the present Polish and Russian, and in their adja- CHAP. cent dialects.

THE languages, classed under each of the above heads, are so visibly related together, as to make one and the same family, and to announce the same parent stock: but are so dissimilar to the others, as to mark a different source and chronology of origin. The local positions in Europe, of the different nations using these tongues, are also evidence of their successive chronology. The Keltic or

In

Kimmerian is in the farthest part of the west, in the
British islands, and on the western shores of France.
The Scythian or Gothic languages occupy the great
body of the European continent, from the ocean
to the Vistula, and have spread into England.
the eastern parts of Europe, most contiguous to
Asia, and also extending into Asia, the Sarmatian
or Slavonic tongues are diffused. So that we per-
ceive at once, that the Kimmerian or Keltic nations,
to have reached the westerly position, must have
first inhabited Europe: that the Scythian or Gothic
tribes must have followed next; and have princi-
pally peopled it; and that the Sarmatian, or Sla-
vonic people, were the latest colonists. Other
nations have entered it, at more recent periods, as
the Huns and the Romans; and some others have
established partial settlements, as the Lydians in
Tuscany; the Greeks at Marseilles, and in Italy;
the Phenicians and Carthaginians in Spain. But
the three stocks, already noticed, are clearly the
main sources of the ancient population of the Eu-
ropean continent, in its northern and western
portions.

THE most authentic accounts of ancient history confirm the preceding statement.

II.

BOOK

I.

THAT the Kimmerians were in Europe before the Scythian tribes, we learn from the information of Herodotus, the father of Grecian history. He states, apparently from the information of the Scythians themselves, that the Kimmerians anciently possessed those regions in Europe which the Scythians were occupying in his time. And these Scythians were then spread from the Danube, towards the Baltic and the north.

IT cannot now be ascertained, when the Kimmerians first passed out of Asia over the Bosphorus, which they named; but that they were in Europe, in the days of Homer, is obvious, because he mentions them in his Odyssey; and he appears to have lived, at least eight hundred years before the Christian æra. That he was acquainted with the position of the Kimmerians, in the north-eastern parts of Europe, is three times asserted by Strabo.*

THAT the Kimmerians were inhabiting these places, above seven hundred years before our Saviour's advent, we have direct historical evidence; because it was about this period, if not before, that they were attacked by the Scythians in these settle

2 Herod. Melpom. s. 11. I have adopted the Greek orthography of the K, Kupio, because it expresses the proper pronunciation of the word. w

3 Kippspiar ardowy, Od. A. v. 14. He places them on the Pontus, at the extremities of the ocean; and describes them as covered with those mists and clouds, which popular belief has attached to the northern regions of the Euxine. The Turkish name Karah Deksi, the Greek Maupo @ahaσoa, and our Black Sea, imply the same opinion. Bayer says, that he has had it from eye-witnesses, that all the Pontus and its shores are infested by dense and dark fog. Comm. Acad. Petrop. t. ii. p. 421.

4 Strabo, Geog. p. 12. 38. 222.

5

II.

ments. Overpowered by this invasion, the Kim- CHAP. merians of these districts moved from Europe into Asia Minor; and afflicted its maritime regions with calamities, from their warfare, which Ionia remembered with such horror, as to believe that they sprang from the infernal regions; to the neighbourhood of which even Homer consigns them.6

THE part of the Kimmerian population, which the Scythians thus disturbed, was then occupying the peninsula, which from them obtained the name of the Kimmerian Chersonesus; and its vicinity. Their name was also retained, after their departure, in the adjoining Bosphorus, in a mountain, and in a city on the peninsula, where the isthmus was protected by a ditch and a rampart. In these parts of Europe they had possessed great power, before the Scythians attacked them'; and Herodotus says, that in his time, several Kimmerian walls and ports were to be seen there. The Turks are now the masters of this country, but their dominion begins to decline.

THE retreat of the Kimmerians, who fled before

5 Herodotus states this invasion to have occurred in the reign of Ardyes, the son of Gyges, lib. i. s. 15. Ardyes reigned from 680 to 631 years before Christ. Strabo places the same event in Homer's time or before, on the authority of some other historians, p. 38. 222. We can scarcely reduce any of the facts of ancient classical history, before the Persian war, to exact chronology.

6 "As Homer knew that the Kimmerians were in the north and west regions on the Bosphorus, he made them to be near Hades; and perhaps according to the common opinions of the Ionians concerning that race." Strabo, Geog. p. 222. Ed. Amst. 1707.

7 Strabo. lib. xi. p.756. 475.
* Herod. Melpom. lib. iv. s. 12.

BOOK the Scythians, has given rise to the assertion, that

I.

they conquered Asia, because what the Romans called Asia Minor, was by the more ancient Greeks usually denominated Asia; but it is clear that their irruption was along the sea coast, and did not extend beyond the maritime districts." One of their chiefs who conducted it was called Lygdamis; he penetrated into Lydia and Ionia, took Sardis, and died in Cilicia. This destructive incursion, which succeeded probably because it was unexpected, has been mentioned by some Greek poets, as well as by Herodotus", Callisthenes, and Strabo. 13 They were at length expelled from Asia Minor by the father of Croesus. 14

WHEN the Scythians first attacked them on the European side of their Bosphorus, their endangered tribes held a council; the chiefs and their friends wished to resist the invaders, but the others preferred a voluntary emigration. Their difference of opinion produced a battle, and the survivors abandoned their country to the Scythians.15 But while one portion went under Lygdamis to Asia, the more warlike and larger part of the Kimmerian nations, according to the geographers cursorily mentioned by Plutarch 16, receded westward from the Scythians, and proceeded to inhabit the remoter

9 Herod. Clio, s. 15.

10 By Callinus in his poems, who calls them the "impetuous Kimmerians." Strab. lib. xiv. p. 958., and by Callimachus, Hym. in Dian. 252.

11 Herod. Clio, s. 6. Ibid. Melpom.

12 Ap. Strab. p. 930.

13 Strab. Geog. lib. i. p. 106. et al.

14 Herod. Clio, s. 16.

15 Herod. Melpom. s.11.

16. Plutarch in Mario.

II.

regions of Europe, extending to the German Ocean. CHAP. "Here," he adds, “it is said, that they live in a dark, woody country, where the sun is seldom seen, from their many lofty and spreading trees, which reach into the interior as far as the Hercynian, forest." But whether their progress to these parts was the consequence of the Scythian attack, or had preceded it, is of little importance to us to ascertain. The fact is unquestionable, that the Kimmerians anciently diffused themselves towards the German Ocean.

THE history of the Kimmerians, from their leaving the eastern Bosphorus, to their reaching the Cimbric Chersonesus on the Baltic, has not been perpetuated. The traditions of Italy, and even an ancient historian intimate, that Kimmerians were in those regions near Naples, where the ancient mythologists place the country of the dead." Their early occupation of Europe and extensive dispersion divest this circumstance of any improbability. They who wandered across Europe from the Thracian Bosphorus into Jutland, may have also migrated southward into Italy, like the Goths and Lombards of a future age. But as nations, in the nomadic state, have little other literature than funeral inscriptions, the brief and vague songs of their bards, wild incantations, or rude expressions of

17 Strabo says, “And they deem this place Plutonian, and say that the Kimmerians are there; and they who sail thither, first sacrifice to propitiate the subterraneous demons, which the priests exhort them to do, on account of the profit which they derive from the offering. There is a fountain of river water, but all abstain from this, as they think it the water of the Styx. Geog. p. 171.- Ephorus applying this place to the Kimmerians," &c. Ib. p. 375.