At dawn he fell upon the Ambraciots while they were still abed, ignorant of what had passed, and fully thinking that it was their own countrymen,— Demosthenes having purposely put the Messenians in front with orders to address them in the Doric dialect, and thus to inspire confidence in the sentinels, who would not be able to see them, as it was still night.
Himera was founded from Zancle by Euclides, Simus, and Sacon, most of those who went to the colony being Chalcidians; though they were joined by some exiles from Syracuse, defeated in a civil war, called the Myletidae. The language was a mixture of Chalcidian and Doric, but the institutions which prevailed were the Chalcidian.
There are many Greek tribes, but the chief people are equal in number to the Greek dialects with which we are acquainted, namely, four. Of these, the Ionic is the same as the ancient Attic; (for Iones was the former name of the inhabitants of Attica; from thence came the Iones who settled in Asia, and use the dialect now called Ionic;) the Doric was the same as the Æolic dialect, for all the people on the other side of the isthmus except the Athenians, the Megareans, and the Dorians about Parnassus, are even now called Æolians; it is probable that the Dorians, from their being a small nation, and occupying a most rugged country, and from want of intercourse [with the Æolians], no longer resemble that people either in language or customs, and, although of the same race, have lost all appearance of affinity.
It is said that Asine as well as Hermione was inhabited by Dryopes; either Dryops the Arcadian having transferred them thither from the places near the Spercheius, according to Aristotle; or, Hercules expelled them from Doris near Parnassus.
But the wanderings of the Messenians outside the Peloponnese lasted almost three hundred years, during which it is clear that they did not depart in any way from their local customs, and did not lose their Doric dialect, but even to our day they have retained the purest Doric in Peloponnese.
T u r r ē n í a , khṓra pròs tôi Adríāi, apò Turrhēnoû. ésti kaì T u r r ē n í a pólis, hḕ légetai kaì T u r r ē n ḗ . kaì Turrhēnoí hoi polîtai. kaì Tursēnḕ thálassa kaì Tursēnís. kaì ktētikòn Tursēnikós kaì Tursēnikḗ kaì Tursēnikón. légontai kaì Turrhēnoí hoi Adriâtai, apò Turrhēnoû … katà Dōrída diálekton, aph’ hoû katà aphaíresin kaì grámmatos prosthései túrannos eklḗthē.