That such results as these, wearing, perhaps, the garb of paradoxes, are in strong contrast to the recognized doctrines of the best Greek historians is undoubted. No reader, however, should dismiss them until he has satisfied himself that he has discussed the question ethnologically as well as historically; until he has clearly seen the extent whereto the reasoning which the palæontological geologist applies to the antiquities of the earth’s crust (reasoning wholly independent of historical testimony) is applicable to the archæology of the human species also; and (lastly and most especially) until having fully appreciated the necessity of making the geographical and philological connections of the Latin and Greek languages coincide, he has experienced the difficulty of doing so in the face of the phenomena presented by the present distribution of the Skipetar, Dalmatian, Croatian, and other interjacent populations. There is, then, a Greek language, a Greek literature, a Greek influence in literature; all beyond doubt. But there is no equally undoubted Greek stock. As far as there is such an entity, the speech is in Hellas, and the blood in Italy. Up to a certain time the Hellenic influence has a northern direction, and acts upon certain populations originally barbarous, so as imperfectly to Hellenize them. Such is the case with Ætolia and Macedon. Afterwards, however, the direction of these influences changes, and Ætolia and Macedon contribute to dis-Hellenize (if so hybrid a word may be allowed) Greece. Before they do this, however, they have been taken out of the category of barbarism; just as would be the case if Anglo-Saxon England were reconquered by the half-Anglicized Ireland of the nineteenth century, and just as would _not_ have been the case had it been conquered by the Ireland of Brian Ború. Rome, too, respected the land that she had reduced; so that the physical history of Greece remains but slightly altered until the period of the Gothic, Hun, and Slavonic invasions. And even Alaric but ravaged the soil and destroyed life. We nowhere find proofs of any introduction of Gothic blood. Nor yet of Hun. It is the Slavonic stock that has given Greece its greatest foreign element. Why is it that when we compare a map of Modern with one of Ancient Greece, such a small proportion of the old classical names, either modified or unmodified in form, can be found? Such is, undoubtedly, the case. Yet subject to Turkey as Greece was until the present century, the majority of the new names is not Turkish. On the contrary, they are chiefly Slavonic. The language of the later Byzantine writers explains this.[13]