Descriptive Ethnology Author:Robert Gordon Latham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. The Latins or Italians, and the Greeks or Hellenes.—The Germans.—The Kelts.—The Euskaldunac, or Basks. The Italians and Greeks.—Respecting popu... more »lations so well known as the Romans and the Athenians, the Latins and die Hellenes, the Italians and the Greeks, I have little to say in the way of ordinary detail. Their early civilization, and their influence on the world's history, are palpahle and patent. The physical conditions, both in the way of climate and sea-board, under which this civilization was developed, are amongst the earliest teachings in geography. Their southern physiognomy has been, over and over again, contrasted with the blonde complexions and light hair of the Germans ; and their great intellectual aptitudes have been admitted to either accompany, or represent, a fine, and almost faultless, organization. No one asks the descriptive ethnologist for a history of either Rome or Greece. Both Rome and Greece, however, have their ethnologies. In noticing these, I shall limit myself to the three questions which, in the present state of our inquiries, are the most important. These are— I. The relations of the Greek and Latin groups to each other. II. The relations of the division which the two groups constitute to the other families of Europe. chapter{Section 4III. The relation of the modern Greeks and the modern Italians to the ancient. I. The relations of the Greek and Latin groups to each other.—Roughly speaking, this is represented by the relations of the Latin and Greek languages; languages which have long been admitted to constitute branches of the same stock, or sub-sections of the same section, rather than separate classes or separate sections. The exact value of the class thus constituted is another question. The current phraseology ...« less