Some enquiries concerning the first inhabitants, language, religion, learning and letters of Europe / By a member of the Society of Antiquaries in London [i.e. F. Wise].

  • Francis Wise
Date:
1758
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some enquiries concerning the first inhabitants, language, religion, learning and letters of Europe / By a member of the Society of Antiquaries in London [i.e. F. Wise]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    waves impelling one another, and f{preading wider {till as they go. The firft undulation is effaced by a fecond, and that by a third, and fo on; till all at laft fubfiding in a calm, no vifible traces remain of any. . 9 How many fucceiffions of people might. Cimmerians the have paffed in this manner into Europe, Jirft people of it is impoffible to compute. The firft, ra ee that appear upon record, are called by the Greeks (1) Cimmerians, who are faid to have been (2) driven out of their country by an inundation; which to me is one argument of their very great antiquity. For thofe fabulous traditions that convey to us any imperfect notices of the general deluge, fuch as the ftories of Ogyges and Deucalion, feem to belong to the moft early times wherein faéts were remembered. The Cimmerians have left their name in the Bofporus, and town Cimmerium near the Euxine Sea, where probably were their firft habitations in Europe. And from hence The Cimmerians were Scythians. (1) The firft notice of the Cimmerians occurs in Homer Odyff. a. v. 14. who defcribes them as a people living in perpetual darknefs, and in the road to the infernal regions. The firft account of their motions is found in Eufebius Chron. Incurfus in Afiam Amazonum, pariter (S Cimmeriorum. This he places about a hundred years after the Trojan war. Herodotus mentions another irruption into Afia, in the time of Cyaxares and Pfammitichus. But their firft migrations are unknown, and muft have happened many hundreds of years before the oldeft of thefe incurfions. (2) Ort repplynaey oixevres, Méqarn arananwerdd erSew tx F 7e2wy. Strabo Lib. VII. p- 292. Strabo here fpeaks of the inhabitants of the Cimbric Cherfonefe or Jutland, and efteems the account altogether fabulous. But as Ephorus, Po- fidonius, and others before him, thought thefe the fame people with the Cim- merians of the Tauric Cherfonefe; the inundation mentioned was probably an old tradition derived from their anceftors ; fince it can by no means agree: to the Cimbrians.
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