The Pelasgians and Minoan civilisation have been briefly discussed above (Ch. XIII.). Later problems in Greek ethnology are still under dispute. Sergi, who regards the proto-Aryans as round-headed barbarians of Celtic, Slav, and Teutonic speech, makes no exception in favour of the Hellenes. These also enter Greece not as civilisers, but rather as destroyers of the flourishing Mykenaean culture developed here, as in Italy, by the Mediterranean aborigines. But in course of time the intruders become absorbed in the Pelasgic or eastern branch of the Mediterraneans, and what we call Hellenism is really Pelasgianism revived, and to some extent modified by the Aryan (Hellenic) element.
The Hellenes.
If it may be allowed that at their advent the Hellenes were less civilised than the native Aegeans on whom they imposed their Aryan speech, whence and when came they? By Penka[1287], for whom the Baltic lands would be the original home not merely of the Germanic branch but of all the Aryans, the Hellenic cradle is located in the Oder basin between the Elbe and the Vistula. As the Doric, doubtless the last Greek irruption into Hellas, is chronologically fixed at 1149 B.C., the beginning of the Hellenic migrations may be dated back to the 13th century. When the Hellenes migrated from Central Europe to Greece, the period of the general ethnic dispersion was already closed, and the migratory period which next followed began with the Hellenes, and was continued by the Itali, Gauls, Germans, etc. The difficulties created by this view are insurmountable. Thus we should have to suppose that from this relatively contracted Aryan cradle countless tribes swarmed over Europe since the 13th century B.C., speaking profoundly different languages (Greek, Celtic, Latin, etc.), all differentiated since that time on the shores of the Baltic. The proto-Aryans with their already specialised tongues had reached the shores of the Mediterranean long before that time and, according to Maspero[1288], were known to the Egyptians of the 5th dynasty (3990-3804 B.C.) if not earlier. Allowing that these may have rather been pre-Hellenes (Pelasgians), we still know that the Achaeans had traditionally arrived about 1250 B.C. and they were already speaking the language of Homer.
"The indications of archaeology and of legend agree marvellously well with those of the Egyptian records," says H. R. Hall[1289], "in making the Third Late Minoan period one of incessant disturbance.... The whole basin of the Eastern Mediterranean seems to have been a seething turmoil of migrations, expulsions, wars and piracies, started first by the Mycenaean (Achaian) conquest of Crete, and then intensified by the constant impulse of the Northern iron-users into Greece." Herodotus speaks of the great invasion of the Thesprotian tribes from beyond Pindus, which took place probably in the 13th century B.C.[1290] As a result "an overwhelming Aryan and iron-using population was first brought into Greece. The earlier Achaian (?) tribes of Aryans in Thessaly, who had perhaps lived there from time immemorial, and had probably already infiltrated southwards to form the mixed Ionian population about the Isthmus, were scattered, only a small portion of the nation remaining in its original home, while of the rest part conquered the South and another part emigrated across the sea to the Phrygian coast. Of this emigration to Asia the first event must have been the war of Troy.... The Boeotian and Achaian invasion of the South scattered the Minyae, Pelasgians, and Ionians. The remnant of the Minyae emigrated to Lemnos, the Pelasgi and Ionians were concentrated in Attica and another body of Ionians in the later Achaia, while the Southern Achaeans pressed forward into the Peloponnese[1291]."
The Greek Language.
It is evident from the national traditions that the proto-Greeks did not arrive en bloc, but rather at intervals in separate and often hostile bands bearing different names. But all these groups—Achaeans, Danai, Argians, Dolopes, Myrmidons, Leleges and many others, some of which were also found in Asia Minor—retained a strong sense of their common origin. The sentiment, which may be called racial rather than national, received ultimate expression when to all of them was extended the collective name of Hellenes (Sellenes originally), that is, descendants of Deucalion's son Hellen, whose two sons Aeolus and Dorus, and grandson Ion, were supposed to be the progenitors of the Aeolians, Dorians, and Ionians. But such traditions are merely reminiscences of times when the tribal groupings still prevailed, and it may be taken for granted that the three main branches of the Hellenic stock did not spring from a particular family that rose to power in comparatively recent times in the Thessalian district of Phthiotis. Whatever truth may lie behind the Hellenic legend, it is highly probable that, at the time when Hellen is said to have flourished (about 1500 B.C.), the Aeolic-speaking communities of Thessaly, Arcadia, Boeotia, the closely-allied Dorians[1292] of Phocaea, Argos, and Laconia, and the Ionians of Attica, had already been clearly specialised, had in fact formed special groups before entering Greece. Later their dialects, after acquiring a certain polish and leaving some imperishable records of the many-sided Greek genius, were gradually merged in the literary Neo-Ionic or Attic, which thus became the κοινή διάλεκτος, or current speech of the Greek world.
Admirable alike for its manifold aptitudes and surprising vitality, the language of Aeschylus, Thucydides, and the other great Athenians outlived all the vicissitudes of the Byzantine empire, during which it was for a time banished from Southern Greece, and even still survives, although in a somewhat degraded form, in the Romaic or Neo-Hellenic tongue of modern Hellas. Romaic, a name which recalls a time when the Byzantines were known as "Romans" throughout the East, differs far less from the classical standard than do any of the Romance tongues from Latin. Since the restoration of Greek independence great efforts have been made to revive the old language in all its purity, and some modern writers now compose in a style differing little from that of the classic period.
Yet the Hellenic race itself has almost perished on the mainland. Traces of the old Greek type have been detected by Lenormant and others, especially amongst the women of Patras and Missolonghi. But within living memory Attica was still an Albanian land, and Fallmerayer has conclusively shown that the Peloponnesus and adjacent districts had become thoroughly Slavonised during the 6th and 7th centuries[1293]. "For many centuries," writes the careful Roesler, "the Greek peninsula served as a colonial domain for the Slavs, receiving the overflow of their population from the Sarmatian lowlands[1294]." Their presence is betrayed in numerous geographical terms, such as Varsova in Arcadia, Glogova, Tsilikhova, etc. Nevertheless, since the revival of the Hellenic sentiment there has been a steady flow of Greek immigration from the Archipelago and Anatolia; and the Albanian, Slav, Italian, Turkish, Rumanian, and Norman elements have in modern Greece already become almost completely Hellenised, at least in speech. Of the old dialects Doric alone appears to have survived in the Tsaconic of the Laconian hills. The Greek language has, however, disappeared from Southern Italy, Sicily, Syria, and the greater part of Egypt and Asia Minor, where it was long dominant.
The Slavs.
To understand the appearance of Slavs in the Peloponnesus we must go back to the Eurasian steppe, the probable cradle of these multitudinous populations. Here they have often been confused with the ancient Sarmatae, who already before the dawn of history were in possession of the South Russian plains between the Scythians towards the east and the proto-Germanic tribes before their migration to the Baltic lands. But even at that time, before the close of the Neolithic Age, there must have been interminglings, if not with the western Teutons, almost certainly with the eastern Scythians, which helps to explain the generally vague character of the references made by classical writers both to the Sarmatians and the Scythians, who sometimes seem to be indistinguishable from savage Mongol hordes, and at others are represented as semi-cultured peoples, such as the Aryans of the Bronze period might have been round about the district of Olbia and the other early Miletian settlements on the northern shores of the Euxine.