Greece Proper lies between the 36th and 40th parallels of north latitude, and between the 21st and 26th degrees of east longitude. Its greatest length, from Mount Olympus to Cape Tænarus, may be stated at 250 English miles; its greatest breadth, from the western coast of Akarnania to Marathon in Attica, at 180 miles; and the distance eastward from Ambrakia across Pindus to the Magnesian mountain Homolê and the mouth of the Peneius is about 120 miles. Altogether, its area is somewhat less than that of Portugal.[321] In regard, however, to all attempts at determining the exact limits of Greece proper, we may remark, first, that these limits seem not to have been very precisely defined even among the Greeks themselves; and next, that so large a proportion of the Hellens were distributed among islands and colonies, and so much of their influence upon the world in general produced through their colonies, as to render the extent of their original domicile a matter of comparatively little moment to verify. [321] Compare Strong, Statistics of the Kingdom of Greece, p. 2; and Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. ch. 3, p. 196. The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging from east and west, and commencing with the Ægean sea or the gulf of Therma, near the 40th degree of north latitude, is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon, until it touches the Adriatic at the Akrokeraunian promontory. The country south of this chain comprehended all that in ancient times was regarded as Greece, or Hellas proper, but it also comprehended something more. Hellas proper,[322] (or continuous Hellas, to use the language of Skylax and Dikæarchus) was understood to begin with the town and gulf of Ambrakia: from thence, northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory, lay the land called by the Greeks Epirus,—occupied by the Chaonians, Molossians, and Thesprotians, who were termed Epirots, and were not esteemed to belong to the Hellenic aggregate. This at least was the general understanding, though Ætolians and Akarnanians, in their more distant sections, seem to have been not less widely removed from the full type of Hellenism than the Epirots were; while Herodotus is inclined to treat even Molossians and Thesprotians as Hellens.[323] [322] Dikæarch, 31, p. 460, ed. Fuhr:— Ἡ δ᾽ Ἑλλὰς ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀμβρακίας εἶναι δοκεῖ Μάλιστα συνεχὴς τὸ πέρας· αὐτὴ δ᾽ ἔρχεται Ἐπὶ τὸν πόταμον Πηνειὸν, ὡς Φιλέας γράφει, Ὄρος τε Μαγνήτων Ὁμόλην κεκλημένον. Skylax, c. 35.—Ἀμβρακία—ἐντεῦθεν ἄρχεται ἡ Ἑλλὰς συνεχὴς εἶναι μέχρι Πηνείου ποτάμου, καὶ Ὁμολίου Μαγνητικῆς πόλεως, ἥ ἔστι παρὰ τὸν πόταμον. [323] Herod. i. 146: ii. 56. The Molossian Alkôn passes for a Hellen (Herod. vi. 127).