[624] It is, I need hardly say, still a disputed point whether the Homeric Greeks could or could not write. See chapter xi.
[625] M. F. Lenormant, the Academy, March 21 and 28, 1874.
[626] I must again protest against the use, while compelled by want of another to use the term ‘Indo-European,’ which, applied to language, contains an unproved theory. India did not supply Europe either with speech or with population. The popular belief appears erroneous as is its appreciation of Darwinism, which did not derive man from monkey. The original Egyptian roots developed themselves into a host of dialects which flourished and perished before Pali and Sanskrit, a professor’s tongue, like mediæval Latin, never understanded of the people, assumed their present shapes.
[627] North American Review.
[628] Professor Jebb quotes M. Dumont, Céramique de la Grèce Propre.
[629] The Academy, Dec. 9, 1882.
[630] I have treated the question popularly in Etruscan Bologna (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1876). The study owed its existence to the Rev. Isaac Taylor, who, using the Family Pen once too often, supported the Turanian origin of the Etruscans in a marvellously uncritical and unscholar-like book, Etruscan Researches (London: Macmillan & Co., 1874).
[631] The stater of Crœsus was the first gold coin known to the Greeks. Most of the classical authors declare that silver was first coined at Ægina by order of Pheidon (circa b.c. 869).
[632] Hamilton (Asia Minor, vol. i. pp. 145–6) has carefully described this most interesting monument.
[633] See the ‘colossal male head’ in General Palma di Cesnola, Cyprus, p. 123.