Greek nation; but it is equally evident that, without the help of an historical interpretation, the story can give us none of the information we desire.

brother Bias.* Whatever may be the full | lation they stood to the other branches of the meaning of these marvellous stories, we see no reason for questioning their historical ground so far as regards the establishment of Æolian chieftains in Argolis; and this event may have contributed to bring the Argive Achæans nearer in language and religion to those of Thessaly. Tradition throws very little light on the manner in which the name of the Achæans was introduced into Laconia. We have seen reason to believe that it was not here where it first arose, though this appears to be Strabo's meaning when he says that Achæus himself settled there. Another statement of the same author, that Achæans came into Laconia with Pelops, stands too insulated, and too little supported by other facts, to deserve much attention. The event may, perhaps, be indicated by the tradition that Eurotas, who succeeded his father Myles, son of Lelex, having no male children, left his kingdom to Lacedæmon, son of Jupiter and Taygeté, who had married his daughter Sparté. These names seem to intimate that a new tribe from the north had gained the ascendant over the Leleges, who inhabited the plain near the coast, where their labours are said to have confined the river named from their king in an artificial channel. After this we read of no change of dynasty, at least till the Trojan war, and we find the Lacedæmonian kings allying themselves by marriage with those of Argolis,+ which seems to confirm our supposition of an original natural affinity between them. This view of the Achæans will perhaps acquire a higher degree of probability when we compare the accounts we have received of the origin of the fourth great division of the Greek nation, the Ionians.

According to the most generally received opinion, the Ionians were a Hellenic tribe, who took forcible possession of Attica and a part of Peloponnesus, and communicated their name to the ancient inhabitants. It is a distinct question, whether the conquerors brought this name with them, or only assumed it in their new territories. This last supposition is alone consistent with the legends of Ion, which all treat Xuthus as the founder of the power of the Ionians, and never speak of Ion himself as having migrated into Attica from the north. It might, indeed, be easily imagined that the birth of Ion is a mere fiction, and that Xuthus was the real name of an Ionian chief who led his people from Thessaly to Attica. But in this case we should have expected, according to the usual form of the mythical genealogies, to hear of an elder Ion, or, at least, to find some trace of the Ionian name in the north. But none such appears in the quarter where we might reasonably look for it. Theopompus, indeed, derived the name of the Ionian Sea from an Ionius, a native of Issa, who once ruled over its eastern coast;* other writers from an Italian Iaon. But these traditions, if they are not rather mere conjectures, cannot be connected with our Ionians, because, if their name had been so early celebrated, it would assuredly have occurred in the legends of Thessaly. Hence, even if it were certain that they were a Hellenic race in the ordinary sense of the word -that is, that they sprang from the Thessalian Hellas-we must still abandon all hope of tracing the origin of their name to that region, and must either adopt the common explanation of it, or suppose that it was derived from some other more probable, but totally unknown cause, and the obscure legend of Xuthus will be the only link that connects the Ionians by any direct evidence with the people of Hellen.

The early history of the Ionians, though peculiarly interesting on account of its relation to the ancient institutions of Attica, is, perhaps, the most obscure that has yet come under our view. We have already seen the manner in which Ion is connected by the current genealogy with the family of Hellen. The Athenians listened with complacency to a different legend, more flattering to their national vanity, accord- It may seem, however, that in this case no ing to which he was the son, not of Xuthus, such. evidence is wanted, and that the fact is but of Apollo: a story which furnished Euripi-sufficiently ascertained by proofs of a different des with the subject of one of his most ingenious plays. The poet represents Ion, not only as the founder of the Ionian name, but as succeeding to the throne of Erechtheus. On the other hand, he recognises in Xuthus a foreign chief who had succoured the Athenians in their war with Euboea, and had thus earned the hand of the king's daughter; and he ventures to contradict the common tradition so far as to call Achæus and Dorus the issue of this marriage. All these variations, devised to gratify the Athenians, tend to confirm the substance of the common story by showing that it kept its ground in spite of the interest which Athenian patriotism might have in distorting or suppressing it. And we may reasonably suspect that if, in its form, it deviates from the truth, it is rather so as to disguise than to exaggerate the importance of the event to which it refers. It must not, therefore, be neglected when we are inquiring who the Athenians were, and in what re

* Compare Herod., ix., 34. Paus., ii., 16-18. Apollod., ii., 2-4, † Paus., iii., 1, 4. Apollod., ii., 2, 2, 1.

kind, yet of irresistible force. Herodotus informs us that the inhabitants of Attica were originally Pelasgians: we know that they were afterward a part of the Hellenic nation, yet the same historian expressly asserts that the Attic Ionians had never changed their seats: and it may appear that the only way of reconciling these facts is to suppose that a body of Hellenic settlers had established themselves among the old Pelasgian population, and had given it a new name and a new nature. Herodotus himself undoubtedly lends some colour to this supposition. The change of name, indeed, would not, according to his view, be an argument of any weight; for he asserts that such changes had repeatedly taken place in earlier times, while the Pelasgian character of the people continued unaltered. But he speaks of a trans

327) also mentions a river lon, a tributary of the Peneus, Strabo, vii., p. 317. Tzetz., Lye, 630. Strabo (p. and a town named Alalcomene on its banks; and there

seems to have been a river of the same name in the Peloponnesian Ionia. Dionys. Per., 416, couples it with the Melas and the Crathis. t Eustath., Dion. Per., 22,

THE HELLENIC NATION.

formation by which the Attic Pelasgians be-
came Hellenes; and he infers, from his own
observations on the scattered remnants of the
Pelasgian race which he found elsewhere, that
this event must have been accompanied by a
complete change in the language of Attica.
These are effects which imply some powerful
cause: Herodotus, indeed, does not describe
the manner in which they were wrought, but it
seems clear that he referred them to the epoch
which was marked by the appearance of Ion;
for to Ion, in common with all other authors, he
attributes not only the introduction of a new
national name, but also the institution of the
four tribes into which the people of Attica was
anciently divided, and which were retained in
several of the Ionian colonies. Of these tribes
we shall speak more fully hereafter; we here
allude to them only so far as they bear upon the
present question; and, for this purpose, it will
suffice to mention that one of them was, as its
name imports, a tribe of warriors, and that, to
a very late period, we find in Attica a powerful
body of nobles, possessing the best part of the
land, commanding the services of a numerous
dependant class, and exercising the highest au-
thority in the state. With this we must com-
bine the fact, that Ion is described by Herodo-
tus, as well as by other writers, as the leader
of the Attic armies:* a title which easily sug-
gests the notion that the warrior tribe, and the
noble class just mentioned, were no other than
the Hellenic conquerors, who are supposed to
have overpowered the native Pelasgians. The
Attic legends may even seem to render it prob-
able that this revolution went a step farther,
and that, although the break was studiously
concealed, the strangers took possession of the
throne, and put an end to the line of the Pelas-
gian kings. We are told that Poseidon, the
great national god of the Ionians, destroyed
Erechtheus and his house;† and Euripides,
who mentions this tradition,‡ considers lon as
the founder of a new dynasty.

These arguments would, perhaps, be per-
fectly convincing, if, on the other hand, there
were not strong reasons for believing that the
name of the Ionians is of much higher antiqui-
ty than the common legend ascribes to it, and
that it prevailed in Peloponnesus and in Attica
before the Hellenes made their appearance in
Thessaly. We have already quoted a passage
in which Herodotus contrasts the Dorians as a
Hellenic race, with the Ionians as Pelasgians.
It is true that he adopted the general opinion,
that these Pelasgians had been newly named
after Ion; but there would have been no mean-
ing in his words if he had believed that the
Ionians were really a Hellenic tribe, which had
given its name to the conquered people. Their
identity with the Pelasgians was the result of
his own researches; the origin of the name
was an unimportant fact, as to which he was
content to follow the received tradition. His
meaning appears still more clearly from the
manner in which he speaks of the Cynurians,
a people who inhabited a little tract situate be-
tween Argolis and Laconia. He remarks that,

+ Apollod. ii, 15, 5, 1. Her, viii, 44, στρατάρχης. Paus. 1, 31, 3, πολέμαρ Tom, 264. He was ingulfed in a chasm which Poseidon spened with his trident.

of the seven nations which in his time inhabited Peloponnesus, two were aboriginal, and were then seated in the same land where they had dwelt of old; these were the Arcadians and the Cynurians. The Achæans, too, he observes, had not quitted Peloponnesus, though they no longer occupied the same part of it; but the Cynurians, who were an aboriginal people, appeared to be the only Ionians, though, having become subject to the Argives, they had assumed the Dorian character. Here, again, it is clear that the epithet Ionian is used as equivalent to Pelasgian, or ante-Hellenic. The authority of Herodotus, therefore, seems to direct us to Peloponnesus as one of the earliest seats of the name. And this is also implied in the form which the authors, followed by Pausanias, gave to the story of Ion, for it was told in two ways. Ion was said by some to have remained in Attica, and to have given his name to the country, from which a colony afterward migrated to Egialus; while others, as we have seen, carried Xuthus himself into Peloponnesus, and supposed that Ion, after having established his name and his power there, led an army to the aid of the Athenians, and thus extended his influence over Attica. The latter tradition must have been that which Herodotus adopted, for he also speaks of Xuthus as having come to Peloponnesus. This was indeed explained by the above-mentioned story, that Xuthus had been expelled from Attica by the sons of Erechtheus; but, unless we admit this grossly improbable tale, the result of the whole is, that the Peloponnesian Ionians were, at least, of equal antiquity with those of Attica. And to this conclusion we are led by the legends of the southern Ionia; for here, the only king named before the arrival of Ion is a Selinus, who takes his name from one of the rivers of the country, which flowed near Helicé, the wife of Ion. But, besides this settlement of chief town of the Ionians, so called, it was said, from the daughter of Selinus, who became the the Ionians on the western side of the peninsula, it is clear that they once occupied a great part of the eastern coast. The legends both of Sicyon and Corinth spoke of a very ancient connexion between this region and Attica. Marathon, it was said, the son of Epopeus, one of the kings of Corinth, who reigned there before the arrival of the Eolids, had first fled to the seacoast of Attica, and afterward, returning to his paternal dominions, divided his kingdom between his two sons, Sicyon and Corinthus ; and hence the final fall of the Eolian dynasty is said to have been accompanied by the expulsion of the Ionians. Still more distinct traces of an Ionian population appear at Træezen and Epidaurus. The people of Trazen are distinguished in the historical times as the kinsmen and firm friends of the Athenians. Their city, as we shall see, was the birthplace of the great Attic hero; Sphettus and Anaphlystus, the sons of Trozen, founded two of the Attic towns; the strife between Athené and Poseidon, for the possession of the land, was equally celebrated in the Attic and the

Η Conon., 26. Σισυφίδας ἐκβαλὼν — καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτοῖς Ιωνας.

Træzenian legends, and was commemorated on the ancient coins of Trozen by the trident and the head of the goddess.* At Epidaurus, the last king before the Dorian conquest, which will be hereafter related, was said to be a descendant of Ion, and, when driven from his own dominions, takes refuge with his people in Attica. The well-attested antiquity of the Cy-tinguish two periods in the ancient history of nurians seems to warrant the assumption that the name of the Ionians had, in very early times, prevailed still more widely on the eastern side of Peloponnesus, and that it was signified by the ancient epithet of Argos, the Iasian, which appears to have preceded that derived from the Achæans. Their growing power may, perhaps, have confined the Ionians within narrower limits, and have parted states which were once contiguous. The early predominance of the Ionian name in this quarter might then be connected with the fact that it is used in the books of Moses as a general description of Greece.

race. Their mutual relation seems to be expressed by the tradition that, at the death of Pandion, his twin sons, Erechtheus and Butes, divided their inheritance, and that Erechtheus succeeded to the kingdom, Butes to the priesthood of Athené and Poseidon.* If these traces do not mislead us, we should be inclined to disAttica, one of which might be called the priestly, the other the heroic, in the former of which the priesthood was predominant, while in the latter, the nobles or warriors gradually rose to power. The latter period may also be terined the Ionian, and contrasted with the former as the Pelasgian; not, however, because the Ionians were foreign to the Pelasgians, but because, during this period, migrations appear to have taken place from Peloponnesus into Attica, which tended at once to fix the Ionian name in the latter country, where a variety of appellations had before been in use, and to strengthen the hands of the warrior class by the accesBut still it remains to be considered how this sion of new adventurers of the same blood. view of the Ionians is to be reconciled with the There is even a sense in which the second of known state of society in Attica, and with the these periods might not improperly be called various indications which it seems to disclose the Hellenic, not only inasmuch as it was one of a foreign conquest, and of two distinct races. of gradual approximation to the purely martial The question, however, is not whether any for- and heroic character of the genuine Hellenic eign settlers established themselves and be- states, but also as strangers, apparently of Helcame powerful in Attica-for this cannot and lenie origin, now gained a footing in Attica. need not be denied-but whether the genuine For so much, at least, the story of Xuthus Ionians were a different tribe from the aborigi- seems sufficient to prove. The foundation, or nal Pelasgians; and it may certainly be doubt- occupation, of the Marathonian Tetrapolis, ated whether this can be more safely inferred tributed to Xuthus, is evidently connected with from the institutions attributed to Ion, than that war in which he is said to have aided the from his traditional relation to Xuthus. There Athenians against the Euboeans, and renders it seems to be no reason why they might not have probable that he migrated from the island into been formed in the natural internal progress of Attica: this, however, would throw no light society, and have been originally independent upon his origin. Euboea seems to have been of all extraneous causes, though some such inhabited of old by a variety of races, as its may have contributed to ripen and strengthen geographical position would lead us to expect: them. Until it is proved that the Indian, Egyp- it was among the most ancient seats of the Letian, Median castes, and other similar institu- leges its mines very early attracted Phonitions, both in the ancient and modern world, cian colonists; and it was in Euboea that the all arose from invasions and conquests, which Curetes were said first to have put on brazen established the ascendant of more powerful armour.† Homer describes its inhabitants by strangers over the children of the soil, the the collective name of the Abantes; as to which, tribes of Ion must be regarded as an equivocal the most learned of the ancients were themsign; and we cannot conclude that the war- selves in doubt whether it was connected with riors alone were of Hellenic, the rest of Pelas- the Phocian town of Abæ, or with Abas, the gian origin. Without laying any stress on the Argive hero. A tract in the northern part of form of the legend, which represented all the the island was called Hestiæotis, and Strabo tribes as named after as many sons of Ion, and believed that this name was transferred from thus placed them all on a level with respect to Euboea to the north of Thessaly, by a colony their descent, we may observe that some of which had been forced to emigrate by the Perthe ancients included a tribe of priests among rhæbians: we should otherwise have presumed the four, and that this opinion is strongly con- that the Thessalian region had been the mothfirmed by the Attic traditions, which are mark-er country. There was also an Attic township ed by traces, scarcely to be mistaken, of an ancient priestly caste. This may originally have had the supreme power in its hands; but here, as everywhere else, it could not fail to be accompanied by a class of nobles or warriors, who, however, were undoubtedly not a distinct

named Histiæa, which led some writers to think that the Eubean Histiæans were of Attic origin. In the same quarter of Eubea was a town, and perhaps a district, which bore the remarkable name of Hellopia, the same which Hesiod gives to the country about Dodona. It is even said that the whole of Euboea was once * Paus., ii., 30, 6. Plut., Thes., 6. called Hellopia; and it is added that it receiv Od., Z., 346. Eustath. on I., iii., 258. Perhaps weed this name from Hellops, a son of Ion, which may connect this with the remark of Pausanias (11., 37, 3), might seem to confirm the supposition that the that, before the return of the Heracleids, the Argives spoke Ionians were a Hellenic race, if it were not the same language with the Athenians. more probable that this legend was occasioned + Steph. Byz., Azônios

+ Paus., ii., 26, 1.

Her., ., 101. The Magians, a Median tribe. With respect to the hypothesis of a conquest, as the origin of the Indian and Egyptian castes, there are some good remarks in Bohlen, Das alte Indien, ii., p. 38.

Apollod., iii., 15, 1, 1.
Strabo, I., p. 445.

THE HEROES AND THEIR AGE.

by the numerous Ionian colonies which passed belonging to this class, who, in the language of over from Attica to the island. But though poetry, are called heroes. The term hero is of this confusion of uncertain accounts about the doubtful origin, though it was clearly a title of early population of Eubea precludes all conjec-honour; but, in the poems of Homer, it is apture as to the origin of Xuthus, drawn from the plied not only to the chiefs, but also to their folside on which he appears to have entered Atti- lowers, the freemen of lower rank, without, ca, still the tradition which connected him with however, being contrasted with any other, so the house of Eolus is strengthened by the pe-as to determine its precise meaning. In later culiar rites which distinguished the inhabitants times its use was narrowed, and in some deof the plain of Marathon, and which seem to gree altered:* it was restricted to persons, mark a Hellenic descent. The union of Xu- whether of the heroic or of after ages, who were thus and Creusa undoubtedly implies that this believed to be endowed with a superhuman, settlement exerted considerable influence over though not a divine nature, and who were honthe fortunes of Attica, and it was a necessary oured with sacred rites, and were imagined to consequence that Xuthus and Ion should be have the power of dispensing good or evil to brought into near relation to one another; but, their worshippers; and it was gradually comin any other sense, we see no evidence of a bined with the notion of prodigious strength Hellenic conquest either in Attica or the Pelo- and gigantic stature. Here, however, we have ponnesian Ionia. Of the supposed break in the only to do with the heroes as men. The hissuccession of the native kings, we shall have tory of their age is filled with their wars, expeoccasion to speak again. The force of any ar- ditions, and adventures; and this is the great gument drawn from the language of Attica mine from which the materials of the Greek must depend on the conception we form of the poetry were almost entirely drawn. But the original relation between the Pelasgian and richer a period is in poetical materials, the more Hellenic race. The difference between the di- difficult it usually is to extract from it any that alect from which those of Attica and the Asi- are fit for the use of the historian; and this is atic Ionia issued, and the Eolian or Doric, does especially true in the present instance. Though not fall much short of that which was to have what has been transmitted to us is, perhaps, been expected, according to the view here ta- only a minute part of the legends which sprang ken of the Ionians; and for several generations, from this inexhaustible source, they are suffivellous nature. The pains taken by the ancient it may have been continually lessened by a cient to perplex the inquirer by their multiplicicompilers to reduce them to an orderly system, growing intercourse between Attica and the ty and their variations, as well as by their marhave only served, in most cases, to disguise neighbouring Hellenic states. their original form, and thus to increase the difficulty of detecting their real foundation. would answer no useful purpose to repeat or abridge these legends, without subjecting them to a critical examination, for which we cannot

THE period included between the first appearance of the Hellenes in Thessaly and the re-afford room: we must content ourselves with turn of the Greeks from Troy, is commonly known by the name of the heroic age or ages. The real limits of this period cannot be exactly defined. The date of the siege of Troy is only the result of a doubtful calculation; and, from what has been already said, the reader will see that it must be scarcely possible to ascertain the precise beginning of the period; but still, so far as its traditions admit of anything like a chronological connexion, its duration may be estimated at six generations, or about two hunWe have already described the dred years. general character of this period as one in which a warlike race spread from the north over the south of Greece, and founded new dynasties in a number of little states; while, partly through the impulse given to the earlier settlers by this immigration, and partly in the natural progress of society, a similar state of things arose in those parts of the country which were not immediately occupied by the invaders; so that everywhere a class of nobles entirely given to martial pursuits, and the principal owners of the land-whose station and character cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than when compared to that of the chivalrous barons of the middle ages-became prominent above the mass of the people, which they held in various degrees of subjection. The history of the heroic age is the history of the most celebrated persons Paus., i., 15, 3, and 32, 4.

We must pass very hastily over the exploits The former, whose of Bellerophon and Perseus, and we mention them only for the sake of one remark. The scene of their principal adventures is laid out of Greece, in the East. father, Glaucus, is the son of Sisyphus, having chanced to stain his hands with the blood of a kinsman, flies to Argos, where he excites the jealousy of Protus, and is sent by him to Lycia, the country where Prœtus himself had been hospitably entertained in his exile. It is in the adjacent regions of Asia that the Corinthian hero proves his valour by vanquishing ferocious tribes and terrible monsters. Perseus, too, has been sent over the sea by his grandfather Acrisius, and his achievements follow the same direction, but take a wider range: he is carried along the coasts of Syria to Egypt, where Herodotus heard of him from the priests, and into the unknown lands of the South. There can

In Homer, it is used as the German Rechen in the Nithe warriors before Thebes and Troy seem to be included guish them from their own contemporaries, but to contrast belungenlied. So, too, in Hesiod (Op. et D., 155-171), all them with the men of a later and inferior generation. under the name, Afterward it was limited to the most eminent persons of the heroic age; not, however, to distin

point to Thessaly as the mother-country from pied by an Æolian tribe is intimated by another which the people issued: Andreus, the first legend, which describes Deion, son of Eolus, king, is a son of the River Peneus. He assigns as reigning there,* and perhaps also by the stoa part of his territory to Athamas, who adopts ries about the strife of cunning between Sisytwo of the grandchildren of his brother Sisyphus and the Phocian Autolycus.† phus; 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 Eolian 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 and sacrilegious outrages have provoked. Yet Phlegyas, their mythical ancestor, is connected with the house of Æolus in exactly the same manner as Minyas himself. 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 Æolians in the south of Boeotia, where Tanagra is said to have received its name from a daughter of Eolus, and Hyria from a hero who is introduced in various ways into the Minyan legends.†

Sons, or more remote descendants of Eolus, spread the Eolian 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 Æthlius 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 Etolus-contended for the succession to his throne, was the son of Æthlius, by Calyce, a daughter of Eolus, 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 Æolian settlements on this side of Peloponnesus are connected with the name of Salmoneus, who is celebrated for the venAnother seat of the Æolian race was Ephyra, geance inflicted by Jupiter on his audacious imwhich afterward became more celebrated under piety. He is said to have founded Salmone, in the name of Corinth. That of Ephyra was com- the territory of Pisa: the same name, with a mon to it with many other towns, as in Elis, slight inflexion, is given to a Baotian town or Thessaly, and Epirus; and Homer couples the district, which is said to have been named after Ephyreans with the Phlegyans, as the especial a son of Sisyphus. To the south of Elis, anfavourites of Mars. The Eolian dynasty at other Eolian dynasty, long renowned, not only Corinth, as we shall call it by anticipation, is in epic song, but in history, owed its origin to represented by the wily Sisyphus; and this, his Tyro, the beautiful daughter of Salmoneus. legendary character, may not be unconnected Left by her father in Thessaly, she becomes the with the causes which procured the epithet of mother of Pelias and Neleus, whom the legend wealthy for his city before the time of Homer. represents as the offspring of the god of the sea. As to the more ancient population, there are She afterward wedded her uncle Cretheus, and reasons, which we shall mention hereafter, for bore to him another heroic progeny. Neleus believing that it was nearly allied to that of founded a kingdom in Pylus, apparently the Attica. Here we will only remark, that the Triphylian; for there were three towns of that local legends were singularly interwoven with name on the western side of Peloponnesus, and the story of the Argonautic expedition, to which it was a controverted point, even among the we shall hereafter revert. They inform us that ancients, which was the one described by HoEetes, king of Colchis, had first reigned at Co-mer as the residence of Nestor. Among other rinth, but, dissatisfied with this realm, withdrew traces which confirm Strabo's opinion, that the to the east, leaving it, however, in charge for poet meant the Triphylian Pylus, we may rehis descendants. Hence, when Jason brought mark that, as the mother of Nestor sprang from his daughter Medea home to Iolcus, the Co-the Minyean Orchomenus, so the remembrance rinthians invited her to their city, which, when she was about to return to Asia, she delivered up to Sisyphus. As we have already seen that some of the line 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. That Phocis was occu

of the same race was preserved in Triphylia, by a river called by Homer the Minyeus, afterward the Anigrus. 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

* Apollod., i., 9, 4.

Autolycus dwelt on Parnassus, and stole the cattle of
Sisyphus, and changed their marks to elude their owner,
Eustath. on Od., xix., 395.
Strabo, ix., p. 125.

Paus., v., 1, 5. Quint. Cal., x., 125.
Paus, ix., 34, 10.

Strabo, vili, p. 347. Leake's Morea, 1., 54.