7. The THRACIANS, who settled in Pieria at the foot of mount Olympus, and from thence came down to mount Helicon, as being the originators of the worship of Dionysus and the Muses, and the fathers of Grecian poetry,(41) are a nation of the highest importance in the history of civilization. We cannot but suppose that they spoke a dialect very similar to the Greek, since otherwise they could not have had any considerable influence upon the latter people. They were in all probability derived originally from the country called Thrace in later times, where the Bessians, a tribe of the nation of the Satræ,(42) at the foot of Mount Pangæum, presided over the oracle of Dionysus. Whether the whole of the populous races of Edones, Odomantians, Odrysians, Treres, &c. are to be considered as identical with the Thracians in Pieria, or whether it is not more probable that these barbarous nations(43) received from the Greeks their general name of Thracians, with which they had been familiar from early times, are questions which I shall not attempt to determine. Into these nations, however, a large number of Pæonians subsequently penetrated, who had passed over at the time of a very ancient migration of the Teucrians, together with the Mysians.(44) To this Pæonian race the Pelagonians, on the banks of the Axius, belonged; who also advanced into Thessaly, as will be shown hereafter. Of the Teucrians, however, we know nothing, excepting that in concert with (Pelasgic) Dardanians they founded the city of Troy,—where the language in use was probably allied to the Grecian, and distinct from the Phrygian.(45)
8. Now it is within the mountainous barriers above described that we must look for the origin of the nations which in the heroic mythology are always represented as possessing dominion and power, and are always contrasted with an aboriginal population. These, in my opinion, were northern branches of the Grecian nation, which had overrun and subdued the Greeks who dwelt further south. The most ancient abode of the HELLENES Proper (who in mythology are merely a small nation in Phthia(46)) was situated, according to Aristotle, in Epirus, near Dodona, to whose god Achilles(47) prays, as being the ancient protector of his family. In all probability the ACHÆANS, the ruling nation both of Thessaly and of Peloponnesus, in the mythical times, were of the same race and origin as the Hellenes. The MINYANS, Phlegyans, Lapithæ, and Æolians of Corinth and Salmone, came originally from the districts above Pieria, on the frontiers of Macedonia, where the very ancient Orchomenus, Minya, and Salmonia or Halmopia were situated.(48) Nor is there less obscurity with regard to the northern settlements of the IONIANS; they appear, as it were, to have fallen from heaven into Attica and Ægialea: they were not, however, by any means identical with the aboriginal inhabitants of these districts, and had, perhaps, detached themselves from some northern, probably Achæan, race.(49) Lastly, the DORIANS are mentioned in ancient legends and poems as established in one extremity of the great mountain-chain of Upper Greece, viz. at the foot of Olympus; there are, however, reasons for supposing, that at an earlier period they had dwelt at its other northern extremity, at the furthest limit of the Grecian nation.
