148 On the Ancient HELLENES. 
barbarians around them. The religious ceremonies which they 
introduced would render them venerable, and gain them mul- 
titudes of profelytes. The arts of augury, vaticination, and 
magic, would all co-operate to enhance their reputation. Agri- 
culture, in that age little known, and ftill lefs practifed in 
Greece, would be embraced with grateful hearts by the half- 
famifhed favages. “(hey would look up to the authors of that 
blefling with the fame fentiments which prompted the Roman 
poet to invoke BAccuus and CErEs benign: 
Liper et alma Ceres, vefiro fi munere tellus 
Chaoniam pingut giandem mutavit arifta. 
Tue alliance of fuch a fuperior people would be eagerly courted, 
their manners would be imitated ; to incorporate with them by 
blood and affinities would be deemed honourable, and would, 
at the fame time, be found fafe, improving, and advantageous. 
Their neareft neighbours would be firft drawn into the vortex ; 
the infe€tion would gradually diffufe itfelf far and wide, till, 
in procefs of time, it extended its influence to all the oriental 
colonies at that zra newly eftablifhed in Greece. Indeed, all 
thefe colonies looked upon themfelves as brethren, as appears 
from the relation they all claimed to the family of their imagi- 
nary HELLEN. All thofe tribes might, in reality, look upon 
themfelves as brethren, as they had emigrated from the fame 
quarters, and were defcended of patriarchs who actually ftood 
in that relation to each other. Thus, the colony of the Hel- 
lenes, which, according to HEropotus, quoted above, was at 
the firft weak and inconfiderable, by the acceffion of its neigh- 
bours and numbers of the barbarous nations around, became 
ftrong, populous, and confiderable. The original name of 
Graii was forgot ; and firft the cantons in the neighbourhood of 
Phrhiotis, and afterwards, in a fhort time, almoft all the fepts 
of Greece, became Hellenes. Nothing lefs than the moft exalt- 
i ed 
Ee 
