The proofs upon which rest the reputed arrival of Egyptian colonisers, under Cecrops, in Attica, have been shown to be slender, the authorities for the assertion to be comparatively modern, the arguments against the probability of such an immigration in such an age, to be at least plausible and important. The traditions speak of them with gratitude as civilisers, not with hatred as conquerors. Assisting to civilise the Greeks, they then became Greeks; their posterity merged and lost amidst the native population. Perhaps in all countries, the first step to social improvement is in the institution of marriage, and the second is the formation of cities. As Menes in Egypt, as Fohi in China, so Cecrops at Athens is said first to have reduced into sacred limits the irregular intercourse of the sexes, and reclaimed his barbarous subjects from a wandering and unprovidential life, subsisting on the spontaneous produce of no abundant soil. High above the plain, and fronting the sea, which, about three miles distant on that side, sweeps into a bay peculiarly adapted for the maritime enterprises of an earlier age, we still behold a cragged and nearly perpendicular rock. In length its superficies is about eight hundred, in breadth about four hundred, feet. Below, on either side, flow the immortal streams of the Ilissus and Cephisus. From its summit you may survey here the mountains of Hymettus, Pentelicus, and, far away, “the silver bearing Laurium”; below, the wide plain of Attica, broken by rocky hills--there, the islands of Salamis and Ægina, with the opposite shores of Argolis, rising above the waters of the Saronic Bay. On this rock the supposed Egyptian is said to have built a fortress, and founded a city; the fortress was in later times styled the Acropolis, and the place itself, when the buildings of Athens spread far and wide beneath its base, was still designated πόλις, or the City. By degrees we are told that he extended, from this impregnable castle and its adjacent plain, the limit of his realm, until it included the whole of Attica, and perhaps Bœotia. It is also related that he established eleven other towns or hamlets, and divided his people into twelve tribes, to each of which one of the towns was apportioned--a fortress against foreign invasion, and a court of justice in civil disputes.