A knowledge of the ancients may exist in an endless variety of degrees; a perfect knowledge is altogether unattainable. The time which separates us from them cannot be removed; but the difference of space presents no such insurmountable difficulty. The soil and the atmosphere of the classic countries have something so peculiar, and so utterly foreign to us, that to obtain a perfect familiarity with the ancient classics, it is necessary to know those countries and live in them, for unless we have seen them with our own eyes, we easily form erroneous notions; and this is required more particularly of him who wishes to understand the Latin poets. But still, even if a person cannot actually visit the countries, he may supply the defect, in a great measure, by a loving and diligent study. To initiate you into this, and at the same time to indicate to you those facts which are absolutely certain as points to start from, is the object of these Lectures. I shall give positive results which you may receive with confidence, and which I have arrived at by diligent and laborious research: they chiefly refer to changes of nations and countries, but at the same time topography shall not be excluded. It is easy to perceive that this department of knowledge may be treated in various ways, for there are histories in which every thing that happened at the same period, is related synchronistically, while we may also look at events from the point of view of one particular nation. The same difference exists in ethnography and chorography. In the present Lectures it is my intention to give information about the classical nations of antiquity, and about the whole range of nations which are connected with them either by literature or by history, but I do not mean to treat of all the nations of antiquity in the widest sense of the term. I shall speak of the East and of Africa only so far as they come within the reach of the Greeks and Romans; I shall not touch upon the non-classical nations, though they are now better known from native accounts. I shall notice the migrations in Africa and those of the Scythians, as well as the Bactrian empire and other eastern countries. Of India I shall not speak according to Indian authorities, which were unknown to the ancients, but I shall follow the accounts furnished by the Greeks. Scandinavia will, for the most part, be dealt with in the same manner; the Finnian nations will be passed over altogether, as well as those parts of Africa which do not come in contact with the classical nations.