THE HELLENIC NATION. of the Peneus. For there stood an Ithomé, 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 Eolus as he appears now 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 The above-mentioned contest, which Endywill not otherwise bear a chronological comparison with the line of Neleus. There is one remarkable feature common to the legendary character of these two houses. That of Amy-mion proposed to his sons, was decided in fathaon was renowned for its wisdom. Jupiter, vour of Epeus: henceforth, it is said, the peoso Hesiod sang, gave prowess to the acids, ple were called Epeans; and this is the name wit to the Amythaonids, and wealth to the sons by which Homer speaks of them, though he uses of Atreus. Melampus is the Greek Merlin. that of Elis for the country. It was in the While he lived in the forest, his ears were reign of Epeus that Pelops was said to have arpurged by the tongues of serpents to discern rived in Greece, and to have wrested the territhe language of birds and reptiles, from which tory of Pisa from the Epeans. The two brothhe learned all the secrets of nature, Poseidon ers who were excluded from the throne were had bestowed an equally marvellous gift on his believed to have led colonies to foreign lands: grandson Periclymenus, the brother of Nestor. Pæon to the banks of the Axius, where he was He had endowed him with the power, which supposed to have become the father of the Pæowas generally attributed to the marine deities, nian nation; Etolus to the land of the Cuof assuming any shape he would. And thus retes, which was thenceforth named Ætolia the wisdom of Nestor, which in the Iliad is de- after him, as its two principal towns or dislia seem never to have comprised more than scribed as the fruit of years and experience, tricts were after his two sons, Calydon and viewed in the light of the ancient legend, seems Pleuron. These Hellenic settlements in Etorather the result of his superhuman descent.!! In these little Hellenic States, the Caucones, the maritime part of the country: the interior the ancient inhabitants of the land, formed per- was apparently occupied by tribes of a different haps the bulk of the subject people. But many origin, which, strengthened from time to time of them, driven from the coast into the hills on by new hordes from the north, rather gained the borders of Arcadia, preserved their inde- than lost ground, and did not, till a very late pependence for several centuries. It is not so riod, feel the influence of their more civilized clear what changes took place at this period in neighbours. The Curetes are said to have rethe population of Messenia. According to one treated before Etolus into Acarnania; we find account, it also fell under the dominion of Eo-them described in the Iliad as formidable enelian 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 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. But it seems to have been not from the south of Thessaly, the seat of the Eolids, that Messenia received its new inhabitants, who shared it with the Leleges and the Caucones; Thucydides (iii., 102) seems to speak of the name as but from the north, the upper part of the vale Apollod., i., 9, 11, 3. Heyne, Apollod., vol. ii., p. 377; or Mr. Clinton, F. H., that the Epean settlers in Etolia were afterward comt Fr., xlviu. Tol. i., p. 41. Hesiod and Euphorion, in the Scholiast of Apoll. R., i., obsolete in his time. Ephorus (Strabo, x., p. 464) related Hence it has been supposed that Nelens is only an-pelled to receive a colony of Eolians, who were driven out the form of Nereus, the water-god, of whose metamor- of Thessaly along with the Baotians. These were probboses we read in Apollodorus, ii., 5, 11, 4, as of those of ably the Eolians who destroyed Olenus (Strabo, x., p. 451), Od-, iii., 366. Herod., iv., 148. Tetis, in., 13, 5, 4. Proteus is the old man of the sea. and from whom the name of olis arose. Od., iv. Apollod., 1., 9, 5. Paus., iii., 1, 3. A son of Cynortas. Athen., ii., p. 35. The legend is worth noticing. in Etolia as follows: When Orestheus (the mountaineer) "Hecateus, of Miletus, says that the vine was discovered (oreλexos). This he ordered to be put in the earth, and came to reign in Etolia, a bitch brought forth a stock 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. We have reserved the mention of the Lo- the traces of an Eolian dynasty are the least crian tribes for this place, because one of distinct. Poseidon, and other deities connectthem bordered on Ætolia, and they are in gen-ed with the sea, occur most frequently in the eral connected, by their traditions, both with it genealogies and legends of the race.' This, and with Elis. The Locrians claimed a high- its common character, will appear more strier antiquity than any other branch of the Greek king and important when we compare its histonation. Those of Opus boasted that Cynus, ry with that of the Dorians, which we now protheir port town, had been the dwelling of Deu- ceed to review. calion, when he had descended with his new people from Parnassus, and they showed there the tomb of Pyrrha.* Strabo, without assigning any reason, treats it as certain that they were a colony from the Epicnemidian Locris,† though he records an inscription which commemorated the struggle of the Greeks at Thermopyla, 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 Helen, but of Amphictyon, another son of Deucalion: a fictitious personage, who, as we shall afterward 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 Etolus sometimes mentioned ; 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. 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 Etolia.|| 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. 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 towards the north, but afterward 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 towards the south, would be, their desire of occupying the rich plains in the heart of Thessaly. But it seems surprising Thus, then, in the countries we have men- that here they should have left no traces of tioned, which include the greater part of North- their presence, and that we find them transern Greece and the western side of Peloponne- ported all at once from Phthiotis to the opposus, the beginning of a new period is connect-site corner of Thessaly, at the foot of Ossa and ed, more or less closely, with the house of Olympus. We have already intimated that the Eolus, or with the tribe which his name rep-common genealogy of the race of Hellen can resents. We learn, indeed, little besides 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, 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 (oivn), Eneus, of Etolus." See also Paus., x., 38, 1, who makes Orestheus king of the neighbouring Locris. * Strabo, ix., p. 425. + ix., p. 427. + Scymnus, v., 592. Eustathius (on II., ii., 531) gives a genealogy, which, he remarks, is an ancient one, in which tolus 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. Boeckh, Explic. ad Pindar, p. 191. 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 connexion in their national legends-no mention of any alliances contracted in this region between the mythical descendants of Dorus and Eolus-but the people who are the first and bitterest enemies of the Dorians are represented as the friends and brothers of the Eolians. For Herodotus, on the other hand, who adopted the mythical genealogies in their literal sense, followers had begun their wanderings from the it was necessary to imagine that Dorus and his * As Ino-Leucothea and Melicertes-Palemon. 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., 1, 3), 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). THE HELLENIC NATION. 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 farther to the west, as by the Pass of Metzovo, it would be useless to inquire. country at a very remote period by an invasion We have observed that their first enemies were a people who are described as allies and kinsmen of the Eolians. This is the people which makes a prominent figure in the legendary history of Thessaly, under the name of the Lapiths. They are renowned for their victorious struggle with the Centaurs, a fabulous race -which, however, may be supposed to represent the earlier and ruder inhabitants of the land-whom they expelled from their seats on the plain, and even on the sides of Pelion, from which, according to Homer, they were driven by Pirithous, the Lapith chief, and forced to take refuge among the Ethices, on the western side of Pindus. This is, perhaps, only a poetical description of the conflict, which is related with an appearance of greater historical exactness by other authors, who inform us that the Perrhæbians, a Pelasgian race, which once possessed the rich plains on the banks of the Peneus, in the neighbourhood of Larissa, were over-gressions of their northern neighbours, the fierce powered by the Lapiths; and that, while some continued to dwell there as subjects of the conquerors, others maintained their independence in the upper valleys of Olympus. It would seem that the Dorians, issuing from their strongholds in the northeast corner of Thessaly, had endeavoured to wrest a part of these conquests from them, and perhaps with partial success; but, according to their own legends, they were very hard pressed, and they cannot have gained any permanent superiority. The Dorian king Egimius, it is said, unable to defend himself against the Lapiths, called in the aid of Hercules, which he agreed to repay with a third of his kingdom. The invincible hero delivered him from his enemies, and slew their king Coronus. Yet this Coronus was celebrated among the chiefs who embarked on the Argonautic expedition; he was one of those Minyans who, as we have seen, appear to be only the Eolians under another name. It was probably from the Dorian traditions of this conflict that the Lapiths acquired a bad celebrity for their overweening and impious arrogance, and that in Thessaly they often appear to be identified with the sacrilegious Phlegyans. The father of Coronus was the audacious Cæneus, who defied Apollo (the Dorian god), disdained to pray or sacrifice to the gods, and forced men to swear by his In other legends perhaps the Dorians spear. themselves may have taken the place of the Centaurs. The most obscure part of the history of the Dorians is that which Herodotus relates, by saying that they were ejected from Hestiæotis by the Cadmeans, and settled in Pindus, being then called the Macednian people. The Cadmeans are the ancient inhabitants of Thebes, who are said to have been driven from their I,, 744. Strabo, ix., p. 434. + Strabo, iz., p. 440, 441. 1 Apollo, i., 7, 7, 3. Diod., iv., 37. VOL. 1-1 In Esch, adv. Ctes., p. 68, they are called Acragallida. Kpavyaλidat. Anton. Lib, c. 4, tells a story of Cragaleus, Hercules dedicated to Apollo, seems to authorize the stateSuidas and Harpocration have the form KpavyaMidai or ment in the text. son of Dryops. This, combined with what we read in Paus, iv, 34, 9, of the servitude of the Dryopes, whom To Styra and Carystus. They were also said to have wandered to Cyprus (Diod., iv., 37), were found in Cythnus (Her., viii., 46), and once were seated on the shores of the Hellespont, Strabo, xiii., p. 586. All we know is, that it was from their last-men- | late that, after the death of Xuthus, Achæus tioned territory about Eta that the Dorians is- collected á band of adventurers from Ægialus sued, at a later period, to effect the conquest of and from Athens, and, bending his course to Peloponnesus. Thessaly, with their aid recovered the patrimoSuch, according to Herodotus, is the sum ofny of which his father had been wrongfully dethe early adventures of the Dorians; but some prived.* And, accordingly, the same part of later writers speak of another migration or col- Thessaly in which Phthia and the ancient Helony of this people, much more interesting and las were situate was, at a later period, and important than any of those we have mentioned. after many revolutions, still called Achaia;† We shall have occasion hereafter to inquire how and Homer, though he commonly uses the far it may be deemed credible, and whether we name of Achæans for the Greeks in general, must suppose that Herodotus was ignorant of it, yet more particularly designates by it the subor only omitted it as foreign to his immediate jects of Achilles, who reigned in Phthia. We purpose. We now turn to the two other main see, then, that there was one admitted fact: divisions of the Greek nation, which, as we have Achæans were, in very early times, the preseen, according to the current legend, derived dominant race in the south of Thessaly, and on their names, not from sons, but from more re- the eastern side of Peloponnesus. But there mote descendants, of Hellen. This, if we admit- were two contrary opinions; one assigning the ted the common genealogy in its literal sense, priority to the northern, the other to the southwould be a difference of little importance; ern Achæans. It seems clear, however, that but as we believe Hellen, Æolus, Dorus, Achæ- the former of these opinions has the greater us, and Ion to be merely fictitious persons, weight of evidence in its favour. For Strabo, representatives of the races which bore their who in one passage relates that Achæus fled names, we are led to view it in another light, from Athens to Laconia, and there first introas indicating much more than it expresses, and duced the name of the Achæans, elsewhere as implying that the Achæans and Ionians were speaks as if Pelops had first brought the Achæfar more closely connected with one another ans with him into Laconia from Phthia;‡ and than with the other two branches of the nation. Pausanias has preserved a more simple tradiAnd this presumption appears to be greatly tion, which tends to the same point: that Arstrengthened by the accounts which have been chander and Architeles, the sons of Achæus, transmitted to us of their origin and first estab-came from Phthiotis to Argos, and wedded two lishment in Greece. daughters of Danaus-Automaté and Scæa; Xuthus, the father of Achæus and Ion, has Archander named his son Metanastes, to signo part assigned to him in the legends of Thes-nify that he was an emigrant from a foreign saly. To explain this remarkable fact, a story was told by some late writers, that his brothers had driven him out of Thessaly, on pretence that he had taken more than his due share of their common patrimony.* The outcast first found shelter, it was said, in Attica. There he established himself in the plain of Marathon, and founded what was called the Tetrapolis, or the four united townships of Enoe, Marathon, Probalinthus, and Tricorythus. He wedded Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus, king of Attica, and Achæus and Ion were the fruit of this marriage. So far most authors agreed; but some added, that at the death of Erechtheus he was chosen to decide the disputed succession, and the preference he gave to Cecrops provoked the other sons of Erechtheus to expel him from Attica. He crossed over with his children to Peloponnesus, to the region then called Ægialus, or the Coast, but which afterward successively received the names of Ionia and Achaia, and died there; and now, if not sooner, the history of his two sons is parted into separate lines. land. Still, however, the question remains, who the Achæans originally were, and whether they were so nearly related to the Hellenic race as the current genealogy seems to infer. And here we find that some of the ancients took a very different view of their national affinities. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, without even noticing the common tradition, reports one totally different; that Achæus, Phthius, and Pelasgus were the sons of Larissa and Poseidon; and that, in the sixth generation after the first Pelasgus, they led the Pelasgians from Argos into Thessaly, drove out the barbarians, and divided the country into three parts, which were named, after them, Achaia, Phthiotis, and Pelasgiotis.|| Contrary as this account is to the notion of the Achæans which the ancients drew from Ho *Paus., vii., 1, 3. + Her., vii., 197. viii, p. 383, 365. To be convinced vii., 1, 6. It will immediately occur to every intelligent reader of the Greek author, that not only the name of Metanastes, but those of the daughters and sons-in-law of Danaus, are significant, and that they manifestly express the relation between rulers and subjects. Only it may be doubtful whether this relation is implied in the names of the two brothers, so that Architeles should represent the subject class, or whether they are both of similar import, and the inferior relation is only expressed by the names of their wives, which seem to indicate the different effects of that these marriages are merely mythological phrases, voluntary and compulsory submission. which must be interpreted according to analogy under the guidance of etymology, the reader has only to compare some other instances, as of Polycaon and Euæchme (Paus., iv, 2, 1), Ægeus and Meta, daughter of Hoples, his first wife; he afterward weds Chalciopé, daughter of Rhexenor (Apollod., iii., 15, 6, 2), or of Chalcodon (Athen., xin., p. 556); but, according to Tzetzes (Lyc., 494), some authors gave him no other wife than Autochthe, daughter of Persous. So Electryon reigns with his wife Anaxo (Tzetz.. Lyc., 932); and, at a later period, Procles and Eurysthenes are married to Lathria and Anuxandra (Paus., iii., 10, 6). i., 17. THE HELLENIC NATION. mer's use of the name, it seems not to have stood alone; for in another genealogy, Phthius, who was generally considered as belonging to the stock of Pelasgus, was called the son of Achæns. The result to which these last traditions lead us is, that the Achæans were originally no other than the ancient Pelasgian inhabitants of Phthia; and perhaps this mode of viewing them will be found to afford the simplest explanation of the apparent contradictions in the testimony of the ancients concerning them. Considered as a branch of the Pelasgians, who from the remotest times were seated both in Thessaly and Argolis, they might be said, by those who looked upon Peloponnesus as the earlier settlement, to have migrated thence to the north, though their name was first heard in Phthia. If, indeed, the name was a descriptive one, and expressed their situation on the coast, as has been conjectured, it might have been common to both countries from the beginning. But, in any case, the general tendency of the ancient traditions leads us to suppose that, at some period or other, a part of the tribe really migrated from the north to the south, and established themselves in Argolis. Here, however, we observe a remarkable difference between their history and that of the Eolians. Their leaders, Archander and Architeles, marry the daughters of Danaus, but neither they nor any of their descendants mount the throne of Argos, whereas we have seen the Eolian chiefs everywhere founding royal dynasties. And this seems to authorize the conclusion that this migration took place before the Eolians had become masters of Phthia, and had begun to be also called Achæans; and that the Pelasgian Achæans found in Argolis a kindred people, among whom they gained admission more, indeed, by force than good will, but still without effecting a total revolution, or overthrowing the government of the native kings. On this supposition we shall no longer be perplexed by the difficulty which chronologers have found in explaining how the sons of Achæus could marry the daughters of the ancient Danaus, and we shall be spared the necessity of inventing a second personage of the same name as a subject for this particular affinity. If we take this view of the subject, we must distinguish between the Achæans of the north, who, in the period when we first become acquainted with them, are no other than the olians, who, among other names, were sometimes called by that of the people in whose land they established their sway, and those of the Achaean Argos, where not only the bulk of the population, but the noble and ruling families, perhaps that of the kings themselves, continued to be Pelasgian long after the Eolians had gained a footing in other parts of Peloponnesus. It must be with reference to the former that Strabo calls the Achæans an Eolian race;† and that Euripides, while he speaks of Xuthus as a son of Eolus, describes him as an Achæan. To these Eolian Achæans belong also the Myrmi Eustath. on Il, ii., 681. Hellas, he remarks, was founded by Hellen; not, however, some say, the son of Deucalion, bas the son of Phthius, son of Achæus. A little before he speaks of a Phthius, son of Poseidon and Larissa; and in the next page he says that Pelasgus, Phthius, and Acheus were the sons of Hamon and Larissa. dons, whose memory has been transmitted to acus. Hence Peleus, the son of Eacus, These latter, however, in course of time, received a new colony from the western side of Peloponnesus. Argos, it is said, continued to be the sole seat of the house of Danaus until Protus and Acrisius, the sons of Abas, contended with one another for the throne. Acrisius maintained his ground at Argos: Prœtus, at first driven into exile, returned with a band of Lycian allies, and forced his brother to consent to a partition of the disputed territory. The eastern portion fell to Prœtus, who, with the aid of the Cyclopes, raised the indestructible walls of Tiryns: Acrisius was killed, through a fatal mischance, by Perseus, the son of his daughter Dana; though, to avoid his predicted destiny, he had left Argos, and had retired to the Thessalian Larissa: an indication not to be overlooked of an early intercourse between the northern and southern Pelasgians. After this disaster, Perseus, that he might not fill the throne which his own hand had made vacant, exchanged his patrimony for that of Megapenthes, son of Protus, and in the neighbourhood of Tiryns, but on a loftier site, founded a new again split into three smaller realms. In the city, Mycenae. But, in the second generation after this transfer, the little western state was reign of Anaxagoras, grandson of Megapenthes, the women of Argos were struck with phrensy. The king-according to another, and, apparently, older form of the legend, it was Prœtus, whose daughters had been thus punished for their impiety in laughing at the wooden image of Heré, or spurning the rites of Dionysussought the aid of the seer Melampus, who, by his mother's side, was akin to the royal line. Melampus asked no less a price for the succours of his art than a third of the kingdom; and, like the Sibyl, when the king refused it, rose in his demands, and only consented to remedy the evil when he had obtained another third for his * By transforming the ants (μύρμηκες, οι μύρμοι) into men (Mupuidoves), according to the fable, occasioned probably modern (see Strabo, viit., p. 375. Theagenes in Tzetz., by a false etymology, though some writers, ancient and Lyc., 176), have supposed it to have been grounded on the mode of living in caves, which they attribute (on no eviEginetica. dence, however, save the fable itself to the ancient inhab itants of Egina. The curious reader will find the ancient history of Egina elaborately discussed in K. O. Mueller's |