"All the known Indo-European languages," writes Professor Whitney, "are descended from a single dialect, which must have been spoken at some time in the past by a single limited community, by the spread and emigration of which--not, certainly, without incorporating also bodies of other races than that to which itself belonged by origin--it has reached its present wide distribution." "Of course, it would be a matter of the highest interest to determine the place and period of this important community, were there any means of doing so; but that is not the case, at least at present." "The condition of these languages is reconcilable with any possible theory as to the original site of the family." "One point is established, that 'the separation of the five European branches must have been later than their common separation from the two Asiatic branches,' the Iranians and Indians." (Whitney's _The Life and Growth of Language_, pp. 191, 193.) SECTION I. GRECIAN HISTORY. THE LAND.--"Greeks" is not a name which the people who bore it applied to themselves. It was a name given them by their kinsfolk, the Romans. They called themselves _Hellenes_, and their land they called _Hellas_. Hellas, or Greece proper, included the southern portion of the peninsula of which it is a part, the portion bounded on the north by Olympus and the Cambunian Mountains, and extending south to the Mediterranean. Its shores were washed on the east by the Aegean, on the west by the Adriatic, or Ionian Gulf. The length of Hellas was about two hundred and fifty English miles: its greatest width, measured on the northern frontier, or from Attica on a line westward, was about a hundred and eighty miles. It is somewhat smaller than Portugal.