"In the Homeric poems, where … the 'Hellenes' only appear in one district of Southern Thessaly, the name Achæans is employed by preference as a general appelation for the whole race. But the Achæans we may term, without hesitation, a Pelasgian people, in so far, that is, as we use this name merely as the opposite of the term 'Hellenes,' which prevailed at a later time, although it is true that the Hellenes themselves were nothing more than a particular branch of the Pelasgian stock. … [The name of the] Achæans, after it had dropped its earlier and more universal application, was preserved as the special name of a population dwelling in the north of the Peloponnese and the south of Thessaly." _Georg Friedrich Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, Introduction._ "The ancients regarded them [the Achæans] as a branch of the Æolians, with whom they afterwards reunited into one national body, i.e., not as an originally distinct nationality or independent branch of the Greek people. Accordingly, we hear neither of an Achæan language nor of Achæan art. A manifest and decided influence of the maritime Greeks, wherever the Achæans appear, is common to the latter with the Æolians. Achæans are everywhere settled on the coast, and are always regarded as particularly near relations of the Ionians. … The Achæans appear scattered about in localities on the coast of the Ægean so remote from one another, that it is impossible to consider all bearing this name as fragments of a people originally united in one social community; nor do they in fact anywhere appear, properly speaking, as a popular body, as the main stock of the population, but rather as eminent families, from which spring heroes; hence the use of the expression 'Sons of the Achæans' to indicate noble descent." _E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 1, chapter 3._ ALSO IN _M. Duncker, History of Greece, book 1, chapter 2, and book 2, chapter 2._ See, also, ACHAIA, and GREECE: THE MIGRATIONS. ACHAIA: A. D. 1205-1387. Mediæval Principality.