incorporation of European renegades who have thrown aside the speech, the creed, and the civilization of Europe. FOOTNOTES: [1] In modern use we speak of _Spain_ as only one part, though much the larger part, of the peninsula, and of _Portugal_ as another part. But this simply comes from the accident that, for some centuries past, all the other Spanish kingdoms have been joined under one government, while Portugal has remained separate. In speaking of any time till near the end of the fifteenth century of our æra, the word _Spain_ must always be used in the geographical sense, as the name of the whole peninsula. CHAPTER II. GREECE AND THE GREEK COLONIES. § 1. _The Eastern or Greek Peninsula._ ♦Characteristics of the Eastern peninsula.♦ The Historical Geography of Europe, if looked at in chronological order, must begin with the most eastern of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe. Here the history of Europe, and the truest history of the world, began. It was in the insular and peninsular lands between the Ionian and Ægæan seas that the first steps towards European civilization were taken; it is there that we see the first beginnings of art, science, and political life. But Greece or _Hellas_, in the strict sense of the name, forms only a part of the lands which must be looked on as the great Eastern peninsula. It is however its leading and characteristic portion. As the whole peninsular land gradually tapers southwards from the great mass of central Europe, it becomes at each stage more and more peninsular, and it also becomes at each stage more and more Greek. Greece indeed and the neighbouring lands form, as was long ago remarked by Strabo,[2] a series of peninsulas within peninsulas. It is not easy to find a name for the whole region, as it stretches far beyond any limits which can be given to Greece in any age of the world or according to any use of the name. But the whole land seems to have been occupied by nations more or less akin to the Greeks. The history of those nations chiefly consists of their relations to the Greeks, and all of them were brought more or less within the range of Greek influences. We may therefore not improperly call the whole land, as opposed to Italy and Spain, the _Greek_ peninsula. It has also been called the _Byzantine peninsula_, as nearly answering to the European part of the Eastern division of the Roman Empire, when its seat of government was at Byzantion, Constantinople, or New Rome. ♦Its chief divisions.♦