366 On the Early Kings of Attica, ponnesus to the junction of the bay of Corinth with the sea that washes Italy and Sicily is attested by the name ovlo^ which this sea bore, and of which all the other etymologies are manifest fictions. The Cynurians on the Eastern side of the Peloponnesus were an Ionian people, and except the Arcadians, says Herodotus, 8. 73, and the Achceans, the only autochthones in it. In his time the Cynurians were com- pletely detached from their kinsmen and had become Dorian, but probably in older times the lonians had extended them- selves from the Corinthian gulph as low down as Cynuria^^ The Acte or coast of Argolis opposite to Attica (Miiller Dorier i. p. 81.) was Ionian, and as the Ionian Tetrapohs which Xutlius is said to have colonized, (Strabo i. p. 555 Oxf.) included Marathon on the coast opposite to Euboea, and lonians were found also in the Southern part of Euboea itself, except Carystus, (Thuc. 7? 57) we may regard the whole intervening space as included in the ancient limits of Ionia. The southern part of Attica was that to which the name 'Attlkvi properly belonged, for this word seems formed from A/CTJ7, and according to the observation of Niebuhr (Geogr. of Her. p. 23.) it is to such a promontory as this that the name 'Aktyj specifically applies. Hence 'Aktolo^s and 'AKTaL(Dv in the Attic mythi. The southern part of Boeotia was also Ionian ^^. The lonians thus occupied a long line of seacoast, and when we consider how very slight a change would make 2^ I am inclined to think that the Pylians on the western coast were also lonians. Apollodorus says that Pylas king of Megara founded Pylus in the Peloponnesus. This is evidently designed to make the Pylians, who imder Neleus joined in the migration which followed the Dorian conquest, of Ionian origin ; hut the real con- nexion was probably older. Neptune was the chief divinity of the Pylians ; Neleus is his son. Od. 253; indeed Nestor himself (z/eco, Neo-Tos) appears to me to be nothing else than a marine god, m lapse of time converted into a king and hero, yet retaining in his epic character the features of divinity, but relaxed and softened to the human aspect. Compare Hesiod's description of Nereus with the Homeric Nestor: l>ii]p6a S' djfev8ea Kal aXi]Qea yeivaTO IIoWos npeorfSvTan-ou Traiowv' avTap KaXeovcri yepovTa, OvueKa V7]iui€pW}'s n-e Kal iJTTLo^y ov8g de/ULLa-nScov Arj06Tat, dWd SiKaLa Kal rjiTLa dtjvea o'iScu. Th. 233. Herodotus calls the Pylians Cauconians, as he calls the lonians iEgiaiean Pelasgians. I. 147. 25 Hesych. 'IwVes. €vlol Kal n-ov^ QpaKa^ 'A^ataus Kal Bolwtou's, The Thra- cians here mentioned must be those of Boeotia.
