[509] It is not necessary to trace in this place, with precision, the various applications of the name Hellas, after the time of Homer. Stanley (on Æsch. Suppl. 263) states, that what I have termed Middle Greece was the Hellas of Ptolemy: that with Strabo the word includes most of the islands of the Ægean: and, finally, that it also came to include Asia Minor, and parts even of the African coast, as well as places elsewhere, which had been colonised by the Greek race. According to Cramer (Geogr. Greece, i. 2), at the epoch of the Peloponnesian war, Hellas meant everything south of the Peneus and the gulf of Ambracia. He considers that Herodotus also meant by it a portion of Thesprotia (Herod. ii. 56. viii. 47). It is interesting to observe how this domestic name, taken from the race which made Greece so great and famous, has retained its vitality through so many vicissitudes, and is now the national name of Greece, in opposition to that which was probably drawn from a Pelasgian source, and which, as proceeding from the Roman masters of the country, told its people the tale of their subjugation.
[510] Il. xvi. 234.
[511] Il. iii. 172.
[512] I follow the acute and sagacious notes of Professor Malden to a valuable paper contributed by Mr. James Yates, during the year 1856, to the Philological Transactions: also Donaldson’s Cratylus, p. 120.
[513] In loc. Cary’s Birds, p. 77.
[514] See sect. x.
[515] i. 89.
[516] See Studies on the Theo-mythology of Homer.
[517] Fasti, i. 39.
[518] De Nat. Deor. ii. 27.