When we come to the Aryan settlements, we cannot positively determine which among the Aryan races of Europe were the earliest settlers in point of time. ♦Greeks and Italians.♦ The great race which, in its many sub-divisions, contains the Greeks, the Italians, and the nations more immediately akin to them, are the first among the European Aryans to show themselves in the light of history; but it does not necessarily follow that they were actually the first in point of settlement. ♦Celts.♦ It may be that, while they were pressing through the Mediterranean peninsulas and islands, the Celts were pressing their way through the solid central land of Europe. The Celts were clearly the vanguard of the Aryan migration within their own range, the first swarm which made its way to the shores of the Ocean. Partially in Spain, more completely in Gaul and the British Islands, they displaced or assimilated the earlier inhabitants, who, under their pressure and that of later conquerors, have been gradually shut up in the small mountainous region which they still keep. Of the Celtic migration we have no historical accounts, but all probability would lead us to think that the Celts whom in historic times we find on the Danube and south of the Alps were not emigrants who had followed a backward course from the great settlement in Transalpine Gaul, but rather detachments which had been left behind on the westward journey. Without attempting to settle questions as to the traces of Celtic occupancy to be found in other lands, it is enough for our purpose that, at the beginnings of their history, we find the Celts the chief inhabitants of a region stretching from the Rubico to the furthest known points of Britain. Gaul, Cisalpine and Transalpine, is their great central land, though even here they are not exclusive possessors; they share the land with a non-Aryan remnant to the south-west, and with the next wave of Aryan new-comers to the north-east.
The settlements of these two great Aryan races come before authentic history. After them came the Teutonic races, who pressed on the Celts from the east; and in their wake, to judge from their place on the map, must have come the vast family of the Slavonic nations. ♦Teutons and Slaves.♦ But the migrations of the Teutons and Slaves come, for the most part, within the range of recorded history. Our first glimpse of the Teutons shows them in their central German land, already occupying both sides of the Rhine, though seemingly not very old settlers on its left bank. The long wanderings of the various Teutonic and Slavonic tribes over all parts of central Europe, their settlements in the southern and western lands, are all matters of history. So is the great Teutonic settlement in the British islands, which partly exterminated, partly assimilated, their Celtic inhabitants, so as to leave them as mere a remnant, though a greater remnant, as they themselves had made the Basques. And, as the process which made the north-western islands of Europe Teutonic is a matter of history, so also are the later stages of the process which made the northern peninsulas Teutonic. But it is only the later stages which are historical; we know that in the strictly Scandinavian peninsula the Teutonic invaders displaced non-Aryan Fins; we have only to guess that in the Cimbric Chersonêsos they displaced Aryan Celts. ♦Lithuanians.♦ But beyond the Teutons and Slaves lies yet another Aryan settlement, one which, in a purely philological view, is the most interesting of all, the small and fast vanishing group which still survives in Lithuania and the neighbouring lands. Of these there is historically really nothing to be said. On the eastern shores of the Baltic we find people whose tongue comes nearer than any other European tongue to the common Aryan model; but we can only guess alike at the date when they came thither and at the road by which they came.
These races then, Aryan and non-Aryan, make up the immemorial population of Europe. The remnants of the older non-Aryan races, and the successive waves of Aryan settlement, are all immemorial facts which we must accept as the groundwork of our history and our geography. ♦Movements among the Aryan races.♦ They must be distinguished from other movements which are strictly matters of written history, both movements among the Aryan nations themselves and later intrusions of non-Aryan nations. Thus the Greek colonies and the conquests of the Hellenized Macedonians Hellenized large districts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, partly by displacement, partly by assimilation. The conquests of Rome, and the Teutonic settlements within the Roman Empire, brought about but little in the way of displacement, but a great deal in the way of assimilation. The process indeed was opposite in the two cases. The Roman conqueror assimilated the conquered to himself; the Teutonic conqueror was himself assimilated by those whom he conquered. Britain and the Rhenish and Danubian lands stand out as marked exceptions. The Slavonic settlements in the East wrought far more of displacement than the Teutonic settlements in the West. Vast regions, once Illyrian or Thracian—that is, most likely, more or less nearly akin to the Greeks—are now wholly Slavonic. ♦Later intrusion of Non-Aryan races.♦ Lastly come the incursions on European lands made by non-Aryan settlers in historic times. Their results have been widely different in different cases. ♦Semitic.♦ The Semitic Saracens settled in Spain and Sicily, bringing with them and after them their African converts, men possibly of originally kindred race with the first inhabitants both of the peninsula and of the island. These non-Aryan settlers have vanished. The displacement of large bodies of them is a fact of comparatively recent history, but it can hardly fail that some degree of assimilation must also have taken place. Then come the settlements, chiefly in eastern Europe, of those whom for our purpose it is enough to group together as the Turanian nations. The Huns of Attila have left only a name. The more lasting settlement of the Avars has vanished, how far by displacement, how far by assimilation, it might be hard to say. Chozars, Patzinaks, a crowd of other barbarian races, have left no sign of their presence. ♦Turanian.♦ The Bulgarians, originally Turanian conquerors, have been assimilated by their Slavonic subjects. The Finnish Magyars have received a political and religious assimilation; their kingdom became a member of the commonwealth of Christian Europe, though they still keep their old Turanian language. The latest intruders of all, the Ottoman Turks, still remain as they were when they first came, aliens on Aryan and Christian ground. But here again is a case of assimilation the other way; the Ottoman Turks are an artificial nation which has been kept up by the constant incorporation of European renegades who have thrown aside the speech, the creed, and the civilization of Europe.
[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.