286 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IIL 



particularly of peftilential difeafes, which, at different times, have 

 gone near to depopulate many countries. As Egypt was, therefore, 

 but a fmall country, no more than a valley betwixt the Arabian 

 mountains on one fide, and the Lybian on the other, in fome parts 

 not above 200 ftadia broad, that is, about 25 Englilh miles *, it 

 was of abfolute neceffity that the country fliould be overftocked 

 with people in the courfe of fo many ages, and, therefore, that it 

 fhould difcharge itfelf, by fending colonies to different parts of the 

 world. Of thefe, Diodorus Siculus tells us, that many were record- 

 ed in their facred books ; but, of which, Diodorus appears to have 

 doubted. But, for my part, I fee no good reafon for rejedling the 

 authority of thofe books in any thing, but particularly in this mat- 

 ter of colonies, which, I think, it was of abfolute neceffity, that the 

 Egyptians fhould have fent out of their country. Now, two of 

 thefe colonies were fent to Greece in very antient times, and form- 

 ed the two moft antient nations of Greece, the Athenians, who 

 boafted that they were ax^royjovzi^ or produced out of their foil, and 

 the Arcadians, who pretended to be older than the moon, U.soffiX'nvoiy 

 as they called themfelvesf. From this laft mentioned country, came 

 a colony, under QLnotrus, to Latium in Italy, 17 generations, as the 

 Halicarnaflian tells us, before the Trojan war; and, at a latter pe- 

 riod, another, from the fame country, came under Evander, and oc- 

 cupied that very ground upon which the city of Rome was built:- 

 So that here we have civility and arts again imported from Egypt 

 into Italy. From- the fame country of Arcadia came originally the 

 Pelafgi, who were a very wandering people; for they went not 

 only from Egypt to Greece, but to Afia, where they were, as Ho- 

 mer informs us, at the time of the Trojan war, and alfo to Italy. 



They 

 * Herodot. Lib. z. cap. S. 

 f Thefe two colonies, from Egypt to Greece, I have mentioned in vol. 5. of Origin 

 of Language, p. i o i . ; apd I have fppken of them, at great length, in the firft vol. of 

 that work, from p. 638. to p. 646. of 2d edition. 



