Another great family which left the Aryan home was that from which descended the Greeks and Romans.[33] The primitive ancestors of these two people have been called the Pelasgians (Pelasgi), the name which the Greeks gave to their own ancestors who lived in the days before the name Hellenes was used for the Greek nationality. There is evidence of a certain early civilization, which is believed to have been that of these primitive Pelasgi, in the centre of Asia Minor. And it seems probable that the line of migration of this nationality passed to the south of the Caspian Sea, then through Asia Minor, and finally, not all at once, but in successive streams, some across the Hellespont or Dardanelles to the north of Italy and the north of Greece, and some to the coast of Asia Minor, and across by the islands of the Ægean to the mainland of Greece. At every point upon the route there were left behind remains—offshoots, as it were, or cuttings from the great Pelasgic stem,—a primitive half-Greek stock in the centre of Asia Minor, a barbarous half-Greek stock in Thrace and Macedon; while all along the coasts of Asia Minor and the Greek Islands, and in the southern parts of European Greece (more especially those which looked eastward) there arose a much more cultivated race. For in these regions the Greeks came in contact with the Phœnicians, and gathered much from the civilizations of Egypt and Assyria. If there were remains of a primitive Italian race in the north of Italy these were (in subsequent, but still pre-historic years) blotted out by the spread of the Gauls beyond the Alps.
How little did these rival nationalities, the Greeks and Romans, deem that their ancestors had once formed a single people! All such recollections had been lost to the Greeks and Romans, who, when we find them in historic times, had invented quite different stories to account for their origin.
Next we come to two other great families of nations who seem to have taken the same route at first, and perhaps began their travels together as the Greeks and Romans did. These are the Teutons and the Slavs. They seem to have travelled by the north of the Caspian and Black Sea, extending over all the south of Russia, and down to the borders of Greece; then gradually to have pushed on to Europe, ousting the Kelts from the eastern portion, until we find them in the historical period threatening the borders of the Roman empire on the Rhine and the Danube. Probably the Teutons pushed on most to the west, and left the Slavs behind.
The Teutonic family of nations first comes before us vaguely in the history of the invasion of Gaul and Italy by the Cimbri and the Teutones, which, as we know, was checked by Marius in the years 102 and 101 B.C. It is probable that both Cimbri and Teutones were of German origin, though some have connected the name Cimbri with Cymri, the native name of the Welsh (whence Cumberland, etc.). This attack by the Cimbri and Teutones was only an isolated attempt on behalf of the Teutons. The great invasion of the Roman empire by them did not begin till five centuries later, in 395 A.D. Of the nations who from this time forward were engaged in the dismemberment of the empire, and in laying the foundations of mediæval history, almost all seem to have been of Teutonic origin. The chief among these nationalities were the Goths—divided into two great nationalities, the Visi-Goths (West Goths), and the Ostro-Goths (East Goths), who successively conquered Italy, and founded kingdoms in Italy, South Aquitaine, and Spain. Then there were the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Alani and the Suevi, who invaded Gaul at the beginning of the fifth century, and passed on, some of them, to found kingdoms in Spain and Africa. There were the Lombards who succeeded the Ostro-Goths as conquerors of Italy; the Franks who subdued the Burgundians and the Visi-Goths; the Bavarians who settled in the Roman provinces of Vindelicia and Noricum, the English (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) who settled in the Roman province of Britain. All these nations carved for themselves new states out of the fragments of the Roman empire, and these states have for the most part remained unchanged till our day. And of all those other German states, many of which were acquired by driving back the Slavs (e.g. modern Saxony, Prussia), we need not speak here. For we have already said what are the modern nations which compose the Teutonic, or be it, for the words are the same, the Deutsch, or Dutch family. They are the Scandinavians—that is to say, the inhabitants of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the English, the Dutch and Flemings (most of the old Keltic inhabitants of Belgium were subsequently driven out by Teutonic invaders), and the Germans.
Lastly, we come to the Slavonians (Slavs), about whom and the Panslavonic movement which is to weld all the Slavonic peoples into one great nationality we have heard so much in recent years. The word Slav comes from slowan, which in old Slavonian meant to ‘speak,’ and was given by the Slavonians to themselves as the people who alone, in their view, spoke intelligibly. Just so the Greek word βάρβαροι (barbaroi), from which we get our word barbarians, arose, in obedience to a like prejudice, only from the imitation of people babbling or making unintelligible sounds—‘bar-bar-bar.’ But among the Germans who conquered and enslaved the people, Slav became synonymous with the Latin servus, and from them it passed on to express the idea of slave—esclave, schiavo, etc. The Slavonic people once extended much farther to the west in Northern Europe than they do at present—as far, for instance, as the Elbe in Northern Germany. We begin to hear of them in history about the age of Charlemagne—a little, that is, before the end of the eighth century, A.D. The Obotriti and the Wiltzi are the names of two Slavonic nations on the Baltic, of whom we hear much about this time. But they can no longer be identified as the ancestors of any existing race. In the reign of Charlemagne’s grandson, called Lewis the German, we hear much of other Slavonic peoples whose names have more meaning for us—the Sorabians, the Czechs (i.e. Bohemians), the Mähren or Moravians, and the Carinthians, who, if they have as separate peoples ceased to exist, have left behind them their names in the lands they inhabited.
The same has been the case with other Slavonic peoples who appear later in history—the Pomeranians and the Prussians (earlier Borussians) and the Silesians. The people who now bear these names and inhabit these countries are by origin almost exclusively Teutonic; but the names themselves and the earlier inhabitants were not Teutons, but Slavs.
The existing Slavonic nationalities are the Russians, Lithuanians (incorporated in Russia), the Poles, the Czechs or Bohemians, the Bulgarians, Servians, Montenegrins, etc.,—most, in fact, of the nations of the Southern Danube.
Pre-historic
research
through
language.
This is the classification of nationalities by their language. No classification is perfect; and we know, as an historical fact, that many nations have abandoned their original tongue, and adopted that of some other people—their conquerors probably,—as the Gauls and Goths (or Iberians) of France and Spain have adopted the Latin of the Romans, as the Highland Scottish, the Irish, the Welsh and Cornishmen have adopted English.
But a classification by language is far more satisfactory than any other sort of classification of nations. For when we think of nations we do not think first of all of their physique. The most important thing to know about them is not their hair was dark or red, their eyes brown or blue. What we care most to learn are their national character, their thoughts, their beliefs, their forms of social life. And for the days when we have no national literature, no history, to guide us, almost the only means of gaining reliable information upon these points is by a study of the language of the people in question. Language holds within it far better than do tumuli or weapons, or articles of pottery or woven-stuffs or ornaments, the records of long-past times, records of material civilization and mental culture likewise. It holds these records, as a chemist would say, in solution in it; not visible perhaps to the mere passer-by; but if we know how to precipitate the solution it is wonderful what results we obtain.