M. L. ROUSE, B.L., ON THE PEDIGREE OF THE NATIONS. 89 



account of the invasion, must liave intended to place the 

 settlement of those Thracian tribes beyond the Ister at a period 

 long anterior to the fifth century B.C. lUit, according to 

 Herodotus, it was only in the early part of the seventh century 

 that the Scythians took tlie place of the Kinnnerians.* We 

 may therefore safely conclude that Thracian tribes were 

 dwelling on both sides of the Ister up to the Tyras when the 

 Kimmerioi occupied southern-most liussia, and that by 

 Herodotus's time they had pushed their settlements along the 

 coast up to Carcinitis — that is, about three times as far. 



The Kimmeric name for the river was, as we have seen, the 

 Danaster: the name Tyras must therefore have been Thracian; 

 and what more natural than that the Thracians should bestow 

 the name of their ancestor upon their boundary-stream ! And 

 his name it is, with such simple phonetic changes as always 

 occur in the lapse of a few centuries : thus the Teutonic sharp 

 ih has become t or cl in all the Teutonic languages! except 

 English and Icelandic : while y in Englisli, which used to be 

 sounded, as it still is in Swedish, like the French n, has become 

 i, first with either the ee or the % sound, and then very often 

 with the sound heard in hitc.\ The Eussians liave since 

 ilrawn the name back closer to its original from ; for, in 

 succession to the cily Tyras, they have a city about seventy 

 miles up tlie stream called Tiraspol. 



We may note on the coast of Thrace proper, a headland called 

 Tiriza, or Tiristis, and a town called Tiristasis. But now we turn 

 southward, and find that the Thracians had in classic times 

 penetrated nearly as far from the Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, 

 in that direction as the Ister is in the opposite direction. Thus 

 Herodotus tells us that the king of Crestonia, who refused 

 submission to Xerxes, was a Thracian,§ Mela (about B.C. 40) 

 describes Chalcidice as part of Thrace,! | and Strabo declares 

 •that in his time (about B.C. 10) the Thracians were occupying 

 Macedonia and part of Thessaly.^ 



Unless indeed the Thracian people, known to us under 

 another name,** at one time possessed the whole of Greece, the 



* Her. I, 15, 16 (Ardys reigned 674-026, Alyattes 615-559). 



t Cp. e.g. the Anglo-Saxon thank and thjjn or thin^ Eiig- thanJc, thin, 

 Swed. tack\ tiui {= tlin) and Ger. dank\ diinn. 



% Cp. A.-S. mys, f)illan, with E. mice, fill, and the changes already 

 •noted in the names of the descendants of Gomer, whose name must in 

 turn have been pronounced Gomer, Gumer, Gumer and Glimmer, Gimmer, 

 Kummer, Kiinmer, Kimber, and Kuraber. (See also Final Notes.) 

 Her. VIII, 116. |1 Mel. c. ii. 



^ Strab. VII, vii, 1. . -^^^ See pp. 98-99. 



G 2 



