СНАР. IV. 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 Dionysus sought 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 brother Bias.1-Whatever may be the full meaning of these marvellous stories, we see no reason for questioning their historical ground, so far as regards the establishment of Eolian 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 Achæans in which the name of the Achæans was introduced into Laconia. 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 1 Compare Herod, ix. 34. Paus. ii. 16-18. Apollod. ii. 2—4. CHAP. Origin of the Ionians. at least till the Trojan war, and we find the Lacedæmonian kings allying themselves by marriage with those of Argolis 1; which seems to confirm our supposition of an original natural affinity between them. This view of the Achæans will perhaps acquire 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. 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, according to which he was the son, not of Xuthus, but of Apollo; a story which furnished Euripides 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 Paus. iii. 1. 4. Apollod. ii. 2. 2. 1. IV. not therefore be neglected, when we are inquiring CHAP. who the Ionians were, and in what relation they stood to the other branches of the Greek nation; but is is equally evident that, without the help of a historical interpretation, the story can give us none of the information we desire. tion to the Hellenes. According to the most generally received opinion, Their relathe 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 1; other writers from an Italian Iaon.2 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 1 Strabo, vii. p. 317. Tzetz. Lyc. 630. Strabo (p. 327.) also mentions a river Ion, a tributary of the Peneus, and a town named Alalcomenæ 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. 2 Eustath. Dion. Per. 92. CHAP. 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. It may seem however that in this case no such evidence is wanted, and that the fact is sufficiently ascertained by proofs of a different kind, yet of Their esta irresistible force. Herodotus informs us, that the blishment in Attica. inhabitants of Attica were originally Pelasgians: we know that they were afterwards 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 transformation by which the Attic Pelasgians became 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 dependent class, and exercising the highest authority in the state. With this we must combine the fact, that Ion is described by Herodotus, as well as by other writers, as the leader of the Attic armies 1: a title which easily suggests 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 probable that this revolution went a step further, and that, although the break was studiously concealed, the strangers took possession of the throne, and put an end to the line of the Pelasgian kings. We are told that Poseidon, the great national god of the Ionians, destroyed Erechtheus and his house 2; and Euripides, who mentions this tradition 3, considers Ion as the founder of a new dynasty. CHAP. IV. of the These arguments would perhaps be perfectly con- Antiquity vincing, if, on the other hand, there were not strong Ionian 1 Her. viii. 44. στρατάρχης. Paus. i. 31. 3. πολέμαρχος. Apollod. iii. 15. 5. 1. * Ion. 284. He was engulfed in a chasm which Poseidon opened with his trident. |