CHAP. III - FOREIGN SETTLERS IN GREECE

Summary

In a comparatively late period,—that which followed the rise of a historical literature among the Greeks,—we find a belief generally prevalent, both in the people and among the learned, that in ages of very remote antiquity, before the name and dominion of the Pelasgians had given way to that of the Hellenic race, foreigners had been led by various causes from distant lands to the shores of Greece, and there had planted colonies, founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced useful arts and social institutions, before unknown to the ruder natives. The same belief has been almost universally adopted by the learned of modern times, many of whom, regarding the general fact as sufficiently established, have busied themselves in discovering fresh traces of such migrations, or in investigating the effects produced by them on the moral and intellectual character, the religious or political condition, of the Greeks. It required no little boldness to venture even to throw out a doubt as to the truth of an opinion sanctioned by such high authority, and by the prescription of such a long and undisputed possession of the public mind; and perhaps it might never have been questioned, if the inferences drawn from it had not provoked a jealous inquiry into the grounds on which it rests.