of the Peloponnesians, though the latter were mixed with the earlier inhabitants of the peninsula. The Peloponnesians, however, showed them the respect and attachment which everywhere in Greece colonists used to show to their mother country. The Dorians were often involved in wars with the Phocians, and even before the Peloponnesian war they had once been subdued by them, but a Spartan army quickly coming to their rescue, chastised the Phocians, and restored the Dorians to freedom. It is quite uncertain what afterwards became of the little people. During the period when the administration of Greece was in the hands of the Romans, the Dorians are not mentioned at all; so that they must have been united either with the Phocians, or, which is not improbable, with the Aetolians. If that part of Greece should ever become accessible, much may be discovered that is of importance for ancient history and geography; with the exception of the coasts, scarcely anything is accurately known; the upper countries of Parnassus have scarcely been visited at all, and our maps are arbitrary. It will hardly be possible ever to ascertain the sites of the towns from the want of inscriptions. Beyond the mountains of Doris there is a grand Alpine country. AETOLIA. In the later history of Greece, the Aetolians are a people of the highest importance, and so they are in the earliest traditions, but during the best period of the Greeks, they sink completely into the background. Their peculiarity is very perplexing to the inquiring historian. We find them mentioned in the Homeric Catalogue, and in the legends of Calydon and Pleuron, and there can be no doubt as to their being a Greek people, for the Curetes as well as the Aetolians themselves are called Greeks. Thucydides too[61] considers them in this light, though only conditionally; he calls them Ἠπειρωτικὸν ἔθνος, and where he mentions their separate tribes, they appear as different from all the other Greeks; he speaks of their language being unintelligible (ἀγνωστότατοι γλῶσσαν), which is a strong expression with Athenians who, like all Greeks, were very tolerant in regard to dialects. The Laconian dialect was quite as different from the Attic, as the Swiss German is from the Low German, and the Athenians scarcely understood one third of it. The Aetolian dialect, accordingly, seems to have already become so barbarous, as to require great attention to guess the meaning when it was spoken. In these circumstances, therefore, the Aetolians appear as non-Greeks, and still more so in Polybius, who says that most of the Aetolians were barbarians. In one passage, Thucydides also classes them with the barbarians, when he states that they, like the Acarnanians, went about in time of peace armed with knives (σιδηροφορεῖν); he also asserts that they were ὠμόφαγοι. Such statements appear to us extremely strange, and seem to suggest a degree of barbarism similar to that of the Abyssinians; but