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

WHENCE CAME THE ACHEANS ? 349
350 WHENCE CAME THE ACHEANS ?
when he speaks of the lapodes as Illyrians mixed with Celts,
for proof of the Illyrian basis of the population he uncontrolled grief,
were turned into trees
appeals to
by the banks of the
Eridanus (Po), we can at once
their custom of tattooing and understand why the Greek
not to any difference of speech,
and though he tells us that they had traders came to the land of the Veneti, and we can therefore
adopted the Celtic dress
Avith some probability conjecture that the wares of the Greeks
and arms, he says nothing about their adoption of the Celtic
were purchased with the golden amber from the Baltic.
language, or of their being bilingual like the tribes further
On an earlier page (232) we saw that there had been very
south just referred to.
early
There was probably at this period no intercourse between Greece and the region round the
well-defined difference
mouths
between the languages used of the Po, to which was probably due not only the
by those tribes of Celts and
Illyrians who had long been conterminous Mycenean or intermixed, nor
influence seen in antiquities of this region, but
again between those Illyrians and Thracians who had even some of the amber that made its
way into Mycenean
long
lived contiguous. That these latter peoples had Greece.
not only long
There are no people called Celts yet in Italy in the time of
dwelt as neighbours but were of the same stock there is good
Herodotus. With him Ombrice, the land of the Umbrians,
evidence.
extends up to the Alps': "From the upper region of the Ombrice
Herodotus, living at Thurii in south Italy in the latter half
flows the river Carpis, and another
of the fifth century B.C., had called Alpis towards the
good opportunities for learning
north wind, and they deboiiche into
the general facts of the ethnology of northern Italy and it (Istrus)." With him
the
adjacent regions: he knew the Celts were of the Ligyes through the medium
occupying the country to the north of the Alps
and round the sources of the Danube " : the Istrus flows
of Massalia, for he speaks of the Ligyes who dwell above the
teri'itory of that town through
he knew of the
;
Veneti, whcjm he all Europe beginning from the Celts, who dwell
rightly
regarded as Illyrians, and through them furthest towards the sunsetting after
he, as well as all other
the Cynetes of the
Greeks, probably had what peoples
knowledge they possessed of the
in Europe." All the country east of Ombrice extending
up
countiy lying to the north and noi'th-east of the to the Alps and down the Danube as far as the
Adriatic.
Thus when he sjjeaks of the Sigynnac as the land of the Thracian tribe of Triballi he regards as the land
only tribe dwelling
beyond the Danube of which he knew of the Illyrians. For he " says the
anything, he river Angrus, flowing from
indicates
the Ilh'rians, falls out into the Triballian plain and after
the ])robable channel through which this information ))ercolated
by describing that ])eo])le as watering
'dwelling above the it falls into the Brongus, which falls into the Istrus."
\'eneti.'
The
The discoveries made in the I'cgioiis m-ar the mouth literary evidence thus justifies us
of the in thinking that for
Po,
in i-eceiit years, of many ai'ticles of potteiy and
many centuries before the Christian era the whole area with
bronze of (Jreek
which we
woi'kmanship of the are dealing was peopled by Illyrians, Tliraeians,
fifth i;.(;.
ceiituiy demoiisti'ate that in the
and Celts. It is
unnecessary
time of Herodotus the Gi'eeks li.ul an extensive trade at present to in(|uire whether
in this
these Celts came from Asia into Europe, making their way
qnai'ter.
When we considei- that the tiade in IJaltie amber was
up the valley of the ])anube to where we And them at the
entirely in the hands dawn of the of \'eiieti, as we history,
or whether they developed in North Central
are t()ld
by Pliny,
that Theophiast us Europe and gradually spread dow'n into the Balkan peninsula.
writing in .'il.lti.c.
speaks ot' I^ig\stic