THE GRECIAN CITIES.
Greece was first colonized by the Phœnicians and Egyptians— the descendants of the Ethiopians. It was during the lath dynasty of Egyptian kings, that the first colonization of Greece took place.
The aborigines of Greece, denominated Pelasgi, Heantes, &c. were extremely barbarous. They wandered in woods, without law or government, having but little intercourse with each other. They clothed themselves with skins of beasts; retreated for shelter to rocks and caverns; and lived on acorns, wild fruits, raw flesh, and even devoured the enemies they slew in battle. [Rollin.]
Argos. The arrival of Inachus in Greece from Phœnicia, is connected with the foundation of the kingdom of Argos. This event took place B.C. 1857. Money was first made of gold and silver at Argos, B.C. 891. Inachus is called the son of the Ocean, because he came to Greece by sea. By some he is said to have been the last of the Titans, a Phœnician colony who gave the Greeks the first notions of religion and civilization, and introduced the worship of their own gods, Saturn, Jupiter, Ceres, &.c. &c.
The Phœnicians, the Canaanites in scripture, were a commercial people in the days of Abraham. In the time of the Hebrew judges, they had begun to colonize. Their first settlements were Cyprus and Rhodes; thence they passed over and peopled Greece, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, and framed likewise establishments on the western coast of Africa.
The city of Athens. (Acts xvii. 15.) The capital of Attica in Greece, situated on the Saronic Gulf, forty-six miles east of Corinth, three hundred south-west of Constantinople, and five miles from the coast.
The foundation of Athens by Anthony, or Cecrops, Egyptians, who conducted thither a colony from the Nile, is dated B.C. 1556. This event had an important connection with the subsequent refinement and literary distinction of Greece. Cecrops, after fixing down in Attica, attempted to civilize the wild and barbarous natives of that region. Constructing twelve small villages, which were afterwards connected with Athens he
