HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY. 15 



the Germans also adored godlike characters, as Thor, Wodan, and Freia. 

 They reverenced no visible objects, and erected no temples. Their sacred 

 places were groves and woods, where they built their altars and offered 

 their sacrifices. Their system included priests and priestesses, and 

 ecclesiastical authority often extended beyond any jurisdiction which the 

 civil magistrate would dare to assume. The priest could scourge a citizen 

 in the name of the Deity ; he generally opened the legislative assembly, 

 commanded silence, and held the banner of the tribe in battle. The 

 priestess confined herself within the sphere of prophecy. 



The dead were burnt upon a funeral pile, amid the shrieks and lamenta- 

 tions of their surviving relatives. If the deceased was a young man, his 

 arms and horse were consumed with him. After the fire had gone out, the 

 ashes and the bones of the body were carefully collected, and buried beneath 

 a light sod. They believed in the immortality of the soul, and therefore 

 would meet death without fear or terror. 



Their ideas of heaven (Valhalla) were rather sensual. It was peopled 

 only with German heroes, who continued their warlike pursuits, inter- 

 mingled with banquets and revels. 



THE CLASSIC AGES. 



1. The Greeks ('EXX^jv^r, Hellenes) from their Settlement to the 

 Period of the Roman Supremacy. 



Historians unite in the opinion that the greater part of* ancient Greece 

 was colonized by the Pelasgians. They were even considered as the abo- 

 rigines of several provinces, as of Arcadia. It is, however, more likely 

 that the Arcadians came from. Asia. 



Greece presents four grand natural divisions : Hellas, Macedonia, 

 Epirus and Thessaly, and the Peloponnesus. 



The southern division, Peloponnesus, contained the districts of Arcadia, 

 Achaia, Argolis, Laconia or Sparta, Elea, and Messenia. In Hellas, or 

 Greece Proper, were Attica (Athens), Boeotia, Phocis, and yEtolia. 



The Greeks are generally represented as rude and uncultivated, yet from 

 the accounts which have reached us of their ancient architecture, religious 

 ceremonies, and discoveries, we infer a degree of civilization among them, 

 even in the most ancient times. Probably not more than five generations 

 had lived in Thessaly, when Deucalion arrived there. A general deluge 

 had driven him and his men from the deserts of Parnassus. His followers 

 named themselves Hellenes, after his son Hellenes. Spreading themselves 

 over Greece, and mingling with the Pelasgi, their name became by degrees 

 predominant throughout the country. At a later period, the ^Eolians, 

 Dorians, lonians, and Achseans stand out prominently in history ; some 

 Greek historians mention new accessions of emigrants from Asia and 

 Egypt, in 1580 and 1350 B.C. These various elements gradually combined 



187 



