THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

Yet
WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 289
in the Cyreuaica and other parts of North Africa, they nuist
not be assigned to the fair-haired Berber, but to the darkhaired
race, which in Egypt, the Isles of Greece, Attica, and
Peloponnesus, were the makers of the same class of objects.
If the reader is
disposed to raise the objection that in
historical times the name Pelasgian hardly survived as an
ethnic appellation, and that consequently
it is improbable that
at any period it had any great importance,
I would ask him
whether he is
prepared to deny that there was ever any widespread
Celtic race which inhabited all the broad region from
the Damibe valley to the shores iA' the Atlantic, extending as
far south as Andalusia, because at the present hovu' there is no
people or community which bears as its political denomination
the name of Celt. And yet
if we are to put the slightest faith
in
the history
(^f the past such a mighty race once existed.
The formation of new clans which take a name from their first
fonndtjr is constantly going on in barbaric races, and when one
of those tribes becomes the ruling political factor, fre([uently
its name becomes that of all its weaker sister clans. The names
of the latter either perish utterly, or linger (jn as local names.
Thus the once powerful tribe of Kncheleis had disappeared in
the time of Strabo', and their name only survi\'e(l in the town
of Encheieae in lUyria. Dio Cassius' gives us an excellent
illiisti'ation of the manner in which the names of some tribes
get lost, and those of others get more prominent. In describing
the Britons the two
the natives of Britain he says "among
greatest tribes are the Caledonians ami the Maetae for even
;
the names of the othiTs may be said to ha\e merged
in tht.'se."
With the lisr oi a |uwerfiil clan, which becomes a mastei'-
state, the old ethnic erases to ha\e -igniticance, ami is but
rarely used, lint because we read of Suessiones, Bituri^cs, or
Pictavi (wlie nanie> still sur\i\'e in Sois.son.s. Herri, and
Poitou), it does not tollow that these ti'ibes had iMt also ethnic
names in cmiiiiih>ii with many
otlni' tiihes. Wlm will assert
that the Angles, Siixons, and .luti'S, who settled in England.
Were three dirt'iTeut I'accs :'
-
i.wvi. 12
(
wh.it ancient autli(iiit\- speaks
I^pitciiiir i)t' .\i[>liiiiini.