Sometimes the Pelasgians seem to be spoken of simply as _Old-Hellênes_, sometimes as a people distinct from the Hellênes. ♦The Greek nation.♦ Whether the Hellênes, on their entering into Greece, found the land held by earlier inhabitants, whether Aryan or non-Aryan, is a curious and interesting speculation, but one which does not concern us. It is enough for our purpose that, as far back as history or even legend can carry us, we find the land in the occupation of a branch of the Aryan family, consisting, like all other nations, of various kindred tribes. It is a nation which is as well defined as any other nation, and yet it shades off, as it were, into the other nations of the kindred stock. Clearly marked as Greek and Barbarian are from the beginning, there still are frontier tribes in Epeiros and Macedonia which must be looked on as forming an intermediate stage between the two classes, and which are accordingly placed by different Greek writers sometimes in one class and sometimes in the other. § 4. _The Earliest Geography of Greece and the Neighbouring Lands._ ♦The Homeric map of Greece.♦ Our first picture of Greek geography comes from the Homeric catalogue. Whatever may be the historic value of the Homeric poems in general, it is clear that the catalogue in the second book of the Iliad must represent a real state of things. It gives us a map of Greece so different from the map of Greece at any later time that it is inconceivable that it can have been invented at any later time. We have in fact a map of Greece at a time earlier than any time to which we can assign certain names and dates. Within the range of Greece itself the various Greek races often changed their settlements, displacing or conquering earlier Greek settlers; and the different states which they formed often changed their boundaries by bringing other states into subjection or depriving them of parts of their territory. The Homeric catalogue gives us a wholly different arrangement of the various branches of the nation from any that we find in the Greece of historic times. The _Dorian_ and _Ionian_ names, which were afterwards so famous, are hardly known; the name of _Hellênes_ itself belongs only to a small district. ♦Tribal divisions of Homeric Greece.♦ The names for the whole people are _Achaians_, _Argeians_ (_Argos_ seeming to mean all Peloponnêsos), and _Danaoi_, the last a name which goes quite out of use in historic times. The boundary of Greece to the west is narrower than it was in later times. The land called _Akarnania_ has not yet got that name, if indeed it was Greek at all. It is spoken of vaguely as _Epeiros_ or the mainland,[3] and it appears as part of the possessions of the king of the neighbouring islands, _Kephallênia_ and _Ithakê_. The islands to the north, _Leukas_ and _Korkyra_, were not yet Greek. The _Thesprotians_ in Epeiros are spoken of as a neighbouring and friendly people, but they form no part of the Greek nation.