CHAP. IV. settlements nesus. reasons for believing that the name of the Ionians is of much higher antiquity than the common legend ascribes to it, and that it prevailed in Peloponnesus in Pelopon- 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 meaning 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 between Argolis and Laconia. He remarks, that, of the seven nations which in his timeinhabited 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.1 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 1 VIII. 73. remained in Attica, and to have given his name to the country, from which a colony afterwards 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.1 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 chief town of the Ionians, so called, it was said, from the daughter of Selinus, who became the wife of Ion.2 But beside this settlement of 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 connection 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 sea-coast of Attica, and afterwards, returning to his paternal dominions, divided his kingdom between his two sons, Sicyon and Corinthus 3; and hence the final fall of the Æolian dynasty is said to have been accompanied by the expulsion of the Ionians. Still more distinct traces of an Ionian I VII. 94. 2 Paus. vii. 1. 4. 3 Paus. ii. 1. 1. 4 Conon. 26. Σισυφίδας ἐκβαλὼν — καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτοῖς Ιωνας. 3 CHAP. IV. CHAP. IV. Early distinctions among the Ionians in population appear at Trozen and Epidaurus. The people of Trozen 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 Trazenian legends, and was commemorated on the ancient coins of Trazen by the trident and the head of the goddess.1 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 wellattested antiquity of the Cynurians 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. But still it remains to be considered how this view of the Ionians is to be reconciled with the known state of society in Attica, and with the various indications which it seems to disclose of a foreign conquest, and of two distinct races. The question how Paus. ii. 30. 6. Plut. Thes. 6. 2 Paus. ii. 26. 1. 3 Od. . 246. Eustath, on Il. iii. 258. Perhaps we may connect this with the remark of Pausanias (ii. 37. 3.), that, before the return of the Heracleids, the Argives spoke the same language with the Athenians. ever is not whether any foreign settlers established themselves and became powerful in Attica - for this cannot and need not be denied - but whether the genuine Ionians were a different tribe from the aboriginal Pelasgians; and it may certainly be doubted whether this can be more safely inferred from the institutions attributed to Ion, than from his traditional relation to Xuthus. There seems to be no reason why they might not have been formed in the natural internal progress of society, and have been originally independent of all extraneous causes, though some such may have contributed to ripen and strengthen them. Until it is proved that the Indian, Egyptian, Median castes 1, and other similar institutions both in the ancient and modern world, all arose from invasions and conquests, which established the ascendant of more powerful strangers over the children of the soil, the tribes of Ion must be regarded as an equivocal sign; and we cannot conclude that the warriors alone were of Hellenic, the rest of Pelasgian, origin. Without laying any stress on the form of the legend, which represented all the tribes as named after as many sons of Ion, and thus placed them all on a level with respect to their descent, we may observe, that some of the ancients included a tribe of priests among the four, and that this opinion is strongly confirmed by the Attic traditions, which are marked 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 every where else, it could not fail to be accompanied by a class of nobles or warriors, who however were undoubtedly not a distinct race. Their mutual relation seems to be expressed by the tradition, that, at the death of Pandion, his twin sons, 1 Her. i. 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. CHAP. IV. CHAP. IV. Hellenes Erechtheus and Butes, divided their inheritance, and that Erechtheus succeeded to the kingdom, Butes to the priesthood of Athené and Poseidon.1 If these traces do not mislead us, we should be inclined to distinguish two periods in the ancient history of Attica, 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 termed 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 accession of new adventurers of the same blood. Mixture of There is even a sense in which the second of these periods might not improperly be called the Hellenic; not only inasmuch as it was one of gradual approximation to the purely martial and heroic character of the genuine Hellenic states, but also as strangers, apparently of Hellenic origin, now gained a footing in Attica. For so much at least the story of Xuthus seems sufficient to prove. The foundation, or occupation, of the Marathonian Tetrapolis, attributed to Xuthus, is evidently connected with that war in which he is said to have aided the Athenians against the Eubœans, and renders it probable that he migrated from the island into Attica: this however would Migrations throw no light upon his origin. Euboea seems to have been inhabited of old by a variety of races, as its geographical position would lead us to expect: it was among the most ancient seats of the Leleges; its mines very early attracted Phoenician colonists; and with Ionians in to and from Euboea. 1 Apollod. iii. 15. 1. 1. |