. The literature of all nations and all ages; history, character, and incident. at about the same period. Greece, in the year , is thought to have been occupied by a dark-skinned raceknown as the Pelasgi, whom we know only as a race of Greek language is descended from the primitive Aryan,and is a sister of the Sanskrit. It was introduced by theAchaians, a fair-skinned race, who entered Greece from thenorth, and appear to have dominated the original inhabitantswithout difficulty. About 1550, according to a late legend,Cecrops arrived from Eg>pt, and became first king of A
. The literature of all nations and all ages; history, character, and incident. at about the same period. Greece, in the year , is thought to have been occupied by a dark-skinned raceknown as the Pelasgi, whom we know only as a race of Greek language is descended from the primitive Aryan,and is a sister of the Sanskrit. It was introduced by theAchaians, a fair-skinned race, who entered Greece from thenorth, and appear to have dominated the original inhabitantswithout difficulty. About 1550, according to a late legend,Cecrops arrived from Eg>pt, and became first king of Athens,introducing civilization among the heretofore rude people ofthe peninsula. Earlier stories make him a Pelasgic , it is related that Cadmus, coming from Phoenicia about1493 , founded Thebes and taught his alphabet. Twohundred years later, Pelops, from Phrygia, settled in Pelo-ponnesus, over which his grandson Agamemnon exercisedsovereign sway. Some time after the siege of Troy, rudeDorian invaders, sweeping southward from Thessaly, drove150 COPYRrGHT, 1900. W. BOUGUEREAU, PiNX HOMER AND HIS GUIDE GREEK LITERATURE. 151 many of the Achaians across the ^gean Sea to Ionia, andsuppressed the early culture of Greece proper for Dorians founded the kingdom of Sparta. The nameHellenes, by which the Greeks called themselves in the timeof their glory, was not adopted till long afterwards. In all these statements we may trace, if we will, a com-plex of emigrations and adjustments which resulted in theHellas, or Greece, of historic times. Many elements seem tohave combined to make the Greeks, and the mixture was themost fortunate one known in history. For this people wasdestined to enjoy a career of unexampled glory in both warand intellectual achievement; and the literature which theyhave left behind them is not only the most nearly perfectknown, but it has served as the form upon which all subse-quent literatures have been modeled, and which they havevai
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