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 praclifed in 

 Greece, would be embraced with grateful hearts by the half- 

 famifhed favages. They would look up to the authors of that 

 bleffing with the fame fentiments which prompted the Roman 

 poet to invoke Bacchus and Ceres benign : 



Liber et alma Ceres, vejlro fi munere tellus 

 Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit ari/ia. 



The alliance of fuch afuperior 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 j 

 the infection would gradually diffufe itfelf far and wide, till, 

 in procefs of time, it extended its influence to all the oriental 

 colonies at that aera newly eftabliftied 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 Herodotus, 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 

 Phthiotis, and afterwards, in a (hort time, almoft all the fepts 

 of Greece, became Hellenes. Nothing lefs than the moft exalt- 

 i ed 



