The doctrine thus propagated by Herodotus concerning Attica is even more strongly represented in Strabo as respects its Ionian character. Τὴν μὲν Ἰάδα τῇ παλαίᾳ Ἀτθίδι τὴν αὐτὴν φαμέν· καὶ γὰρ Ἴωνες ἐκαλοῦντο οἱ τότε Ἀττικοὶ, καὶ ἐκεῖθεν εἰσιν οἱ τὴν Ἀσίαν ἐποικήσαντες Ἴωνες, καὶ χρησάμενοι τῇ νῦν λεγομένῃ γλώττῃ Ἰάδι[228]. The poverty of their soil kept them, he adds, apart as of a different race (ἔθνος), and of a different speech (γλώττη). And thus again Herodotus reports that the same letter which the Dorians called San, the Ionians called Sigma. Is not this more than a dialectic difference, and does it not indicate a deeper distinction of race?[229] The connection of the Pelasgians with ancient Attica will receive further illustration from our inquiry hereafter into the general evidence of the later tradition respecting that race. _Egypt._ _Egypt and the Pelasgians._ If we are to venture yet one step further back, and ask to what extraneous race and country do the Pelasgic ages of Greece appear particularly to refer us as their type, the answer, as it would seem, though it can only be given with reserve, must be, that Egypt and its people appear most nearly to supply the pattern. A variety of notes, indicative of affinity, are traceable at a variety of points where we find reason to suspect a Pelasgian character: particularly in Troy, and in the early Roman history, more or less in Hesiod and his school, and in certain parts of Greece. Many of these notes, and likewise the general character that they indicate, appear to belong to Egypt also. The direct signs of connection between Egypt and Greece are far less palpable in Homer, than between Greece and Phœnicia. We have no account from him of Egyptians settled among the Greeks, or of Greeks among the Egyptians. The evidence of a trading intercourse between the two countries is confined to the case of the pseudo-Ulysses, who ventures thither from Crete under circumstances[230] which seem to show that it was hardly within the ordinary circle of Greek communications. He arrives indeed in five days, by the aid of a steady north-west wind: but a voyage of five days[231] across the open sea, which might be indefinitely prolonged by variation or want of wind, was highly formidable to a people whose only safety during their maritime enterprises lay in the power of hauling up their vessels whenever needful upon a beach. It was near twice the length of the voyage to Troy[232]. Hence we find that Menelaus was carried to Egypt not voluntarily, but by stress of weather: and Nestor speaks with horror of his crossing such an expanse, a passage that even the birds make but once a year[233]. If this be deemed inconsistent with the five days’ passage, yet even inconsistency on this point in Homer would be a proof that the voyage to Egypt was in his time rare, strange, and mysterious to his countrymen, and so was dealt with freely by him as lying beyond experience and measurement.