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

'
Herod.
WHENCE CAME THE ACHEAX8 ?
1^95
396 WHENCE CAME THE ACHEANS ?
there might not have been a reflux movement of this people
early bodies of Cimbri had passed down to the Alpine regions,
or their descendants back through Switzerland at a later time.
gathering fresh followers as they passed on their course of
Most of the objections taken to Livy's statement are based
rapine, and had then settled in central France, their ranks
upon the assumption that the Celts had come into Europe
would have contained a very large proportion of Alpine tribes,
up the Danube, and that as those Avho invaded Italy in the
who differed in dialect, institutions, and physical characteristics
beginning of the fourth century had all come from the Danube,
from the pure Cimbri from the north. Such a population
so all such invaders must have come from that side also. But
would accordingly differ in all those features from the Belgic
the undisputed facts of the Cimbrian and Teuton invasion of
(Cimbric) tribes of the north-east, who came direct from
llo B.C. show the feasibility of the alternative embodied in
Scandinavia.
Livy's recital.
If it were certain that, as the best Assyriologists hold, the
It has also been urged that there were never enough Celts
Cimmerians are the same people as the Gimiri, who according
in the west to swarm back over the western Alps into Italy or
to the cuneiform inscriptions were in Armenia in the eighth
Germany. But the advocates of this view forget that though
century B.C., we should have evidence that the wanderers from
the genuine Celts would be few, they would be the chiefs of
Jutland had penetrated at that early date into the heart of Asia.
great masses of native population over whom they ruled in
That tribes who had once dwelt in Europe had reached this
Gaul, as did their brethren in later days over the Illyrians
region is proved by the case of the Armenians themselves, who
and '^^I'hracians of the Balkan, and as did the fair-haired Achean
were an oflfshoot from the Phrygians, who had crossed from
families over the aborigines of Thessaly, Argolis and Laconia.
Thrace into Asia*.
Indeed it
might just as well be ui'ged that then- never were
Posidonius was of opinion that the "emigration of the
Frankish crusades because the number (jf
genuine Franks was
Cimbri and other kindred peoples from their native land was
never suffici(3ntly great to supply the vast hordes which set out
gi-adual and occasioned by the inundation of the sea, and by no
for the Holy Land.
means a sudden movement." Yet Strabo- r(>fused to credit the
"
It is also urocd that if Livv's nan-ativc is tiue, we ought
reason assigned for their wandering and robber life that
to find the names of the Bituriges and thcii- allies, such as the
dwelling on a peninsula they w^ere driven out of their homes by
Arveini, in north Italy. Jjut bctwt'eii (iOO n.c. and 225 I?.C.
a very high tide." He adds as the reason for his incredulity
these early settlements of iSitui'iges
and Ai-\'ei-ni
might have
that " they still to this day occupy tlie country which they had
easily been engulfed in the iiiaelst loni ot intertribal sti-ite, and
held in former times." Yet his reason will hardly convince us,
have been nieiged into fr(!sh st'ttlers ti-oiu
Ixyond the Al[)s,
who know that vast tracts of land have fi-om time to time bemi
such as the Insubres and Hoii, whose names are ]ii-esei'\ed
swallowed u]) by the inroads of the Northern Ocean. Any one
because they hapjieiied io he the most })roniiiient at the time
who has stood on the gri^at
sea-wall at the Helder can realize
ot the Ivonian coiniuest.
how large a pai't of Holland might easily be swept away wei'e it
Such a movement would well account foi- the fai-ts that in
not f'oi- that mastei'piece of engineei'ing.
It is remarkable that
"
('aesars time there was a cleai' distinction in languanc,
the Ambrones, who were the allies of the ( 'imbri in their
inst itut ions, and laws" hetweeii the Uelgae and ('eltae ((lalli).
meditated descent on Italy, are said to have left their country
We lia\c shown that the llel'^ic trilx's were Cniihi-i, who had
for the same cause.
nio\('(l diicct ly acioss the IJhine into north-eastern (iaiil.and
who were therefore niole VII. 7-^. 'J'lii-; is
siiii])()itcil
homogeneous, as the\' Wele less mixed
liv tlic most iiiodcrn liiif^'uistic results,
wliicli show tliiit Ariiif'iiiau comes (lo>er to (li-ei-k than to tli(> Iranian trrou]) of
with subject I'aces. ( )ii the other hand, it i^
|)rol)able that if -
iiUii.'iiat:es.
2'.ll.