Since we have frequently considered DELPHI as belonging to the number of the Doric cities, on a supposition that it was the seat of an ancient Doric nobility (although the people was chiefly formed of naturalized slaves of the temple), we have finally to observe on the character of the Delphians, that their early degeneracy (which even Æsop is said to have strongly reproved) is a phenomenon which has frequently taken place among the people residing in the immediate neighbourhood of national sanctuaries. The number and variety of strangers flocking together; the continual fumes of the altars, from which the natives were fed without labour or expense;(1905) the crowds of the market, in which jugglers and impostors of all kinds earned their subsistence,(1906) and the large donatives which Crœsus, with other monarchs and wealthy men, had distributed among the Delphians, necessarily produced a lazy, ignorant, superstitious, and sensual people; and cast a shade over the few traces of a nobler character, which can be discovered in the events of earlier times. APPENDICES. Appendix V. On the Doric Dialect. 1. The ancient grammarians divided the Greek language into four distinct branches—the Doric, Ionic, Attic, and Æolic; the latter including all dialects not comprised under the other three heads, because only one branch of it, the Lesbian, was the written language of one species of poetry: and yet this latter division must unquestionably have contained different species less connected with each other than with some branches of the other three dialects. It is, however, pretty well agreed that the several Æolic dialects together contained more remains of the primitive Grecian or (if we will so call it) Pelasgic language, than either the Doric, Ionic, or Attic; and that at the same time many forms of the latter were preserved with great fidelity in the Latin tongue; partly because the life of the Italian husbandmen bore a nearer resemblance to that of the ancient Greeks than that of the later Greeks themselves, and because neither their literature, nor any fastidious sense of euphony and rhythm, induced them to soften and refine their language. But of the more polished dialects, that of Homer, though differing in many points, yet in others doubtless closely resembled the original language, which must once have been spoken from Thessaly to Peloponnesus, and was variously metamorphosed in the Doric, Ionic, and Attic dialects. Thus, for example, the genitive case of the second declension, in the ancient form, was ΟΙΟ, which was preserved in the Thessalian dialect,(1907) perhaps also in the Bœotian,(1908) and in Latin I or EI is also perceivable; whilst in the Doric Ω and the Attic ΟΥ this vowel was entirely lost. The nominative of masculines of the first declension in Α belongs to the Latin, Homeric, Dryopian, Thessalian, Bœotian, Macedonian, and Elean dialects. In the Doric it was probably of rare occurrence, and more accidental.(1909) The