The name Peloponnesus is singular; it is very ancient, and occurs as early as the Homeric hymn on Apollo. There can be no doubt that it has some reference either to a people or to some ruler; how far it may contain an allusion to the Pelasgians, is a question concerning which nothing can be said with certainty. Where names differ so widely, a healthy philology demands that we should abstain from any dangerous attempt. If we employ a rational method of exegesis, we cannot doubt that the Atreids were also called Pelopids, and that previously to the immigration of the Heracleids and Dorians into the peninsula, there existed an historical dynasty under that name. But whether Pelops is the historical ancestor of that race, or some kind of hero, whether he is different from the Pelasgus in the “Supplices” of Aeschylus, who, according to different genealogies in the Arcadian traditions, is sometimes called the first man, and sometimes a son of Zeus, are questions about which, if we judge soberly and thoughtfully, we can say nothing. The opinion prevalent in the time of the tragedians, that Pelops was a Phrygian, belongs to a much later period, in which the Trojans too were regarded as Phrygians, which according to the views of the epic poems they never could be. Another very ancient name, which the Greeks regard as the earlier and native name, is Ἀπία, for there can be no doubt that it is a proper name, though some Alexandrians declared it to be an adjective; ἐξ ἀπίης γῆς does not signify “from a distant,” or “waterless country” (from πίνω), but from the country of Apia. Those who are anxious to manufacture history out of etymologies, may find in this name various allusions as, for example, to the Opicans, but they are all equally hazardous. In general etymology is necessary; but we cannot be sufficiently on our guard not to fall into quibbles and fancies. Not to neglect the later times, I will at once notice the subsequent change of the name into Morea (ὁ Μορέας). This too has given rise to various etymologies: it is a very common opinion among the modern Greeks, that the name Morea is derived from the shape of the country; as the ancients often compared it to the leaf of a plane tree, so the moderns compare it to the leaf of a mulberry tree (_mora_), according to which the name would be of Italian origin. But I am convinced that, at the time when the Bulgarians ruled in Greece, and when the Slavonians, being pushed onward by them, inundated Peloponnesus, the country, being the maritime province of the Bulgarian kingdom, was called Morea from _more_ (the Slavonian word for _sea_), and consequently, the name originally was in all probability not confined to Peloponnesus. In the time of the Achaean league, the Romans called it Achaia, from one of its provinces,—a name, which in fact wholly and properly belongs to Peloponnesus, until it was extended to the rest of Greece.