FOREIGN INFLUENCES.--Besides Phrygia, the legends of the Greeks bear traces of a foreign influence from _Phoenicia_ and _Egypt_. The Phoenicians were unquestionably early connected with the Greeks, first by commercial visits to Greek ports, to which they brought foreign merchandise. The story of _Cadmus_, who is said to have founded _Thebes_, and to have brought in the Phoenician alphabet, is fabulous. But it is probable, that, as early as the close of the ninth century B.C., the _alphabet_ was introduced by Phoenicians, and diffused over Greece. Another legend is that of _Cecrops_, conceived of later as an Egyptian, who is said to have built a citadel at Athens, and to have imported the seeds of civilization and religion. _Danaus_, another emigrant from Egypt, coming with his fifty daughters, is said to have built the citadel of _Argos_. In the later times, the Greeks were fond of tracing their knowledge of the arts to Egyptian sources. It is remarkable that the agents by whom germs of civilization were said to have been imported from abroad, though foreign, are nevertheless depicted as thoroughly Greek in their character. Whatever the Greeks may have owed to Egypt, it is probable was mainly derived from Ionians who had previously planted themselves in that country. THE DORIAN EMIGRATION.--It was in the prehistoric time that the Dorians left their homes in northern Greece, and migrated into Peloponnesus, where they proved themselves stronger than the Ionians and the Achaeans dwelling there. They left the Achaeans on the south coast of the Corinthian Gulf, in the district called Achaia. Nor did they conquer Arcadia. But of most of Peloponnesus they became masters. This is the portion of historic truth contained in the myth of the _Return of the Heraclidae_, the descendants of Hercules, to the old kingdom of their ancestor. MIGRATIONS TO ASIA MINOR.--The Dorian conquest is said to have been the cause of three distinct migrations to Asia Minor. The Achaeans, with their Aeolic kinsmen on the north, established themselves on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, _Lesbos_ and _Cyme_ being their strongholds, and by degrees got control in _Mysia_ and the _Troad_. Ionic emigrants from Attica joined their brethren on the same coast. The Dorians settled on the south-west coast; they also settled _Cos_ and _Rhodes_, and at length subdued _Crete_. The Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, and the migrations just spoken of, were slow in their progress, and possibly stretched over centuries.