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τὸ Ἑλληνικόν. This noble assertion of Hellenic nationality may be unhistorical, but it is in harmony with the spirit of the struggle against the Mede. As Myres points out (Anthropology and the Classics, p. 134), ‘H. here first gives us a reasoned scheme of ethnological criteria.’ ‘Common descent, common language, common religion, and common culture, these are the four things that make a nation one, and conversely the things which, if unconformable, hold nations apart.’ He further thinks that H. gives the four criteria in what he regards as the order of their relative importance, and contrasts the somewhat similar order, laying stress first on physical characteristics, adopted by H. (iv. 23) in describing the Argippaei, with that of Aeschylus in the Supplices (234 f.).

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