IV.] NAMES OF THE CONTINENTS. 69

Europe into Asia when she crosses those straits1, and in the
Prometheus Solutes he definitely states that the Phasis is the
boundary8. This curious contradiction, taken in connexion with
Herodotus' mention of the same two opinions, shews how greatly
men's minds fluctuated on the subject.

The names by which these continents came to be designated
seem to have been in use before the continents
themselves were known. This arose from their conSnentt.*118
being first applied to coast lands or limited districts,
while afterwards their application was gradually extended, so as
to include the whole of the area of country that lay behind.
This is clearly seen in the case of Europe, which name first occurs
in the Homeric Hymn to the Pythian Apollo3 in conjunction
with that of Peloponnese, which also is used there for the first
time : and in that passage it is evidently employed of the main-
land of Greece as distinguished from that peninsula and the
islands, and not in any wider acceptation, for the Greek nation is
there divided into " those who dwell in fruitful Peloponnese, and
those who inhabit Europe and the seagirt islands." Both this
appellation and that of Asia came from the East,

Their Origin.

though probably not from Phoenicia, as has been
commonly thought, but from Assyria, where the words a$&
'sunrise* and irib or ereb i darkness J frequently occur in in-
scriptions. They may have been brought to the Aegean by way
of Lydia, the Heracleid kings of which country were according to
their traditions connected with Assyria4. The neighbourhood of
the Aegean must in any case have been the locality in which these
words came to be used with a descriptive significance, to represent

1 Prom. Vinct. 729 foil.:

Xiirowrav aiJXtS^' tKirepfo JS.auariK6v*
......... \nrovffa

Prom. Sol, Fragm. i :

r0 fdv SlSvfJLov

8 1- 73-
4 Kiepert, Lthrbuch d. a. Getgraphie, p. 96.