Such was the land. The Greeks who inhabited it belonged apparently to that Achæan-Æolian branch which was the first to cross from Europe to the north-west Ægæan and to oust, or plant colonies among, the older nameless--perhaps “Pelasgian”--occupants. This is not the place to discuss the tribal or even racial differences which once existed between Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks. Their divergence of character was great; it was of the first significance as exhibited in war, in social life, in art. The fact that each division spoke the Greek tongue, though with various accents and idioms, is no longer held as proof that their racial origin and capacity were the same. Between the Greek of Lesbos and the Greek of Sparta there were differences in temper, in adaptability, and in taste, as great as those between the English-speaking Irishman, with his nimble sympathies and his ready eloquence and wit, and the slower if surer Saxon of Mid-lothian. If we touch upon this question here, it is merely because it casts some measure of light upon those social and literary characteristics of the Lesbians in which Sappho fortunately shared. Almost beyond a doubt the Æolian Greeks who first made Lesbos their home were the nearest of kin to those fair-haired Achæans who, in the _Iliad_, followed their feudal lords to the siege of Troy. Socially a distinguishing mark of these people was the liberty and high position enjoyed by the women in the household, by the Penelopes as well as by the Helens. This fact has hardly been sufficiently considered in dealing with that peculiar position of Sappho and her coterie, concerning which something will be said later on. Artistically their distinguishing mark, as represented first in Homer, was their clear, open-eyed, original observation of essentials, their veracity of description, their dislike of the indefinite and the mystic. This too is clearly reflected in the work of Sappho and her compatriots. We must not, it is true, make too much of this racial derivation and its consequences. The population of Lesbos doubtless became mixed; the lapse of centuries, the passing away of the feudal relation, increasing ease and wealth in a softening climate, long intercourse with the trade and culture of the neighbouring Asiatic coast--all these had their inevitable effects. Nevertheless, among it all, the frank genius of earliest Greece is still discernible in the classic poetry of Lesbos.