus. Cecrops, in the year 1556 before Christ, carried 

 the mysteries of Isis or Ceres into Attiea; Danaus, in 1485, carried there the 

 thesmophories ; and Cadmus, in 1493, introduced the alphabet, the eastern ori- 

 gin of which is suflSciently attested by the forms of the letters and the names 

 which they have retained. These colonies arrived with sufficient strength to 

 establish themselves in the country of the Pelasgi, and diffuse their civilization 

 there. But, as we have said, their chiefs had been but half instructed in the 

 learning of Egypt, so that they carried with them only the external form of the 

 religion, without attaching any metaphysical idea to it. Their divinities, although 

 evidently borrowed from the Egyptian mythology, henceforth appeared under 

 human forms only, and this anthropomorphism was peculiarly favourable to the 

 progress of the graphic arts. What, in fact, would sculpture have become, had 

 it been condemned to the reproduction of the hideous forms of those emblematical 

 beings in which the priests had personified one of the attributes of the divinity, 

 had it represented a god with four heads and a hundred arms, as in India, or 

 with the head of a wolf or hawk as in Egypt ? 



The particular tribe of the Hellenes, which extended its domination not only 

 over the Pelasgi, but also over the foreign colonies that had settled in Greece, 

 finally gave its name to the whole country. This tribe, which, under the guid- 

 ance of Deucalion, established itself in the neighbourhood of Parnassus, came 

 from the north, and probably from the Caucasus, it being on that mountain 

 that the poets represented Deucalion's father, Prometheus, as chained. Now 

 the tribes of the Caucausus assuredly had knowledge of the doctrines of India, 

 by means of their intercourse with Colchis, which was long a kind of mart for 

 the commerce whch they carried on in all the European seas. The Uellenes 



