It was probably greater security, which gave this advantage, in early times, to Southern over Northern and Midland Greece. Only one narrow neck of land led into the Peloponnesus, and that passage was so circuitous, or dangerous, or both, that it was not the highway of immigrant tribes, who seem usually to have crossed the Corinthian gulf into Elis. This tract of land had not indeed the whole, but it had much, of the advantage enjoyed by England. It was not quite, but it was almost, A precious stone, set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house[400]. When reached, it was the highway to nothing. The fat lands of Bœotia were a road onwards for all who came from Thessaly: there was here a choice between barrenness and poverty, on the one hand, like those of Attica in early times, and insecurity of tenure in the rich soils, which were the object of desire to each tribe as it went upon its march. The Peloponnesus was richer than the one, far more secure than the other: it throve accordingly; and in the Trojan war this small territory supplied four hundred and thirty ships, probably including the greatest number of large vessels, while the other two divisions of continental Greece together gave no more than five hundred and thirty. And it seems to have had altogether a more vigorous and concentrated political organisation; for while the five hundred and thirty were in fifteen divisions, under twenty-six leaders, the Peloponnesian force was in six divisions, under nine leaders only, and of the six three at least, namely, those of Mycenæ, Lacedæmon, and Arcadia, were virtually under the direct command of Agamemnon. _Derivation of the Pelasgian name._ Various derivations have been suggested for the name of the Pelasgi. Some will have it to come from Peleg, mentioned in the tenth chapter of Genesis, whose name, said to mean division, is taken to allude to the partition of the earth’s surface among the various tribes of the human race. Marsh well observes, that this amounts to no more than possibility: that the meaning of the word will not serve to attach it to the Pelasgi in particular, as in the early ages of the world migration, with partition and repartition, was a continuous process: and that, even if true, it tells us nothing of them antecedent to their European settlement[401]: nothing, that is to say, of a material kind, except what we know independently of it, viz. their being, in common with all other races, of eastern origin. Clinton gives other reasons for rejecting this etymology[402], while he sees force in the reference of the names of Iapetus and Ion to Japheth and Javan respectively. It seems plain that we could not safely build upon even a complete similarity of name, in a case where the interval of time that separates Peleg and Pelasgi, the terms we are to compare, is so vast and so obscure.