[401] Of the Greeks in Spain, it has not been thought necessary here to speak. Their few establishments were on the southern coast, and rather on the eastern part of it; but they were of little consequence, and do not seem to have produced any lasting effect on the character or language of the country. They were, in fact, rather a result of the influence of the rich and cultivated Greek colony in the South of France, whose capital seat was Marseilles, or of the spirit which in Rhodes and elsewhere sent out adventurers to the far west. (See Benedictins, Hist. Litt. de la France, 1733, 4to, Tom. I. pp. 71, etc.) For those who are curious about the Greeks in Spain, more than they will probably desire will be found in the elaborate and clumsy work of Masdeu, Hist. Crit. de España, Tom. I. p. 211, Tom. III. pp. 76, etc. Aldrete (Orígen de la Lengua Española, 1674, f. 65) has collected about ninety Spanish words to which he attributes a Greek origin; but nearly all of them may be easily traced through the Latin, or else they belong to the Northern invaders or to Italy. Marina, a good authority on this particular point, says: “I do not deny, nor can it be doubted, that, in the Spanish language, are found many words purely Greek, and occasional phrases and turns of expression that are in Attic taste; but this is because they had first been adopted by the Latin language, which is the mother of ours.” Mem. de la Real Acad., Tom. IV., Ensayo, etc., p. 47. There is a curious inscription in Nunes de Lião, (Origem da Lingoa Portugesa, Lisboa, 1784, p. 32,) from a temple erected by Greeks at Ampurias to Diana of Ephesus, which states, that “nec relicta Græcorum lingua, nec idiomate patriæ Iberæ recepto, in mores, in linguam, in jura, in ditionem cessere Romanam, M. Cathego et L. Apronio Coss.” No doubt, these Greeks came from Marseilles, or were connected with it; and no doubt they spoke Latin. But the ancient Iberian language seems to be recognized as existing, also, among them. Ampurias, however, was generally in Spain held to be of Greek origin, as we may see in different ways, and among the rest in the following lines of Espinosa, who, when Alambron comes there with the Infanta Fenisa, says:—
Juntan á la ciudad, que fué fundada
De cautos Griegos, rica y bastecida.
Segunda Parte de Orlando, ed. 1556, Canto xxxi.
[402] Livius, Hist. Rom., Lib. XXVIII. c. 12. The words are remarkable. “Itaque ergo prima Romanis inita provinciarum, quæ quidem continentis sint, postrema omnium, nostrâ demum ætate, ductu auspicioque Augusti Cæsaris, perdomita est.”
[403] Livius, Hist. Rom., Lib. XLIII. c. 3.
[404] Strabo, Lib. III., especially pp. 168, 169, ed. Casaubon, fol., 1620; and Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. III. §§ 2-4, but particularly Vol. I., ed. Franzii, 1778, p. 547. A striking proof of the importance of Spain, in antiquity generally, may be found in the fact incidentally stated by W. von Humboldt, (Prüfung, etc., § 2, p. 3,) that “ancient writers have left us a great number of Spanish names of places;—in proportion, a greater number than of any other country except Greece and Italy.”
[405] Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. VII. c. 44, where the distinction is spoken of as something surprising, since Pliny adds, that it was “an honor which our ancestors refused even to those of Latium.”
[406] Plin., Hist. Nat., Lib. V. c. 5, with the note of Hardouin, and with Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus, fol., 1787, Lib. I. c. ii.
[407] Plutarchus in Sertorium, c. 14.