h
latitude and between the 21st and 26th degrees of east longitude. Its
greatest length, from Mount Olympus to Cape Taenarus, may be stated
at 250 English miles; its greatest breadth, from the western coast of
Akarnania to Marathon in Attica, at 180 miles; and the distance eastward
from Ambrakia across Pindus to the Magnesian mountain Homole and the
mouth of the Peneius is about 120 miles. Altogether its area is somewhat
less than that of Portugal." But as to the exact limits of Greece
proper, he points out that these limits seem not to have been very
precisely defined even among the Greeks themselves.

The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging east and
west and commencing with the AEgean Sea or the Gulf of Therma near the
fortieth degree of north latitude, Grote continues, "is prolonged
under the name of Mount Lingon until it touches the Adriatic at the
Akrokeraunian promontory. The country south of this chain comprehended
all that in ancient times was regarded as Greece or Hellas proper,
but it also comprehended something more. Hellas proper (or continuous
Hellas, to use the language of Skylax and Dikaearchus) was understood to
begin with the town and Gulf of Ambrakia : from thence northward to
the Akrokeraunian promontory lay the land called by the Greeks Epirus--
occupied by the Chaonians, Molossians, and Thesprotians, who were termed
Epirots and were not esteemed to belong to the Hellenic aggregate."

Beside this survey of Hellas proper or continuous Hellas, as Grote
presented it, he set the word-map of Italy that Gibbon draws--Italy
changing its face under the Roman civilization: "Before the Roman
conquest, the country which is now called Lombardy was not considered
as a part of Italy. It had been occupied by a powerful colony of Gauls,
who, settling themselves along the banks of the Po, from Piedmont to
Romagna, carried their arms and diffused their name from the Alps to the
Apennine. The Ligurians dwelt on the rocky coast, which now forms the
republic of Genoa. Venice was yet unborn; but the territories of
that state, which lie to the east of the Adige, were habited by the
Venetians. The middle part of the peninsula, that now composes the duchy
of Tuscany and the ecclesiastical state, was the ancient seat of the
Etruscans and Umbrians; to the former of whom Italy was indebted for the
first rudiments of a civilized life. The Tiber rolled at the foot of the
seven hills of Rome, and the country