LEGENDARY GREECE
CHAPTER XVIII
.
CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE.
PERIOD OF
INTERMEDIATE DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORICAL GREECE.
SECTION I.
RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS INTO PELOPONNESUS.
IN one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the
descending series of the two most distinguished mythical families in Peloponnesus,—the
Perseids and the Pelopids: we have followed the
former down to Heracles and his son Hyllus, and the latter down to Orestes son
of Agamemnon, who is left in possession of that ascendancy in the peninsula
which had procured for his father the chief command in the Trojan war. The Herakleids, or sons of Heracles, on the other hand, are
expelled fugitives, dependent upon foreign aid or protection: Hyllus had
perished in single combat with Echemus of Tegea,
(connected with the Pelopids by marriage with
Timandra sister of Clytemnestra,) and a solemn compact had been made, as the
preliminary condition of this duel, that no similar attempt at an invasion of
the peninsula should be undertaken by his family for the space of one hundred
years. At the end of the stipulated period the attempt was renewed, and with
complete success; but its success was owing, not so much to the valor of the
invaders as to a powerful body of new allies. The Herakleids reappear as leaders and companions of the Dorians,— a northerly section of the
Greek name, who now first come into importance,—poor, indeed, in mythical
renown, since they are never noticed in the Iliad, and only once casually
mentioned in the Odyssey, as a fraction among the many-tongued inhabitants of
Crete,—but destined to form one of the grand and predominant elements
throughout all the career of historical Hellas.
Kleodeus—as
well as his grandson Aristomachus, were now dead, and
the lineage of Heracles was represented by the three sons of the latter,—Temenus, Kresphontes, and Aristodemus, and under their conduct
the Dorians penetrated into the peninsula. The mythical account traced back
this intimate union between the Herakleids and the
Dorians to a prior war, in which Heracles himself had rendered inestimable aid
to the Dorian king Egimius, when the latter was hard
pressed in a contest with the Lapithae. Heracles
defeated the Lapithae, and slew their king Koronus; in return for which Egimius assigned to his deliverer one third part of his whole territory, and adopted
Hyllus as his son. Heracles desired that the territory thus made over might be
held in reserve until a time should come when his descendants might stand in
need of it; and that time did come, after the death of Hyllus. Some of the Herakleids then found shelter at Trikorythus in Attica, but the remainder, turning their steps towards Egimius,
solicited from him the allotment of land which had been promised to their
valiant progenitor. Egimius received them according
to his engagement, and assigned to them the stipulated third portion of his
territory and from this moment the Herakleids and
Dorians became intimately united together into one social communion. Pamphylus and Dymas, sons of Egimius, accompanied Temenus and his two brothers in their
invasion of Peloponnesus.
Such is the mythical incident which professes to
explain the origin of those three tribes into which all the Dorian communities
were usually divided,—the Hylleis, the Phamphyli, and the Dymanes,—the
first of the three including certain particular families, such as that of the
kings of Sparta, who bore the special name of Herakleids.
Hyllus, Pamphylus, and Dymas are the eponymous heroes of the three Dorian tribes.
DORIAN INVASION OF PELOPONNESUS.
Temenus and his two brothers resolved to attack
Peloponnesus, not by a land-march along the Isthmus, such as that in which
Hyllus had been previously slain, but by sea, across the narrow inlet between
the promontories of Rhium and Antirrhium,
with which the Gulf of Corinth commences. According to one story,
indeed,—which, however, does not seem to have been known to Herodotus,—they are
said to have selected this line of march by the express direction of the
Delphian god, who vouchsafed to expound to them an oracle which had been
delivered to Hyllus in the ordinary equivocal phraseology. Both the Ozolian Lokrians, and the Etolians, inhabitants of the northern coast of the Gulf of
Corinth, were favorable to the enterprise, and the former granted to them a
port for building their ships, from which memorable circumstance the port ever
afterwards bore the name of Naupaktus. Aristodemus
was here struck with lightning and died, leaving twin sons, Eurysthenes and Prokles; but his remaining brothers continued to press the
expedition with alacrity.
At this juncture, an Acarnanians prophet named Carnus
presented himself in the camps under the inspiration of Apollo, and uttered
various predictions: he was, however, so much suspected of treacherous
collusion with the Peloponnesians, that Hippotes,
great-grandson of Heracles through Phylas and
Antiochus, slew him. His death drew upon the army the wrath of Apollo, who
destroyed their vessels and punished them with famine. Temenus, in his distress,
again applying to the Delphian god for succor and counsel, was made acquainted
with the cause of so much suffering, and was directed to banish Hippotes for ten years, to offer expiatory sacrifice for
the death of Carnus, and to seek as the guide of the army a man with three
eyes. On coming back to Naupaktus, he met the Etolian Oxyltis, son of
Andraemon, returning to his country, after a temporary exile in Elis, incurred
for homicide: Oxylus had lost one eye, but as he was
seated on a horse, the man and the horse together made up the three eyes
required, and he was adopted as the guide prescribed by the oracle. Conducted
by him, they refitted their ships, landed on the opposite coast of Achaia, and
marched to attack Tisamenus, son of Orestes, then the
great potentate of the peninsula. A decisive battle was fought, in which the
latter was vanquished and slain, and in which Pamphylus and Dymas also perished. This battle made the Dorians
so completely masters of the Peloponnesus, that they proceeded to distribute
the territory among themselves. The fertile land of Elis had been by previous
stipulation reserved for Oxylus, as a recompense for
his services as conductor: and it was agreed that the three Herakleids,—Temenus, Kresphontes, and the infant sons of Aristodemus,—should
draw lots for Argos, Sparta, and Messene. Argos fell to Temenus, Sparta to the
sons of Aristodemus, and Messene to Kresphontes; the
latter having secured for himself this prize, the most fertile territory of the
three, by the fraud of putting into the vessel out of which the lots were
drawn, a lump of clay instead of a stone, whereby the lots of his brothers were
drawn out while his own remained inside. Solemn sacrifices were offered by each
upon this partition: but as they proceeded to the ceremony, a miraculous sign
was seen upon the altar of each of the brothers,—a toad corresponding to Argos,
a serpent to Sparta, and a fox to Messene. The prophets, on being consulted,
delivered the import of these mysterious indications: the toad, as an animal
slow and stationary, was an evidence that the possessor of Argos would not
succeed in enterprises beyond the limits of his own city; the serpent denoted
the aggressive and formidable future reserved to Sparta; the fox prognosticated
a career of wile and deceit to the Messenian.
MYTHICAL BEARING OF THE STORY
Such is the brief account given by Apollodorus of the
Return of the Herakleids, at which point we pass, as
if touched by the wand of a magician, from mythical to historical Greece. The
story bears on the face of it the stamp, not of history, but of legend,—
abridged from one or more of the genealogical poets, and presenting such an
account as they thought satisfactory, of the first formation of the great
Dorian establishments in Peloponnesus, as well as of the semi-Aetolian Elis.
Its incidents are so conceived as to have an explanatory bearing on Dorian
institutions,—upon the triple division of tribes, characteristic of the
Dorians,—upon the origin of the great festival of the Karneia at Sparta, alleged to be celebrated in expiation of the murder of Carnus,—upon
the different temper and character of the Dorian states among themselves,—upon
the early alliance of the Dorians with Elis, which contributed to give
ascendency and vogue to the Olympic games,—upon the reverential dependence of
Dorians towards the Delphian oracle,—and, lastly, upon the etymology of the
name Naupaktus. If we possessed the narrative more in
detail, we should probably find many more examples of coloring of the legendary
past suitable to the circumstances of the historical present.
Above all, this legend makes out in favor of the
Dorians and their kings a mythical title to their Peloponnesian establishments;
Argos, Sparta, and Messene are presented as rightfully belonging, and restored
by just retribution, to the children of Heracles. It was to them that Zeus had
especially given the territory of Sparta; the Dorians came in as their subjects
and auxiliaries. Plato gives a very different version of the legend, but we
find that he, too, turns the story in such a manner as to embody a claim of
right on the part of the conquerors. According to him, the Achaeans, who
returned from the capture of Troy, found among their fellow-citizens at
home—the race which had grown up during their absence—an aversion to readmit
them: after a fruitless endeavor to make good their rights, they were at last
expelled, but not without much contest and bloodshed. A leader named Dorieus,
collected all these exiles into one body, and from him they received the name
of Dorians instead of Achaeans; then marching back, under the conduct of the Herakleids into Peloponnesus, they recovered by force the
possessions from which they had been shut out, and constituted the three Dorian
establishments under the separate Herakleid brothers,
at Argos, Sparta, and Messene. These three fraternal dynasties were founded
upon a scheme of intimate union and sworn alliance one with the other, for the
purpose of resisting any attack which might be made upon them from Asia, either
by the remaining Trojans or by their allies. Such is the story as Plato
believed it; materially different in the incidents related, yet analogous in
mythical feeling, and embodying alike the idea of a rightful reconquest.
Moreover, the two accounts agree in representing both the entire conquest and
the triple division of Dorian Peloponnesus as begun and completed in one and
the same enterprise,—so as to constitute one single event, which Plato would
probably have called the Return of the Achaeans, but which was commonly known
as the Return of the Herakleids. Though this is both
inadmissible and inconsistent with other statements which approach close to the
historical times, yet it bears every mark of being the primitive view
originally presented by the genealogical poets: the broad way in which the
incidents are grouped together, was at once easy for the imagination to follow,
and impressive to the feelings.
The existence of one legendary account must never be
understood as excluding the probability of other accounts, current at the same
time, but inconsistent with it: and many such there were as to the first
establishment of the Peloponnesian Dorians. In the narrative which I have given
from Apollodorus, conceived apparently under the influence of Dorian feelings, Tisamenus is stated to have been slain in the invasion. But
according to another narrative, which seems to have found favor with the
historical Achaeans on the north coast of Peloponnesus, Tisamenus,
though expelled by the invaders from his kingdom of Sparta or Argos, was not
slain: he was allowed to retire under agreement, together with a certain
portion of his subjects, and he directed his steps towards the coast of
Peloponnesus south of the Corinthian Gulf, then occupied by the Ionians. As there
were relations, not only of friendship, but of kindred origin, between Ionians
and Achaeans, (the eponymous heroes Ion and Achaeus pass for brothers, both
sons of Xuthus), Tisamenus solicited from the Ionians
admission for himself and his fellow-fugitives into their territory. The
leading Ionians declining this request, under the apprehension that Tisamenus might be chosen as sovereign over the whole, the
latter accomplished his object by force. After a vehement struggle, the Ionians
were vanquished and put to flight, and Tisamenus thus
acquired possession of Helike, as well as of the
northern coast of the peninsula, westward from Sicyon; which coast continued to
be occupied by the Achaeans, and received its name from them, throughout all
the historical times. The Ionians retired to Attica, many of them taking part
in what is called the Ionic emigration to the coast of Asia Minor, which
followed shortly after. Pausanias, indeed, tells us that Tisamenus,
having gained a decisive victory over the Ionians, fell in the engagement, and
did not himself live to occupy the country of which his troops remained
masters. But this story of the death of Tisamenus seems to arise from a desire, on the part of Pausanias, to blend together into
one narrative two discrepant legends; at least the historical Achaeans in later
times continued to regard Tisamenus himself as having
lived and reigned in their territory, and as having left a regal dynasty which
lasted down to Ogyges, after whom it was exchanged
for a popular government.
The conquest of Temenus, the eldest of the three Herakleids, originally comprehended only Argos and its
neighborhood; it was from thence that Troezen,
Epidaurus, Egina, Sikyon, and Phlius were successfully occupied by Dorians, the sons and son-in-law of Temenus—Deiphontes, Phalkes, and Keisus—being the leaders under whom this was accomplished.
At Sparta, the success of the Dorians was furthered by the treason of a man
named Philonomus, who received as recompense the
neighboring town and territory of Amyklae. Messenia
is said to have submitted without resistance to the dominion of the Herakleid Kresphontes, who
established his residence at Stenyklarus: the Pylian Melanthus, then ruler of
the country, and representative of the great mythical lineage of Neleus and
Nestor, withdrew with his household gods and with a portion of his subjects to
Attica.
OXYLUS AND THE ETOLIANS IN ELIS
The only Dorian establishment in the peninsula not
directly connected with the triple partition is Corinth, which is said to have
been Dorized somewhat later and under another leader, though still a Herakleid. Hippotes—descendant of
Heracles in the fourth generation, but not through Hyllus,—had been guilty (as
already mentioned) of the murder of Karnus the
prophet at the camp of Naupaktus, for which he had
been banished and remained in exile for ten years; his son deriving the name of Aletes from the long wanderings endured by the
father. At the head of a body of Dorians, Aletes attacked Corinth: he pitched his camp on the Solygeian eminence near the city, and harassed the inhabitants with constant warfare
until he compelled them to surrender. Even in the time of the Peloponnesian
war, the Corinthians professed to identify the hill on which the camp of these
assailants had been placed. The great mythical dynasty of the Sisyphids was expelled, and Aletes became ruler and Ekist of the Dorian city; many of
the inhabitants, however, Eolic or Ionic, departed.
The settlement of Oxylus and
his Etolians in Elis is said by some to have been accomplished
with very little opposition; the leader professing himself to be descended from Etolus, who had been in a previous age banished from
Elis into Etelia, and the two people, Epeians and Etolians,
acknowledging a kindred origin one with the other. At first, indeed, according
to Ephorus, the Epeians appeared in arms, determined
to repel the intruders, but at length it was agreed on both sides to abide the
issue of a single combat. Degmenus, the champion of
the Epeians, confided in the long shot of his bow and
arrow; but the Etolian Pyraichmes came provided with his sling,—a weapon then unknown and recently invented by
the Etolians,—the range of which was yet longer than
that of the bow of his enemy: he thus killed Degmenus,
and secured the victory to Oxylus and his followers.
According to one statement, the Epeians were
expelled; according to another, they fraternized amicably with the new-comers:
whatever may be the truth as to this matter, it is certain that their name is
from this moment lost, and that they never reappear among the historical
elements of Greece: we hear from this time forward only of Eleians, said to be
of Etolian descent.
One most important privilege was connected with the
possession of the Eleian territory by Oxylus, coupled
with his claim on the gratitude of the Dorian kings. The Eleians acquired the
administration of the temple at Olympia, which the Achaeans are said to have
possessed before them; and in consideration of this sacred function, which
subsequently ripened into the celebration of the great Olympic games, their
territory was solemnly pronounced to be inviolable. Such was the statement of
Ephorus: we find, in this case as in so many others, that the Return of the Herakleids is made to supply a legendary basis for the historical
state of things in Peloponnesus.
ACHAEAN LEGENDS ADOPTED DY THE DORIANS
It was the practice of the great Attic tragedians,
with rare exceptions, to select the subjects of their composition from the
heroic or legendary world, and Euripides had composed three dramas, now lost,
on the adventures of Temenus with his daughter Hyrnetho and his son-in-law Deiphontes,—on the family
misfortunes of Kresphontes and Merope,—and on the
successful valor of Archelaus the son of Temenus in Macedonia, where he was
alleged to have first begun the dynasty of the Temenid kings. Of these subjects the first and second were eminently tragical, and the
third, relating to Archelaus, appears to have been undertaken by Euripides in
compliment to his contemporary sovereign and patron, Archelaus king of
Macedonia: we are even told that those exploits which the usual version of the
legend ascribed to Temenus, were reported in the drama of Euripides to have
been performed by Archelaus his son. Of all the heroes, touched upon by the
three Attic tragedians, these Dorian Herakleids stand
lowest in the descending genealogical series—one mark amongst others that we
are approaching the ground of genuine history.
Though the name Achaeans, as denoting a people, is
henceforward confined to the North-Peloponnesian territory specially called
Achaia, and to the inhabitants of Achaea, Phthiotis,
north of Mount Eta,—and though the great Peloponnesian states always seem to
have prided themselves on the title of Dorians—yet we find the kings of Sparta,
ever in the historical age taking pains to appropriate to themselves the
mythical glories of the Achaeans, and to set themselves forth as the
representatives of Agamemnon and Orestes. The Spartan king Kleomenes even went
so far as to disavow formally any Dorian parentage; for when the priestess at
Athens refused to permit him to sacrifice in the temple of Athene, on the plea
that it was peremptorily closed to all Dorians, he replied: "I am no
Dorian, but an Achaean." Not only did the Spartan envoy, before Gelon of
Syracuse, connect the indefeasible title of his country to the supreme command
of the Grecian military force, with the ancient name and lofty prerogatives of
Agamemnon—but, in farther pursuance of the same feeling, the Spartans are said
to have carried to Sparta both the bones of Orestes from Tegea, and those of Tisamenus from Helike, at the
injunction of the Delphian oracle. There is also a story that Oxylus in Elis was directed by the same oracle to invite
into his country an Achaean, as Ekist conjointly with
himself; and that he called in Agorius, the
great-grandson of Orestes, from Helike, with a small
number of Achaeans who joined him. The Dorians themselves, being singularly
poor in native legends, endeavored, not unnaturally, to decorate themselves
with those legendary ornaments which the Achaeans possessed in abundance.
As a consequence of the Dorian establishments in
Peloponnesus, several migrations of the preexisting inhabitants are represented
as taking place:
1. The Epeians of Elis are
either expelled, or merged in the new-comers under Oxylus,
and lose their separate name.
2. The Pylians, together
with the great heroic family of Neleus and his son Nester, who preside over
them, give place to the Dorian establishment of Messenia, and retire to Athens,
where their leader, Melanthus, becomes king: a large
portion of them take part in the subsequent Ionic emigration.
3. A portion of the Achaeans, under Penthilus and other descendants of Orestes, leave
Peloponnesus, and form what is called the Eolic emigration, to Lesbos, the Troad, and the Gulf of Adramyttium: the name Eolians, unknown to Homer, and seemingly never applied to
any separate tribe at all, being introduced to designate a large section of the
Hellenic name, partly in Greece Proper, and partly in Asia.
4. Another portion of Achaeans expel the Ionians from
Achaia, properly so called, in the north of Peloponnesus; the Ionians retiring
to Attica.
The Homeric poems describe Achaeans, Pylians, and Epeians, in
Peloponnesus, but take no notice of Ionians in the northern district of Achaia:
on the contrary, the Catalogue in the Iliad distinctly includes this territory
under the dominions of Agamemnon. Though the Catalogue of Homer is not to be
regarded as an historical document, fit to be called as evidence for the actual
state of Peloponnesus at any prior time, it certainly seems a better authority
than the statements advanced by Herodotus and others respecting the occupation
of northern Peloponnesus by the Ionians, and their expulsion from it by Tisamenus. In so far as the Catalogue is to be trusted, it
negatives the idea of Ionians at Helike, and
countenances what seems in itself a more natural supposition—that the
historical Achaeans in the north part of Peloponnesus are a small undisturbed
remnant of the powerful Achaean population once distributed throughout the
peninsula, until it was broken up and partially expelled by the Dorians.
The Homeric legends; unquestionably the oldest which
we possess, are adapted to a population of Achaeans, Danaeans,
and Argeians, seemingly without any special and
recognized names, either aggregate or divisional, other than the name of each
separate tribe or kingdom. The post-Homeric legends are adapted to a population
classified quite differently—Hellens, distributed into Dorians, Ionians, and
Aeolians. If we knew more of the time and circumstances in which these
different legends grew up, we should probably be able to explain their
discrepancy; but in our present ignorance we can only note the fact.
Whatever difficulty modern criticism may find in
regard to the event called “The Return of the Herakleids”,
no doubt is expressed about it even by the best historians of antiquity.
Thucydides accepts it as a single and literal event, having its assignable
date, and carrying at one blow the acquisition of Peloponnesus. The date of it
he fixes as eighty years after the capture of Troy. Whether he was the original
determiner of this epoch, or copied it from some previous author, we do not
know. It must have been fixed according to some computation of generations, for
there were no other means accessible—probably by means of the lineage of the Herakleids, which, as belonging to the kings of Sparta,
constituted the most public and conspicuous thread of connection between the
Grecian real and mythical world, and measured the interval between the Siege of
Troy itself and the first recorded Olympiad. Heracles himself represents the
generation before the siege, and his son Tlepolemus fights in the besieging army. If we suppose the first generation after Heracles
to commence with the beginning of the siege, the fourth generation after him
will coincide with the ninetieth year after the same epoch; and therefore,
deducting ten years for the duration of the struggle, it will coincide with the
eightieth year after the capture of the city; thirty years being reckoned for a
generation. The date assigned by Thucydides will thus agree with the distance
in which Temenus, Kresphontes, and Aristodemus, stand
removed from Heracles. The interval of eighty years, between the capture of
Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, appears to
have been admitted by Apollodorus and Eratosthenes, and some other professed
chronologists of antiquity: but there were different reckonings which also
found more or less of support.
SECTION II.
MIGRATION OF THESSALIANS AND BEOTIANS.
In the same passage in which Thucydides speaks of the
Return of the Herakleids, he also marks out the date
of another event a little antecedent, which is alleged to have powerfully
affected the condition of Northern Greece. “Sixty years after the capture of
Troy (he tells us) the Boeotians were driven by the Thessalians from Arne, and
migrated into the land then called Kadmeis, but now
Boeotia, wherein there had previously dwelt a section of their race, who had
contributed the contingent to the Trojan war”."
The expulsion here mentioned, of the Boeotians from
Arne “by the Thessalians”, has been construed, with probability, to allude to
the immigration of the Thessalians, properly so called, from the Thesprotid in Epirus into Thessaly. That the Thessalians
had migrated into Thessaly from the Thesprotid territory, is stated by Herodotus, though he says nothing about time or
circumstances. Antiphus and Pheidippus appear in the Homeric Catalogue as commanders of the Grecian contingent from
the islands of Kos and Karpathus, on the south-east
coast of Asia Minor: they are sons of Thessalus, who
is himself the son of Heracles. A legend ran that these two chiefs, in the
dispersion which ensued after the victory, had been driven by storms into the
Ionian Gulf, and cast upon the coast of Epirus, where they landed and settled
at Ephyre in the Thesprotid.
It was Thessalus, grandson of Pheidippus,
who was reported to have conducted the Thesprotians across the passes of Pindus into Thessaly, to have conquered the fertile
central plain of that country, and to have imposed upon it his own name instead
of its previous denomination Aeolis.
Whatever we may think of this legend as it stands, the
state of Thessaly during the historical ages renders it highly probable that
the Thessalians, properly so called, were a body of immigrant conquerors. They
appear always as a rude, warlike, violent, and uncivilized race, distinct from
their neighbors the Achaeans, the Magnetes, and the
Perrhaebians, and holding all the three in tributary dependence: these three
tribes stand to them in a relation analogous to that of the Lacedoemonian Perioeki towards Sparta, while the Penestae, who cultivated their lands, are almost an exact
parallel of the Helots. Moreover, the low level of taste and intelligence among
the Thessalians, as well as certain points of their costume, assimilates them
more to Macedonians or Epirots than to Hellens. Their
position in Thessaly is in many respects analogous to that of the Spartan
Dorians in Peloponnesus, and there seems good reason for concluding that the
former, as well as the latter, were originally victorious invaders, though we
cannot pretend to determine the time at which the invasion took place. The
great family of the Aleuads, and probably other
Thessalian families besides, were descendants of Heracles, like the kings of
Sparta.
There are no similar historical grounds, in the case
of the alleged migration of the Boeotians from Thessaly to Boeotia, to justify
a belief in the main fact of the legend, nor were the different legendary
stories in harmony one with the other. While the Homeric Epic recognizes the
Boeotians in Boeotia, but not in Thessaly, Thucydides records a statement which
he had found of their migration from the latter into the former; but in order
to escape the necessity of flatly contradicting Homer, he inserts the
parenthesis that there had been previously an outlying fraction of Boeotians in
Boeotia at the time of the Trojan war, from whom the troops who served with
Agamemnon were drawn. Nevertheless, the discrepancy with the Iliad, though less
strikingly obvious, is not removed, inasmuch as the Catalogue is unusually
copious in enumerating the contingents from Thessaly, without once mentioning
Boeotian. Homer distinguishes Orchomenus from Boeotia, and be does not
specially notice Thebes in the Catalogue: in other respects his enumeration of
the towns coincides pretty well with the ground historically known afterwards
under the name of Boeotia.
Pausanias gives us a short sketch of the events which
he supposes to have intervened in this section of Greece between the Siege of
Troy and the Return of the Herakleids. Peneleos, the leader of the Boeotians at the siege, having
been slain by Eurypylus the son of Telephus, Tisamenus, son of Thersander and grandson of Polynikes, acted as their commander, both during the
remainder of the siege and after their return. Autesion,
his son and successor, became subject to the wrath of the avenging Erinnyes of Laius and Edipus: the
oracle directed him to expatriate, and he joined the Dorians. In his place, Damasichthon, son of Opheltas and
grandson of Peneleos, became king of the Boeotians:
he was succeeded by Ptolemnus, who was himself followed by Xanthus. A war
having broken out at that time between the Athenians and Boeotians, Xanthus
engaged in single combat with Melanthus son of Andropompus, the champion of Attica, and perished by the
cunning of his opponent. After the death of Xanthus, the Boeotians passed from
kingship to popular government. As Melanthus was of
the lineage of the Neleids, and had migrated from Pylus to Athens in consequence of the successful
establishment of the Dorians in Messenia, the duel with Xanthus must have been
of course subsequent to the Return of the Herakleids.
MIGRATION OF BOEOTIANS FROM THESSALY.
Here, then, we have a summary of alleged Boeotian
history between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids,
in which no mention is made of the immigration of the mass of Boeotians from
Thessaly, and seemingly no possibility left of fitting in so great and capital
an incident. The legends followed by Pausanias are at variance with those
adopted by Thucydides, but they harmonize much better with Homer.
So deservedly high is the authority of Thucydides,
that the migration here distinctly announced by him is commonly set down as an
ascertained datum, historically as well as chronologically. But on this
occasion it can be shown that he only followed one amongst a variety of
discrepant legends, none of which there were any means of verifying.
Pausanias recognized a migration of the Boeotians from
Thessaly, in early times anterior to the Trojan war; and the account of
Ephorus, as given by Strabo, professed to record a series of changes in the
occupants of the country. First, the non-Hellenic Aones and Temmikes, Leleges and Hyantes; next, the Kadmeians,
who, after the second siege of Thebes by the Epigoni, were expelled by the
Thracians and Pelasgians, and retired into Thessaly, where they joined in
communion with the inhabitants of Arne— the whole aggregate being called
Boeotians. After the Trojan war, and about the time of the Eolic emigration,
these Boeotians returned from Thessaly and reconquered Boeotia, driving out the
Thracians and Pelasgians—the former retiring to Parnassus, the latter to
Attica. It was on this occasion (he says) that the Minyae of Orchomenus were subdued, and forcibly incorporated with the Boeotians.
Ephorus seems to have followed, in the main, the same narrative as Thucydides,
about the movement of the Boeotians out of Thessaly; coupling it, however, with
several details current as explanatory of proverbs and customs.
The only fact which we make out, independent of these
legends, is, that there existed certain homonymies and certain affinities of
religious worship, between parts of Boeotia and parts of Thessaly, which appear
to indicate a kindred race. A town named Arne, similar in name to the
Thessalian, was enumerated in the Boeotian Catalogue of Homer, and antiquaries
identified it sometimes with the historical town Charroneia,
sometimes with Akraephium. Moreover, there was near
the Boeotian Koroneia a river named Kuarius, or Koralius, and a
venerable temple dedicated to the Itonian Athene, in
the sacred ground of which the Pambeotia, or public
council of the Boeotian name, was held; there was also a temple and a river of
similar denomination in Thessaly, near to a town called Iton,
or Itonus. We may from these circumstances presume a
certain ancient kindred between the population of these regions, and such a
circumstance is sufficient to explain the generation of legends describing
migrations backward and forward, whether true or not in point of fact.
What is most important to remark is, that the stories
of Thucydides and Ephorus bring us out of the mythical into the historical
Boeotia. Orchomenus is Boeotized, and we hear no more
of the once-powerful Minyae: there are no more Kadmeians at Thebes, nor Beotians in Thessaly. The Minyaa and the Kadmeians disappear in the Ionic emigration, which will be presently adverted to.
Historical Beotia is now constituted, apparently in
its federative league, under the presidency of Thebes, just as we find it in
the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
SECTION III
EMIGRATIONS FROM GREECE TO ASIA AND THE ISLANDS OF THE
AEGEAN.
To complete the transition of Greece from its mythical
to its historical condition, the secession of the races belonging to the former
must follow upon the introduction of those belonging to the latter. This is
accomplished by means of the Eolic and Ionic migrations.
The presiding chiefs of the Aeolic emigration are the
representatives of the heroic lineage of the Pelopids:
those of the Ionic emigration belong to the Neleids;
and even in what is called the Doric emigration to Thera, the Ekist Theras is not a Dorian but
a Kadmeian, the legitimate descendant of Edipus and Kadmus.
The Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonies were planted
along the western coast of Asia Minor, from the coasts of the Propontis southward down to Lycia (I shall in a future
chapter speak more exactly of their boundaries); the Eolic occupying the
northern portion, together with the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos; the Doric
occupying the southernmost, together with the neighboring islands of Rhodes and
Kos; and the Ionic being planted between them, comprehending Chios, Samos, and
the Cyclades islands.
1. AEOLIC EMIGRATION.
The Aeolic emigration was conducted by the Pelopids: the original story seems to have been, that
Orestes himself was at the head of the first batch of colonists, and this
version of the event is still preserved by Pindar and by Hellanikus. But the
more current narratives represented the descendants of Orestes as chiefs of the
expeditions to Aeolis—his illegitimate son Penthilus,
by Erigone daughter of Egisthus,
together with Echelatus and Gras, the son and
grandson of Penthilus, together with Kleues and Malaus, descendants of
Agamemnon through another lineage. According to the account given by Strabo,
Orestes began the emigration, but died on his route in Arcadia; his son Penthilus, taking the guidance of the emigrants, conducted
them by the long land-journey through Boeotia and Thessaly to Thrace; from
whence Archelaus, son of Penthilus, led them across
the Hellespont, and settled at Daskylium on the Propontis.
Gras, son of Archelaus, crossed over to Lesbos and possessed himself of the
island. Kleues and Malaus,
conducting another body of Achaeans, were longer on their journey, and lingered
a considerable time near Mount Phrikium, in the
territory of Lokris; ultimately, however, they passed
over by sea to Asia and took possession of Kyme,
south of the Gulf of Adramyttium, the most considerable of all the Aeolic
cities on the continent. From Lesbos and Kyme, the
other less considerable Aeolic towns, spreading over the region of Ida as well
as the Troad, and comprehending the island of Tenedas, are said to have derived their origin.
Though there are many differences in the details, the
accounts agree in representing these Aeolic settlements as formed by the
Achaeans expatriated from Laconia under the guidance of the dispossessed Pelopids. We are told that in their journey through Boeotia
they received considerable reinforcements, and Strabo adds that the emigrants
started from Aulis, the port from whence Agamemnon departed in the expedition against
Troy. He also informs us that they missed their course and experienced many
losses from nautical ignorance, but we do not know to what particular incidents
he alludes.
2. IONIC EMIGRATION.
The Ionic emigration is described as emanating from
and directed by the Athenians, and connects itself with the previous legendary
history of Athens, which must therefore be here briefly recapitulated.
The great mythical hero Theseus, of whose military
prowess and errant exploits we have spoken in a previous chapter, was still
more memorable in the eyes of the Athenians as an internal political reformer.
He was supposed to have performed for them the inestimable service of
transforming Attica out of many states into one. Each deme, or at least a great
many out of the whole number, had before his time enjoyed political
independence under its own magistrates and assemblies, acknowledging only a
federal union with the rest under the presidency of Athens: by a mixture of
conciliation and force, Theseus succeeded in putting down all these separate
governments, and bringing them to unite in one political system, centralized at
Athens. He is said to have established a constitutional government, retaining
for himself a defined power as king, or president, and distributing the people
into three classes: Eupatridae, a sort of sacerdotal noblesse; Geomori and Demiurgi, husbandmen
and artisans. Having brought these important changes into efficient working, he
commemorated them for his posterity by introducing solemn and appropriate
festivals. In confirmation of the dominion of Athens over the Megarid
territory, he is said farther to have erected a pillar at the extremity of the
latter towards the Isthmus, marking the boundary between Peloponnesus and
Ionia.
But a revolution so extensive was not consummated
without creating much discontent; and Menestheus, the
rival of Theseus—the first specimen, as we are told, of an artful
demagogue—took advantage of this feeling to assail and undermine him. Theseus
had quitted Attica, to accompany and assist his friend Peirithous,
in his journey down to the underworld, in order to carry off' the goddess Persephon,—or (as those who were critical in legendary
story preferred recounting) in a journey to the residence of Aidoneus, king of
the Molossians in Epirus, to carry off his daughter. In this enterprise, Peirithous perished, while Theseus was cast into prison,
from whence he was only liberated by the intercession of Heracles. It was
during his temporary absence, that the Tyndarids Castor and Pollux invaded
Attica for the purpose of recovering their sister Helen, whom Theseus had at a
former period taken away from Sparta and deposited at Aphidnae;
and the partisans of Menestheus took advantage both
of the absence of Theseus and of the calamity which his licentiousness had
brought upon the country, to ruin his popularity with the people. When he
returned, be found them no longer disposed to endure his dominion, or to
continue to him the honors which their previous feelings of gratitude had conferred.
Having, therefore, placed his sons under the protection of Elephenor,
in Euboea, he sought an asylum with Lykomedes, prince
of Scyros, from whom, however, he received nothing but an insidious welcome and
a traitorous death.
Menestheus, succeeding to the honors of the expatriated hero,
commanded the Athenian troops at the Siege of Troy. But though he survived the
capture, he never returned to Athens—different stories being related of the
place where he and his companions settled. During this interval, the feelings
of the Athenians having changed, they restored the sons of Theseus, who had
served at Troy under Elephenor, and had returned
unhurt, to the station and functions of their father. The Theseids Demophoon, Oxyntas, Apheidas, and Thymoetes had successively
filled this post for the space of about sixty years when the Dorian invaders of
Peloponnesus (as has been before related) compelled Melanthus and the Neleid family to abandon their kingdom of Pylus. The refugees found shelter at Athens, where a
fortunate adventure soon raised Melanthus to the
throne. A war breaking out between the Athenians and Boeotians, respecting the
boundary tract of Enoe, the Boeotian king Xanthus challenged Thymoetes to single combat: the latter declining to accept
it, Melanthus not only stood forward in his place,
but practiced a cunning stratagem with such success as to kill his adversary.
He was forthwith chosen king, Thymoetes being
constrained to resign .
Melanthus and his son Kodrus reigned
for nearly sixty years, during which time large bodies of fugitives, escaping
from the recent invaders throughout Greece, were harbored by the Athenians: so
that Attica became populous enough to excite the alarm and jealousy of the
Peloponnesian Dorians. A powerful Dorian force, under the command of Aletes from Corinth and Althaemenes from Argos, were
accordingly dispatched to invade the Athenian territory, in which the Delphian
oracle promised them success, provided they abstained from injuring the person
of Kodrus. Strict orders were given to the Dorian
army that Kodrus should be preserved unhurt; but the
oracle had become known among the Athenians, and the generous prince determined
to bring death upon himself as a means of salvation to his country. Assuming
the disguise of a peasant, he intentionally provoked a quarrel with some of the
Dorian troops, who slew him without suspecting his real character. No sooner
was this event known, than the Dorian leaders, despairing of success, abandoned
their enterprise and evacuated the country. In retiring, however, they retained
possession of Megara, where they established permanent settlers, and which
became from this moment Dorian—seemingly at first a dependency of Corinth,
though it afterwards acquired its freedom and became an autonomous community.
This memorable act of devoted patriotism, analogous to that of the daughters of
Erechtheus at Athens, and of Menoekeus at Thebes,
entitled Kodrus to be ranked among the most splendid
characters in Grecian legend.
Kodrus is numbered as the last king of Athens: his descendants were styled Archons,
but they held that dignity for life—a practice which prevailed during a long
course of years afterwards. Medon and Neileus, his
two sons, having quarreled about the succession, the Delphian oracle decided in
favor of the former; upon which the latter, affronted at the preference,
resolved upon seeking a new home. There were at this moment many dispossessed
sections of Greeks, and an adventitious population accumulated in Attica, who
were anxious for settlements beyond sea. The expeditions which now set forth to
cross the Aegean, chiefly under the conduct of members of the Kodrid family, composed collectively the memorable Ionic
Emigration, of which the Ionians, recently expelled from Peloponnesus, formed a
part, but, as it would seem, only a small part; for we hear of many quite
distinct races, some renowned in legend, who withdraw from Greece amidst this
assemblage of colonists. The Kadmeians, the Minyae of Orchomenus, the Abantes of Euboea, the Dryopes; the Molossi, the Phokians, the Boeotians, the Arcadian Pelasgians, and even
the Dorians of Epidaurus — are represented as furnishing each a proportion of
the crews of these emigrant vessel. Nor were the results unworthy of so mighty
a confluence of different races. Not only the Cyclades islands in the Aegean,
but the great islands of Samos and Chios, near the Asiatic coast, and ten
different cities on the coast of Asia Minor, from Miletus in the south to
Phocaea in the north, were founded, and all adopted the Ionic name. Athens was
the metropolis or mother city of all of them: Androklus and Neileus, the Ekists of
Ephesus and Miletus, and probably other Ekists also,
started from the Prytaneium at Athens, with those
solemnities, religions and political, which usually marked the departure of a
swarm of Grecian colonists.
Other mythical families, besides the heroic lineage of
Neleus and Nestor, as represented by the sons of Kodrus,
took a leading part in the expedition. Herodotus mentions Lykian chiefs, descendants from Glaukus son of Hippolochus,
and Pausanias tells us of Philotas descendant of Peneleos,
who went at the head of a body of Thebans: both Glaukus and Peneleos are commemorated in the Iliad. And it is
a remarkable fact mentioned by Pausanias (though we do not know on what
authority), that the inhabitants of Phocaea,— which was the northernmost city
of Ionia on the borders of Eolis, and one of the last founded — consisting
mostly of Phokian colonists under the conduct of the
Athenians Philogenes and Daemen, were not admitted
into the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony until they consented
to choose for themselves chiefs of the Kodrid family. Prokles, the chief who conducted the Ionic emigrants
from Epidaurus to Samos, was said to be of the lineage of Ion, son of Xuthus.
Of the twelve Ionic states constituting the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony—some of them among the greatest cities in
Hellas —I shall say no more at present, as I have to treat of them again when I
come upon historical ground.
3. DORIC EMIGRATIONS
The Aeolic and Ionic emigrations are thus both
presented to us as direct consequences of the event called the Return of the Herakleids: and in like manner the formation of the Dorian Hexapolis in the south-western corner of Asia Minor: Kos,
Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Rhodes, with its three separate cities, as well as
the Dorian establishments in Krete, Melos, and Thera,
are all traced more or less directly to the same great revolution.
Thera, more especially, has its root in the legendary
world. Its Ekist was Theras,
a descendant of the heroic lineage of Edipus and Kadmus, and maternal uncle of the young kings of Sparta,
Eurysthenes and Prokles, during whose minority he had
exercised the regency. On their coming of age, his functions were at an end:
but being unable to endure a private station, he determined to put himself at
the head of a body of emigrants: many came forward to join him, and the
expedition was farther reinforced by a body of interlopers, belonging to the Minyae, of whom the Lacedaemonians were anxious to get rid.
These Minyae had arrived in Laconia, not long before,
from the island of Lemnos, out of which they had been expelled by the Pelasgian
fugitives from Attica. They landed without asking permission, took up their
abode and began to “light their fires” on Mount Taygetus.
When the Lacedaemonians sent to ask who they were, and wherefore they had come,
the Minyae replied that they were sons of the
Argonauts who had landed at Lemnos, and that being expelled from their own
homes, they thought themselves entitled to solicit an asylum in the territory
of their fathers: they asked, withal, to be admitted to share both the lands
and the honors of the state. The Lacedaemonians granted the request, chiefly on
the ground of a common ancestry— their own great heroes, the Tyndarids, having
been enrolled in the crew of the Argo: the Minyae were then introduced as citizens into the tribes, received lots of land, and
began to intermarry with the preexisting families. It was not long, however,
before they became insolent: they demanded a share in the kingdom (which was
the venerated privilege of the Herakleids), and so
grossly misconducted themselves in other ways, that the Lacedaemonians resolved
to put them to death, and began by casting them into prison. While the Minyae were thus confined, their wives, Spartans by birth,
and many of them daughters of the principal men, solicited permission to go in
and see them: leave being granted, they made use of the interview to change
clothes with their husbands, who thus escaped and fled again to Mount Taygetus. The greater number of them quitted Laconia, and
marched to Triphylia, in the western regions of
Peloponnesus, from whence they expelled the Paroreatae and the Kaukones, and founded six towns of their own,
of which Lepreum was the chief. A certain proportion,
however, by permission of the Lacedaemonians, joined Theras,
and departed with him to the island of Kalliste, then
possessed by Phoenician inhabitants, who were descended from the kinsmen and
companions of Kadmus, and who had been left there by
that prince, when he came forth in search of Europa, eight generations
preceding. Arriving thus among men of kindred lineage with himself, Theras met with a fraternal reception, and the island
derived from him the name, under which it is historically known, of Thera.
Such is the foundation-legend of Thera, believed both
by the Lacedaemonians and by the Theraeans, and
interesting as it brings before us, characteristically as well as vividly, the
persons and feelings of the mythical world — the Argonauts, with the Tyndarids
as their companions and Minyae as their children. In Lepreum, as in the other towns of Triphylia,
the descent from the Minyae of old seems to have been
believed in the historical times, and the mention of the river Minyeius in those regions by Homer tended to confirm it.
But people were not unanimous as to the legend by which that descent should be
made out; while some adopted the story just cited from Herodotus, others
imagined that Cloris, who had come from the Minyeian town of Orchomenus as the wife of Neleus to Pylus,
had brought with her a body of her countrymen.
These Minyae from Lemnos and
Imbros appear again as portions of another narrative respecting the settlement
of the colony of Melos. It has already been mentioned, that when the Herakleids and the Dorians invaded Laconia, Philonomus, an Achaean, treacherously betrayed to them the
country, for which he received as his recompense the territory of Amyklae. He is said to have peopled this territory by
introducing detachments of Minyae; from Lemnos and
Imbros, who, in the third generation after the return of the Herakleids, became so discontented and mutinous, that the
Lacedaemonians resolved to send them out of the country as emigrants, under their
chiefs Polis and Delphos. Taking the direction of Crete, they stopped in their
way to land a portion of their colonists on the island of Melos, which remained
throughout the historical times a faithful and attached colony of Lacedaemon.
On arriving in Crete, they are said to have settled at the town of Gortyn. We
find, moreover, that other Dorian establishments, either from Lacedaemon or
Argos, were formed in Crete; and Lyktos in
particular, is noticed, not only as a colony of Sparta, but as distinguished
for the analogy of its laws and customs. It is even said that Crete,
immediately after the Trojan war, had been visited by the wrath of the gods,
and depopulated by famine and pestilence; and that, in the third generation
afterwards, so great was the influx of emigrants, the entire population of the
island was renewed, with the exception of the Eteokretes at Polichnae and Praesus.
There were Dorians in Crete in the time of the
Odyssey: Homer mentions different languages and different races of men, Eteokretes, Kydones, Dorians,
Achaeans, and Pelasgians, as all coexisting in the island, which he describes
to be populous and to contain ninety cities. A legend given by Andron, based
seemingly upon the statement of Herodotus, that Dorus the son of Hellen had settled
in Histiaeotis, ascribed the first introduction of
the three last races to Tektaphus son of Dorus—who
had led forth from that country a colony of Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians,
and had landed in Crete during the reign of the indigenous king Kres. This
story of Andron so exactly fits on to the Homeric Catalogue of Cretan
inhabitants, that we may reasonably presume it to have been designedly arranged
with reference to that Catalogue, so as to afford some plausible account,
consistently with the received legendary chronology, how there came to be
Dorians in Crete before the Trojan war— the Dorian colonies after the return of
the Herakleids being of course long posterior in
supposed order of time. To find a leader sufficiently early for his hypothesis,
Andron ascends to the primitive Eponymus Dorus, to
whose son Tektaphus he ascribes the introduction of a
mixed colony of Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians into Crete: these are the
exact three races enumerated in the Odyssey, and the king Kres, whom Andron
affirms to have been then reigning in the island, represents the Eteokretes and Kydenes in the
list of Homer. The story seems to have found favor among native Cretan
historians, as it doubtless serves to obviate what would otherwise be a
contradiction in the legendary chronology.
Another Dorian emigration from Peloponnesus to Crete,
which extended also to Rhodes and Kos, is farther said to have been conducted
by Althaemenes, who had been one of the chiefs in the expedition against
Attica, in which Krodus perished. This prince, a Herakleid, and third in descent from Temenus, was induced
to expatriate by a family quarrel, and conducted a body of Dorian colonists
from Argos first to Crete, where some of them remained; but the greater number
accompanied him to Rhodes, in which island, after expelling the Karian
possessors, he founded the three cities of Lindus, Ialysus,
and Kamairus.
It is proper here to add, that the legend of the
Rhodian archaeologists respecting their oekist Althaemenes, who was worshipped in the island with heroic honors, was something
totally different from the preceding. Althaemenes was a Cretan, son of the king
Katreus, and grandson of Minos. An oracle predicted to him that he would one
day kill his father: eager to escape so terrible a destiny, he quitted Crete,
and conducted a colony to Rhodes, where the famous temple of the Atabyrian Zeus, on the lofty summit of Mount Atabyrum, was ascribed to his foundation, built so as to
command a view of Crete. He had been settled on the island for some time, when
his father Katreus, anxious again to embrace his only son, followed him from
Crete: he landed in Rhodes during the night without being known, and a casual
collision took place between his attendants and the islanders. Althaeenes hastened to the shore to assist in repelling the
supposed enemies, and in the fray had the misfortune to kill his aged father.
Either the emigrants who accompanied Althaeanes, or some other Dorian colonists afterwards, are
reported to have settled at Cnidus, Karpathos, and Halicarnassus. To the last
mentioned city, however, Anthes of Troezen is
assigned as the oekist: the emigrants who accompanied
him were said to have belonged to the Dymanian tribe,
one of the three tribes always found in a Doric state: and the city seems to
have been characterized as a colony sometimes of Troezen,
sometimes of Argos!
We thus have the Aeolic, the Ionic, and the Doric
colonial establishments in Asia, all springing out of the legendary age, and
all set forth as consequences, direct or indirect, of what is called the Return
of the Herakleids, or the Dorian conquest of
Peloponnesus. According to the received chronology, they are succeeded by a
period, supposed to comprise nearly three centuries, which is almost an entire
blank, before we reach authentic chronology and the first recorded
Olympiad,—and they thus form the concluding events of the mythical world, out
of which we now pass into historical Greece, such as it stands at the
last-mentioned epoch. It is by these migrations that the parts of the Hellenic
aggregate are distributed into the places which they occupy at the dawn of
historical daylight,—Dorians, Arcadians, Aetolo-Eleians,
and Achaeans, sharing Peloponnesus unequally . among them — Aeolians, Ionians,
and Dorians, settled both in the islands of the Aegean and the coast of Asia
Minor. The Return of the Herakleids, as well as the
three emigrations, Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric, present the legendary explanation,
suitable to the feelings and belief of the people, showing how Greece passed
from the heroic races who besieged Troy and Thebes, piloted the adventurous
Argo, and slew the monstrous boar of Kalydon - to the
historical races, differently named and classified, who furnished victors to
the Olympic and Pythian games.
A patient and learned French writer, M. Raoul Rochette
—who construes all the events of the heroic age, generally speaking, as so much
real history, only making allowance for the mistakes and exaggerations of poets
— is greatly perplexed by the blank and interruption which this supposed
continuous series of history presents, from the Return of the Herakleids down to the beginning of the Olympiads. He
cannot explain to himself so long a period of absolute quiescence, after the
important incidents and striking adventures of the heroic age; and if there
happened nothing worthy of record during this long period—as he presumes, from
the fact that nothing has been transmitted—he concludes that this must have
arisen from the state of suffering and exhaustion in which previous wars and
revolution had left the Greeks: a long interval of complete inaction being
required to heal such wounds.
Assuming M. Rochette’s view of the heroic ages to be
correct, and reasoning upon the supposition that the adventures ascribed to the
Grecian heroes are matters of historical reality, transmitted by tradition from
a period of time four centuries before the recorded Olympiads, and only
embellished by describing poets — the blank which he here dwells upon is, to
say the least of it, embarrassing and unaccountable. It is strange that the
stream of tradition, if it had once begun to flow, should (like several of the
rivers in Greece) be submerged for two or three centuries and then reappear.
But when we make what appears to me the proper distinction between legend and
history, it will be seen that a period of blank time between the two is
perfectly conformable to the conditions under which the former is generated. It
is not the immediate past, but a supposed remote past, which forms the suitable
atmosphere of mythical narrative—a past originally quite undetermined in
respect to distance from the present, as we see in the Iliad and Odyssey. And
even when we come down to the genealogical poets, who affect to give a certain
measure of bygone time, and a succession of persons as well as of events,
still, the names whom they most delight to honor and upon whose exploits they
chiefly expatiate, are those of the ancestral gods and heroes of the tribe and
their supposed contemporaries; ancestors separated by a long lineage from the
present hearer. The gods and heroes were conceived as removed from him by
several generations, and the legendary matter which was grouped around them
appeared only the more imposing when exhibited at a respectful distance, beyond
the days of father and grandfather, and of all known predecessors. The Odes of
Pindar strikingly illustrate this tendency. We thus see how it happened that,
between the times assigned to heroic adventure and those of historical record,
there existed an intermediate blank, filled with inglorious names; and how,
amongst the same society which cared not to remember proceedings of fathers and
grandfathers, there circulated much popular and accredited narrative respecting
real or supposed ancestors long past and gone. The obscure and barren centuries
which immediately precede the first recorded Olympiad, form the natural
separation between the legendary return of the Herakleids and the historical wars of Sparta against Messene— between the province of
legend, wherein matter of fact (if any there be) is so intimately combined with
its accompaniments of fiction, as to be undistinguishable without the aid of
extrinsic evidence,—and that of history where some matters of fact can be
ascertained, and where a sagacious criticism may be usefully employed in trying
to add to their number.