dynasty arose, no doubt, chiefly from this dominion over a fertile country; their magnificence—which in a rude age must have excited astonishment, since in one of the highest refinement it still seemed worthy of admirationmay seem to justify the belief that they owed their early progress in the arts of peace to their intercourse with more cultivated foreigners. We are thus reminded of the Phoenician colony at Thebes, of the Egyptian Cecrops, who ruled over Boeotia, and founded an Athens on the lake Copais; more especially as we find an Egyptian legend repeated in one which seems to have been common to several branches of the Minyan race, and which is closely connected with their ancient works of art.1 No other traces however of such a connection with the East appear in the traditions of Orchomenus. Those which describe its foundation, and the succession of its early kings, are remarkably intricate and obscure. They however point to Thessaly, as the mother country from which the people issued: Andreus, the first king, is a son of the river Peneus. He assigns a part of his territory to Athamas, who adopts two of the grandchildren of his brother Sisyphus; they give their names to Haliartus and Coronea; and Halmus, son of Sisyphus, is the founder of the royal line from which Minyas himself springs. These may be considered as indications of a native race, apparently Pelasgians, overpowered by Æolian invaders; and the same fact seems still more clearly attested by the names of the two Orchomenian tribes, the Eteoclean and the Cephisian; the former of which, called after Eteocles the son of Andreus, seems to have comprised the warlike chiefs, the latter, the industrious people which tilled the plains watered by the Cephisus. It is not so easy to explain the appearance of the Phlegyans in these legends: a fierce and godless race, who separate themselves from the Orchomenians, and at length are destroyed by the gods, whom their impiety

1 Compare the story in Her. ii. 121. with that related by Paus. ix. 37. 5., and by Charax, in the Schol. to Aristoph. Nub, 508.

and sacrilegious outrages have provoked. Yet Phlegyas, their mythical ancestor, is connected with the house of

olus, in exactly the same manner as Minyas himself.1 But for this, it might be imagined that the ferocious violence of the Phlegyans represents the continued resistance which the new settlers experienced from some of the native tribes, which they at length extirpated or expelled. There are also traces of the Eolians in the south of Boeotia, where Tanagra is said to have received its name from a daughter of Æolus, and Hyria from a hero who is introduced in various ways into the Minyan legends. 2

Another seat of the Æolian race was Ephyra, which afterwards became more celebrated under the name of Corinth. That of Ephyra was common to it with many other towns, as in Elis, Thessaly, and Epirus; and Homer couples the Ephyreans with the Phlegyans, as the especial favourites of Mars. The Eolian dynasty at Corinth, as we shall call it by anticipation, is represented by the wily Sisyphus; and this, his legendary character, may not be unconnected with the causes which procured the epithet of wealthy for his city before the time of Homer.4 As to the more ancient population, there are reasons, which we shall mention hereafter, for believing that it was nearly allied to that of Attica. Here we will only remark, that the local legends were singularly interwoven with the story of the Argonautic expedition, to which we shall hereafter revert. They inform us, that Eetes king of Colchis had first reigned at Corinth, but, dissatisfied with this realm, withdrew to the east; leaving it however in charge for his descendants. Hence, when Jason brought his daughter Medea home to Iolcus, the Corinthians invited her to their city, which, when she was about to return to Asia, she delivered up to Sisyphus.5 As we have already seen that some of the line

1 His mother is Chryse, daughter of Halmus: she is the sister of Chrysogenia, Paus. 36. 4.

Paus. ix. 20. 1., and 37. 5.

3 Il. xiii. 301.

4 Il. ii. 570.

1 5 Paus. ii. 3. From the ancient Corinthian poet Eumelus.

of Sisyphus take a part in the affairs of Orchomenus, so we hear that his son Ornytion was the father of Phocus, who gave his name to Phocis.1 That Phocis was occupied by an Æolian tribe is intimated by another legend, which describes Deion, son of Æolus, as reigning there2, and perhaps also by the stories about the strife of cunning between Sisyphus and the Phocian Autolycus. 3

Sons, or more remote descendants, of Eolus spread the Æolian name over the western side of Peloponnesus. They appear chiefly in the legends of Elis and of Pylus. The Eleans, who seem not to have been scrupulous in accommodating their ancient traditions to the purpose of exalting the glory of the Olympic games, from which in later times they derived their chief importance, gave the significant name of Aethlius to their first king, and called him the son of Jupiter and Protogenia, daughter of Deucalion. This parentage however was not selected without some historical ground; for Protogenia was also the first mother of the Locrians of Opus, who were really connected with Elis. According to another tradition, Endymion, to whom the Eleans ascribed the first celebration of games at Olympia, in which his three sons-Pæon, Epeus, and Ætolus-contended for the succession to his throne, was the son of Aethlius, by Calyce, a daughter of Æolus, and himself led a colony of Æolians to Elis. It is remarkable that Endymion, who here, like Pelops, acts the part of a conqueror and a king, is in the fables of Asia Minor the beautiful huntsman, for whom Selene descends into the Latmian cave", though no legend seems to have brought him into Elis from the coast of Asia. Other Eolian settlements on this side of Peloponnesus are connected with the name of Salmoneus, who is celebrated for the vengeance inflicted by Jupiter on his audacious impiety. He is said to have founded Salmone, in the territory of Pisa: the

1 Paus. ii. 4. 3.

2 Apollod. i. 9. 4.

3 Autolycus dwelt on Parnassus, and stole the cattle of Sisyphus, and changed their marks to elude their owner. Eustath. on Od. xix. 395. 4 Strabo, ix. p. 425. 5 Paus. v. 1. 5. Quint. Cal. x. 125.

sea.

same name, with a slight inflexion, is given to a Boeotian town or district, which is said to have been named after a son of Sisyphus. To the south of Elis, another Eolian dynasty, long renowned not only in epic song, but in history, owed its origin to Tyro, the beautiful daughter of Salmoneus. Left by her father in Thessaly, she becomes the mother of Pelias and Neleus, whom the legend represents as the offspring of the god of the She afterwards wedded her uncle Cretheus, and bore to him another heroic progeny. Neleus founded a kingdom in Pylus, apparently the Triphylian; for there were three towns of that name on the western side of Peloponnesus, and it was a controverted point, even among the ancients, which was the one described by Homer as the residence of Nestor. Among other traces which confirm Strabo's opinion, that the poet meant the Triphylian Pylus, we may remark that, as the mother of Nestor sprang from the Minyean Orchomenus, so the remembrance of the same race was preserved in Triphylia, by a river called by Homer the Minyeus, afterwards the Anigrus.2 It must be added, that, if Neleus and Nestor are to be considered as real persons, there is probably a break in the series of the Pylian kings, which is concealed by the current genealogy, and that Nestor, the contemporary of the heroes before Troy, cannot, consistently with the chronology of the heroic ages, be so few degrees removed from Æolus as he now appears to be. In fact, we find another branch of the same family at Pylus, which seems to have preceded the Neleids. Amythaon, one of the sons of Cretheus, must have established himself there a generation or two earlier than Neleus is supposed to have done; for his sons, Bias and Melampus, become the founders of royal dynasties in Argolis, which will not otherwise bear a chronological comparison with the line of Neleus.3 There is one remarkable feature common to the legend

1 Paus. ix. 34. 10.

2 Strabo, viii. p. 347. Leake's Morea, i. 54.

3 Heyne, Apollod. vol. ii. p. 377.; or Mr. Clinton, F. H. vol. i. p. 41.

ary character of these two houses. That of Amythaon was renowned for its wisdom. Jupiter, so Hesiod sang, gave prowess to the acids, wit to the Amythaonids, and wealth to the sons of Atreus. Melampus is the Greek Merlin. While he lived in the forest, his ears were purged by the tongues of serpents to discern the language of birds and reptiles, from which he learnt all the secrets of nature.2 Poseidon had bestowed an equally marvellous gift on his grandson Periclymenus, the brother of Nestor. He had endowed him with the power, which was generally attributed to the marine deities, of assuming any shape he would. And thus the wisdom of Nestor, which in the Iliad is described as the fruit of years and experience, viewed in the light of the ancient legend, seems rather the result of his superhuman descent. 4

In these little Hellenic states, the Caucones, the ancient inhabitants of the land, formed perhaps the bulk of the subject people. But many of them, driven from the coast into the hills on the borders of Arcadia, preserved their independence for several centuries. It is not so clear what changes took place at this period in the population of Messenia. According to one account, it also fell under the dominion of Eolian princes, the first of whom was Perieres, whom Hesiod numbers among the sons of Eolus. But according to another tradition, which was very generally received, he was a descendant of Lelex, the first king of Laconia; and in this case, the first indication afforded by the Messenian legends of a new race of settlers would be contained in the tradition that Melaneus, a man expert in archery, and hence accounted a son of Apollo, came to Messenia in the reign of Perieres, who granted

1 Fr. xlviii.

2 Apollod. i 9. 11. 3.

3 Heriod and Euphorion, in the Scholiast of Apoll. R. i. 156.

4 Hence it has been supposed that Neleus is only another form of Nereus, the water-god, of whose metamorphoses we read in Apollodorus, ii. 5. IL 4, as of those of Thetis, iii, 13. 5. 4. Proteus is the old man of the sea, Od. iv.

1 Od. iii. 366. Herod. iv. 148.

A son of Cynortas. Apollod. i. 9. 5. Paus, iii. 1. 3.