"Their language was, … from the beginning, the token of recognition among the Hellenes. … Where this language was spoken—in Asia, in Europe, or in Africa—there was Hellas. … A considerable number of the Greek tribes which immigrated by land [from Asia] into the European peninsula [of Greece] followed the tracks of the Italicans, and, taking a westward route through Pæonia and Macedonia, penetrated through Illyria into the western half of the Alpine country of Northern Greece, which the formation of its hill ranges and valleys renders more easily accessible from the north than Thessaly in its secluded hollow. The numerous rivers, abounding in water, which flow close by one another through long gorges into the Ionian Sea, here facilitated an advance into the south; and the rich pasture-land invited immigration; so that Epirus became the dwelling-place of a dense crowd of population, which commenced its civilized career in the fertile lowlands of the country. Among them three main tribes were marked out, of which the Chaones were regarded as the most ancient. … Farther to the south the Thesprotians had settled, and more inland, in the direction of Pindus, the Molossians. A more ancient appellation than those of this triple division is that of the Greeks (Graikoi), which the Hellenes thought the earliest designation of their ancestors. The same name of Græci (Greeks) the Italicans applied to the whole family of peoples with whom they had once dwelt together in these districts. This is the first collective name of the Hellenic tribes in Europe. … Far away from the coast, in the seclusion of the hills, where lie closely together the springs of the Thyamis, Aous, Aracthus, and Achelous, extends at the base of Tomarus the lake Ioannina, on the thickly wooded banks of which, between fields of corn and damp meadows, lay Dodona, a chosen seat of the Pelasgian Zeus, the invisible God, who announced his presence in the rustling of the oaks, whose altar was surrounded by a vast circle of tripods, for a sign that he was the first to unite the domestic hearths and civic communities into a great association centering in himself. This Dodona was the central seat of the Græci; it was a sacred centre of the whole district before the Italicans commenced their westward journey; and at the same time the place where the subsequent national name of the Greeks can be first proved to have prevailed; for the chosen of the people, who administered the worship of Zeus, were called Selli or Helli, and after them the surrounding country Hellopia or Hellas." {1636} _E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 1, chapters 1 and 4 (volume 1)._ ALSO IN: _G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 2 (volume 2)._ _G. W. Cox, History of Greece, book 1, chapter 4._