him a district in which he founded Echalia.' The name of this Echalia was undoubtedly derived from Thessaly, where there was another town so called, the seat of the renowned archer Eurytus.2 But it seems to have been not from the south of Thessaly, the seat of the Æolids, that Messenia received its new inhabitants, who shared it with the Leleges and the Caucones; but from the north, the upper part of the vale of the Peneus. For there stood an Ithomé, which must have given its name to the town and the mountain, which were long the stronghold of Messenian liberty. There too was a Tricca, celebrated for the most ancient temple of Esculapius; as there was a Messenian Tricca, which contained one sacred to the same god.3 The Messenians had a peculiar legend about his birth4; and in the Homeric catalogue, the men of Tricca, Ithomé, and Echalia, are commanded by his sons Podalirius and Machaon. We shall soon have a fitter occasion of noticing the conclusion toward which all these indications tend.

The above-mentioned contest, which Endymion proposed to his sons, was decided in favour of Epeus: henceforth, it is said, the people were called Epeans; and this is the name by which Homer speaks of them, though he uses that of Elis for the country. It was in the reign of Epeus that Pelops was said to have arrived in Greece, and to have wrested the territory of Pisa from the Epeans. The two brothers who were excluded from the throne were believed to have led colonies to foreign lands: Pæon to the banks of the Axius, where he was supposed to have become the father of the Pæonian nation; tolus to the land of the Curetes, which was thenceforth named Ætolia after him, as its two princi

1 Paus. iv. 2. 2.

From him Hercules learned the use of the bow. Apollod. ii. 4. 9. 1. With his bow Ulysses kills the suitors.

3 Strabo, ix. p. 437.; viii. p. 360. Paus. iv. 3. 2. 4 Paus. ii. 26. 7.

5 II. ii. 615-619. Conon. 14. omits Epeus. 6 In other genealogies, Pæon was said to be a son of Helle (Hygin. Poet. Astr. ii. 20.) Minyas weds his daughter Phanosyra (Schol. Ap. Rh. i. 230.); a tradition, the meaning of which is easily understood, when it is remem bered that there was a town said to have been once called Minya in the north of Thessaly, near the borders of Macedonia. See Steph. Byz. Mvua. Αλμωπία.

pal towns or districts were after his two sons, Calydon and Pleuron.1 These Hellenic settlements in Etolia seem never to have comprised more than the maritime part of the country: the interior was apparently occupied by tribes of a different origin, which, strengthened from time to time by new hordes from the north, rather gained than lost ground, and did not, till a very late period, feel the influence of their more civilised neighbours. The Curetes are said to have retreated before Etolus into Acarnania: we find them described in the Iliad as formidable enemies to the people of Calydon. The country about Calydon, and perhaps all the south of Ætolia, at one time bore the name of Æolis: this, however, seems to have been derived from a much later invasion of the Boeotian Æolians. 2 Still there is no reason to doubt that the earlier inhabitants belonged to the Æolian race, as was universally believed, and perhaps is indicated by their name; though in other legends Etolus was made to descend indeed from Deucalion, but not to be otherwise connected with the line of Hellen. 3

We have reserved the mention of the Locrian tribes for this place, because one of them bordered on Ætolia, and they are, in general, connected by their traditions both with it and with Elis. The Locrians claimed a higher antiquity than any other branch of the Greek nation. Those of Opus boasted that Cynus, their port town, had been the dwelling of Deucalion, when he had descended with his new people from Parnassus, and they

Apollod. i. 7. 7.

2 Thucydides (iii. 102.) seems to speak of the name as obsolete in his time. Ephorus (Strabo, x. p. 464.) related, that the Epean settlers in Ætolia were afterwards compelled to receive a colony of Æolians, who were driven out of Thessaly along with the Baotians. These were probably the Eolians who destroyed Olenus (Strabo, x. p. 451.), and from whom the name of Eolis arose.

3 Athen. ii. p. 35. The legend is worth noticing. "Hecatæus of Miletus says that the vine was discovered in Ætolia as follows: When Orestheus (the mountaineer) came to reign in Etolia, a bitch brought forth a stock (oriaexos). This he ordered to be put in the earth, and from it named his son Phytius (the planter; is Physcus, the father of Locrus, the same person ?) He was the father of (Eneus, so called from the vine (ovn), Eneus of tolus." See also Paus. x. 38. 1., who makes Orestheus king of the neighbouring Locris.

showed there the tomb of Pyrrha. Strabo, without assigning any reason, treats it as certain that they were a colony from the Epicnemidian Locris 2, though he records an inscription which commemorated the struggle of the Greeks at Thermopylæ, in which Opus was termed the mother city of the Locrians. In accordance with these pretensions, Locrus, the founder of their name, was described in the national legends as a descendant, not of Hellen, but of Amphictyon, another son of Deucalion, a fictitious personage, who, as we shall afterwards see, represents the earliest union of the Hellenic tribes. But the ruling families among the eastern Locrians appear, in the Iliad, closely united with those of the Thessalian Hellas. On the other hand, among the ancestors of Locrus we find an Ætolus sometimes mentioned 3; and while in one tradition Opus is simply a son of Locrus, in another he is also a king of Elis, whose daughter bears a son of the same name to Locrus.4 These legends are grounded on the fact, that there was an Opuntian colony in Elis; and this may have been connected with the establishment of the Ozolian Locrians on the eastern border of Ætolia.5 The Locrian mythology seems to lead to the conclusion, that the earliest population of the eastern Locris, of which any recollection was preserved, consisted of Leleges ; and to them perhaps the name of Locrians originally belonged, though chiefs of a Hellenic, and most probably an Æolian race, undoubtedly settled among them.

Thus then in the countries we have mentioned, which include the greater part of northern Greece and the western side of Peloponnesus, the beginning of a new period is connected more or less closely with the house of Æolus, or with the tribe which his name re

1 Strabo, ix. p. 425. 3 Scymnus, v. 592.

2 IX. p. 427.

4 Eustathius (on Il. ii. 531.) gives a genealogy, which, he remarks, is an ancient one, in which Etolus is omitted It begins with Amphictyon and Chthonopatra; then follows Physcus, from whom the people were once called Physcians: he is the father of Locrus, Locrus of Opus. For the other legend, see Pindar, Ol. ix., and the Scholia.

5 Boeckh Explic. ad Pindar. p. 191.

presents. We learn indeed little, beside this general fact, from the legends which we are compelled to follow, as the only sources of our information. There is however one prominent feature in them, which deserves attention, as it cannot be the mere result of chance. We perceive in these Æolian settlements a marked predilection for maritime situations. Iolcus and Corinth are the luminous points from which rays shoot out in all directions: Orchomenus also appears to have been mistress of the neighbouring coast. In the inland districts, as in Phocis, the traces of an Æolian dynasty are the least distinct. Poseidon, and other deities connected with the sea, occur most frequently in the genealogies and legends of the race. This, its common character, will appear more striking and important, when we compare its history with that of the Dorians, which we now proceed to review.

The early fortunes of the Dorians are related by Herodotus in a brief sketch, which we shall give in his own words, that we may use it as a thread to connect other accounts, which illustrate or fill up his scanty outline. After observing that the Dorians and Ionians were of old conspicuously distinguished from one another, and from the other branches of the Greek nation, he adds:-" The one was a Pelasgian, the other a Hellenic race; and the one never yet changed its ancient seats, but the other went through many wanderings. For in the reign of Deucalion it inhabited Phthiotis ; under Dorus, the son of Hellen, the land at the foot of Ossa and Olympus, called Hestiæotis; after it was forced by the Cadmeans to quit Hestiæotis, it dwelt on mount Pindus, and was called the Macednian people. After this again it passed into Dryopis; and so from Dryopis came into Peloponnesus, and was named the Dorian race."

1 As Ino-Leucothea and Melicertes-Palamon. We may remark, with reference to a point already noticed, that, as the rites of Melicertes, who was supposed to have been buried in the Isthmus by Sisyphus (Paus. ii. 13.), were nocturnal and mysterious (Plut. Thes. 25.), so Neleus was buried near the same spot, and Sisyphus would not show his grave even to Nestor (Paus. ii. 2. 2.).

If we adopt this narrative as literally accurate in all points, we must suppose that the Dorians, when they left their ancient home in Phthia, first bent their way toward the north, but afterwards took the opposite direction, and advanced by successive stages till they reached the southern extremity of Greece. There is however great difficulty in believing that this was the real course of their migrations. The only probable motive which could have prevented them from following the same impulse which carried their brethren toward the south, would be their desire of occupying the rich plains in the heart of Thessaly. But it seems surprising that here they should have left no traces of their presence, and that we find them transported all at once from Phthiotis to the opposite corner of Thessaly, at the foot of Ossa and Olympus. We have already intimated that the common genealogy of the race of Hellen can only be received as a general picture of national affinities. In that sense, Dorus may be considered as a brother of Æolus; but that the Dorians and Æolians originally inhabited the same district, or were united by any relations of peculiar intimacy, is exceedingly improbable; because, not only is there no vestige of such a connection in their national legends --no mention of any alliances contracted in this region between the mythical descendants of Dorus and Æolus - but the people who are the first and bitterest enemies of the Dorians, are represented as the friends and brothers of the Æolians. For Herodotus, on the other hand, who adopted the mythical genealogies in their literal sense, it was necessary to imagine that Dorus and his followers had begun their wanderings from the land of Hellen. It seems much more probable that they first entered Thessaly on the same side where they make their first appearance in the historian's narrative, as an independent people from the north; whether up the defile of Tempe, or across the Cambunian range, or at any point further to the west, as by the pass of Metzovo, it would be useless to inquire.