them, both the inland and the maritime countries. There were some
also who passed over the sea in ships, and inhabited the islands:
and some of those nations do still retain the denominations which
were given them by their first founders; but some have lost them
also, and some have only admitted certain changes in them, that
they might be the more intelligible to the inhabitants. And they
were the Greeks who became the authors of such mutations. For
when in after-ages they grew potent, they claimed to themselves
the glory of antiquity; giving names to the nations that sounded
well (in Greek) that they might be better understood among
themselves; and setting agreeable forms of government over them,
as if they were a people derived from themselves.

CHAPTER 6.

How Every Nation Was Denominated From Their
First Inhabitants.

1. Now they were the grandchildren of Noah, in honor of whom
names were imposed on the nations by those that first seized upon
them. Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so,
that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they
proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tansis, and along
Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands which they
light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the
nations by their own names. For Gomer founded those whom the
Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called
Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named
Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians. Now as to
Javan and Madai, the sons of Japhet; from Madai came the Madeans,