1. “From early times the Dorians and Ionians were the chief races of the Grecian nation; the latter of Pelasgic, the former of Hellenic origin; the latter an aboriginal people, the former a people much addicted to wandering. For the former, when under the dominion of Deucalion, dwelt in Phthiotis; and in the time of Dorus, the son of Hellen, they inhabited the country at the foot of Ossa and Olympus, which was called Hestiæotis. Afterwards, however, being driven from Hestiæotis by the Cadmeans, they dwelt under mount Pindus, and were called the Macednian nation. From thence they again migrated to Dryopis; and having passed from Dryopis into Peloponnesus, they were called the Doric race.”58

This connected account cannot be considered as derived immediately from ancient tradition; but can only be viewed as an attempt of the father of history to arrange and reconcile various legends. Nor indeed is it difficult to discover and examine the steps of the argument which led him to this conclusion. It is clear that he considers the genealogy of Hellen,59 viz. that he was the son of Deucalion and father of Dorus, Xuthus, and Æolus, as an historical fact; although it is at least more recent than the poems of Homer, where the name of Hellenes does not include these races, but is the appellation of a single nation in Phthiotis: and that his object is to establish the position, that the Dorians were the genuine Hellenes. Now since Deucalion, the father of Hellen and grandfather of Dorus, was supposed to have dwelt in Phthiotis,60 Herodotus represents the Dorians as also coming from Phthiotis; although the people meant in these legends by the names of Deucalion and Hellen were the real ancient Hellenes, the Myrmidons,61 who were afterwards under the dominion of the Æacidæ,62 and are entirely distinct from the Dorians. Dorus was next represented as succeeding Hellen as king of the same people; and then, since the name of Dorus was [pg 021] in these fabulous accounts connected with Hestiæotis, he infers that the Dorians went thither from Phthiotis. But the modern mythologist must of course abandon this whole deduction as unfounded; and he can only adopt the datum from which the historian started; namely, that, according to ancient tradition, “Dorus dwelt at the foot of Olympus and Ossa.” Here then the real fact presents itself to us. The chain of Olympus, the divider of nations, whose lofty summit is still called by the inhabitants the celestial mansion, is the place in which the Dorians first appear in the history of Greece.

2. The mountain-valley, which in later times bore the name of Thessaly, was bounded to the west by Pindus, to the south by Othrys, to the east by Pelion and Ossa, and to the north by Olympus, under which name the ancient writers, for example Herodotus, also include the chain which in after-times (probably from an Illyrian word)63 was called the Cambunian mount. The course of the Peneus is so situated as to divide the open plain to the south, the ancient Pelasgic Argos, from the mountainous district to the north; towards the north-east it breaks through the mountain-ridge, dividing Ossa from Olympus; here too the river creeps under the loftier heights of mount Olympus;64 so that the path passes along the side of the more rugged and precipitous Ossa. This ravine was known by the ancient generic name of Tempea or Tempe (the cut, from τέμνω), and has been often poetically described, but seldom sufficiently considered as bearing upon the history of Greece.65

Before entering the pass, the traveller crosses a small round valley, agreeably situated; at the end of which on the left hand, where the mountains approach one another on both sides, was the ancient fortress of Gonnus (or Gonni), distant 160 stadia from Larissa, the chief city of the plain.66 From this point the mountains close upon one another more rapidly, until they rise on both sides of the glen in two rocky parapets, forming a gully, where in many places a path has been hewn along the river. About the middle of this path there stands now, upon a bold projection of Ossa, a fortress of Roman construction called Horæo-Castro, covering also a cross glen of that mountain: it was there probably that the strong-hold Gonnocondylum stood; which appears to have taken its name from the “windings” of the valley.67 Not far from this spot is the narrowest part of the ravine, hardly 100 feet in width: which is stated in an inscription to have been fortified by L. Cassius Longinus, the proconsul and partisan of J. Cæsar; but, without the aid of fortification, a few armed men would probably have been able to stop the progress of a force many times their number. The region has nothing beautiful or agreeable in its appearance, but presents rather a look of savage wildness: the perpendicular masses of rock of the same kind of stone appear, as it were, to have been [pg 023] rent asunder, and are without any covering of trees or grass; the blackness of the shadows in the deep hollow, and the dull echoes, increase the gloominess of the impression: beneath bubble the silver waters of the Peneus (ἀργυροδίνης).68 Not far from this narrow passage the defile opens towards the sea, to which the Peneus flows through marshes; and from hence may be seen the smiling country of Pieria, on the eastern side of Olympus, particularly the plains of Phila, Heracleum, and Leibethrum, which lead onwards to the southern parts of Macedonia.

3. This is the only road between Thessaly and the northern districts, which passes in its whole length along a valley; all the others are mountain-passes. Such was the other road to Macedonia, which crossed mount Olympus (ἐσβολὴ Ὀλυμπική).69 This road, too, begins at the strongly-fortified city of Gonnus, the key of the country towards the north; and it then goes along the southern side of Olympus, till it reaches the cities of Azorum and Doliche. Between these two towns is a place where three ways met.70 The chief road passes in a northerly direction over the summit of the Cambunian chain to the Macedonian highlands; and it was here that Xerxes set fire to the woods in order to open a passage for his army, which the Greeks had expected along the more practicable way through Pieria and the valley of Tempe; and it was often in the Roman wars traversed by large armies.71 From the south of Olympus two difficult mountain roads led over the heights of Olympus, connecting [pg 024] Northern Thessaly with Pieria. The one avoided the valley of Tempe, as it passed by the fortress of Lapathus to the north of that defile,72 then along the small lake of Ascurias, whence there was a view of the town of Dium on the sea-coast, at the distance of 96 stadia; after which it descended into the plains of Pieria. We should, however, more particularly notice the other road, taking a more northern direction, and passing over the lofty sides of Olympus, where formerly there stood the castle of Petra, and the temple of the Pythian Apollo, commonly called Pythium, together with a village of the same name,73 the height of which Xenagoras, by a geometrical measurement, ascertained to be 6096 Grecian feet.74 From this point there was a mountain-pass leading down to the coast to Heracleum and Phila in Pieria, and another way led along the ridge of Olympus by difficult and dangerous passages, as far as Upper Macedonia.75

These mountain-passes and defiles have not been explored by any modern traveller; but it was important for our subject to discover their position from the writings of the ancients. Not only did Perseus and Æmilius Paulus here contend for the fate of Macedonia, [pg 025] but it was in this region that the Greek nations of the heroic age disputed the possession of the fertile Thessaly. There was once a time when through these passes the nations pressed down, to whose lot the finest parts of Greece were once to fall; here every step was gained with labour, while the sons of the mountain inured themselves to hardships in their incessant wars. Of the numerous citadels which in these districts cover every important point, the greater number were probably built at a very early period. Thus there were three fortresses76 to defend the pass of Olympus, or the road from Gonnus to Azorum and Doliche, which two places, together with Pythium on the mountain, were comprehended under the name of the Pelagonian Tripolis.77

4. The highlands which border on Macedonia are so rarely mentioned in Grecian history, that we find in them few names of places, while in the valley of the Peneus there were always some traditional and historical memorials extant. For although the northern mountains were not destitute of fountains, grassy slopes, and fertile pastures, still the nations continually pressed downward to the fertile lands of the valley. In this plain Gonnus and Elatea are succeeded by Mopsium upon the right, and Gyrton and Phalanna on the left of the stream; and soon afterwards Larissa stood in the midst of the open country,78 which had been once deposited from the stagnant waters of the Peneus, and being constantly irrigated, always produced a [pg 026] plentiful crop. To the west of Larissa, in a narrower part of the valley, where the hills approach the river more from the north side, there stood, 40 stadia from Larissa, the town of Argura,79 and at the same distance again the fort of Atrax; on the northern bank of the river were the celebrated city of Pelinna80 and the castle of Pharcedon;81 higher up on the left bank, where the mountains on the north begin to recede and form another plain, was the ancient city of Tricca.82 Between Tricca and Pelinna stood, as it appears, the city of Œchalia, so celebrated in mythology; the ruins of which have been perhaps discovered by a traveller in some ancient walls of massive structure,83 of which Pouqueville saw many in this district. If now we follow the Peneus, which runs from the north-west, higher up the stream than Tricca, we come to the mountain district of Hestiæotis. At about three and a half hours from Tricca84 is now situated the convent Meteora, whose name alludes to its singular situation upon lofty columns of rock:85 from which place there were two ways, one leading higher up the Peneus in a [pg 027] westerly direction to Epirus, and the other passing through Stymphæa to Elimiotis in Macedonia,86 This was about the situation of the ancient fortress of Gomphi, which was near Pindus, and not very far from the sources of the Peneus.87 It is, indeed, probable that the name Γόμφοι expresses the wedge-shaped form of these rocks. According to Strabo, Gomphi (in the north-west), Tricca (in the south-west), Pelinna (in the north-east), and the more recent city of Metropolis (in the south-east), formed a square of fortresses, in the middle of which was the ancient Ithome; which Homer, from the steepness of the rock on which it stood, calls the precipitous (κλωμακόεσσα or κλιμακόεσσα).88 From Meteora the Peneus may be followed in a northerly direction to its origin from two small streams; whence there was a path which wound over the high chain of Pindus, and thus reached the country of Epirus. This was in ancient times the road which connected the two countries, and there still remain on it several Cyclopian walls, the strongholds of former ages.

5. There had dwelt in the valley of the Peneus from the earliest times a Pelasgic nation, which offered up thanks to the gods for the possession of so fruitful a territory at the festival of Peloria.89 Their habits were [pg 028] doubtless adapted to the nature of the country, which has still the same effect on the modern inhabitants; those who dwell near the river being of a soft and peaceable disposition, while the mountaineers are of a stronger and freer turn of mind.90 Larissa was the ancient capital of this nation.91 But at a very early time the primitive inhabitants were either expelled or reduced to subjection, by more northern tribes.92 Those who had retired into the mountains became the Perrhæbian nation, and always retained a certain degree of independence. In the Homeric catalogue the Perrhæbians are mentioned as dwelling on the hill Cyphus under Olympus, and on the banks of the Titaresius, which, flowing along the western edge of Olympus, is distinguished by its clear and therefore dark-coloured stream, from the muddy and white waters of the Peneus.93 At the present day the inhabitants of its banks are remarkable for their healthy complexion, while the Peneus is surrounded by a sickly population.94 The ancients however were reminded by the Titaresius of the Styx and of the infernal regions, not from any natural circumstance, but because both among these Perrhæbians and the Hellopian Pelasgians the name and worship of Dodona had been established.95 Accordingly there seems to have been in both places a Ψυχοπομπεῖον, or oracle of the dead. The prince of [pg 029] these Perrhæbians was called Guneus. So much may be gathered from the passage in Homer. Afterwards, in historical times, we find the Perrhæbians having extended their limits to the Cambunian mountains, the pass of Tempe, and the Peneus; and reaching to the west beyond the chain of Pindus.96 Gonnus and Atrax were likewise Perrhæbian towns.97 The Perrhæbians maintained themselves in the mountains, even when the Thessalians had seized upon the plain, not indeed as an independent, but still as a separate, and, until the Macedonian supremacy, as an Amphictyonic nation.

6. The plain on either side of the Peneus was however occupied by the Lapithæ, a race which derived its origin from Almopia in Macedonia, and was at least very nearly connected with the Minyans and Æolians of Ephyra.98 If it be allowed to speak of this heroic race, of superhuman strength and courage, in the same terms as of a real nation, we should say that the towns Elatea, Gyrton, Mopsium, Larissa, Atrax, Œchalia, Ithome, and Tricca, were under their dominion. Our reason is, that the Lapithæ, Elatus, Cæneus, Mopsus, Coronus, Eurytus and Hippodameia, were considered by popular tradition as inhabitants of the above towns; a belief indicated by the names of several of these heroes. The two last of these towns were the native places of the Asclepiadæ, whom the genealogical and other legends always represent as connected with the Lapithæ. In Homer the inhabitants of Tricca, Ithome, and Œchalia are represented as following the sons of Æsculapius; those of Argissa, Gyrton, Orthe, Elone, and Oloosson are headed by the descendants of [pg 030] the Lapithæ. Now from the researches mentioned by Strabo, it would seem that Orthe was the fortress of Phalanna, Argissa the town Argura, both on the river Peneus; Elone was a small town on mount Olympus, as also Oloosson;99 and it appears that the Homeric catalogue agrees well enough with the other traditions, and supposes the Lapithæ to have occupied the valley of the Peneus, with some parts of the mountainous country to the north.

7. Thus much it was necessary to premise, in order to give a faithful description of the spot in which the Dorians first make their appearance in the traditions of Greece. They bordered on the Lapithæ, but inhabited the mountain district of Hestiæotis, according to Herodotus,100 instead of the champaign country, like the latter race. Yet the same passage of that author implies that Tempe was within the territory of Hestiæotis, and belonged at that time to the Dorians; we shall see hereafter how much this account is confirmed by the altar of the Pythian Apollo in this valley.101 It will moreover be rendered probable that the Pythium above mentioned was situated on the mountain heights. Hence we may well suppose the whole Tripolis to have at one time belonged to the Dorians; since even Azorium was not always inhabited by Illyrian Pelagones, but had [pg 031] once been held by the Hellenes.102 It is also probable that Cyphus, a town said to have belonged to the Perrhæbians, was under the dominion of the Dorians; since this race possessed in their second settlement a town called Acyphas.103 It is remarkable that no direct and positive account of any Doric town in this district has been preserved, a circumstance to be attributed to the loss of the epic poem of Ægimius.

8. This poem, written in the Hesiodean tone (although the author probably lived about the 30th Olympiad, 660 B.C. in the last period of epic poetry),104 celebrated the most ancient exploits of the Doric race. Thus it sung how Ægimius, the Doric prince, whilst engaged in a difficult and dangerous war with the Lapithæ, called to his assistance the wandering Hercules, and by the promise of a third part of the territory obtained his alliance; by which means the enemies were beaten, their prince slain, and the disputed territory conquered.105 The name of the poem [pg 032] is a sufficient proof that such would have been its contents.106 Probably the heroes of Iolcus and the Phthiotans were also introduced as allies of the Lapithæ, and at least the adventures of Phrixus and Achilles.107 The scene of the second book was Eubœa, the name of which island was there derived from the cow Io;108 the attack of Hercules upon the Eubœan town of Œchalia also formed, as I conjecture, part of the subject. Ægimius was, however, supposed to reign in Hestiæotis, merely because the Dorians bordered in this direction upon the Lapithæ; he was easily carried over to the second settlements of the race under mount Œta.109 This hero is in general the mythical progenitor and hero of the Doric nation; hence Pindar called the customs and laws of that people “the ordinances of Ægimius.”110 Nevertheless only two tribes of the Dorians are stated to be descended from him, viz. the Dymanes and Pamphylians; the third and most distinguished, viz. the Hylleans, was supposed to be descended from Hyllus the son of Hercules, and adopted [pg 033] by Ægimius. And as the land in the Doric states was equally divided between these three tribes, Hercules was fabled to have received for his descendants a third part of the territory, which belonged of right to the Hylleans. This triple division of the land was expressly mentioned by the epic poet, who used the word τριχάϊκες to express that the Dorians had obtained and shared among themselves, at a distance from their native country (chiefly in Peloponnesus),111 a territory apportioned into three parts. An examination of the opinion, that the first race was distinguished from the other two as of different origin, will be found in a following chapter.112

We must also refer our reader to the investigation [pg 034] of the worship of Apollo, and the mythology of Hercules, in the second book, since from these alone can be collected the internal history of the Doric race during its earliest period.

9. One event which, even if it had not been noticed by tradition, would still have been felt and recognised from the effects it produced, is the migration of the Dorians from the district of Olympus to Crete. It is, indeed, a wonderful migration, being from one end of the Grecian world to the other, and it presents a striking anomaly in the history of the ancient colonies. We must suppose that the Dorians, whilst in their first settlements, excluded from the plain, and pressed by want, or restless from inactivity, constructed piratical canoes, manned these frail and narrow barks with soldiers, who themselves worked at the oars, and thus being changed from mountaineers into seamen—the Normans of Greece—set sail for the distant island of Crete. The earliest trace of the migration in question is found in the Odyssey, in which poem it is mentioned that the thrice-divided Dorians formed a part of the population of Crete.113 Andron states, even with geographical accuracy, that these Dorians came to Crete from Hestiæotis, at that time called Doris, under Tectaphus, the son of Dorus, together with Achæans and some Pelasgians who had remained in Thessaly.114 According to Dicæarchus, the Dorians migrated to Crete from Pelasgiotis;115 by which is [pg 035] meant the same district as that called by Andron Hestiæotis, since Pelasgiotis and Hestiæotis bordered on each other in the vicinity of Tempe. Again, Diodorus affirms that Asterius king of Crete, the adopted father of Minos, the legislator, was the son of Tectamus (Teutamus).116 The essential parts of these statements are rendered certain by two proofs: the first of these is, that the worship of Apollo was practised in Crete with precisely the same ceremonies as at Tempe, and connected with many of the same traditions; the second is, the very remote period at which the principles of the Doric constitution were systematized and established in Crete, so that they afterwards became a model and standard for other states of that race. This gives us the fullest right to consider Minos of Cnosus as a Dorian. We may assert, with still more reason, that the name of Minos indicates a period in which the Doric invaders united a part of the island into one state, and, by extending their power over the Cyclades and many maritime districts, obtained, according to the expression of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aristotle, the dominion of the sea. To discredit this Doric migration would be to reject the simple explanation of many facts recorded in later history. At the same time, however, we do not mean to throw any doubt upon the later migrations from Peloponnesus, when it had already fallen under the power of the Dorians.117 We only assert that [pg 036] these took place at too late a period to account for many unquestionable facts. The portion of Crete first occupied by the Dorians was, according to Staphylus, the eastern coast;118 or, to speak more accurately, the eastern side of the north coast. Here stood the Minoan town of Cnosus, with its harbour Heracleum and colony Apollonia. From this point the dominion, customs, and worship of the Dorians were at a very early period extended over the districts inhabited by the Eteocretans, Pelasgians, and Cydonians; and, with the help of later migrations, pervaded the whole island.119 And although the different dialects could still be distinguished at the time of Homer,120 yet in later times the Doric appears to have been universally adopted.121

10. We now return to the passage of Herodotus, of which a part has been already quoted; “When however the Dorians were driven out by the Cadmeans, they dwelt under Mount Pindus, and were called the Macednian nation.” In this passage the author alludes to the legend, that the Cadmeans, being expelled from Thebes by the Argives, fled to the Encheleans of Illyria, where they bordered upon Homolè, a Magnesian mountain near the valley of Tempe. In this settlement they would certainly be in the neighbourhood [pg 037] of the Dorians. But we should bear in mind how perplexed is the fable which we have before us.122 The predatory excursion of the Encheleans to Phocis and Bœotia appears to admit of no doubt, as it was noticed by a Delphian oracle of tolerable antiquity, and by the tradition of the Thebans. The same horde may in its passage have also disturbed the Dorians in their settlements; but it is no less wonderful, that fugitive Thebans should have voluntarily taken refuge with the Encheleans in Illyria, than that this latter nation should have driven the Dorians from their settlements. It may be true that some northern hordes expelled the Dorians from mount Olympus, since at a later period we find the Pæonian (Teucrian) race of the Pelagones, who had descended from the Axius,123 and made themselves masters of the Tripolis, Azorum, Doliche, and Pythium, in possession of their ancient settlements.

As to the statement of Herodotus, that the Macednians, or ancient Macedonians (who in his lifetime inhabited the territory between the rivers Haliacmon and Lydias, from the mountains to the coast),124 were derived from the Dorians when dwelling under mount Pindus, he probably followed some accounts of the Macedonians, who, not satisfied with establishing the [pg 038] Doric origin of their royal family, wished to claim the same honour for the whole nation: but there does not appear to be any historical foundation for this statement. For the Macedonians, as was above remarked, were indeed for the most part Greeks, but neither their language or customs authorize us to consider them as Dorians.125

1. “From thence,” Herodotus proceeds to relate, “the race of the Dorians migrated to Dryopis, afterwards called Doris, or the Doric Tetrapolis.” Here also it will be necessary to give some illustration of the geography of the country; beginning at Thermopylæ (the point at which mount Œta comes in contact with the sea) to the broken ridge where it is swallowed up in Parnassus, and both ranges are lost in the mountains of Pindus, and where this latter, the grand chain of Greece, is separated and branches off in different directions.

Following the plain of Phocis, which lies between mounts Œta and Parnassus, and is watered by the Cephisus, we presently find the mountains approaching each other from both sides, and contracting the valley of the river. The last towns of Phocis in this direction are, Amphicæa, Tithronium and Drymæa, still to be [pg 039] recognised in ruins, and places bearing the name of Palæocastro.126 Proceeding thence westward to the higher country, we soon arrive at the sources of the river Cephisus, which cannot be mistaken, since it immediately forms a stream of considerable size. The Cephisus indeed rises not in Œta but in Parnassus, and runs first to the north-east, in order to make a bend afterwards to the south-east.127 The situation is particularly indicated by the ancient citadel of a town, situated close to the source, upon a steep projection of Parnassus; this place must be recognised as Lilæa. The scenery around is of a grand and bold description. Twenty stadia from hence was situated Charadra, where a mountain-torrent joined the Cephisus. But the river Pindus, which falls into the Cephisus not far from Lilæa, comes down from a much greater elevation. These valleys, lying to the north-west of Lilæa,128 constitute the proper district of Doris, little described in detail by the ancients, and never till a short time since visited by modern travellers. The steep citadel, about an hour and a half's distance from Lilæa, situated upon a projection of Parnassus near the village of Mariolatis, is perhaps Bœum. The ancient walls in the valley towards the west near Stagni must be set [pg 040] down as the fortress of Cytinium.129 Erineus should probably be sought for in the defiles of Œta, nearer the sources of the stream just mentioned.130 Near Œta was situated Acyphas,131 probably the same as the city of Pindus132 above Erineus, and of the same name as the river; both which names the Dorians had brought with them from their early settlements. This corner of land, placed under the chief mountain-chain of Greece, and hanging over the plains which extend from thence, was bounded by the upper districts of Ætolia, by the territory of the Ozolian Locrians, Phocis, and southern Thessaly.133 From Cytinium a mountain-path led along the side of Parnassus to the country of the Locrians:134 this also has been explored by modern travellers. This pass made the small stronghold of Cytinium so important as a military post, that Philip of Macedon, when he invaded Northern Greece before the battle of Chæronea, immediately occupied Elatea and Cytinium135, evidently as a key to the [pg 041] western districts. From Delphi another mountain-path (which was reckoned by an ancient traveller at 180 stadia136) crossed over in the direction of Lilæa. The modern road to the north, from the valley of Pindus, likewise goes along a mountain-pass through the defiles and ravines of Œta, to the opposite side of the valley of the Spercheus, now called Hellada.137 If this was passable in ancient times, it formed the communication between Doris and the country of the Malians.

2. Mount Œta stretches in a westerly direction for the length of 200 stadia towards the Malian bay, which it reaches at Thermopylæ. It separates Doris, Phocis, and the Epicnemidian Locrians from the valley of the Spercheus. The passes connected with it are, first, the one just mentioned: secondly, another from Phocis to the rocky glen of Trachinia;138 and, lastly, that of Thermopylæ, together with the upper path, made famous by the battle with the Persians. The pass of Thermopylæ is formed on one side by the steep declivity of the mountain, and on the other by a deep and impassable salt-marsh: these in the narrowest part are only 60 paces distant from each other:139 in the middle arise the hot sulphurous springs, which gave the name to the defile. At no great distance from these lies the little plain of Anthela, breaking into two narrow parts of the pass. At the northern entrance of the passage there are still the ruins of a wall, which has perhaps [pg 042] served as a barrier against the invasions of Thessalian, Persian, and Roman armies. Near this spot the brook Asopus rises from the side of the mountain. At the southern end of the pass was the small town of Alpenus, its whole length being about five miles. From Thermopylæ the paved and raised military road leads northward over the Spercheus to Thessaly, southward by Alpenus, Scarpheia, and Thronium, and from thence to Elatea, and thus to the land of Phocis.

Although the broken and precipitous form of both mountain and valley rendered the chain of Œta little suited for human habitation, yet there was in ancient times a considerable number of cities reaching in a line from the Doric Tetrapolis, as far as the sea. Amphanæa must have been built upon mount Œta, but in the direction of Trachinia; so that, with a little latitude of expression, it was considered as in Thessaly.140 Rhoduntia and Teichius were fortified heights on the road over mount Œta.141 Phricium was situated near Thermopylæ on the Locrian side; from this place some colonists went to the Æolian Cume, and Larissa Phriconis.142 On the other side, upon the slope of the mountain above the valley of the small streams Melas and Dyras, lay Trachis. Heraclea was situated six stadia from the ancient Trachis.143 Not far from hence Ægoneia was probably situated.144

3. Having now marked out the topography of this district by traces, which, although not as clear as could be wished, are yet perfectly accurate, we will next proceed to inquire concerning the small native tribes which [pg 043] at different periods settled in these parts, and particularly concerning the Dorians themselves. Doris, in the limited meaning of the term, was the valley of the river Pindus. Whenever the Doric Tripolis is mentioned, the three cities meant are Bœum, Cytinium, and Erineus;145 which last place, as being the most considerable, appears to have been also called Dorium:146 but when writers speak of a Tetrapolis, Acyphas (or Pindus) is added as a fourth town.147 This is the country which Dorus the son of Hellen is said to have inhabited, when he brought together his nation on the side of Parnassus;148 a tradition which totally loses sight of the more ancient settlements of the Doric race. It appears, however, that the Dorians, whilst confined within these limits, did not rest content with the possession of this narrow valley, but occupied several places along mount Œta, of which Amphanæa was one.149 An unknown writer150 named six Doric [pg 044] towns,—viz., Erineus, Cytinium, Bœum, Lilæum, Carphæa and Dryope: of which, by Lilæum is meant the town of Lilæa, by Carphæa probably Tarphe near Thermopylæ,151 and by Dryope the country which had once belonged to the Dryopians. There was therefore probably a time when the heights near the sources of the Cephisus, and a narrow strip of land along mount Œta, as far as the sea, were in the possession of the Dorians. Nay this was even partly the case in the Persian war; for even at that time Doris stretched in a narrow tongue of land thirty stadia broad, between the Malians and Phoceans, nearly as far as Thermopylæ:152 Scylax also mentions the Dorians as inhabitants of the sea-coast.153 This district, however, near mount Œta is that which the Dryopians had formerly inhabited (as may be shown from a passage of Herodotus)154, before they were entirely dispossessed by the Dorians, their neighbours in the Tetrapolis. Thus, by means of this geographical investigation we have arrived at an historical event. It seems probable that the Dorians, having moved by slow degrees from Hestiæotis to mount Œta, first gained possession of the furthest extremity of the mountain-valley, and thence [pg 045] gradually spread towards the coast over the land of the Dryopians. This race indeed generally did not press all at once, but passed slowly into districts which had been seized by some part of them at an earlier period.155

4. The Dryopians (the fragments of whose history we here introduce) are an aboriginal nation, which may be called Pelasgic, since Aristotle and others assign to them an Arcadian origin.156 Their affinity with the Arcadians is confirmed by the worship paid by them to Demeter Chthonia, to Cora Melibœa, and Hades Clymenus: which bore a great resemblance to those of Phigaleia, Thelpusa, and other towns in Arcadia.157 Their territory bordered upon that of the Malians, so that they extended into the valley of the Spercheus beyond Œta, and in the other direction as far as Parnassus;158 to the east their settlements reached to Thermopylæ.159 Their expulsion is related [pg 046] in a manner entirely mythical, being connected with the propagation of the worship of Apollo (which is intimately allied with the migrations of the Dorians), and also with the adventures of Hercules; but when a clue to this method of narration is once discovered, it will be found to be equally, or perhaps more, instructive, and to convey much fuller information than a bare historical narrative. In the present instance, the Pythian Apollo is represented as the god to whom the vanquished Dryopians are sent as slaves, and who despatches them to Peloponnesus;160 and Hercules, in conjunction with the Trachinians, subdues and consecrates them to Apollo, or assigns to them settlements in Argolis, but allots their land to the Dorians or Malians.161

From this tradition we might perhaps infer that the Dryopians accompanied the Dorians in their migration to Peloponnesus, and settled there with them. But the situation of the places belonging to the Dryopians makes it necessary to seek some other explanation; for the colonies of this race lie scattered over so many coasts and islands, that they can only have been planted by single expeditions over the sea. In Argolis, for instance, they built Hermione, Asine, and Eion (Halieis), upon projecting headlands and [pg 047] promontories; in Eubœa, Styra and Carystus belonged to them;162 among the islands they had settlements in Cythnos163 and perhaps Myconos; they had also penetrated as far as Ionia and Cyprus.164 Hence it must be inferred that the Dryopians, harassed or dislodged by their neighbours, dispersed in various directions over the sea. It is, however, historically certain that a great part of the Dryopians were consecrated as a subject people to the Pythian Apollo (an usage of ancient times, of which there are many instances), and that for a long time they served as such; for even in the fragmentary history of the destruction of Crissa (Olymp. 47, 590 B.C.), we find Craugallidæ mentioned together with the Crissæans,165 which was a name of the Dryopians derived from a fabulous ancestor.166 The condition of the subjects of temples, and consequently of these Craugallidæ, will be treated of at large in another place.167

5. But the Dorians, though hostile to their neighbours the Dryopians, were on friendly terms with the Malians. This people dwelt in the valley of the Spercheus, enclosed on all sides by rocky mountains, and open only in the direction of the sea; they were divided into the inhabitants of the coast, the Sacerdotal, and the Trachinians.168 The second of these classes [pg 048] probably dwelt near to the Amphictyonic temple at Thermopylæ, the third on the rocky declivities of mount Œta. These are the people who were in such close alliance with the Dorians, that Diodorus speaks of Trachis as the mother-town of Lacedæmon.169 The friendship between Ceyx and Hercules, together with that of his sons, is the mythical expression for this connexion. The Malians were always a warlike people, those persons only who had served as hoplites being admitted to a share in the government.170 Their country was however chiefly famous for its slingers and darters.171

6. In after-times there came into these districts a nation which the ancient traditions of the country do not recognise, viz. the Hellenic Ænianes or Œtæans; the latter name denoting the region in which that nation was settled, the former their race;172 although I do not assert that the fourteen Œtæan communities173 constituted the entire nation of the Ænianes. For they also dwelt on the banks of the Inachus, and about the sources of the Spercheus, near the city of Hypata.174 In early times they had inhabited the inland parts of Thessaly, and about the end of the fabulous period they descended into those settlements, from which in later times they were dislodged by the Illyrian Athamanes.175 Although the Ænianes did not disavow a certain dependence on the Delphian oracle, and though they [pg 049] adopted among their traditions the fables respecting Hercules, anciently prevalent in their new settlements,176 yet on account of their geographical position they lived in opposition and hostility to the Malians and Dorians;177 who, as Strabo states, had been deprived by them of a part of their territory.178 Nay more, it is probable that the emigration of the Dorians which conquered Peloponnesus, was in some way or other connected with the arrival of the Ænianes in this region. There was an ancient enmity between the Lacedæmonians and the Œtæans.179 It was chiefly on this account that Sparta founded the town of Heraclea in the country of Trachinia; which would doubtless have caused the revival of an important Doric power in this part of Greece, had not the jealousy of the Thessalians and Dolopians, and even of the Malians themselves, been awakened at its first establishment.

Thus much concerning the situation of the Dorians in their settlements near mount Œta. The subject however is not yet exhausted; for we have still to trace the origin of the great influence which the establishment of the Dorians at Lycorea upon Parnassus had on the religion of Delphi (for that Lycorea was a Doric town will be made probable hereafter), as well as to treat of the Amphictyonic league, in the founding of which a very large share doubtless belonged to the Dorians: but the discussion of both these points must be deferred to the second book.180

As to the colonies of the Doric cities near mount Parnassus, Bulis on the frontiers of Phocis and Bœotia, [pg 050] on the Crissæan gulf, was probably founded from thence at the time of the Doric migration.181

1. The most important, and the most fertile in consequences, of all the migrations of Grecian races, and which continued even to the latest periods to exert its influence upon the Greek character, was the expedition of the Dorians into Peloponnesus. It is however so completely enveloped in fables, and these were formed at a very early period in so connected a manner, that it is useless to examine it in detail, without first endeavouring to separate the component parts.

The traditionary name of this expedition is “the Return of the descendants of Hercules.”182 Hercules, [pg 051] the son of Zeus is (even in the Iliad), both by birth and destiny, the hereditary prince of Tiryns and Mycenæ, and ruler of the surrounding nations.183 But through some evil chance Eurystheus obtained the precedency, and the son of Zeus was compelled to serve him. Nevertheless he is represented as having bequeathed to his descendants his claims to the dominion of Peloponnesus, which they afterwards made good in conjunction with the Dorians; Hercules having also performed such actions in behalf of this race, that his descendants were always entitled to the possession of one-third of the territory. The heroic life of Hercules was therefore the mythical title, through which the Dorians were made to appear, not as unjustly invading, but merely as reconquering, a country which had belonged to their princes in former times. Hence Hercules is reported to have made war with some degree of propriety, and subdued the principal countries of the Doric race (except his native country Argos), Lacedæmon and the Messenian Pylus, to have established the national festival at Olympia, and even to have laid the foundation of the most distant colonies. To esteem as real these conquests and settlements, these mythical forerunners of real history, is incompatible with a clear view of these matters; and we could scarce seriously ask even the most credulous, how, at a time when sieges were in the highest degree tedious, Hercules could have stormed and taken so many fortresses, surrounded with almost impregnable walls?184

A severer criticism enjoins us to trace the mythical narrative to its centre, and attempt to ascertain whether the sovereign race of the Dorians did really spring from the early sovereigns of Mycenæ; such [pg 052] being not only the epic account, but also the tradition countenanced in Sparta itself. Tyrtæus said, in his poem called the Eunomia, “Zeus himself gave this territory (Laconia) to the race of Hercules; united with whom we (the Dorians) left the stormy Erineus, and reached the wide island of Pelops.”185 And a still more important proof is the reply of king Cleomenes, mentioned by Herodotus, who, when forbidden by the priestess in the Acropolis of Athens to enter the temple, as being a Dorian, answered, “I am no Dorian, but an Achæan,” referring to his descent from Hercules.186 From this it would appear that there was amongst the Dorians an Achæan phratria, to which the kings of Argos, Sparta, and Messenia, and the founders and rulers of Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus, Ægina, Rhodes, Cos, &c., belonged; and which, in conjunction with the Dorians, only recovered by conquest its hereditary rights.187

2. It is certainly hazardous at once to reject an extensive and connected system of heroic traditions, for the sake of establishing in its place a conjecture which sacrifices reports recognised by ages prior to historical information, and celebrated by the earliest poets, to a mere theory of historical probability. We [pg 053] must, however, recollect that mythical legends present in general merely the views and opinions of nations on the origin of their actual condition; these opinions being at the same time more often directed and determined by religious and other notions, especially by a certain feeling of justice, than by real tradition, and therefore they frequently conceal, rather than express, historical truth. The following remarks, partly deduced from inquiries which will follow, may serve to contrast with each other the characteristics of history and mythology.

In the first place, if we consider the narrative in question as a plain historical statement, and consequently suppose the Heraclidæ to have been expatriated Achæans, the same supposition must be extended to the whole tribe of Hylleans. For Hyllus, the representative of the Hylleans, is called the son of Hercules; and it was with reference to that tribe that the third part of the territory was secured to the descendants of Hercules: hence also Pindar calls the Dorians universally the descendants of Hercules and Ægimius.188 In this case, then, the Pamphylians and Dymanes would alone remain as Dorians proper. It is, however, by no means probable, that, if the most distinguished part of the Doric people had been of Achæan descent, the difference between the language, religion, and customs of these two races would have been so strongly and precisely marked.

In the second place, everything that is related concerning the exploits of Hercules in the north of [pg 054] Greece refers exclusively to the history of the Dorians; and conversely all the actions of the Doric race in their earlier settlements are mythically represented under the person of Hercules. Now this cannot be accounted for by supposing that there was only a temporary connexion between this hero and the Doric race.

Lastly, if we compare as much of the fables concerning Hercules related below as refers to the Dorians, with those current among the ancient Argives, and if we separate in mind the links by which the epic poets gave them an apparent historical connexion, we shall find no real resemblance between the two. The worship of Apollo, which can in almost every case be shown to have been the real motive which actuated the Dorians, was wholly foreign to the Argives. If then an Achæan tribe did arrive amongst the Dorians, bringing with it the story of Hercules, or a hero so called, this latter people must have applied and developed his mythology in a manner wholly different from those to whom they owed it. And after all, we should be obliged to suppose that long before their irruption into Peloponnesus, these Heraclidæ had been so intermixed with the Dorians, that their traditions were formed entirely according to the disposition of that race, since Hercules in Thessaly is represented as a complete Dorian. Here, however, we are again at variance with the fable, which represents the Heraclidæ as having fled to the Dorians a short time only before their entry into Peloponnesus.

Thus we are continually met with contradictions, and never enabled to obtain a clear view of the question, unless we assent to the proposition that [pg 055] Hercules, from a very remote period, was both a Dorian and Peloponnesian hero, and particularly the hero of the Hyllean tribe, which in the earliest settlements of the Dorians had probably united itself with two other small nations, the Heraclidæ being the hereditary princes of the Doric race. The story of the Heraclidæ being descended from the Argive Hercules, who performed the commands of Eurystheus, was not invented till after Peloponnesus had been introduced into the tradition.

3. There is hardly any part of the traditional history of Greece whose real sources are so little known to us as the expedition of the Heraclidæ. No one can fail to perceive that it possesses the same mythical character as the Trojan war; and yet we are deprived of that which renders the examination of a mythical narrative so instructive, viz. the traditional lore scattered in such abundance throughout the ancient epic poems. This event, however, early as it was, lay without the range of the epic poetry; and therefore, whenever circumstances connected with it were mentioned, they must have been introduced either accidentally or in reference to some other subject. In no one large class of epic poems was this event treated at length, neither by the cyclic poets, nor the authors of the Νόστοι. In the Ἠοῖαι attributed to Hesiod, it appears only to have been alluded to in a few short passages.189 Herodotus nevertheless mentions [pg 056] poets who related the migration of the Heraclidæ and Dorians into Laconia.190 Perhaps these belonged to the class who carried on the mythical fables genealogically, as Cinæthon the Laconian, and also Asius, who celebrated the descent of Hercules, and appears, from the character of his poems, to have also commemorated his descendants.191 Or they may have been the historical poets, such as Eumelus the Corinthian, although those alluded to by Herodotus cannot have composed a separate poetical history (as the former did of Corinth); since they would doubtless have followed the national tradition of Sparta; and this, with respect to the first princes of the Heraclidæ, differed from the accounts of all the poets with which Herodotus was acquainted, and was not the general tradition of Greece.192 And doubtless many such local traditions were preserved amongst particular nations, concerning an event which for a long time determined the condition of Peloponnesus. Thus the Tegeatans193 celebrated the combat of Echemus their general with Hyllus. Whether the early historians collected these accounts from oral record, or whether they derived them from the poets above mentioned (although the latter is more in their manner), cannot be determined; [pg 057] for there are only extant two fragments of these writers concerning the Heraclidæ, one of Hecatæus, the other of Pherecydes, which connect immediately with the death of Hercules, and therefore do not prove that these authors wrote any continuous account of the history of this migration. The early tradition received a fuller development in the Attic drama; but it was unavoidably represented in a very partial view. The Heraclidæ of Æschylus, and the Iolaus of Sophocles might, like the Heraclidæ of Euripides, have had on the whole the tendency to celebrate those merits which the Athenians are made to commend in Herodotus,194 even before the battle of Platæa, viz., their good offices towards the Heraclidæ, at the time when they took refuge in Attica. The last-named tragedian, in his Temenidæ, Archelaus, and Cresphontes, went further into the history of the Doric states, and descended lower into the historical period, than any poet before his time; his reason having, perhaps, been, the exhaustion of the legitimate mythical materials.195 Now these Attic tragedians manifestly took for their basis the narrative given by Apollodorus, himself an Athenian, as may be shown by some particular circumstances. Perhaps Ephorus rested more upon the earlier poets and historians, as far as we are acquainted with their statements; but his narrative, even if it were extant, could, no more than those of the former, be considered as proceeding from a critical examination; since, in the first place, from a total misapprehension of the character of tradition, he forced everything into history, and then endeavoured to restore the deficiencies of [pg 058] oral narrative by probable reasoning; of the fallaciousness of which method we will bring forward some proofs.

4. After what has been said, we will forbear to apologize for merely offering a few remarks on the origin and meaning of the traditions which concern the Doric migration, instead of endeavouring to give a history of that event. And, indeed, we might bring forward some most marvellous legends, but on that very account the better fitted to convince every one what is the nature of the ground on which we stand.

In the Ἠοῖαι attributed to Hesiod, it was stated that Polycaon the son of Butes, whose name represents the ancient (i.e. Lelegean) population of Messene, married Euæchme (Εὐαίχμη, viz. celebrated for the spear) the daughter of Hyllus, and grand-daughter of Hercules. In this simple and unpretending manner the early tradition conveyed the idea that the Hylleans and Dorians had, by the power of the spear, made themselves masters of Messene, and united themselves with the original inhabitants.196

In the Laconian village of Abia, there was a temple of Hercules, which was said to have been built by Abia the nurse of Glenus, the brother of Hyllus.197 It was, therefore, supposed that Hyllus and Glenus themselves came to Laconia. Pausanias endeavours to [pg 059] reconcile the local tradition with the received history, and assumes that Abia had fled hither after the death of Hyllus; which, however, is inconsistent with the common account that Peloponnesus was in the hands of the enemy, and that the battle in which Hyllus fell was at the Isthmus. We come now to the common relation of the order of events.

5. According to this account, the Heraclidæ, after the death of their father, were in Trachis with their host Ceyx, who generously protected them for a time, but was afterwards forced, by the threats of Eurystheus, to refuse them any longer refuge; Ceyx, according to Hecatæus,198 was compelled to say to them, “I have not the power to assist you; withdraw therefore to another nation;” and upon this they sought an asylum in Attica. Those early historians, however, who stated that Hercules died as king in Mycenæ, gave an entirely different account of this circumstance, viz., that Eurystheus, after the death of Hercules, expelled his sons, and again usurped the dominion,199 and they fled in consequence to Attica.

At Athens they sat as suppliants at the altar of Pity, received the protection of Theseus or Demophon, dwelt in the Tetrapolis,200 and fought, together with the Athenians, under the command of Hyllus [pg 060] and Iolaus (to whose prayers the gods had granted a second youth), at the pass of Sciron, a battle against Eurystheus; Macaria (probably an entirely symbolical being, but here the daughter of Hercules) having previously offered herself as an expiatory sacrifice. In this action they conquered the Argive king, whom Alcmene with womanish vengeance put to death, and whose tomb the Athenians showed before the temple of the Pallenian Minerva.201 This is the [pg 061] fable so much celebrated by the tragedians and orators, a locus communis as it were, which the Athenians sometimes even mentioned in their decrees,202 or wherever it served to show how poorly the Peloponnesians had requited their ancient benefactors. What credit a Lacedæmonian would have given to these stories, we know not; Pindar certainly knew nothing of them, for he states that Iolaus had near Thebes received a momentary renewal of youthful vigour for the purpose of putting to death Eurystheus, after which he immediately expired, and was buried by the Thebans in the family tomb of Amphitryon.203 In this account Eurystheus is represented as having been conquered in the neighbourhood of Thebes, and in consequence by a Theban army. It is not however necessary to esteem the Athenian tradition as altogether groundless, and purposely invented: it was probably founded on some actual event, and afterwards modified and embellished. The connecting link was without doubt the temple of Hercules in Attica. It was natural that, if the Athenians worshipped that hero, they should wish to have had the merit of protecting his descendants. Hence the sons of Hercules were said to have dwelt in the Tetrapolis at Marathon, where was the chief temple of Hercules in Attica, and in the neighbourhood of which flowed the fountain Macaria, represented as a daughter of that hero. It was on this account, as is reported, that the entire Tetrapolis was during the Peloponnesian war spared by the Lacedæmonians. Many circumstances, [pg 062] which will hereafter be brought forward, seem to show that an union and intercourse subsisted between the Dorians of Peloponnesus and some of the northern towns of Attica,204 the foundation of which appears to have been laid in the times of the Doric migration, by a settlement of Dorians and Bœotians in these towns. But this settlement had doubtless, when those fables were invented, been already lost in the mass of the Athenian people.

6. After this battle, won by the aid of the Athenians, the Heraclidæ are said (and with good reason, as they were assisted by the Athenians) to have obtained possession of all Peloponnesus, and to have ruled undisturbed for one year (or some fixed period); at the expiration of which, a pestilence (like a tragical catastrophe) drove them back again to Attica. The mythologists make use of this time to send Tlepolemus the Heraclide to Rhodes, in order that he may arrive there before the Trojan war. Of all this, however, Pherecydes could have known nothing, as he relates that Hyllus, having conquered Eurystheus, went to Thebes,205 without subduing Peloponnesus, and there with the other Heraclidæ formed a settlement near the gate of Electra, a circumstance which we shall advert to hereafter.206 In Peloponnesus, however, according to the traditions chronologically arranged, Eurystheus was succeeded by the Pelopidæ, who accordingly appear as the expellers of the legitimate sovereigns of the race of Perseus.207 Whether [pg 063] any such circumstance was known to the early poets is very much to be doubted; but it is at least clear, that in this case we are not in possession of the real tradition itself, but of scientific combinations of it. Against these new sovereigns were directed the expeditions of the Heraclidæ, of which it is generally stated that there were three. The account given of them follows the general idea of an entire dependence of the Dorians on the Delphian oracle;208 but the misconception of its injunctions, which embarrasses and perplexes the whole question, may, we think, be attributed entirely to the invention of the Athenians. The oracle mentioned the third fruit, and the narrow passage by sea (στενυγρὰ), as the time and way of the promised return, which the Athenians falsely interpreted to mean the third year, and the Isthmus of Corinth. But the account given in Apollodorus, nearly falling into Iambic or Trochaic metre, leaves no doubt that he took his account of the oracle from the Attic tragedians,209 as was remarked above. Deceived by these predictions, Hyllus forced his way into Peloponnesus in the third year, and found at the Isthmus the Arcadians, Ionians, and Achæans of the peninsula already assembled. In a single combat with Echemus the son of Aëropus, the prince of Tegea, Hyllus fell, [pg 064] and was buried in Megara; upon which the Heraclidæ promised not to renew the attempt for fifty or one hundred years from that time.210 Here every one will recognise the battle of the Tegeate with the Hyllean as an ancient tradition. But in the arrangement, by which it was contrived that the expeditions of the Heraclidæ should not be placed during the Trojan war and the youth of Orestes, we do not hesitate to suspect the industry of ancient systematic mythologists.

7. When the Heraclidæ had been once separated from the Dorians as belonging to a different race, and Hyllus set down as only the adopted son of the Doric king, it immediately became a matter of doubt at what time the junction of the Dorians and Heraclidæ in one expedition should be fixed. Sometimes the Dorians are represented as joining the Heraclidæ before the first, sometimes before the second, sometimes before the third expedition; by one writer as setting out from Hestiæotis, and by another from Parnassus.211 There were doubtless no real traditional grounds for any one report; and still less any sufficient to place the name Hyllus, and the events connected with it, at any fixed epoch. Hence also Hyllus is at one time called the contemporary of Atreus, and at another of Orestes;212 Pamphylus and Dymas are stated to have lived from the time of Hercules to the conquest of Peloponnesus.213 Nor is there any absurdity in this, inasmuch as they are the collective names of races which existed throughout [pg 065] this whole period. The descendants of Hyllus, however, are no longer races, but, as it appears, real persons; viz., his son Cleodæus,214 and his grandson Aristomachus. These names stood at the head of the genealogy of the Heraclidæ; as, for example, of the kings of Sparta; and they can hardly have been mere creations of fancy. From their succession is probably calculated the celebrated epoch of the expedition of the Heraclidæ, viz., 80 years after the Trojan war, which was without doubt determined by the early historians, since Thucydides was acquainted with it. The Alexandrine critics generally adopted it, as we know expressly of Eratosthenes, Crates, and Apollodorus.215 But all that is recounted of the expeditions of these two princes, however small in amount,216 cannot have been acknowledged by those who, like Herodotus, and probably all the early writers, stated the armistice after the death of Hyllus as lasting 100 years.217

8. At length Apollo himself opens the eyes of the Heraclidæ to the meaning of the oracle. It was not across the Isthmus, but over the Straits of Rhium, that they were to cross into Peloponnesus, and after the third generation had died away. They therefore first sailed from Naupactus, to the Molycrian promontory (Antirrhium), and thence to Rhium in Peloponnesus, which was only five stadia distant.218 That the Dorians [pg 066] actually came on that side into Peloponnesus, is a statement which may be looked on as certain; agreeing (as it does) with the fact that the countries near the Isthmus were the last to which the Dorians penetrated. The name Naupactus implies the existence of ship-building there in early times;219 and there was a tradition that the Heraclidæ passed over on rafts, imitations of which were afterwards publicly exposed at a festival, and called Στεμματιαῖα, i.e. crowned with garlands.220 This festival was doubtless the Carnea, since the Carnean Apollo was worshipped at Sparta under the name of Stemmatias. Now it is also stated that the Acarnanian soothsayer Carnus (who was reported to have founded the worship of the Carnean Apollo) was killed at the time of this expedition by Hippotes the son of Phylas, for which reason the Heraclidæ offered expiatory sacrifices to his memory.221 We see from this that some rites of a peculiar worship of Apollo were observed at this passage, which were probably for the most part of an expiatory nature. Now I have shown elsewhere, that the Carnean or Hyacinthian worship of [pg 067] the Ægidæ originated at Thebes, and prevailed in Peloponnesus before the arrival of the Dorians, particularly at Amyclæ:222 consequently, that prevalent near the straits of Naupactus might have been another, probably an Acarnanian223 branch of the religion of Apollo, which was afterwards incorporated in the Carnean festival; a supposition which, if admitted, would enable us to explain many statements of ancient authors. The religious rites and festivals are in fact often so intermingled and confused together, that it is necessary to trace their component parts to many and distant sources.

9. At their passage from Naupactus the Dorians stood in great need of the friendship and assistance of the native races, the Ozolian Locrians and Ætolians. The Locrians occupied Naupactus in early times;224 the Ætolians were their immediate neighbours, and their powerful city of Calydon was the mistress of the region. The Locrians are said to have aided the Dorians in their passage, by deceiving the Peloponnesians with false beacons;225 and we shall meet hereafter with traces of a lasting amity between the Locrians and Sparta. A most singular, but, doubtless for that very reason, a most ancient dress, has been given by mythology to the union of the Dorians and Ætolians. This connexion, which was indispensable for the passage from Naupactus, is also found implied in other legends, the general [pg 068] character of tradition being to express the same thing in various ways. Of these we may mention the marriage of Hercules with Deianira, the daughter of Œneus the Calydonian.226 At this time the Dorians were ordered by the oracle to seek a person with three eyes for a leader. This person they recognised in Oxylus the Ætolian, who either sat upon a horse, himself having one eye, or rode upon a one-eyed mule. Difficult as it is to rest satisfied with this interpretation of the oracle, so casual a circumstance having no connexion with the general course of events, yet it appears impossible to discover the true meaning of the word τριόφθαλμος.227 In all probability this expression for the whole Ætolian race was only delivered in a mythical shape, and the sorry explanation was not invented until a late period.228 The family of Oxylus is stated to have come from Calydon; so that the Ætolians (who in later times made themselves masters of Elis) appear to have come for the most part from that place.229 There existed, however, an ancient alliance and affinity between the inhabitants of Elis, the Epeans, and the Ætolians who dwelt on the farther side of the Corinthian gulf; and Oxylus himself was said to have originally belonged to Elis;230 hence it does not appear that there was any actual war between these two states, but only that the Ætolians were received by the Eleans, and admitted to [pg 069] the rights of citizenship;231 and at the same time the same honours were permitted to the heroes and heroines of the Ætolians as to their own.232

10. The systematised tradition next makes mention of a battle which took place between the united force of Peloponnesus, under the command of Tisamenus, the grandson of Agamemnon, and the sons of Aristomachus; in which the latter were victorious, and Peloponnesus fell into their possession. According as it suits the object of the narrator, this engagement is either represented to have been both by sea and land, and to have taken place at the passage,233 or after the march through Arcadia. We may fairly suppose that it was inferred merely on probable grounds that a battle must have been fought by Tisamenus, whom the tradition represented as prince of the Achæans at the capture of Ægialea.234 Many traditions agree in stating that the Heraclidæ at that time took the road through Arcadia; Oxylus is said to have led them by this way, [pg 070] that they might not be envious of his fertile territory of Elis;235 Cresphontes is moreover stated to have been the brother-in-law of Cypselus king of Arcadia, who had his royal seat at Basilis, on the Alpheus, in the country of the Parrhasians.236

11. Next comes the division of Peloponnesus among the three brothers Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodamus, or his sons. We have to thank the tragedians alone for the invention and embellishment of this fable;237 that it contains little or no truth is at once evident; for it was not till long after this time that the Dorians possessed the larger part of Peloponnesus;238 and a division of lands not yet conquered is without example in Grecian history. At the same time it is related that, upon the altars whereon the brothers sacrificed to their grandfather Zeus, there was found a frog for Argos, a snake for Sparta, and a fox for Messenia. It seems however probable that these are mere symbols, by which the inventors (perhaps the hostile Athenians) [pg 071] attempted to represent the character of those nations. For it cannot be supposed that national arms or ensigns are meant; unless indeed we give credit to the pretended discovery of Fourmont, who affirms that he found in the temple of the Amyclæan Apollo a shield with the inscription of Teleclus as general (βάγος), with a snake in the middle; and another of Anaxidamus, with a snake and two foxes.239 But he has represented the shield of so extraordinary a form, with sharp ends, and indentures on the sides, that the fraud is at once open to detection; and consequently the supposition that the snake was the armorial bearing of Sparta remains entirely unfounded.240

12. Although we cannot here give a complete account of the great revolution which the irruption of the Dorians universally produced in the condition of the different races of Greece,241 it may nevertheless be remarked, that a very large portion of the Achæans, who originally came from Phthia, retired to the northern coast of Peloponnesus, and compelled the Ionians to pass over to Attica. The reduction of the principal fortress of this country, the Posidonian Helice, is ascribed to Tisamenus; and that Helice was in fact the abode of the most distinguished families of the Achæan nation is evident from the legend, that Oxylus the Ætolian, at the command of the oracle, shared the dominion [pg 072] with Agorius, a Pelopid, who was descended from Penthilus the son of Orestes, and dwelt at Helice.242 The chronological difficulty of Oxylus being called the cotemporary of a grandson of Penthilus is not of much importance. At Helice was also shown the tomb of Tisamenus, whose supposed ashes the Spartans (doubtless with the idea of thus making amends for the injustice of his expulsion) afterwards brought to their city, as they also did the corpse of Orestes at Tegea.243 But hereupon follows a series of migrations to Æolis in Asia, which was founded in later times, in which the numbers of the Achæan race predominated. Although Orestes is called a leader of the first expedition,244 he probably is only put for his descendants: Penthilus also is perhaps put only for that part of his descendants who went with the colony to Lesbos and Æolis. For all the Penthilidæ did not go; we find indeed Penthilidæ in Mitylene;245 and others at Helice, as we have just seen. Pisander, a Laconian Achæan, is also mentioned as having gone with the expedition of Orestes; and there were men of his family in Tenedos at the time of Pindar.246

1. So wonderful is the physical organization of Greece, that each of its parts has received its peculiar destination and a distinct character; it is like a body whose members are different in form, but between which a mutual connexion and dependence necessarily exists. The northern districts as far as Thessaly are the nutritive organs which from time to time introduced fresh and vigorous supplies: as we approach the south, its structure assumes a more marked and decided form, and is impressed with more peculiar features. Attica and the islands may be considered as extremities, which, as it were, served as the active instruments for the body of Greece, and by which it was kept in constant connexion with others; while Peloponnesus, on the other hand, seems formed for a state of life, occupied more with its own than external concerns, and whose interests and feelings centred in itself. As it was the extremity of Greece, there also appeared to be an end set by nature to all change of place and habitation; and hence the character of the Peloponnesians was firm, steady, and exclusive. With good reason therefore was the region where these principles predominated considered by the Greeks as the centre and acropolis247 [pg 074] of their countries; and those who possessed it were universally acknowledged to rank as first in Greece.

2. This character of Peloponnesus will become more evident, if we examine the peculiar nature of its mountain-chains. Though the Isthmus of Corinth connected the peninsula with the continent by a narrow neck of land, yet it was not traversed in its whole length by any continuous chain of mountains; the Œnean hills being entirely separated from the mountains of Peloponnesus.248 The principal elevations in Peloponnesus form very nearly a circle, the circumference of which passes over the mountains of Pholoë, Lampe, Aroanius, Cyllene, Artemisium, Parthenium, and Parnon; then over Boreum, and from thence up to the northern rise of mount Taygetus, and finally over mount Lycaon along the river Alpheus. The highest ridge appears to be that part of Cyllene which looks to Parnon: the height of Cyllene, according to the statement of Dicæarchus,249 was not quite 15 stadia; according to another measurement, it was nine stadia wanting 80 feet;250 a considerable height, when it is remembered that the sea is near, and that Peloponnesus is the last link of the great chain, which runs down from the north of Macedonia. But the eastern plains also, for instance that of Tegea, are at a great height [pg 075] above the sea, and are often covered with snow late in the spring.251 Now from the circle of mountains which has been pointed out, all the rivers of any note take their rise; and from it all the mountainous ranges diverge, which form the many headlands and points of Peloponnesus. The interior part of the country however has only one opening towards the western sea, through which all its waters flow out united in the Alpheus. The peculiar character of this inland tract is also increased by the circumstance of its being intersected by some lower secondary chains of hills, which compel the waters of the valleys nearest to the great chains either to form lakes, or to seek a vent by subterraneous passages.252 Hence it is that in the mountainous district in the north-east of Peloponnesus many streams disappear, and again emerge from the earth. This region is Arcadia; a country consisting of ridges of hills and elevated plains, and of deep and narrow valleys, with streams flowing through channels formed by precipitous rocks; a country so manifestly separated by nature from the rest of Peloponnesus, that, although not politically united, it was always considered in the light of a single community. Its climate was extremely cold; the atmosphere dense, particularly in the mountains to the north:253 the effect which this had on the character and dispositions of the inhabitants has been described in a masterly manner by Polybius, himself a native of Arcadia.

3. Laconia is formed by two mountain-chains [pg 076] running immediately from Arcadia, and enclosing the river Eurotas, whose source is separated from that of an Arcadian stream by a very trifling elevation. The Eurotas is, for some way below the city of Sparta, a rapid mountain-stream; then, after forming a cascade, it stagnates into a morass; but lower down it passes over a firm soil in a gentle and direct course.254 Near the town of Sparta rocks and hills approach the banks on both sides, and almost entirely shut in the river both above and below the town:255 this enclosed plain is without doubt the “hollow Lacedæmon” of Homer.256 Here the narrowness of the valley, and the heights of Taygetus, projecting above in a lofty parapet, increase the heat of summer, both by concentrating the sun-beams, as it were, into a focus, and by presenting a barrier to the cool sea-breezes;257 whilst in winter the cold is doubly violent. The same natural circumstances produce violent storms of rain, and the numerous mountain-torrents frequently cause inundations in the narrow valleys.258 The mountains, although running in connected chains, are yet very much interrupted; their broken and rugged forms were by the ancients attributed to earthquakes;259 one of which caused so great consternation at Sparta a short time before the war with the Helots. The country is not however destitute of plains; that indeed along the lower part of the Eurotas is one of the finest in Greece, [pg 077] stretching towards the south, and protected by mountains from the north wind: moreover, the maritime district, surrounded by rocks, from Malea to Epidaurus Limera (Malvasia), is extremely fertile.260 Nor are the valleys on the frontiers of Messenia less productive; towards the promontory of Tænarum however the soil continually becomes harder, drier, and more ferruginous. The error of supposing that this country was nearly a desert appears from the very large number of its vegetable productions mentioned by Theophrastus and others: Alcman and Theognis also celebrate its wines: vines were planted up to the very summit of mount Taygetus, and laboriously watered from fountains in forests of plane-trees;261 the country was in this respect able to provide for its own wants. But the most valuable product, in the estimation of the new inhabitants, was doubtless the iron of the mountains.262 More fortunate still was the situation of the country for purposes of defence, the interior of Laconia being only accessible from Arcadia, Argolis, and Messenia by narrow passes and mountain-roads; and the most fertile part is the least exposed to the inroads of enemies from those quarters: the want of harbours263 likewise contributes to the natural isolation of Laconia from other lands. Euripides has on the whole very successfully seized the peculiar character of the country in the following lines, and contrasted it with the more favoured territory of Messenia:264

For along the banks of the Pamisus (which, notwithstanding the shortness of its course, is one of the broadest rivers in Peloponnesus), down to the Messenian bay, there runs a large and beautiful valley, justly called Macaria, or “The Happy,” and well worth the artifice by which Cresphontes is said to have obtained it. To the north, more in the direction of Arcadia, lies the plain of Stenyclarus, surrounded by a hilly barrier. The western part of the country is more mountainous, though without any such heights as mount Taygetus; towards the river Neda, on the frontiers of Arcadia, the country assumes a character of the wildest and most romantic beauty.

4. Argolis is formed by a ridge of hills which branches from Mount Cyllene and Parthenium in Arcadia, and is connected with it by a mountain-chain, very much broken, and abounding in ravines and [pg 079] caverns (hence called Τρητὸν);265 through which runs the celebrated Contoporia,266 a road cut out, as it were, between walls of rock, connecting Argos with Corinth. By similar passes Cleonæ, Nemea, and Phlius, more to the south, and eastwards Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Epidaurus, were connected; and this natural division into many small districts had a considerable effect upon the political state of Argos. The southern part of this chain ends in a plain, at the opening of which, and near the pass just alluded to, was situated Mycenæ, and in a wider part of it the city of Argos. The nature of this anciently cultivated plain is very remarkable; it was, as is evident, gradually formed by the torrents which constantly filled up the bay between the mountains; and hence it was originally little else than fen and morass.267 Inachus, “the stream,” and Melia, the daughter of Oceanus, “the damp valley” (where ash-trees, μελίαι, grow), were called the parents of the ancient Argives; and the epithet “thirsty” (πολυδίψιον Ἄργος), which is applied to Argos in ancient poems, refers only to the scarcity of spring-water in the neighbourhood of the town. Yet, notwithstanding the rugged nature of the rest of Argolis, there are, both in the interior and near the sea, here and there, small plains, which by the fertility of their soil attract and encourage the husbandman; the south-eastern coast slopes regularly down to the sea. To the north of the mountain-ridge which bounded Argolis, extending from the Isthmus [pg 080] as far as a narrow pass on the boundaries of Achaia, there is a beautiful, and in ancient times highly-celebrated plain, in which Corinth and Sicyon were situated.268 With respect to the progress of civilization at Argos, it is important to know that the mountains between that town and Corinth contain copper:269 accordingly, in the former town the forging of metals appears to have been early introduced; and hence arose the ancient celebrity of the Argive shields.270 But no precious metal has been ever found in any part of Peloponnesus: a circumstance which greatly tended to direct the attention of its inhabitants to agriculture and war, rather than commerce and manufactures.

5. That region which was in later times called Achaia, is only a narrow tract of land along the coast, lying upon the slope of the northern mountain-range of Arcadia. Hence most of the Achæan cities are situated on hills above the sea, and some few in enclosed valleys. The sources of the numerous streams by which the country is watered lie almost without exception in Arcadia, whose frontiers here reach beyond the water-line.

But the lowest slope of Peloponnesus, and the most gradual inclination to the sea, is on the western side; and it is in this quarter that we find the largest extent of champaign country in the peninsula, which, being surrounded by the chain beginning from mounts Scollis and Pholoë, was hence called the Hollow Elis. It was a most happy circumstance that these wide [pg 081] plains enjoyed an almost uninterrupted state of peace. Towards the coast the soil becomes sandy; a broad line of sand stretches along the sea nearly as far as the Triphylian Pylos, which from this circumstance is so frequently spoken of by Homer as “the sandy.”271 As this tract of country is very little raised above the level of the sea, a number of small lakes or lagoons have been formed, which extend along the greatest part of the coast, and are sometimes connected with one another, sometimes with the sea. Such being the nature of the country, the river Alpheus runs gently between low chains of hills and through small valleys into the sea. Towards the south the country becomes more mountainous, and approaches more to the character of Arcadia.

6. If now we picture to ourselves this singular country before the improvements of art and agriculture, it presents to the mind a very extraordinary appearance. The waters of Arcadia are evidently more calculated to fill up the deep ravines and hollows of that country, or to produce irregular inundations, than to fertilise the soil by quiet and gentle streams. The valleys of Stymphalus, Pheneus, Orchomenus, and Caphyæ in Arcadia required canals, dams, &c., before they could be used for the purposes of husbandry. One part of the plain of Argos was carefully drained, in order to prevent it becoming a part of the marshes of Lerna. In the lower part of the course of the Eurotas it was necessary to use some artificial means for confining the river: and that this care was at some time bestowed on it, is evident from the remains of quays,272 which give to the river the appearance [pg 082] of a canal. The ancient Nestorian Pylus was situated on a river (Anigrus), which even now, when it overflows, makes the country a very unhealthy place of residence; and no traveller can pass a night at Lerna without danger. Thus in many parts of Peloponnesus it was necessary, not merely for the use of the soil, but even for the sake of health and safety, to regulate nature by the exertions of art. At the present time, from the inactivity of the natives, the inevitable consequence of oppression, so bad an atmosphere prevails in some parts of the country, that, instead of producing, as formerly, a vigorous and healthy race, one sickly generation follows another to the grave. And that improvements of this kind were begun in the earliest periods, is evident from the fact, that the traces of primitive cities are discovered in those very valleys which had most need of human labour.273 This induction is also confirmed by the evidence of many traditions. The scanty accounts respecting the earliest times of Sparta relate, that Myles, the son of the earth-born Lelex, built mills, and ground corn at Alesiæ; and that he had a son named Eurotas, who conducted the water stagnating in the level plain into the sea by a canal, which was afterwards called by his name.274 Indeed the situation of Sparta seems to imply that the standing water was first drained off:275 nay, even in later times, it was possible, by stopping the course of the river, to lay most of the country between Sparta and the opposite heights under water.276

7. The consideration of these natural circumstances and traditions obliges us to suppose that the races which were looked on as the ancient inhabitants of Peloponnesus (the Pelasgians in the east and north, and the Leleges in the south and west) were the first who brought the land to that state of cultivation in which it afterwards remained in this and other parts of Greece. And perhaps it was these two nations alone to whom the care of husbandry, cattle, and everything connected with the products of the soil, belonged through all times and changes. For, in the first place, the numbers of the invading Achæans, Ionians, and afterwards of the Dorians, were very inconsiderable, as compared with the whole population of Peloponnesus; and, secondly, these races conquered the people as well as the country, and enjoyed an independent and easy life by retaining both in their possession: so that, whatever tribe might obtain the sovereign power, the former nations always constituted the mass of the population. By means of these usurpations agriculture was kept in a constant state of dependence and obscurity, so that we seldom hear of the improvement of the country, which is a necessary part of the husbandman's business. Agriculture was, however, always followed with great energy and success. For in the time of the Peloponnesian war, when the population of Peloponnesus must have been very great, it produced more corn than it consumed, and there was a constant export from Laconia and Arcadia downwards to the coast of Corinth.277

8. It is not with a view of founding any calculation upon them, but merely of giving a general idea of the numerical force of a Greek tribe (which many would [pg 084] suppose to be a large nation), that I offer the following remarks. At the flourishing period of the Doric power, about the time of the Persian war, Sparta, which had then conquered Messenia, contained 8000 families, Argos above 6000; while in Sicyon, Corinth, Phlius, Epidaurus, and Ægina, the Dorians were not so numerous, the constitution being even more oligarchical in those states. Although in the colonies, where they were less confined by want of sufficient space, and by the severity of the laws, the inhabitants multiplied very rapidly, yet the number of original colonists, as many of them as were Dorians, was very small. Now since in the states of Peloponnesus, even after they had been firmly established, the number of inhabitants, particularly of Dorians, never, from several causes, much increased,278 it seems probable that at the time of their first irruption the whole number of their males was not above 20,000.279 Nor were the earlier settlements of Achæans and Ionians more considerable. For the Ionians, as is evident from their traditions, appear as a military race in Attica, and probably formed, though perhaps together with many families of a different origin, one, and certainly the least, of four tribes (the ὅπλητες280). The arrival of the Achæans is represented in ancient traditions in the following simple manner: “Archander and Architeles, the sons of Achæus, having been driven from Phthiotis, came to Argos and Lacedæmon.”281 Their names signify “the ruler,” and “the chief governor.” [pg 085] Certainly the Achæans did not come to till the ground; as is also evident from the fact that, when dislodged by the Dorians, and driven to the northern coast, they took possession of Patræ, dwelt only in the town, and did not disperse themselves into the smaller villages.282

It seems pretty certain that the Dorians migrated together with their wives and children. The Spartans would not have bestowed so much attention as they did on women of a different race; and all the domestic institutions of the Dorians would have been formed in a manner very unlike that which really obtained. This circumstance alone completely distinguishes the migration of the Dorians from that of the Ionians, who having, according to Herodotus, sailed from Attica without any women, took native Carian women for wives, or rather for slaves, who, according to the same writer, did not even dare to address their husbands by their proper names. And this was probably the case with all the early settlements beyond the sea, since the form of the ancient Greek galley hardly admitted of the transport of women.

9. It would have been less difficult to explain by what superiority the Dorians conquered Peloponnesus, had they gained it in open battle. For, since it appears, that Homer describes the mode of combat in use among the ancient Achæans, the method of fighting with lines of heavy armed men, drawn up in close and regular order, must have been introduced into Peloponnesus by the Dorians; amongst whom Tyrtæus describes it as established. And it is evident that the chariots and darts of the Homeric heroes could never have prevailed against the charge of a deep and compact body armed with long lances. But it is more difficult still to comprehend [pg 086] how the Dorians could have entered those inaccessible fortifications, of which Peloponnesus was full; since their nation never was skilful in the art of besieging, and main force was here of no avail. How, I ask, did they storm the citadel of Acro-Corinthus, that Gibraltar of Peloponnesus?283 how the Argive Larissa, and similar fortresses? On these points, however, some accounts have been preserved with regard to the conquest of Argos and Corinth, which, from their agreement with each other, and with the circumstances of the places, must pass as credible historical memorials. From these we learn that the Dorians always endeavoured to fortify some post at a short distance from the ancient stronghold; and from thence ravaged the country by constant incursions, and, kept up this system of vexation and petty attack, until the defenders either hazarded a battle, or surrendered their city. Thus at a late period the places were still shown from whence Temenus and Aletes had carried on contests of this nature with success.284 And even in historical times this mode of waging war in an enemy's country (called ἐπιτειχισμὸς τῃ χώρᾳ) was not unfrequently employed against places, which could not be directly attacked.285

1. Before the time of the Dorians, Mycenæ, situated in the higher part of the plain at the extremity of the mountain-chain, had doubtless been the most important and distinguished place in Argolis; and Argos, although the seat of the earliest civilization was dependent upon and inferior to it. At Mycenæ were the Cyclopian hall of Eurystheus,286 and the sumptuous palace of Agamemnon; and though, as Thucydides correctly says, the fortified town was of inconsiderable extent, yet it abounded with stupendous and richly-carved monuments, whose semi-barbarous but artificial splendour formed a striking contrast with the unornamented and simple style introduced after the Doric period.287 The Doric conquerors, on the other hand, did not commence their operations upon fortresses secured alike by nature and art, but advanced [pg 088] into the interior from the coast. For near the sea between Lerna and Nauplia, on the mouth of the Phrixus,288 there was a fortified place named Temenium, from which Temenus the son of Aristomachus, together with the Dorians, carried on a war with Tisamenus and the Achæans, and probably harassed them by repeated incursions, until they were obliged to hazard an open battle. From thence the Dorians, after severe struggles, made themselves masters of the town of Argos.289 It is related in an isolated tradition, that Ergiæus, a descendant of Diomed, stole and gave to Temenus the Palladium brought by his ancestor from Troy to Argos, which immediately occasioned the surrender of the city.290 Argos was therefore supposed to have been taken by Temenus himself.

2. The further extension of the Doric power is, however, attributed not to Temenus, but to his sons; for such the Doric tradition calls Ceisus, Cerynes, Phalces, and Agræus or Agæus.291 Of these, Ceisus is represented to have governed at Argos, and Phalces to have gone to Sicyon. The ancient Meconè or Sicyon had in early times been in the power of the Ionians, and afterwards subject to the Achæans of Argos. The very copious mythology of this ancient [pg 089] city contains symbolical and historical elements of the most various nature: we will only touch upon a part of the story immediately preceding the Doric invasion. Phæstus, a son of Hercules, is stated to have been king of Argos before that event; and having gone to Crete, where he founded the town of his name,292 to have been succeeded by his descendants Rhopalus, Hippolytus, and Lacestades, the last of whom lived on terms of friendship with Phalces. Between them, however, Zeuxippus, a son of Apollo and of the nymph Hyllis,293 is placed. We here perceive the traces of a connexion between Phæstus in Crete, and the introduction of the worship of Apollo and Hercules; this tradition, however, cannot authorise us to draw any chronological inferences.

3. Whether Phlius (situated in a corner of Arcadia, in a beautiful valley, whence arise the four sources of the Asopus294) was founded from Sicyon or Argos, was a matter of contention between these two towns: the latter simply called Phlias the son of Ceisus.295 This Phlias, however, is nothing else than the country personified; the name being derived from φλέω or φλιδάω, and signifying “damp,” or “abounding in springs,” which appellation was fully merited by the nature of the spot. Hence Phlias was with more reason called the son of Dionysus (Φλεὺς, Φλεὼν), who loved to dwell in such valleys. There is, therefore, greater probability in the account of the Sicyonians, that Phalces and Rhegnidas were the founders of the Doric [pg 090] dominion;296 it being moreover easier to force a way to Phliasia from Sicyon along the Asopus, than from Argos. It is known, that Pythagoras the Samian derived his origin from a certain Hippasus, who had quitted Phlius on that occasion; and the Ionic town of Clazomenæ is said to have been partly founded by some inhabitants of Cleonæ and Phliasia, who had been expelled by the Dorians;297 from which two facts we are justified in inferring the existence of a connexion between the early inhabitants of these places and the Ionians. Cleonæ, situated in a narrow valley, where the mountains open towards Corinth, and bordering upon Phlius, appears from this account to have been colonised at the same time with that town, but probably from Argos. For we find that the ruling power was there in the hands of the same Heraclide family, of which a branch went from Argos to Epidaurus.298

4. The Acte (as the northern coast of Argolis, over against Attica, was called)299 was reduced, according to the account of Ephorus, by Deiphontes and Agæus.300 The former of these, who was called a descendant [pg 091] of Ctesippus, and son-in-law of Temenus, and whose fortunes afforded materials for the tragic poets, made himself master of the town of Epidaurus, and dislodged the Ionians from thence: these latter, under the command of their king Pityreus, crossed over to Attica, whence the king's son Procles went subsequently, at the general Ionic migration, to Samos.301 Of the Dorians of Epidaurus, however, a part under the conduct of Triacon withdrew to Ægina,302 in which place Hellenes of Thessaly had formerly ruled, and united the island and mother-state into one commonwealth, with equal rights, and the same magistrates. Now since besides Epidaurus, Trœzen alone belonged to the Actè, and since both Agæus and Deiphontes are mentioned as the Dorian colonisers of this coast, it was probably this Agæus who brought Trœzen under the rule of the Dorians.303 In this city, too, he must have encountered some Ionians; since both the mythical genealogies and religious rites of the ancient Trœzen attest a close connexion between its earlier inhabitants and the Athenians.304 For Trœzen even shared with the Ionic cities in the peculiar worship of the Apaturian Athene, as the goddess of phratriæ and gentes;305 as also in that of Poseidon and his son Theseus.

5. The accounts already given show that Sicyon, [pg 092] Phlius, Cleonæ, Epidaurus, Trœzen, and Ægina received their share of Doric inhabitants either mediately or immediately from Argos. We can only regret the want of any accurate accounts respecting Mycenæ and Tiryns; the conquest of which cities must have been most difficult; but, when accomplished, decisive for the sovereignty of the Dorians. Pindar306 considers the expulsion of the Achæan Danai from the gulf of Argos, and from Mycenæ, as identical with the expedition of the Heraclidæ; and Strabo states that the Argives united Mycenæ with themselves.307 Nevertheless we find that in the Persian war Mycenæ and Tiryns were still independent states, and it admits of a doubt whether they had previously belonged for any length of time to Argos. That some ancient inhabitants at least still maintained themselves in the mountains above Argos, is shown by the instance of the Orneatæ. The inhabitants of Orneæ, a town on the mountainous frontier of Mantinea, having long been hostile to the Dorians, and at war with the Sicyonians,308 were at length overpowered by Argos, and degraded to the state of periœci.309 Now, since it is more probable that such a proceeding took place against the people of a different race, than against a colony of Argos, and also as there is nowhere any mention of a Doric settlement at Orneæ, it is evident that the inhabitants of Orneæ had up to that time been either Achæans or Arcadians.

6. Although from the foregoing accounts it appears that Argos almost entirely lost its power over the towns which it had been the means of bringing under the rule of the Dorians, yet in early times there existed certain [pg 093] obligations on the part of these cities towards Argos, which at a later period became mere forms. There was in Argos, upon the Larissa, a temple of Apollo Pythaëus, which had probably been erected soon after the invasion of the Dorians, as a sanctuary of the national deity who had led them into the country. It was a temple common to all the surrounding district, though belonging more particularly to the Argives.310 The Epidaurians were bound at certain seasons to send sacrifices to it.311 The Dryopians in early times, and afterwards also, in their character of Craugallidæ, or servants of the Delphian god, had at Asine and Hermione erected temples to Apollo Pythaëus, in acknowledgment of a similar dependence; and this was the only one spared by the Argives at the destruction of the former town.312

7. The fragments preserved respecting the ancient history of the Dryopians having been collected in a previous chapter,313 we shall here only remark that this people possessed a considerable district in the most southern part of Argolis, the boundaries of which, so long as they remained inviolate, were defined by two points, viz. the temple of Demeter Thermesia on the frontier between Hermione and Trœzen, eighty stadia from Cape Scyllæum, and a hill between Asine, Epidaurus, and Trœzen,314 and they may still be pointed out with tolerable certainty. Hercules, who, according to the Doric tradition, brought the Dryopians hither, had [pg 094] accurately marked out these boundaries. It is, however, also related that the Dryopians established themselves beyond these limits at Nemea315 in Argolis: this, however, as well as Olympia, was not any particular town, but merely the name of a valley, and particularly of a temple of Zeus there situated.

8. The history of the establishment of Corinth, though marvellous and obscure, contains nevertheless some historical traces by no means unworthy of remark. In the first place, it is stated that this town did not receive its inhabitants from Argos. The purport of the tradition is as follows: “When Hippotes at the time of the passage of the Dorians from Naupactus slew the soothsayer, he was banished (according to Apollodorus for ten years),316 during which time he led a roaming and predatory life;”317 whence his son was called Ἀλήτης, or the Wanderer.318 It is also recorded in the fragment of a tradition319 that Hippotes, when crossing the Melian gulf, imprecated against those who wished to remain behind, “That their vessels might be leaky, and themselves the slaves of their wives.” In like manner his son Aletes passed through the territory at that time called Ephyra, where he received from scorn a clod of earth;320 which in the ancient oracular language was a symbol of sovereignty.321 [pg 095] We might almost guess from these traditions that the Dorian warriors had harassed, and at length subdued the ancient Ephyreans, by ravaging their lands, and by repeated invasions. This is confirmed by the very credible account of Thucydides relating to this point.322 There was in the mountainous country, about sixty stadia from Corinth, and twelve from the Saronic gulf, a hill called Solygius, of which the Dorians had once taken possession for the purpose of making war against the Æolian inhabitants of Corinth. This hill was, however (at least in the time of Thucydides), entirely unfortified. Here we may recognise the very same method of waging war as in the account of Temenus given above, a method which in the Peloponnesian war was adopted by the Spartans at the fortifying of Decelea. Again, it is related in a tradition connected with the Hellotian festival, that at the taking of Corinth the Dorians set fire to the town, and even to the temple of Athene, in which the women had taken refuge.323 In another it is stated that Aletes, being advised by an oracle to attack the city on a “crowned day,” took it during a great funeral solemnity by the treachery of the youngest daughter of Creon: these, however, are for the most part mere attempts at an historical interpretation of ancient festival ceremonies. As Aletes (according to his genealogy) lived one generation after the conquerors of Peloponnesus, the capture of Corinth was dated thirty years after the expedition of the Heraclidæ;324 whence probably also arose the error of [pg 096] supposing that there had previously been Dorians at Corinth; as it was supposed that the Dorians had obtained their whole dominion over Peloponnesus at one time, by one expedition. The city appears to have received the name of Corinth at this time, instead of its former one of Ephyra;325 and it seems that the Dorians called it with a certain preference “The Corinth of Zeus;” although ancient interpreters have in vain laboured to give a satisfactory explanation of this name.

9. The early inhabitants of Corinth were, according to the expression of Thucydides,326 Æolians; and their traditions and religion show that they were very nearly connected with the Minyans of Iolcus and Orchomenus.327 Their kings were the Sisyphidæ, whose genealogy closes with Hyantidas and Doridas. We find in the last name the same confusion which has been pointed out (amongst others) in the legend of Thessalus the son of Jason,328 viz., that the arrival of a different nation was expressed by connecting the new comers genealogically with the heroes of the ruling race. Thus Doridas, i.e. the Dorians in a patronymic form, is the descendant of Sisyphus. Here begins the sovereignty of the Dorians; who, however, did not, as Pausanias329 states, altogether expel the ancient inhabitants, but formed the aristocratic class of the new state. Pindar and Callimachus, indeed, call the whole Corinthian nation Aletiadæ330 but merely by a poetical license; the only lineal descendants of Aletes being the [pg 097] ruling house, the Bacchiadæ, from which for a long time were taken the kings and Prytanes of Corinth and all its colonies. There were, however, at Corinth distinguished families of a different origin. The family of Cypselus, which afterwards obtained possession of the tyranny, was, according to Herodotus, of the blood of the Lapithæ, and descended from Cæneus.331 They came, according to Pausanias, from Gonusa, near Sicyon, to assist the Dorians against Corinth:332 Aletes, however, at the advice of an oracle, at first refused to receive them, but presently admitted them into the city, where they afterwards overthrew his own descendants. We shall allow this narrative, which contains a post eventum prophecy of the tyranny of the Cypselidæ, to rest on its own merits, remarking only that the Cænidæ had more reason to assist the ancient Æolians than the Dorians; and shall merely infer from it the existence of distinguished families in Corinth not of Doric descent.

10. As in this chapter we have hitherto rather followed a geographical than a chronological arrangement, we will now pass to the founding of Megara.333 That event is represented by the ancient tradition as connected with the expedition of the Peloponnesians against Athens;334 which is doubtless a correct statement, since Megara had before that epoch been closely united with Attica, and comprehended in Ionia. This [pg 098] expedition was, according to most authors, undertaken by the whole Peloponnesus; by some, however, the Corinthians are called the real authors of it, and Aletes the leader, Althæmenes of Argos, the son of Ceisus, being nevertheless joined with him. The defeat of the Doric invaders, by the voluntary sacrifice of Codrus, has been a favourite subject both with poets and rhetoricians.335 It is sufficient for our purpose to oppose to this celebrated legend an obscure tradition that some Athenians, whom Lycophron calls Codri, had a share in the expedition of the Heraclidæ.336 Whether or not the Ionians and Dorians met at the borders on this occasion, thus much is certain, that Megara in consequence of this invasion became a Doric town, and indeed soon afterwards a Corinthian colony.337 It also remained for some time in complete dependence on Corinth, as Ægina upon Epidaurus; in proof of which it is mentioned that the Megarians were bound to mourn for every death that occurred in the family of the Bacchiadæ at Corinth.338 When, however, the internal strength of Megara increased, it ventured to dissolve this connexion, and, in defiance of the Corinth of Zeus, to rout the Corinthians in the field.339 The [pg 099] border-wars of the Megarians and Corinthians were carried on without intermission.340 Megara appears not to have raised itself to the situation of a ruling city till after it had obtained its independence; since in earlier times it had been one of the five hamlets (κῶμαι) into which the country was divided, viz. the Heræans, Piræans, Megarians, Cynosyrians, and Tripodiscians.341 These small communities also waged war with each other, but with a singular lenity, of which some almost marvellous accounts have been preserved; the conquerors carried their prisoners home, treated them as guests and companions, who were hence called δορύξενοι, in opposition to δορυάλωτοι.

11. We now turn to Laconia, which, according to the above-mentioned legend concerning the division of Peloponnesus, fell to the share of Aristodemus or his sons.342 According to the common tradition (which was derived from the epic poets343) the twin brothers [pg 100] Eurysthenes and Procles344 took possession of Sparta after the death of their father; whereas the national tradition of Sparta, as Herodotus informs us, represented Aristodemus himself as having been the first ruler,345 and the double dominion of his children as not having been settled till after his death; the first-born, however, enjoying a certain degree of precedence.346 This is, indeed, contradicted by the account of Thucydides,347 who mentions as a Lacedæmonian tradition, that the kings who first took possession of Lacedæmon (i.e. Eurysthenes and Procles) were conducted thither with dances and sacrifices, an honour which at the command of the Delphian oracle was afterwards given to Pleistoanax at his restoration. This variation, however, is perhaps merely the effect of a pardonable negligence in the author.

12. It is, however, far more difficult to ascertain what was the condition of Laconia immediately after the invasion of the Dorians. For it is plain that the history, as it was arranged by Ephorus, and derived from him to other authors, is in contradiction with many isolated traditions, but which for that very reason are of the greater importance. So far, indeed, from the whole of the Laconian territory immediately [pg 101] falling into the hands of the Dorians,348 it is certain that a powerful fortress of the ancient Achæans, at a short distance from Sparta itself, held out for nearly three centuries after the Doric invasion.

There was a saying, well known in antiquity, of the “silent Amyclæ;” thus called because its citizens had been so often alarmed by the report of the enemy coming, that they at last made a law that no one should give tidings of the enemy's approach; in consequence of which the town was at length taken.349 This proverb, and the story on which it was founded, prove the existence of a long and determined contest between the two neighbouring cities. They also confirm the account of Pausanias, that the Dorians in the reign of Teleclus built a temple350 to Zeus Tropæus, because they had at length, after a tedious and severe struggle, overcome the Achæans of Amyclæ and taken their city. This city of Amyclæ, one of the most ancient and considerable in Peloponnesus, of which there still remains a fort situated upon a rock on the side of mount Taygetus, was therefore so far from being reduced by the Spartans immediately, that it held out until the reign of Teleclus, 278 years after the invasion, a short time before the first Messenian war; and [pg 102] then was only taken after a tedious contest, which, from the proximity of Amyclæ and Sparta, must have been very dangerous to the latter city. Now it is not possible that before this victory Amyclæ and Sparta, distant only 20 stadia (2-1/2 miles) from each other, should have been engaged in constant war, as it must have soon ended in the destruction of one or the other city: their truces and armistices were, however, doubtless interrupted frequently by sudden incursions. The important territory near mount Taygetus belonged at that time to Amyclæ, and all this country was still in the possession of the Achæans, with whom some Minyans from Lemnos, and Cadmean Greeks, known by the name of Ægidæ, had united themselves. This is the territory from which the colonies of Thera, Melos, and Gortyna proceeded; so, according to Pindar, Amyclæ was the point from which the first colonies to Lesbos and Tenedos set out, and also (as may be inferred from other notices) those Achæans who took possession of Patræ.351

Sparta, on the other hand, must have been of very slight importance before the Doric migration; by which event alone it was enabled to become the ruler of all the surrounding states. For, in the first place, Sparta was not built in the same manner as Mycenæ, Tiryns, and other ruling cities founded before the Doric invasion; the Acropolis is a hill of inconsiderable height, and easy of ascent, without any trace of ancient fortifications or walls. Secondly, it is remarkably deficient in monuments and local memorials of the times of the Pelopidæ and other mythical princes; much as the Spartans in other instances clung to traditions [pg 103] and records of this kind: while Amyclæ and Therapne had these in great abundance. Amyclæ, in a beautiful and well-wooded country,352 was the abode of Tyndareus and his family; here were the tombs of Cassandra and Agamemnon, who, according to a native tradition (preserved by Stesichorus and Simonides),353 ruled in this city. At no great distance was situated the town of Therapne. Alcman calls it the “well-fortified Therapne;”354 Pindar mentions its high situation;355 by which they clearly imply a position and fortification similar to that of Tiryns. The latter also calls it the ancient metropolis of the Achæans, amongst whom the Dioscuri lived; here were the subterraneous cemeteries of Castor and Pollux,356 vaulted, perhaps, in the ancient manner; here also the temples of the Brothers and of Helen in the Phœbæum, and many remains of the ancient symbolical religion.357 It is also very remarkable, that on the banks of the Eurotas, in the district between Therapne and Amyclæ, there should have been discovered a building358 which resembles the well-known treasury at Mycenæ, and [pg 104] which affords a certain proof that the dominion of the Pelopidæ extended to this district.

But although the local traditions make it probable that the ante-Doric rulers of the country dwelt in Amyclæ and Therapne, yet Homer describes Sparta as the residence of the Pelopidæ, transferring, apparently, the circumstances of his own time to an earlier period. Homer sometimes calls Lacedæmon the abode of Menelaus; by Lacedæmon meaning the entire country, and especially the valley round Sparta, which agrees far better with the epithet of “hollow Lacedæmon,” than the district of Amyclæ, which opens down to the sea.359 Sometimes he expressly mentions Sparta as the city in which Menelaus has fixed his abode.360

13. Amyclæ, however, is not the only Achæan city which was not reduced by the Dorians till a late period. Ægys, on the frontiers of Arcadia, is said to have been taken from the Achæans by Archelaus and Charilaus a short time before Lycurgus; Pharis, together with Geronthræ, by Teleclus;361 and Helos in the plains, near the mouth of the Eurotas, by Alcamenes, the son of Teleclus.362 So long as these places belonged to the Achæans, the Spartans were shut out from the sea, and surrounded on all sides by the possessions of a different race. It appears, however, that other places besides Sparta were held by the Dorians themselves [pg 105] previously to their obtaining possession of the whole of Laconia; such were, for instance, Bœæ near Malea,363 and perhaps also Abia on the confines of Messenia.364 But of the numerous contests which doubtless took place at this period, little information has come down to us, as they just lie between the provinces of mythology and history.

Thus much, however, we may with safety say, that Ephorus is clearly in error when he mentions a division of Laconia made by the Dorians, immediately after their conquest, for the sake of an undisturbed dominion over the country.365 The same historian further states that “Sparta was reserved by the Dorians as the seat of their own empire; that Amyclæ366 was granted to Philonomus, who had delivered the country to them by treachery, and that governors were sent into the other four divisions.” Also, that “the principal towns of these four provinces were Las, Epidaurus Limera (or Gytheium), Ægys, and Pharis; of which the first served as the citadel of Laconia,367 the second as an excellent harbour, the third as a convenient arsenal for the wars with Arcadia, and the fourth as an internal point of union. That the periœci dwelt in these towns, and were [pg 106] dependent upon the Spartans, though without losing their freedom.” This account doubtless suited the historical style of Ephorus; but it does not agree with the isolated but genuine traditions already mentioned.

The division into six provinces is nevertheless, in my opinion, to be considered as an historical fact; only the arrangement could not have been made till a much later period. Of these provinces, the first comprehended the district of the city; the second, the mountain-chain of Taygetus, with the western coast; the third, the Laconian gulf; the fourth, perhaps the modern Zaconia, on the eastern side of the Eurotas; the fifth, the northern frontier; and the sixth, the lower valley of the Eurotas. The reality of such a division is also confirmed by the existence of a similar one in Messenia; which is spoken of by other writers besides Ephorus.368 For this country is also said to have been divided by Cresphontes, so that Stenyclarus was the habitation of the Dorians and their king, under whose authority were placed the Messenian districts of Pylos, Rhium, Mesola, and Hyamia; of these, Pylos apparently comprehended the whole western coast; Rhium is the promontory of Methone and the neighbouring southern coast; Hyamia may perhaps be the shore of the Messenian bay nearest to the frontiers of Laconia; [pg 107] Mesola signifies the midland district369 near the Pamisus; and Stenyclarus is the northern plain of Messenia.

14. We have now another instance of the arbitrary manner in which Ephorus composed his history by probable arguments. He proceeds upon the fact that Eurysthenes and Procles, although the founders of Sparta, were not honoured as such (as ἀρχηγέται), that they did not enjoy any divine honour, did not give their name to any tribe, &c. (Now the very first of these statements is false; for Eurysthenes and Procles, according to the native tradition, were not the founders of Sparta, as was shown above.) Hence Ephorus infers that they must have offended the Dorians; and he finds the cause of this offence in the adoption of foreign citizens, through whose assistance they had extended their power. This instance is a sufficient justification for our rejecting the historical system of Ephorus, and neglecting the results which he obtained by it.

There must have been many stories concerning Eurysthenes and Procles current in ancient times which have not come down to us. There was a general tradition of their continual discord; and we know that the military fame of Procles was as great as that of Eurysthenes was insignificant.370 There is, however, something peculiarly worthy of notice in an incidental remark of Cicero,371 that Procles died a year before Eurysthenes. Could there have been chronicles of so early a period, or is it possible that tradition [pg 108] should preserve such precise dates? It is also a remarkable statement that the wives of both kings were likewise twin sisters, Lathria and Anaxandra by name, daughters of Thersander king of the Cleonæans, whose descent we mentioned above.372 Some great heroic actions of Soüs373 (the “violent”), the son of Procles, were also celebrated in Sparta.374 It was even said that he had carried on war against the Cleitorians; and it was related, that in the narrow valley of Cleitor, when surrounded by enemies, and oppressed by intolerable thirst, he promised to give up all his conquests, on the condition of himself and his army being allowed to drink from the fountain: that upon this he offered the crown to any one who would abstain from drinking, but, no one being willing to gain it at this price, he moistened himself with water from the fountain, and departed without drinking.375 But a Spartan king would hardly have ventured, even some centuries afterwards, to lead an army through the hostile territory of Arcadia, to a place at so considerable a distance as Cleitor, leaving behind so many hollow defiles, ravines, and mountains.

15. In the country which from this time forth obtained the name of Messenia,376 Pylos was before the Doric migration the most important town, whither the family of the Nelidæ had retired from the Triphylian territory.377 The Dorians under Cresphontes378 [pg 109] at first seated themselves in the opposite part of the country, at Stenyclarus, in the midland region; they must however have soon pressed so closely upon Pylos, that part of the inhabitants was forced to emigrate. For that many of the noble families, both at Athens and in Asia Minor, came originally from Pylos, is placed out of doubt by the agreement of many national and family traditions; and it is equally certain that they did not leave Peloponnesus long before the Ionic migration. Mimnermus, the most ancient witness to this fact, says that the founders of his native city Colophon came from the Nelean Pylos;379 i.e., he calls Andræmon, the founder of Colophon, a Pylian; where it almost seems that the poet meant a direct migration from that place. Pylos however (though it is generally considered to have been in the possession of the Dorians from this epoch) probably remained for some time an independent town, with a limited territory; even in the second Messenian war some Nestoridæ went as allies to the Messenians;380 and, after the defeat of the Messenians, the Pylians and the Methonæans were able to harbour them for a considerable time.381

16. Of the internal condition of Messenia we cannot even know so much as of that of Laconia, since, at the cessation of its political existence, its monuments, and even its inhabitants, perished; and thus all means of perpetuating a knowledge of its former state were [pg 110] entirely lost. Yet, setting aside the accounts of Ephorus, there remain some very simple circumstances from which we may form an idea of the condition of the country. It is related, that when Cresphontes was treacherously assassinated, the Arcadians, in conjunction with the kings of Sparta and Ceisus king of Argos, re-established in his place his son Æpytus,382 who had been brought up with Cypselus the Arcadian, the father of his mother Merope,383 and who rendered himself so celebrated, that all his descendants were called Æpytidæ. The name of Æpytus is evidently connected with Æpytis, a district on the frontiers of Arcadia and Messenia, near the ancient Andania, the earliest seat of civilization and religious worship in the country. The names of his descendants, Glaucus, Isthmius, Dotades, Sybotas (swine-herd), Phintas (or Φιλητὴς), are in remarkable contrast with those of the Lacedæmonian kings, as Eurysthenes (widely-ruling), Procles (the renowned), Agis (the general), Soüs (the violent), Echestratus (the general), Eurypon (the widely-reigning), Labotas (shepherd of the people), and so forth; for, whilst the latter signify powerful warrior princes, there sounds in the former something peaceable and pastoral. What Pausanias relates of these Messenian princes refers [pg 111] almost exclusively to a peaceful office—viz., the establishment of festivals; the gods also to whom they were consecrated agree with the same general character. Glaucus and Isthmius, we are told, established or promoted the worship of Æsculapius at Gerenia and Pharæ: Sybotas joined to the ancient worship of the great gods at Andania the funeral sacrifices of the hero Eurytus, brought over from the Thessalian to the Messenian Œchalia; and others in the same manner. In fact this Cabirian worship of Demeter at Andania, allied to that prevalent in Attica at Eleusis and Phyla, was one of the most ancient in Peloponnesus, and at that time flourished in Messenia;384 whereas, according to Herodotus, the Dorians everywhere exterminated the ancient rites of Demeter.385 Hence also the mystical consecration of Andania was discontinued as long as Messenia was governed by the Spartans, and it fell into oblivion, until many centuries afterwards Epaminondas solemnly re-established it, either from the mere recollection of the inhabitants, or, if the account be true, upon the authority of an inscription on a tin plate found in a brazen urn, containing some obscure words referring to ancient mystic ceremonies.386

The re-establishment of Æpytus may, however, have been effected by the threefold alliance of both the princes and nations of Argos, Sparta, and Messenia, by which they guaranteed their respective rights, an alliance of which Plato has preserved a faint, though [pg 112] undoubted trace, marked out in the spirit of his political philosophy.387

From the settlements of the Dorians within Peloponnesus, we now turn to those without that peninsula.

1. On account of the multiplicity of subjects which it will be now necessary to consider, we shall be compelled to shorten the discussion of several points, and to take for granted many collateral questions, except where we may be encouraged to enter into greater detail by the hope of disclosing fresh fields for the inquiries of others.

It will be the most convenient method to make the mother-states the basis of our arrangement, as these are known with far greater certainty than the dates of the foundation of their respective colonies; by which means we shall also be enabled to take in a regular order those settlements which lie near to, and were connected with, one another.

First, the colonies of Argos, Epidaurus, and Trœzen. We will treat of these together, as they all lie in the same direction, and as the colonies of [pg 113] the two last states more or less recognised the supremacy of Argos, and not unfrequently followed a common leader. These extend as far as the southern extremity of Asia Minor.

The Dorians on the south-western coast of Asia Minor derived their origin, according to Herodotus,388 from Peloponnesus. And indeed they were generally considered a colony of Argos389 (from which state Strabo derives Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Cos), led by princes of the Heraclidæ, from whom the noble families of Rhodes—for example, the Eratidæ or Diagoridæ at Ialysus—claimed to be descended.390 This emigration was considered contemporary, and as having some connexion with the expedition of Althæmenes, the son of Ceisus, from Argos to Crete.391 Now we know from Herodotus392 that the Coans, Calydnians, and Nisyrians came from Epidaurus; [pg 114] yet, as is evident from arguments already brought forward, two different expeditions cannot be understood to have taken place. Thus also Ægina was called a colony of Argos as well as of Epidaurus. The account of Herodotus is confirmed by the similarity of the worship of Æsculapius at Cos and at Epidaurus, which was sufficiently great to prove a colonial connexion.393 We have also a tradition of some sacred missions between Cos and Epidaurus; a ship of the latter is said to have brought a serpent of Æsculapius to the former state.394 If this is considered as an historical fact, we may, as it appears, deduce more from it than is commonly inferred—viz. that the Doric colonists of Cos, Calydna, &c. remained in Epidaurus a sufficient time before their passage into Asia Minor to adopt the worship of Æsculapius. And since we find that the worship of Æsculapius also prevailed in Cnidos and Rhodes,395 it may be fairly inferred, that of the inhabitants of these islands a part at least passed through Epidaurus. This is further confirmed by the orator Aristides, who, on the authority of the national tradition, states of the Rhodians, “that from ancient times they had been Dorians, and had had Heraclidæ and Asclepiadæ for their princes.”396 Thus also there were families of the Asclepiadæ and Heraclidæ at Cos, to the former of which Hippocrates was related on his father's side, to the latter on his mother's.397 Contemporaneous [pg 115] with this migration from Argos and Epidaurus was that from Trœzen,398 in which Halicarnassus, the citadel upon the sea (ἁλι-κάρηνον), was founded; which fact also receives confirmation from the similarity of religious worship.399 And indeed there is reason for believing that it was only one Doric tribe, the Dymanes, which colonized this city,400 who strengthened themselves by collecting together the earlier inhabitants, the Leleges and Carians.401

2. Those towns, however, only which composed the Doric Tripolis of Rhodes (a number which probably originated from the division of the tribes), together with Cnidos, Cos, and Halicarnassus, formed the regular Doric league (before the separation of Halicarnassus called the Hexapolis, afterwards the Pentapolis). The members of this alliance met on the Triopian promontory to celebrate in public national festivals the rites of Apollo and Demeter, which last were of extreme antiquity;402 its influence in political affairs was however probably very inconsiderable.403 But, besides those already mentioned, many towns and islands in this district were peopled by Dorians.404 [pg 116] The small island of Telos, near Triopium, was probably dependent upon Lindos:405 Nisyrus and Calydna (or Calymna) have been already mentioned; the inhabitants were Epidaurian Dorians, who belonged to the colony of Cos:406 Carpathus also received some Argive colonists. It is said to have been taken by Ioclus, the son of Demoleon, an Argive by descent.407 Syme also was colonised from Cnidos: of this town we shall make further mention when speaking of the Laconian settlements. The inhabitants of Astypalæa were partly derived from Megara;408 their Doric origin is attested by the dialect of decrees now extant;409 and by the same circumstance we are enabled to recognise as a Doric colony Anaphe,410 which is situated near the Doric islands of Thera, Pholegandros,411 and Melos; the position of these islands, together forming a chain across the southern part of the Ægæan sea, shows that they were colonized in a connected and regular succession. Myndus, however, upon the mainland had received inhabitants from the same town as Halicarnassus;412 perhaps Mylasa had also had some connexion with the Dorians.413 Cryassa in Caria was colonised by inhabitants [pg 117] of the Doric island of Melos.414 Even Synnada and Noricum, further to the interior in Phrygia, had inhabitants of Doric origin;415 yet the Spartan settlement in Noricum is a fact which it is difficult to understand; and with regard to the former we are wholly unable to state how the Dorians could have penetrated thus far.

I have now, though not without in some measure forestalling the regular course of these investigations, given an account of all the known cities in this territory which were founded by Dorians of Peloponnesus; and if to these we add the colonies from Rhodes upon the opposite coast of Asia, and the cities of Lycia founded from the island of Crete, in which the Doric dialect was doubtless spoken, we shall have before us a very extensive range of colonies belonging to that race. Some of these were probably dependent upon the more considerable; many on the contrary stood entirely alone, some very early disagreements having, as it appears, separated and estranged them from the league of the six towns.416 Hence the Calymnians [pg 118] (or Calydnians) at a later period, on the occasion of embarrassing lawsuits, had recourse not to the larger states of the same race, but to the Iasians (who, though a colony from Argos, had afterwards learned the habits and character of the Ionic race by a settlement from Miletus),417 which nation sent them five judges. This circumstance, however, may be accounted for by a temporary resemblance of their constitutions.418

3. Having thus put together the most simple historical accounts respecting the foundation of these Doric cities, we have still to examine the mythical narrations with which they are accompanied, and which were invented by representing the same colonies under different names, and attributing a false antiquity to their establishment. That this was in fact the case is evident from the mythical account which is connected with the colony of Trœzen, viz. “that Anthes and his son Aëtius, ancient princes of the Trœzenians, had in early times founded Halicarnassus.”419 This tradition, however, contradicts itself, when compared with the additional account in Callimachus,420 “that Anthes had taken out Dymanes with him;” which was exclusively a civil division of the Dorians. It is therefore far preferable to follow the statement of Pausanias,421 that the descendants of Aëtius passed over to Halicarnassus and Myndus long after his death. It [pg 119] must not, however, from this circumstance be inferred that these descendants of Aëtius were leaders of the colony, since it was necessary that these should be Doric Heraclidæ. But they were in all probability a family which cultivated the worship of Poseidon in preference to any other, and carried it over with them to the colony. But that a family of this kind, and with it the tradition and name of Anthes, actually prevailed in Halicarnassus, is seen also from the poetical name of the Halicarnassians (Antheadæ.)422

There is also a great similarity in the part which Tlepolemus bears in the history of the colonisation of Rhodes. In this case also the mythical hero is represented as coming from Argos,423 as well as the historical colony, only at an earlier period. But, it may be objected, the colony is related to have come immediately from Epidaurus, and not the hero. We have, however, still an evident trace of mythical genealogies of Rhodes, in which Tlepolemus was represented as immediately connected with the Heraclidæ of Epidaurus. For Pindar celebrates the Diagoridæ as descended on the father's side from Zeus, from Amyntor on the mother's, because both these were the grandfathers of Tlepolemus.424 Now Deiphontes of Epidaurus was also descended on his mother's side from Amyntor, and was [pg 120] therefore very nearly related to Tlepolemus. We may also probably suppose that there was in this Argive and Epidaurian colony a family which derived itself from Tlepolemus the son of Hercules, by which means the traditions concerning him were connected with this migration.425 The same want of consistency which we observed above, may here also be perceived in the statement of Homer, that the colony of Tlepolemus was divided into three parts, according to the different races of the settlers;426 whence it is evident that he was always considered as a Doric prince.

Thirdly, the colony of Cos, Nisyrus, Carpathus, and Casos also possessed leaders or heroic founders, whose expedition is reported to have taken place at a time different from that at which the colony was founded, and is placed back in a remote period, viz. Phidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus the Heraclide, [pg 121] or of Hercules himself. Their origin is derived by the fable from the irruption of Hercules into Cos, where he made pregnant the daughter of Euryphylus; afterwards they are said to have migrated to Ephyra in Thesprotia, and their descendants to have gone from thence to Thessaly, where the Aleuadæ, the most distinguished and the wealthiest family of Larissa, claimed them as ancestors.427 Again, I do not deny that Heraclide families in exile at Cos derived their origin from both these heroes (it was indeed by this means that the name of Thessalus found its way into the Asclepiad family of Hippocrates); but that these families were born in the island of Cos itself, is evidently a patriotic invention of the Coans. There were, as we have seen, traditions respecting Phidippus and Antiphus in Cos, and also at Ephyra in Thesprotia; which traditions the fables and poems respecting the returns of the heroes from Troy, endeavoured to reconcile, by making Antiphus reach Ephyra, after a series of wanderings, instead of going directly to Cos; a supposition which will not gain many believers. It is also plain from the epigram of Aristotle,428 that, according to the traditions of Ephyra, that city was considered as the native country, and the domicile of the two heroes; and therefore was in direct opposition to the Coan tradition. Now that a Heraclide family should have gone from Cos to Ephyra in Epirus, is contrary to all other examples of the migrations of Greek races and colonies, and all that we know of the dispersion of Heraclide clans or families. On the other hand, a part of the mythology of Hercules, which appears to be of great antiquity,429 refers to this Ephyra in Epirus; and [pg 122] it was then quite natural, that with the conquest of Ephyra (a fabulous exploit of Hercules) the origin of a branch of the Heraclidæ should be connected, who then came with the Dorians into Peloponnesus, and by means of the Epidaurian colony to the island of Cos.

4. The favourable situations of these Doric cities on islands and promontories, possessing roadsteads and harbours convenient for maritime intercourse, attracted in early times a considerable number of colonies. It is remarkable that the Rhodians should have founded fewer and less considerable colonies on the coast of Asia Minor than in the countries to the west: for, with the exception of Peræa, which was not till later times dependent on this island, the only Rhodian towns in Asia Minor were Gagæ430 and Corydalla431 in Lycia, Phaselis,432 on the confines of Lycia and Pamphylia, and Soli in Cilicia.433 On the other hand, in Olymp. 16. 4. 713 B.C., according to Thucydides, about the time of their colonising Phaselis, they founded in Sicily the splendid city of Gela, the mother-town of Agrigentum. This colony was sent from Lindus, which furnished its leader Antiphemus (or Deinomenes.)434 It was accompanied by inhabitants of the [pg 123] small island of Telos;435 and was at the same time joined by some Cretan emigrants. That however the numbers of those who came from the first-mentioned town predominated, is shown by the original name of the settlement, Λίνδιοι, and by the religion there established. Doric institutions were common to all the founders above mentioned, and were consequently established in their settlements.436 The connexion and intercourse with those islands continued without interruption; hence it was that, in later times, the family of Phalaris, coming from Astypalæa, found a welcome reception at Agrigentum;437 and the family of the Emmenidæ, which overthrew Phalaris, had come from the same region, viz. from Thera.438 Moreover, Parthenope, in the country of the Osci, and Elpiæ, or Salapiæ, in the territory of the Daunians (in the founding of which the inhabitants of Cos had a share), were beyond a doubt settlements of the Rhodians; and indeed this same people penetrated even to Iberia at an early period, and there founded Rhode; and we have also traces of their presence at the mouth of the Rhone.439 Hence also, perhaps, arose the account of the expedition of Tlepolemus to the Balearic islands; which account, and the statement that Sybaris was [pg 124] founded by him, may be understood merely as mythical expressions for the voyages undertaken by the Rhodians in the western sea.

5. It is, however, a matter even of still greater difficulty to determine the true history of several cities in Asia Minor, which are reported by tradition to have been colonies of Argos, and generally of the greatest antiquity. But it requires nothing short of absolute superstition to believe that Tarsus was founded by Io, or Perseus the Argive,440 who, with his descendant Hercules, was worshipped in this place as a tutelar deity;441 or that Mallus, Mopsuestia, Mopsucrene, and Phaselis were founded by Argive soothsayers at the time of the Trojan war.442 To these may be added Aspendus in Pamphylia, Curium in Cyprus, and even Ione, near Antiochia, in Syria,443 the founding of which place is attributed to the Argives. For, without considering the period at which the ancient Peloponnesians are represented to have undertaken such distant (and at that time impossible) voyages round the Chelidonian islands, it is most singular that Argos, which is at no time mentioned among the maritime nations of Greece, should have planted upon that one line of coast a series of colonies in so connected an order, and so completely useless to herself. We will therefore venture to advance an hypothesis, to which, though perhaps no complete proofs of it can be adduced, we have still sufficient traces to lead us, viz. [pg 125] that all these towns were colonised from Rhodes; but that, by a form frequently in use, they were led out in the name of Argos, the mother-country of Rhodes, and under the auspices of Argive gods and heroes.444 In the first place, Argives and Rhodians are mentioned together as founders; as in the instance of Soli, which nevertheless only defended the Rhodians as a sister state before the Roman senate.445 Of the manner in which heroes were adopted as founders, the city just mentioned furnishes a good instance. For the Argive soothsayer Amphilochus is said to have come hither, who, according to poems that went under the name of Hesiod, had been put to death by Apollo at Soli.446 The following example gives a still clearer notion of the manner in which these fables were formed. The Rhodians built Phaselis at the same time with Gela (Olymp. 16. 713 B.C.); the founder is called Lacius, whom the Delphian oracle had sent to the east, as it had Antiphemus to the west.447 Now it is shown in another part of this work448 that Lacius is a Cretan form for Rhacius; and this was the name of the husband of Manto, and father of Mopsus, the ancient mythical prophet of the temple at Claros. For, leaving no doubt that this person is intended, the tradition also says, that this Mopsus, the son of Rhacius, founded Phaselis:449 Pamphylia itself is called the [pg 126] daughter of Rhacius and of Manto;450 and lastly, the same Lacius is represented as a contemporary of Mopsus, and as having been sent out by Manto as a founder at the same time with the latter.451 The inference that we must draw is, that there was no such individual as Lacius who led the Lindians in person to Phaselis, but that he was merely a mythical being, and represents the Clarian oracle, which seems to have co-operated on this occasion.452 Those who are versed in the interpretation of mythical narratives will also hence infer, that the same was the case with his contrary, Ἀντιόφημος. In order, however, to give the mother-state, Argos, a share in the mythical account of the foundation of the Pamphylian colonies, it was necessary that Amphilochus, who belonged to the family of the Amythaonidæ, should, together with Calchas, have some connexion with them all; and, in fact, it is not impossible that soothsayers from Argos, who called themselves descendants of this prophet and hero, were procured by the Rhodians for this service.

6. We may now penetrate somewhat deeper into the obscure traditions of the Cilician cities Mallus, Mopsuestia, and Mopsucrene. In the fables concerning the founding of these towns, Amphilochus and Mopsus are always mentioned together; at the same time that the account of their Argive origin is very [pg 127] much brought into notice. Cicero calls both these prophets on this occasion kings of Argos.453 Here then we may also assume that soothsayers were brought from the mother-country, and suppose that the prophets of the Amphilochian oracle of Mallus were actually natives of Argos; and although, as will be shown below, the influence of the Clarian worship was also felt,454 yet the persons who were the real colonisers could only have been a sea-faring people, such as the Rhodians. In consequence, however, of these settlements having been founded at a very early period, when all colonies were as yet entirely dependent upon the oracles, and therefore were always under the direction of prophets, and as an inventive and imaginative spirit was then in full vigour, their true history has been enveloped in a thick cloud of mythological fiction, which we have at least begun to remove.

7. We next proceed to the Corinthian colonies, the geographical situation of which alone affords a remarkable result with regard to the maritime expeditions undertaken by the mother-country. For although Corinth had two harbours, Lechæum in the Crisæan, and Cenchreæ in the Saronic gulf, it it evident that all its colonies were sent out from the western port. They were founded, almost without exception, on the coasts of the Ionian sea; at the entrance of which the Corinthians had, perhaps at a very early period, founded the city of Molycreium.455 Notwithstanding this, the very first colony from Corinth, the date of which is known within a few years (Olymp. 5. 760-757 B.C.),456 ventured to cross the [pg 128] Ionian sea, and to found in the most beautiful part of Sicily the renowned city of Syracuse. The founder was Archias a Heraclide, and probably also of the family of the Bacchiadæ;457 he was followed by Corinthians, chiefly from the borough of Tenea;458 and on the road was joined by some Dorians from Megara;459 the expedition was also accompanied by a prophet of the sacred family of Olympia, the Iamidæ, whose descendants flourished at Syracuse in the time of Pindar.460 It appears, however, that Syracuse at that time borrowed many religious institutions from Olympia, as is proved by the worship of Arethusa, of Artemis Ortygia, and of the Olympian Zeus.461 These original founders built a town in the island of Ortygia, the name of which can be explained only from the worship of the goddess just mentioned. The lands taken from the aboriginal Sicilians they divided into lots, according to the number of the colonists. For the method universally observed in founding these colonies was, that the adventurers received before-hand a promise of a share in the territory—which also was called a lot. On the occasion of this very settlement, Æthiops, a Corinthian glutton, is said to have [pg 129] sold a promise of this kind to a companion for one honey-cake.462 Eumelus the Bacchiad, the celebrated poet of Corinth, seems to have been one of these colonists,463 as he is mentioned in connexion with Archias. Although the demus, or populace of the city, chiefly perhaps consisted of inhabitants of various nations, who put themselves under the protection of this colony, and although the territory around was peopled by Sicilian bondsmen, yet in its dialect, and probably for a considerable period in its customs also, Syracuse remained a purely Doric state: as the women in Theocritus say,464 “Our origin is Corinthian, and therefore we speak the language of Peloponnesus. For it is permitted, I suppose, to the Dorians to speak Doric.” Hence the Syracusans were so greatly pleased with an ambassador from Lucania, who had learnt to speak Doric in order to address them in their native tongue.465 Syracuse increased so rapidly in population and power, that seventy years after its foundation it colonized Acræ, and also Enna, situated in the centre of the island; twenty years after this, the town of Casmenæ; and in forty-five more, Camarina. Also some Syracusan466 fugitives named Myletidæ, together with Chalcideans from Zancle, are said to have founded Himera: [pg 130] hence the dialect there in use was a mixture of Chalcidean and Doric; but the institutions were entirely Chalcidean.

8. The other Corinthian colonies, as has been already remarked, were all situated to the east of the Ionian sea. The nearest of these are, besides their colony of Molycreium, Chalcis in Ætolia,467 and Solium in Acarnania;468 further on, we find that Ambracia was in very early times founded by Corinth,469 and accordingly was governed by a brother of Periander;470 by the influence of this settlement Amphilochian Argos changed its language and customs for those of the Greeks.471 Anactorium was founded by the Corinthians, under the command of Periander, in conjunction with the Corcyræans. At the same time, and in connexion with the same persons, they occupied the island of Leucadia;472 to the possession of which, however, the Corcyræans, as they were at that [pg 131] time subject to Corinth, had no just claim; and Themistocles unquestionably did wrong in attributing any such right to them;473 the Leucadians also always remained firm to their real parent-state. Next comes Corcyra itself, the founding of which by Chersicrates the Bacchiad474 is represented as having been a secondary branch of the colony sent to Syracuse;475 but it had at a very early period set itself up as a rival to the mother-state in the Ionian sea, whose ancient power had been probably broken before the Persian war. On the opposite coast lay Epidamnus, which city was chiefly founded by Corcyræans, but under the command of Phalius, the son of Eratocleides, a Corinthian Heraclide, whom the Corcyræans, according to the ancient colonial law, had sent for, together with some of his countrymen (in Olymp. 38. 2. 629 B.C. according to Eusebius), and were afterwards strengthened by emigrants from Dyspontium in Pisatis.—Lastly, Gylax, a Corinthian, together with 200 of his own countrymen, and a greater number of Corcyræans, founded Apollonia in the time of Periander. Here ends the list of Corinthian colonies, which formed a strong and continuous chain along the coast; and thus even the barbarians of the interior, especially the [pg 132] Epirots of Thesprotia, were forced to maintain a perpetual connexion with Corinth:476 hence also the kings of the Lyncestæ in Macedonia esteemed it an honour to derive their origin from the Bacchiadæ.477 At a still further distance lay the island of Issa, which was colonized from Syracuse.478 Corcyra, however, possessed settlements as far as the Flanatian gulf.479 From these facts it is evident that there was a time when Corinth predominated in these seas; and by means of Corcyra and Ambracia, and other towns, ruled over many nations of barbarians. But the loss of Corcyra, which had been at war with its mother-state in the 28th Olympiad (about 668 B.C.),480 even before the time of Periander (though it was for a short time again reduced to subjection by the enterprising Cypselidæ), was an incurable wound for Corinth. The other colonies, however, showed a remarkable obedience to her.481 It was not till after the loss of their maritime dominion in these quarters (an event which had nevertheless taken place before the Persian war) that the Corinthians appear to have founded Potidæa on the opposite side of Greece in Chalcidice, which colony they sought to retain in their power by continually interfering in its internal administration, and for this purpose sent thither every year magistrates named Epidemiurgi.482

9. Megara, on the other hand, was induced by its situation to send even its first colonies to the opposite [pg 133] side of Greece on the Thracian coast. Thus in Olymp. 17. 3. 710 B.C. it founded Astæus in Bithynia;483 afterwards Chalcedon, on the entrance of the Bosporus484 in Olymp. 26. 2. 675 B.C. (according to Eusebius); and 17 years later (Olymp. 30. 3. 658 B.C.) Byzantium in a more favoured spot, opposite to Chalcedon.485 The Argives also had a share in the foundation of this town; for which fact we may trust the general assertion of Hesychius of Miletus, that his circumstantial and fabulous history of the early times of this city was derived from ancient poets and historians. For the transmission of the worship of Here (whose temple both at Byzantium and Argos was on the citadel),486 and the traditions concerning Io, the attendant of the Argive Here, confirm in a manner which does not admit of a doubt, the pretensions of Argos to a share in this colony. Io, who was represented with horns on her forehead, is said to have here produced to Zeus a daughter, Ceroëssa the “Horned” by name (which is, however, only a different name for Io herself), who being suckled by the nymph Semestra, afterwards brought forth Byzas.487 Thence the fable of the cow swimming over the sea became peculiar to this place.488 In other respects the combinations [pg 134] of religious ceremonies as found at Byzantium, almost exactly resembled that which existed in Megara. Nay, so carefully did the Byzantians, though far removed from their mother-state, preserve the remembrance of it, that they carried over almost all the names of their native country and the neighbouring region. We find on the coast a temple of Poseidon, whose son was named Byzas; also of Demeter and Cora; the Scironian rocks, an Isthmian promontory, with the tomb of Hipposthenes a Megarean hero, the temple of Apollo on the high promontory of Metopum; also an altar of Saron, a pretended hero, whose name referred to the Saronic gulf.489 Thus Byzantium was never estranged from its Peloponnesian ancestors, although it adopted a large number of additional colonists,490 and ruled over Thracian subjects. Moreover, the prevailing dialect, which occurs in some public decrees still extant, remained for a long time Doric.491 The Byzantians, together with the Chalcedonians, either at the time of the expedition of Darius against the Scythians, or of the Ionic revolt, founded Mesambria on the Pontus,492 which some consider as a colony of Megara. The Megareans had also founded Selymbria even before the settlement of Byzantium,493 and probably carried on from this place a war with [pg 135] the Samians at Perinthus,494 when that island was still governed by Geomori, before the time of Polycrates. Moreover, the Megareans had a large share in the founding of Heraclea on the Pontus; for although they were strengthened by some Tanagræans from Bœotia, their numbers so predominated that this city was in general considered as Doric.495

10. Megara, however, at the same time founded some very considerable colonies to the west, viz., in Sicily. It will be sufficient to state in general terms that Hybla in Sicily was a Megarean colony, established in the 13th Olympiad (about 728 B.C.), and was even called Megara.496 It probably kept up a constant intercourse with the mother-state; since [pg 136] Theognis, who was a Megarean from Sicily, according to Plato, dwelt nevertheless for a long time in the Megara near Athens, to which state many of his poems refer.497 The founding of the small town of Trogilus, and of the more important city of Thapsos, preceded the building of Megara. A century later, some inhabitants of Megara founded Selinus in the neighbourhood of that part of the island, which town was in early times held by the Phœnicians, in later times by the Carthaginians.

11. The colonies of Sparta, which still remain to be considered, were more numerous than would be expected of a state so averse to maritime affairs. In the history of the migrations of the Heraclidæ, we find introduced the colonies of Thera, Melos, Gortyna, and Cyrene; which, although for the sake of honour they recognised Sparta as their mother-state, had been in fact founded by Achæans, Minyans, and Ægidæ, who dwelt at that time in a state of almost entire independence in a district of Laconia.498 All these states, however, retained the Doric name; and Cyrene, though even the founders married Libyan women,499 [pg 137] always preserved to the utmost of its power the institutions, customs, and language of its mother-country.500 The founding of Cnidos also took place at an early period, and was generally ascribed to the Lacedæmonians.501 The leader of the colony was, according to Diodorus, one Hippotes.502 Syme also was at that time peopled from Cnidos.503 The principal religion of this city, that of Aphrodite504 (who was here worshipped in a three-fold capacity), was without doubt the same as that which existed at Cythera, having been carried over by the Lacedæmonian colonists. The splendid city of Cnidos, protected toward the east by an Acropolis, which both its Cyclopian architecture505 and fabulous history prove to have existed before the time of the Dorians, was situated on a neck of land, with a harbour on each side, one of which was among the largest in Greece. Thus fitted by nature for commerce, Cnidos also founded colonies of its own, among which Lipara, established (in Olymp. 50, about 580 B.C.) upon one of the Æolian islands under the direction of descendants of Hippotes,506 overcame the Etruscans in several wars, and adorned Delphi with offerings [pg 138] of victory.507 Another colony from Cnidos, remarkable chiefly for its distance from the mother-country, is Black-Corcyra, on the coast of Illyria. Lacedæmon herself, however, is said to have sent out colonies to Phrygia, Pisidia, and Cyprus. In the former country, Pisistratus, a Spartan, is said to have founded Noricum near Celænæ on the river Marsyas.508 Selge in Pisidia is generally considered by the ancients to have been a Lacedæmonian colony, and we frequently find on coins of a late date this origin recognised. The representative of the state is Hercules the Doric hero: moreover, the free spirit, the bravery, and the good laws of the Selgæans (although the reverse is sometimes attributed to them) were derived from their mother-state.509 The wrestling youths in the act of grasping one another (ἀκροχειριζόμενοι) represented on their coins, bespeak a love for gymnastic exercises. It should, however, be remembered, that the founders of this colony were, according to a more exact statement, Amyclæans,510 i.e. fugitive Periœci, who perhaps had [pg 139] passed through Cnidos in their way to these districts. It appears that the Selgæans founded Sagalassus,511 which city is styled on its coins The Lacedæmonian. Perhaps Praxander went at the same time from Therapne in Laconia, with Cephas of Olenus (both Achæans by birth) to the island of Cyprus, where they founded Lapathus and Ceronia.512

12. But the most celebrated of all the Lacedæmonian colonies, and which really proceeded from Sparta, was Tarentum. The history of its origin is buried in fable, in the accounts of the first Messenian war; the accompanying circumstances will be mentioned below. The leader of this colony was Phalanthus, son of Aratus, a Heraclide.513 Taras, on the other hand, is called the son of Poseidon, because this colony carried over the worship of that deity from Tænarum to Italy. These emigrants also brought with them other religious rites, as for instance the worship of Hyacinthus;514 likewise many names from their native country, as that of the Eurotas, which they gave to the river Galæsus.515 But the fruitful and luxuriant [pg 140] territory to which they had moved, its soft and voluptuous climate, and the commerce, for which Tarentum was well situated,516 and always open (although it never carried it on in an active manner), helped to engender that effeminacy of character, which gave countenance to the fable of the founders having been the sons of unmarried women (παρθενίαι). Still, amidst all its degeneracy, Tarentum retained a certain degree of dependence on its mother-country: at the foundation of Heraclea the Tarentines allowed Cleandridas a Spartan to be one of the original colonists.517 The friendship, moreover, of the Cnidians with the Tarentines,518 as well as that with the Cyreneans, was founded on the recognition of a common origin. The colony of Croton (Olymp. 19. 2. 703 B.C., according to Eusebius) consisted indeed of Achæans, who came partly from the maritime town of Rhypæ,519 and partly from Laconia:520 it must, however, have been established under the authority of the Doric state of Sparta, since Apollo and Hercules, the Doric god and hero, were here worshipped with especial honour;521 the early constitution was also Doric; and although in general we are not to look for truth in the poetry of Ovid, yet in this instance we may credit his statement that Myscellus the founder was a Heraclide.522 In like manner the Locrians, who (in Olymp. 24. 2. 683 B.C.) founded Locri, must have procured Spartans as leaders,523 since (as their coins also show) they paid particular [pg 141] honours to the Dioscuri, in time of distress in war the statues of these gods having been sent to them from Sparta, as being a people of the same origin;524 and even in the Peloponnesian war they still adhered to the cause of Sparta.525 Of a nature wholly different were the rapid and transitory settlements of Dorieus the son of Anaxandrides, king of Sparta, which this noble adventurer founded in Sicily and Libya; when, scorning to submit to a worthless brother, and confiding in his own strength, he hoped to obtain by conquest a kingdom in a distant country.526 Finally, the Lyctians of Crete and other inhabitants of this island called themselves colonists of Sparta. In all probability many of the ancient Doric cities of this country received fresh settlers from Lacedæmon; which state, at the beginning of the Olympiads527 in the time of Alcamenes, and even during the life of Lycurgus,528 exercised a very considerable influence upon the internal affairs of Crete.

Having taken a view of the Doric settlements without Peloponnesus, we now return to the history [pg 142] of that peninsula, which we will divide into two periods, namely, before and after the 40th Olympiad, or the year 620 B.C.

1. Before we begin to collect and arrange the accounts extant concerning the early history of Peloponnesus, it will be first necessary to ascertain what are our sources of information respecting the events of this period. For the epic poets, who carried on an uninterrupted series of traditions on the events of the mythical ages, and have thus thrown over this dark period some faint glimmerings which may in many places be condensed into a distinct and useful light, only touch on a few points of the period whose history we are about to examine. On the other hand, indeed, the art of writing was during this time introduced among the Greeks through their intercourse with Asia; but that a long time elapsed before it [pg 143] came into general use, is evident from the almost surprising imperfection of those written documents which have been preserved to us of a date anterior to the 60th Olympiad, in comparison with the great perfection of the works of Grecian art. For this reason, writing was long regarded in Greece as a foreign craft, and letters were considered (for example in the Tean curses) as Phœnician symbols. Nevertheless, these few and scanty registers are the first materials for real history and chronology now extant. As such, the following have been made known to us from Peloponnesus.

2. The Quoit of Iphitus, upon which was inscribed in a circle the formula for proclaiming the sacred armistice of Elis, and in which Iphitus and Lycurgus were mentioned as the founders of it.529 There is no reason for doubting its genuineness, which was recognised by Aristotle, and the institution which it mentioned was considered by all ancient writers as a real fact.530 Secondly, the lists of the conquerors at the Olympic games brought down uninterruptedly from the victory of Chorœbus,531 which always recorded the conquerors in the foot-race, and in later times at least those in the other games.532 It is probable that they were originally engraved on single pillars, and afterwards collected under the inspection of the Hellanodicæ.533 Similar catalogues of conquerors in other [pg 144] games, besides the four great ones, were also probably not uncommon, but they were generally inscribed on separate pillars, and were therefore of little use to the historian.534 The names of the conquerors at the Carnean games at Sparta were also registered, so that Hellanicus was enabled to compose from them a work called Καρνεονῖκαι. The register at Sicyon contained a list of the priestesses of Here at Argos, and the poets and musicians of the games.535 But this also contained fabulous accounts: for example, the invention of playing and singing on the harp by Amphion. Nor were the catalogues of the priestesses of Here, which were probably kept at Argos, altogether free from fable, as may be perceived from the fragments of Hellanicus's chronological work on these priestesses, which was probably founded on the official catalogues.536

3. There were also at Lacedæmon public registers, in which Plutarch found mention of the daughters of Agesilaus;537 and in those of the earliest times the same author discovered the Pythian oracle concerning Lycurgus,538 the same that Herodotus refers to in his first book. These doubtless contained the names of all the kings, and probably also the years of their reigns, as far back as Procles, who, according to a statement noticed above, died one year before his [pg 145] brother Eurysthenes.539 This fact could hardly have been derived from any other source than some national annals, though it is not impossible that it was first transferred to them from oral narrative; in which case, however, it is difficult to understand how tradition, contrary to its general character, preserved dates. It was without doubt from these registers that Charon of Lampsacus, before the time of Herodotus, composed his work entitled, “The Prytanes, or Rulers, of Lacedæmon;”540 in which he also noticed the sacred offerings and monuments of ancient times.541 With respect to the chronological labours of Timæus, Polybius542 says that “this writer compared the ephors with the kings of Lacedæmon from the beginning, and the archons at Athens and priestesses at Argos with the conquerors at the Olympic games, and noted the errors which the cities had made in the registration, even when they only differed by three months.” Eratosthenes and Apollodorus founded their chronology, especially before the Olympiads, upon the same list of the kings;543 they both nearly agreed in reckoning 327 or 328 years from the expedition of the Heraclidæ to the first Olympiad (776 B.C.),544 which calculation would have been impossible [pg 146] if the duration of each king's reign had not been known; for if this computation is made by generations, reckoning about three to a century, quite a different number comes out.545 Lycurgus, however, was placed by Eratosthenes 108 years before the first Olympiad;546 in which computation he certainly went on the authority of the Quoit of Iphitus; which agrees with the statement of Apollodorus, that Homer, who according to this chronologist flourished 148 years before the first Olympiad, was a contemporary of Lycurgus when the latter was a young man.547—It appears, however, that the name of Lycurgus was not preserved in any register of the kings, since in that case it would have been impossible that he should have been called by Herodotus the guardian of his nephew Labotas the Eurysthenid,548 by Simonides (who lived in great intimacy with king Pausanias)549 the son of Prytanis and brother of Eunomus the Proclid, and by others the son of Eunomus and guardian of his nephew Charilaus,550 had there existed any genealogy of [pg 147] him which was sufficiently accredited. Hence we must infer that these catalogues only contained the names of the kings, and not even of the royal guardians or protectors, such as Lycurgus. On the other hand, the variations in the enumeration of the kings are unimportant, being confined to this, that in the pedigree of the Proclidæ Herodotus551 (or his transcribers) leaves out the name of Soüs, which occurs in all the rest, and, contrary to Pausanias, changes the order of Eunomus and Polydectes. Since the name of Polydectes is entirely wanting in Simonides and Eusebius, it is probable that Polydectes and Eunomus are only different names of the same king; and that Polydectes was the proper name, and Eunomus a title of honour.552 Upon this hypothesis we obtain the following series of kings of the Proclid line—Prytanis, Polydectes, Charilaus, with tolerable certainty. There must also have been registers of the names and years of the princes of Corinth, and the family of the Bacchiadæ, since no one could have had the boldness to invent them.553 Indeed there were altogether many [pg 148] pedigrees, particularly of the Heraclidæ: as, for example, of families at Cyrene,554 and the Ptolemies;555 their authority, however, could not have been very great; in the latter, indeed, we cannot fail to recognise the unscrupulous hand of Alexandrine flatterers. The ancient chronicles of Elis, which Pausanias saw, appear to have contained complete pedigrees from Oxylus down to Iphitus;556 although the descendants of the former were not kings. The father of Iphitus was there stated to have been also named Iphitus, in contradiction to the common account.557

4. None of these registers appear to have contained anything beyond the names of conquerors at the games (which have seldom any reference to history), and princes with the years of their reigns. If anything more was noted down, it was perhaps here and there an oracle, as those belonging to the history of Sparta in Herodotus,558 which were without doubt brought by the Pythians to Sparta in writing, at a very early period. To these may be perhaps added some ancient rhetras;559 under which term the ancient Dorians included all political documents, laws, and treaties. The most ancient instance of the last kind [pg 149] is the treaty between the Eleans and the inhabitants of Heræa, discovered by sir William Gell,560 the writing of which is so extremely rude as to prove that they were little practised in that art when it was engraved. It is however very doubtful how the Spartan rhetras of Lycurgus were drawn up. By some it has been supposed that they were originally composed in metre, in order to be chanted by the youth of Sparta;561 but this is contradicted by the certain testimony562 that Terpander of Antissa, whom the Spartans so highly esteemed, was the first who set these laws to music, and first gave them a metrical and poetical form; and Terpander did not live till after the 26th Olympiad, or 672 B.C.563 But the rhetra which Plutarch has preserved as the genuine constitutional formula bears a truly archaic character, since it contains a command of the Pythian Apollo to the lawgiver in the infinitive mood, and does not fall into verse. I do not perceive why it might not have been written, as well as the contemporaneous inscription on the Quoit of Iphitus, and the ancient oracles cited by Herodotus; at least we cannot in any other way account for the preservation of the words. The original rhetras, however, were very few, and formed merely the nucleus of a system of laws, more as a help to the memory than as a perfect code; hence the ancients could with propriety say, that Zaleucus was the first who committed laws to writing.564 The three rhetras, which were preserved besides the former one, were merely [pg 150] certain general formulas, and by no means explicit laws; they had the form of an oracle, as having proceeded from the Pythian god,565 but were written entirely in prose.566

Next in the list of public monuments come the ὅροι, or landmarks of territory. It is well known that we are in possession of such records of a later period, belonging to the sacred territory of the Pythian Apollo (in which earlier surveys of the Amphictyonic Hieromnemons, and ancient inscriptions on boundary-stones are appealed to), belonging to Cretan towns, and likewise to Samos and Priene, in which the inhabitants of Priene cite ancient records, preserved from the time of Bias in the temple of Athene.567 Historical works were also composed from these memorials.568 Now there must also have been records of this kind in Peloponnesus, although the inscriptions, by which the Messenians wished to prove [pg 151] to the Romans their original boundary towards Laconia, were evidently not made till after their re-establishment by Epaminondas.569

5. These documents, if we were in possession of them, would afford a valuable foundation for an account of the three centuries before regular history begins; but merely an outline, which would require to be filled up from other sources. This might partly be done from the writings of the Lyric poets, who flourished at that time, as Eumelus, Thaletas, Tyrtæus, Alcman, and Terpander;570 which writers had frequent intercourse with the Spartans, and introduced the events of the time into their poetry to a much greater degree than the epic poets. And in fact we find in the fragments of Tyrtæus and Alcman a lively representation of the feelings and manners of the period. The next source of information is oral tradition, which, though erring continually with regard to names and numbers, yet always relates something essential; and, finally, the political institutions continuing to exist in later times, which had their origin in this period.

These, and no other than these, can have been the means employed by the authors who wrote on the affairs of Laconia, in the century when history was approaching to maturity, such as Hellanicus, Charon, and Herodotus; and either directly or indirectly must have afforded materials to those who treated of the times of Lycurgus during the later age of Greek learning. But how little do we recognise the ancient [pg 152] simplicity and liveliness which characterise all the genuine remains of that time, in the historical style of Ephorus and Hermippus,571 and their followers. The object of these writers was to assimilate, as much as possible, the notions of antiquity to those of their own time, and to attempt in some way or other to represent every act as proceeding from such motives as would have actuated their own contemporaries. They have with a truly unsparing hand rubbed off the venerable rust of ancient tradition, and, totally mistaking the most powerful springs of action then prevalent, moulded all events of which any records had been preserved, into a connected form more suited to a modern history. It is almost impossible to describe with what unlucky zeal Plutarch, where Lycurgus only embodied in laws the political feelings of his race and nation, ascribes to that legislator plans and views generally unsatisfactory, and often absolutely childish.

6. If now we apply the method above stated to the history of Lycurgus, we shall find that we have absolutely no account of him as an individual person. Tradition very properly represents him as intimately connected with the temple of Delphi (by which the Dorians, and especially the state of Sparta, were at that time entirely led), and with Crete, the earliest civilized state of the Doric race. This connexion was generally represented under the form of a journey to both places; his tomb was also shown both at Cirrha and at Pergamia in Crete. It was easy to imagine that the reforms of Lycurgus were violently [pg 153] opposed, and produced tumults and disturbances.572 But the story of Alcander putting out one of Lycurgus's eyes (probably a popular tale) is founded on a false explanation of the title of Pallas Optiletis.573 It was indeed an ancient tradition that he was guardian of a Spartan king; but the common report of this being Charilaus574 is not quite certain, as we have seen above; and in order to account for both his travels and regency, he was reported to have abdicated the latter in order to avoid suspicion.575 If we set aside all fictions of this description, which have almost the spirit of a moral tale, like the Cyropædia of Xenophon, there remains very little traditional lore. Of his legislation we will treat hereafter.576

7. It is very singular that historians should have mentioned so little of the action of Lycurgus, which comes next in importance to that which has been just discussed;577 I mean the share that he had in founding the sacred armistice and games at Olympia, which event was without doubt the commencement of a more tranquil state of affairs in Peloponnesus. Lycurgus, as the representative of the Doric race, Iphitus, of the Ætolians and Eleans, and Cleosthenes,578 the son [pg 154] of Cleonicus of Pisa, the city to which the temple of Olympia properly belonged, and which had not then lost the management of it, in conjunction perhaps with several others, drew up the fundamental law of the Peloponnesian armistice. This contained two heads. First, that the whole territory of the Eleans (who acted as masters of the games, after the expulsion of the Pisatans, every year with more exclusive power) should remain for ever free from hostile inroads and ravages, insomuch that even armed troops were only to be allowed a passage on condition of first laying down their arms;579 secondly, that during the time of the festival a cessation of arms should also be proclaimed throughout the rest of Peloponnesus. But, since there was little agreement among the individual states in the computation of time, and as the Eleans alone were acquainted with the exact time at which the quadrennial festival came round, and perhaps also in order to make the injunction of the god more impressive, the Eleans always sent feciales round to the different states, “heralds of the season, the Elean truce-bearers of Zeus;”580 these persons proclaimed the Olympic armistice, first to their own countrymen, and then to the other Peloponnesians: after which time no army was to invade another's territory.581 The fine which was to have been paid by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war for having sent [pg 155] out soldiers after this period was two minas for each hoplite, the very sum which by the agreement of the Peloponnesians was required for the ransom of prisoners of war;582 whence it is evident that the transgressors of the truce were considered as becoming slaves of the god, and were to be ransomed again from him. The decree was pronounced by the tribunal of the temple at Elis, according to the “Olympian law.”583 The fine was divided between the Eleans and the treasury at the temple of Olympia. To this temple also were paid all penalties incurred by the infraction of treaties;584 nay, sometimes whole cities were bound to pay a fixed tribute every year to the god.585 By these and similar laws was the armistice protected, which doubtless was not intended merely to secure the celebration of the games from disturbance, but also to effect a peaceable meeting of the Peloponnesians, and thus to give occasion for the settling of disputes, and the conclusion of alliances. Even in the Peloponnesian war public business was transacted at this assembly.586 But one chief effect of the Olympian festival appears to have been the production of a more friendly connexion between the Ætolian and Doric races. This fact appears to be established by the tradition that Iphitus introduced the worship of Hercules at Elis, which therefore had previously been peculiar to the Dorians.587 Apollo, the Doric god, was also at this time regarded as the protector of the sacred armistice of Olympia, as we shall see hereafter.588

8. We now proceed immediately to the Messenian wars, since it is hardly possible to find one independent event between the commencement of them and the time of Iphitus. These however are really historical, since we have in Tyrtæus a nearly contemporaneous account of the first, and one actually so of the second. The fragments and accounts of his poems are our principal guides for obtaining a correct knowledge of these transactions. And in these alone many circumstances appear in quite a different light from that in which they are represented in the romance of Pausanias. In the latter, the Spartans only are the aggressors, the Messenians only the subjects of attack; but, if we listen to Tyrtæus, the former also had to fight for their own country. But, since even the ancients possessed few remains of Tyrtæus, and as nearly all the historical part of his poems appears to have come down to us, whence did Pausanias derive his copious narrative, and the details with which he has adorned it? Was it from ancient epic poets? Yet of these there is nowhere any mention: and in general an historical event, if it could not be put into an entirely fabulous shape, like the stories of the origin and foundation of many colonies, lay altogether without the province of the early poetry. It is indeed possible that in the Naupactia, which are referred to for the mythical history of Messenia,589 some historical notices may have occasionally occurred, perhaps too in the works of Cinæthon and Eumelus: but the ancients, who disliked the labour of compiling a history from scattered fragments, probably gave themselves very little trouble to discover them. On the other hand, [pg 157] there existed a series of traditional legends, whose character announces their high antiquity; thus, that of the Messenians, that Aristomenes had thrice offered a hecatomphonion, or sacrifice for a hundred enemies slain in battle;590 whether or no of human victims is doubtful.591 A share in this sacrifice was also performed by Theoclus, who is called an Elean, because he belonged to a family of the Iamidæ, which, as it appears, was settled in Messenia; but this clan, though scattered about in different places, yet always retained their rights at Olympia.592 The same character may also be perceived in the legend of Aristomenes thrice incurring the danger of death. On the first of these occasions, when thrown into the Ceadas, he was preserved by a fox, the symbol of Messenia; on the second, whilst his guards were asleep, he turned to the fire and burnt in two the cords that bound his limbs,593 a story more certainly derived from tradition than the love-adventure which supplies its place in Pausanias: the third time however that he fell into the hands of his enemies, they cut open his breast, and found a hairy heart.594

9. Traditions of this kind were probably circulating in different forms among the victorious Lacedæmonians,595 amongst the refugee Messenians in Italy and Naupactus, the subject Messenians who remained in the country, and the other Peloponnesians, when they were recalled into existence by the re-establishment of the Messenian state by Epaminondas. Even before the battle of Leuctra, the Bœotians, on the advice of an oracle, hung up as a trophy the shield of Aristomenes,596 the device of which was a spread eagle:597 and when Epaminondas recalled the Messenian fugitives from Italy, Sicily, and even from Libya, and had erected them, with numerous Helots and people collected from various quarters, into a new state,598 Aristomenes was especially invoked before the foundation of the city.599 In this manner the ancient traditions were enabled to gain a new footing, and to be developed in a connected form. Several writers now seized upon a subject which had begun to excite so great interest, of whom Rhianus the poet and Myron the prose-writer are known to us.600 Myron gave an account of the first Messenian war down to the death of Aristodemus; but, in the opinion of Pausanias, utterly regardless whether or no he related falsehood and incredibilities; thus, in the teeth of all tradition, he introduced Aristomenes, [pg 159] the hero of the second war, into the first; and he wrote with an evident bias against Sparta.601 Rhianus, however, a native of Bena in Crete, celebrated the actions of Aristomenes, in the second war, from the battle near the Great Trench (Μεγάλη Τάφρος), until the end of the war, as Homer had done those of Achilles; and although Pausanias has disproved some of his statements of particular facts from Tyrtæus,602 yet he has frequently followed him, and especially in the poetical embellishments of his narrative.603 He never mentions any historians, such as Ephorus, Theopompus, Antiochus, or Callisthenes.604 Rhianus, however, though he might not have exclusively adopted the Messenian account,605 yet, as far as we can judge from Pausanias, gave the reins to his fancy, and mixed up many circumstances and usages of later times with the ancient tradition.606 It is not therefore our intention [pg 160] either to divert the reader with a continued narration of these fictions, at the expense of truth, or fatigue him by a detailed criticism of them, but merely to lay before him the chief circumstances, as they are known with historical certainty.

10. The first war is distinctly stated by Tyrtæus to have lasted nineteen years, and in the twentieth the enemy left their country, and fled from the mountain Ithome.607 The same authority also gives the time which elapsed between the first and second wars, viz., that the grandfathers were engaged in the first, the grandchildren in the second.608 The date of the first war is fixed by Polychares, who is stated to have been the author of it,609 having been conqueror in the race at the [pg 161] 4th Olympiad610 (764 B.C.); and it agrees well with this date that Eumelus, who was contemporary with Archias the founder of Syracuse (in the 5th Olympiad), composed a poem for free Messenia. Pausanias places the commencement (we know not on what grounds) at Olymp. 9. 2, (743 B.C.) the termination nineteen years later, Olymp. 14. 1. (724 B.C.) The interval between the two wars he states (though on what authority we know not, and contrary to Tyrtæus) to have been thirty-nine years;611 so that the second would have lasted from Olymp. 23. 4. to Olymp. 28. 1. (or from 685 to 668 B.C.)612 We shall, however, find hereafter that the date of this war was probably later by several years, though not so late as Diodorus fixed it, according to whom the war began in Olymp. 35. 3.613 We also know from Tyrtæus that the Spartan [pg 162] king who completed the subjugation of Messenia was Theopompus.614 Now, with respect to the origin of this war, it may be first traced in the increase of power, which Sparta, before the beginning of the Olympiads, owed to the exertions of its king Teleclus; this prince having succeeded in subduing the neighbouring city of Amyclæ, and in reducing several other Achæan towns to a state of dependence on Sparta.615 Indeed, if we correctly understand an insulated notice,616 Teleclus razed the town of Nedon, on the frontiers of Messenia and Laconia,617 and transplanted its inhabitants to the towns of Pœessa, Echeiæ, and Tragis. Hence arose border wars between the Dorians at Sparta and those at Stenyclarus. The temple of Artemis Limnatis,618 the possession of which was disputed between the two nations (though its festival was common to both), afforded, as may be discovered from the romance of Pausanias,619 the immediate ground for the war. For even in the reign of Tiberius the Lacedæmonians supported their claim to this temple by ancient annals and oracles;620 while the Messenians, on the other hand, brought forward the document already quoted, according to which this temple, together with the whole territory of Dentheleatis, in which it was situated, belonged to them. Dissensions in Messenia must have [pg 163] hastened the breaking out of the war, since it is certain that Hyamia, one of the five provinces of Messenia, was given by the Spartans to the Androclidæ, a branch of the family of the Æpytidæ.621 The history of the first war contains traces of a lofty and sublime poetical tradition: for example, that Aristodemus, though ready to appease the wrath of the gods by the blood of his own daughter,622 yet was unable to effect his purpose; that the damsel was put to death in vain; and upon this, recognising the will of the gods that Messenia should fall, and being terrified by portentous omens, he slaughtered himself upon the tomb of his murdered child.623 The war seems to have been confined chiefly to the vicinity of Ithome, which stronghold, situated in the midst of the country, commanded both the plain of Stenyclarus and that of the Pamisus. The reduction of this fortress necessarily entailed the subjugation of the whole country, and many of the Messenians began to emigrate. With this event the Doric colony of Rhegium is connected. Heraclides of Pontus624 merely relates, that some Messenians (who happened to be at this time at Macistus in Triphylia, in consequence of the violation of some Spartan virgins) united themselves to the Chalcidian founders of this town (who had been sent out from Delphi). He probably means those Messenians who wished to make a reparation for the violation of the Spartan virgins in the temple of Artemis Limnatis, and were in consequence [pg 164] expelled by their own countrymen.625 But, according to Pausanias,626 even this body of Messenians received the district of Hyamia; and the Messenians did not migrate to Rhegium until after the taking of Ithome under Alcidamidas, and again after the second Messenian war under Gorgus and Manticlus, son of Theoclus, one of the Iamidæ.627 Anaxilas the tyrant (who lived after Olymp. 70) afterwards derived his family from the Messenians,628 who constituted in general the first nobility of the town of Rhegium.629

The establishment of Tarentum is connected with the history of the first Messenian war; but it is wrapped up in such unintelligible fables (chiefly owing perhaps to an ignorance of Lacedæmonian institutions), that all we can learn from them is, that Tarentum was at that time founded from Sparta.630

11. In a fragment of Tyrtæus we find some very distinct traces of the condition of the subject Messenians after the first war, which will be separately considered hereafter. The second war clearly broke out in the north-eastern part of the country, on the frontier towards Arcadia, where the ancient towns of Andania and Œchalia were situated. In all probability this tract of country had never been subjugated [pg 165] by the Spartans. Aristomenes, the hero of this war, was born at Andania,631 from which town he harassed the Spartans by repeated inroads and attacks. In his first march he advanced as far as the plain of Stenyclarus; but after the victory at the Boar's Grave he returned to Andania. But this attempt of the Messenians to recover their independence became of serious importance by the share which the greater part of the states in Peloponnesus took in it. For Strabo,632 quoting Tyrtæus, states, that the Eleans, Argives, Arcadians, and Pisatans633 assisted the Messenians in this struggle. The Pisatans were led by Pantaleon the son of Omphalion, who celebrated the 34th Olympiad in the place of the Eleans;634 which fact enables us accurately to fix the time (644 B.C.).—At the head of the Arcadians was Aristocrates, whom Pausanias calls a Trapezuntian, the son of Hicetas, and mentions [pg 166] his treachery at the battle near the Trench, on the subsequent discovery of which the Arcadians deprived his family of the sovereignty of Arcadia.635 The same account is also given by Callisthenes,636 and both writers quote the inscription on a pillar erected near the mountain-altar of Zeus Lycæus in memory of the traitor's detection. Now we know from good authority637 that Aristocrates was in fact king only of Orchomenus in Arcadia,638 of which his family was so far from losing the sovereignty, that his son Aristodamus ruled over it, and also over a great part of Arcadia. The date of Aristocrates639 appears to have been about 680-640 B.C.640

The Lacedæmonians were therefore in this war really pressed by an enemy of superior force, a fact alluded to by Tyrtæus. Meanwhile Sparta was assisted by the Corinthians,641 perhaps by the [pg 167] Lepreatans,642 and even by some ships of the Samians;643 but chiefly by Tyrtæus of Aphidnæ, whom an absurd and distorted fable has turned into a lame Athenian schoolmaster. The fact of Sparta seeking a warlike minstrel in Aphidnæ, may be accounted for from its ancient connexions with this borough in Attica, which is said to have been in the hands of the Dioscuri. Whether or not Aphidnæ at that time belonged to Attica, and was subject to Athens, is a question we shall leave undecided; but there does not seem to be any reason for inferring with Strabo, from the passage of Tyrtæus itself, that the whole tradition was false, and that Tyrtæus was a Lacedæmonian by birth,644 though he doubtless became so by adoption. It is to be regretted that we have very little information concerning the war carried on by Sparta with the rest of [pg 168] the Peloponnesians;645 but the Messenians at a later period withdrew from Andania towards Eira, which is a mountain-fortress on the Neda, the border-stream towards Arcadia, near the sea-coast. When obliged to retire from this stronghold, they were received first by the Arcadians, their ancient and faithful allies (who, according to the tradition, gave them their daughters in marriage646); afterwards the exiles sought an asylum with their kinsmen at Rhegium. Aristomenes himself (if he was not put to death by the Spartans) is said to have died at Rhodes, in the house of the noble family of the Eratidæ.647

12. Besides the possession of Messenia, nothing was of such importance to the Spartans as the influence which they gained over the towns of Arcadia. But in what manner these came into their hands is very little known.648 During the Messenian war Arcadia was always opposed to Sparta. Hence, in the year 659 B.C., the Spartans suddenly attacked and took the town of Phigalea, in a corner of Messenia and Triphylia; but were soon driven out again by the neighbouring Oresthasians.649 But the place chiefly dreaded [pg 169] by Sparta, as being one of the most powerful cantons in Arcadia, and commanding the principal entrance to Laconia, was Tegea. Charilaus, one of the early kings of Sparta, is said to have been compelled, by the valour of the Tegeate women, to submit to a disgraceful treaty.650 At a later period also, in the reigns of Eurycrates and Leon the Eurysthenid,651 Sparta suffered injury from the same state,652 until it at last obtained the superiority under the next king, Anaxandridas. It was not, however, merely the ingenuity of a mountain-tribe, in protecting and fortifying its defiles, that made victory so difficult to the Spartans; but, although the pass which separates Tegea from Laconia, and even at the present time retains the vestiges of defensive walls, was of great service in repelling invasions from Laconia,653 yet Tegea was also formidable in the open field from her heavy-armed troops, which in later times always maintained the second place in the allied army of Peloponnesus.654

13. Argos never obtained so great authority in Argolis as Sparta did in Laconia, since, in the former country, the Dorians divided themselves into several ancient and considerable towns;655 and to deprive Dorians of their independence seems to have been [pg 170] more contrary to the principles of that race, than to expel them, as the Spartans did the Messenians. Argos was thus forced to content itself with forming, and being at the head of a league, which was to unite the forces of the country for common defence, and to regulate all internal affairs. An union of this kind really existed, although it never entirely attained its end. It was probably connected with the temple of Apollo Pythaëus, which, as we remarked above, was considered as common to the Epidaurians and Dryopians. An Argive Amphictyonic council is mentioned in the account of the Messenian war,656 and is evidently not a fiction, although erroneously there introduced. That it still continued to exist in the 66th Olympiad is clear from the fact, that, when the inhabitants of Sicyon and Ægina furnished Cleomenes with ships to be employed against Argos, each town was condemned to pay a fine of 500 talents.657 These penalties could not have been imposed by Argos as a single town, but in the name of a confederacy, which was weakened and injured by this act. We find that the Eleans could impose similar penalties in the name of the Olympian Zeus.658 But the very case here adduced shows how refractory was the conduct of the members of this alliance with regard to the measures taken by the chief confederate.

14. To this internal discord were added the continual disputes with Lacedæmon. Herodotus states, [pg 171] that in ancient times (i.e. about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B.C.) the whole eastern coast of Peloponnesus as far as Malea (comprising the towns of Prasiæ, Cyphanta, Epidaurus Limera, and Epidelium), together with Cythera, and the other islands, belonged to the Argives.659 According to the account of Pausanias the territory of Cynuria, a valley between two ranges of mountains, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argos, inhabited by a native Peloponnesian race, had been from early times a perpetual subject of contention between the two states. The Lacedæmonians had subdued this district in the reigns of Echestratus and Eurypon.660 During the reigns of Labotas and Prytanis, the Spartans complained of an attempt of the Argives to alienate the affections of their Periœci in Cynuria:661 as, however, we know not by what authority this statement is supported, we shall allow it to rest on its own merits. In the reign of Charilaus the Lacedæmonians wasted the territory of Argos.662 His son Nicander made an alliance with the Dryopians of Asine against Argos. Accordingly this people were expelled by Eratus, the Argive king, from their town,663 and fled to their allies in Laconia; from whom they obtained, after the end of the first Messenian war, a maritime district, where they built a new Asine, and for a long time preserved their national manners,664 as well as their connexion with the ancient religious [pg 172] worship of their kinsmen, the inhabitants of Hermione.665

15. A clearer point in the Argive and Peloponnesian history is the reign of Pheidon. The accounts respecting this prince having been collected and examined in another work, it is merely necessary to repeat the result.666 Pheidon the Argive, the son of Aristodamidas, was descended from the royal family of Temenus, the power of which had indeed since the time of Medon, the son of Ceisus, been much diminished, but yet remained in existence for a long time. Pheidon broke through the restrictions that limited his power, and hence, contrary however to the ancient usage of the term, was called a tyrant. His views were at first directed towards making the independent towns of Argolis dependent upon Argos. He undertook a war against Corinth, which he afterwards succeeded in reducing. In all probability Epidaurus, and certainly Ægina, belonged to him; none of the other towns in the neighbourhood were able to withstand the bold and determined conqueror.667 The finishing stroke [pg 173] of his achievements was manifestly the celebration of the Olympic games, over which he, as descendant of Hercules (the first conqueror at Olympia), after having abolished the Ætolian-Elean Hellanodicæ, presided, in conjunction with the inhabitants of Pisa, the ancient town of Pelops, which at this time, and many centuries after this time, had not relinquished its claims to the management of the festival. This circumstance also enables us to fix with certainty the period of his reign, since, in the Elean registers, the 8th Olympiad was marked as having been celebrated by him (747 B.C.). But it was this usurpation that united the Eleans and Lacedæmonians against him, and thus caused his overthrow. While the undertakings of Pheidon thus remained without benefit to his successors, he has been denounced by posterity as the most rapacious of tyrants in Greece; but, had he succeeded in establishing a permanent state of affairs, he would have received equal honours with Lycurgus. Yet, notwithstanding his failure, some of his institutions survived him, which adorn his memory. He is known to have equalized all weights and measures in Peloponnesus, which before his time were different in each state; he was also the first who coined money. He was enabled to undertake both with the greater success, since the only two commercial towns at that time belonging to Peloponnesus lay in his dominions, viz. Corinth (whence he is sometimes called a Corinthian) and Ægina. According to the most accurate accounts he first stamped silver-money668 in Ægina (where at that time forges doubtless existed), and, after having circulated these, he consecrated the ancient and [pg 174] then useless bars of metal to Here of Argos, where they were exhibited in later times to strangers.669—Many of the most ancient drachmas of Ægina, with the device of a tortoise, perhaps belong to this period, since the Greek coins struck before the Peloponnesian war appear to indicate a progress of many centuries in the art of stamping money. Those however which we have are sufficient to show that the same standard was prevalent throughout Peloponnesus,670 a difference in weight, measure, and standard not having been introduced till after the Peloponnesian war. This again was a second time abolished by the Achæan league, and an equality of measures restored.671

16. After the fall of Pheidon the old dispute with Lacedæmon still continued.672 In the 15th Olympiad (720 B.C.) the war concerning the frontier territory of Cynuria broke out afresh;673 the Argives now maintained it for some time,674 and secured the possession of this district chiefly by the victory at Hysiæ in Olymp. 27. 4. (669 B.C.675) And they kept it until the time of Crœsus (Olymp. 58.), when they lost it by the famous battle of the three hundred, in which Othryadas, [pg 175] though faint with his wounds, erected the trophy of victory for Sparta:676 a history the more fabulous, since it was celebrated by sacred songs at the Gymnopædia.677 Inconsiderable in extent as was the territory678 for which so much blood was shed, yet its possession decided which should be the leading power in Peloponnesus. It was not till after this had taken place that Cleomenes, in whose reign the boundary of Lacedæmon ran near the little river Erasinus, was enabled to attack Argos with success.

The power of Argos in the neighbourhood of the city was very insecure and fluctuating. Towards the end of the second Messenian war Argos had conquered the neighbouring town of Nauplia; the Lacedæmonians gave Methone in Messenia to the expelled inhabitants.679 The temple of Nemea, in the mountains towards Corinth, was, from its situation, the property of the independent Doric town Cleonæ; the Argives took it from them before Olymp. 53. 1. 568 B.C.,680 [pg 176] and henceforth celebrated the games of Zeus. The Argives however again lost it; and some time before the 80th Olympiad the Cleonæans again regulated the festival,681 a privilege which they probably did not long retain. It is likely that about 580 B.C. the town of Orneæ, between Argos and Sicyon, which had anciently carried on wars with the latter city, was rendered subject to the former, from which circumstance the Periœci of Argos obtained the general name of Orneatans; to which class the Cynurians also belonged before the battle of Thyrea.682 But these events properly belong to the period, on the history of which we are now about to enter, and which we will designate in general as the time of the tyrants.

1. The subject of this chapter may be best expressed in the words of Thucydides:683 “The tyrants of Athens, and of the rest of Greece, of which many [pg 177] states had been governed by tyrants before the Athenians, were, with the exception of those in Sicily, in most instances, and especially in later times, overthrown by the Lacedæmonians, whose state was never under a despotic government, and who, having become powerful through the early establishment of their own constitution, were enabled to arrange to their own liking the governments of other states.” It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of Greece, that at the same period of time tyrants everywhere obtained the supreme authority in Doric, Ionic, and Æolic cities; a proof that, although these nations were derived from different races, the same stage in the progress of social life was every where attended with the same phenomena. Those states alone in which the features of the Doric character were most strongly marked, viz., Sparta and Argos, resisted this influence; and we shall in general find that it was by a subversion of the Doric principles that the tyrants obtained their power. This will be made evident by a consideration of the absolute monarchies in the Doric states of Peloponnesus.

2. The inhabitants of Sicyon appear in ancient times to have been distinguished from other Dorians by a lively and excitable temperament, and by a disposition which they had at an early period transferred to their mythical hero Adrastus, whose “tongue was softly persuasive.”684 This very disposition, however, under the actual state of circumstances, opened the way to tyranny. In this instance of [pg 178] Sicyon, as in many others, the tyrant was the leader of the lower classes, who were opposed to the aristocracy. It was in this character that Orthagoras came forward, who, not being of an ancient family, was called by the nobles a cook.685 But, notwithstanding its low origin, the family of this person maintained the supremacy for a longer period than any other, according to Aristotle686 for a century, as they did not maltreat the citizens, and upon the whole respected the laws. Their succession is Orthagoras, Andreas, Myron, Aristonymus, and Cleisthenes,687 of whom, however, the second and fourth never ascended the throne, or only reigned for a short time. Myron was conqueror at Olympia in the chariot-race in the 33d Olympiad (648 B. C), and afterwards built a treasury, in which two apartments were inlaid with Tartessian brass, and adorned with Doric and Ionic columns.688 Both the architectural orders employed in this building, and the Tartessian brass, which the Phocæans had then brought to Greece in large quantities from the hospitable king Arganthonius,689 attest the intercourse of Myron with the Asiatics; we shall presently see that this same correspondence was of considerable importance for the measures of other tyrants. Cleisthenes appears to have employed violence [pg 179] in obtaining the sovereignty,690 which he held undisturbed, partly by creating terror through his military fame and exploits in arms, and partly by gaining the support of the people by the introduction of some democratic elements into the constitution. With regard to the latter measure, the singular alterations which he made in the tribes of Sicyon will be explained hereafter.691 We will here only remark that Cleisthenes himself belonged to the subject tribe, which was not of Doric origin; and while he endeavoured to raise the latter, at the same time he sought to depress, and even to dishonour the Doric tribes, so that he entirely destroyed and reversed the whole state of things which had previously existed. For this reason Cleisthenes was at enmity with Argos, the chief Doric city of this district.692 For the same reason he proscribed the worship of the Argive hero Adrastus, and favoured in its place the worship of Dionysus, a deity foreign to the Doric character; and lastly, prohibited the Homeric rhapsodists from entering the town, because Homer had celebrated Argos, and, we may add, an aristocratic form of government. These characteristic traits of a bold and comprehensive mind are gathered from the lively narrative of Herodotus. The same political tendency was inherited by his son-in-law Megacles, the husband of the beautiful Agariste, to obtain whose hand many rival youths had assembled in the palace of Cleisthenes, like the suitors of [pg 180] old, for that of Helen;693 and it was particularly manifested in Cleisthenes of Athens, who changed the Athenian constitution by abolishing the last traces of separate ranks. With regard, however, to the warlike actions of Cleisthenes, he must have been very celebrated for his prowess; since in the war of the Amphictyons against Cirrha, although denounced as a stone-slinger (that is, a man of the lowest rank),694 by the Pythian priestess, he shared the chief command of the army with the Thessalian Heraclid, Eurylochus, and helped to conquer the city.695 This took place in the third year of the 47th Olympiad, or 592 B.C.696 Out of the plunder of the town Cleisthenes built a portico for the embellishment of Sicyon;697 he was also conqueror in the chariot-race at the second Pythiad (Olymp. 49. 3. 584 B.C.)698 It may perhaps be possible from the scattered accounts concerning this prince to form a notion of his character. Cleisthenes was undoubtedly a man who was able to seize the spirit of the time, which aimed at great liberty and excitement—the very contrary of the settled composure of the Dorians; and, combining talents and versatility with the love of splendour and pageantry, ridiculed [pg 181] many things hitherto looked upon with awe, and set no limits to his love of change. Notwithstanding these qualities, he was, as is probable from the general testimony of Thucydides, overthrown by Sparta, perhaps soon after 580 B.C.;699 nor was the ancient state of things restored at Sicyon till 60 years afterwards,700 during which interval another tyrant named Æschines reigned, belonging however to a different family.

3. The Corinthian tyrants701 were nearly allied with those of Sicyon; since the former, not belonging to the Doric nobility, were placed in the same situation as the latter with regard to this class. In Corinth, before the commencement of the dynasty of tyrants, the ruling power was held by the numerous702 Heraclide clan of the Bacchiadæ, which had changed the original constitution into an oligarchy, by keeping itself distinct, in the manner of a caste, from all other families, and alone furnished the city with the annual prytanes, the chief magistrates. Cypselus the son of Aëtion, the grandson of Echecrates, from a Corinthian borough named Petra,703 and not of Doric descent, although connected on his mother's side with the Bacchiadæ, overcame, with the assistance again of the lower classes,704 the oligarchs, now become odious through their luxury705 and insolence, the larger part of whom, either voluntarily or by compulsion, quitted Corinth;706 and Cypselus became tyrant about the 30th [pg 182] Olympiad (660 B.C.),707 from the inability of the people to govern itself independently. However violently the Corinthian orator in Herodotus accuses this prince, the judgment of antiquity in general was widely different. Cypselus was of a peaceable disposition, reigned without a body-guard,708 and never forgot that he rose from a demagogue to the throne. He also undertook works of building, either from a taste for the arts, or for the purpose of employing the people. The treasury at Delphi, together with the plane-tree, was his work.709 To him succeeded his son Periander, who was at first equally or more mild than his father.710 Soon, however, his conduct became sensibly more violent, and, according to Herodotus, he was instigated by his correspondence with Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, who counselled him by every method to weaken, or even to exterminate, the nobility of his city.711 Many of his actions were evidently prompted by the wish of utterly eradicating the peculiarities of the Doric race, which were closely connected with an aristocratic spirit. For this reason he abolished the public tables, and prohibited the ancient education.712 He awed the people by his military splendour, and maintained triremes on both coasts of the [pg 183] Isthmus;713 his person he protected by three hundred body-guards.714 To maintain the city at peace, and to avoid all violent commotions, was a principle, on the observance of which the security of his dominion depended, and upon which a complete system of regulations was founded. With this view he abolished a criminal court715 for the condemnation of such as wasted their patrimony, inasmuch as persons in this situation were likely to become innovators. He interdicted immoderate luxury, and an extravagant number of slaves. Idleness he considered as especially dangerous. So little true did he remain to the democratic principles of his father, that he expelled the people from the city;716 and in order the more readily to accustom them to agricultural and mechanical labour, only permitted them to wear the dress of peasants.717 His own expenses were trifling, and therefore he required no other taxes than harbour-dues and market-tolls. He also avoided, where his projects did not require it, all violence and open injustice; and was even at times so strict a maintainer of public morality, that the numerous procuresses of the luxurious Corinth were by his orders thrown into the sea;718 the hospitable damsels of Aphrodite719 being protected by religion. He, as well as his father, made the construction of [pg 184] splendid monuments of art720 a means of taxing the property of the rich, and of employing the body of the people; though indeed his own refined taste took pleasure in such works. And in general, if considered in reference to the cultivation of taste and intellect, and the interests of agriculture and trade, the age of the tyrants was productive of a very great advancement in the Grecian states. The unpliant disposition, strict in the observance of all ancient customs and usages, was then first bent and subdued, and more liberal and extended views became prevalent. The tyrants were frequently in intimate connexion with the inhabitants of Asia Minor, whom Sparta despised for their luxury and effeminacy; and from the Lydian sultan in his harem at Sardes, a chain of communication, most important in its consequences, was established through the princes of Miletus and Samos with the countries in the immediate neighbourhood of Sparta. Periander was in correspondence not only with Thrasybulus, but also with Halyattes, the king of Lydia, and sent to the latter prince some Corcyræan youths to be castrated according to the oriental custom.721 The names of his kinsmen, Psammetichus and Gordias, the latter Phrygian, the former Egyptian, are proofs of an hospitable intercourse with those countries. On the other side of Greece, the policy of the Cypselidæ led them to attempt the occupation of the coast [pg 185] of the Ionian sea as far as Illyria, and to establish a connexion with the barbarous nations of the interior.722 Periander was of a daring and comprehensive spirit, and rivalled by few of his contemporaries, bold in the field, politic in council, though misled by continual distrust to undertake unworthy measures, and having too little regard for the good of the people when it interfered with his own designs; a friend of the arts, of an enlightened mind, but at the same time overcome by the strength of his passions; and, although devoid of awe for all sacred things, yet at times a prey to the most grovelling superstition. After the death of Periander, Psammetichus723 the son of Gordias, of the same family, succeeded to the sovereignty, but only reigned three years, having been, without doubt, overthrown by the Spartans in Olymp. 49. 3. 582 B.C.724

4. Periander was married to the fair Melissa, whose beauty had captivated him in the house of her father, the tyrant Procles, while she was distributing wine to the labourers in a thin Doric dress.725 Procles was ruler of Epidaurus and the island of Ægina, which were at that time still closely united; he himself was related by marriage to the princes of Orchomenus, and appears from this circumstance, and from his connexion with the family of Cypselus, to belong to the number of tyrants, who, being hostile to the Dorian aristocracy, obtained their power by the assistance of the lower ranks.

And when we also add that Theagenes of Megara, the father-in-law of Cylon the Athenian,726 precisely resembled the princes already mentioned in his conduct (since he likewise obtained his power by attacking [pg 187] the rich landed proprietors, and had killed their flocks upon the pastures of the river),727 and that like the others he endeavoured to please the people by embellishing the city, by the construction of an aqueduct, and of a beautiful fountain;728 it is easy to perceive in the dynasties of the Sicyonian, Corinthian, Epidaurian, and Megarian tyrants, a powerful coalition against the supremacy of the Dorians, and the ancient principles of that race, the more powerful, as they knew how to render subservient to their own ends the opinions which had lately arisen; and it is a matter of wonder that Sparta should have succeeded in overthrowing this combination.

5. If, indeed, it is also borne in mind that the Ionic, as well as the Æolic and Doric729 islands and cities of [pg 188] Asia, and also Athens, together with Phocis, Thessaly, and the colonies in Sicily and Italy, were all in the hands of tyrants, who doubtless assisted one another, and knew their common interest; and that Sparta alone, in most instances at the instigation of the Delphian oracle, declared against all these rulers a lasting war, and in fact overthrew them all, with the exception of the Sicilian tyrants; it must be confessed, that in this period of Grecian history no contest took place either greater, or, by its extent as well as its principles, of more important political and moral consequences. The following tyrants are stated by ancient historians to have been deposed by the Spartans:730 the Cypselidæ of Corinth and Ambracia, the former in Olymp. 49. 3. (584 B.C.), the latter probably somewhat later; the Pisistratidæ of Athens, who were allied with the Thessalians, in Olymp. 67. 3. (510 B.C.);731 their adherent Lygdamis of Naxos,732 probably about the same time: Æschines of Sicyon, about the [pg 189] 65th Olympiad733 (520 B.C.); Symmachus of Thasos; Aulis of Phocis; and Aristogenes of Miletus, of whom we know only the names;734 the larger number were dethroned under the kings Anaxandridas and Ariston, Cleomenes and Demaratus. Of these tyrants, some they deposed by a military force, as the Pisistratidæ; but frequently, as Plutarch says, they overthrew the despotism without “moving a shield,” by despatching a herald, whom all immediately obeyed, “as, when the queen bee appears, the rest arrange themselves in order.”735 In the time of Cleomenes also (525 B.C.) Sparta sent out a great armament, together with Corinthian and other allies, against Polycrates of Samos, the first Doric expedition against Asia, not, as is evident from the trivial reason stated by Herodotus, (viz. in order to revenge the plunder of a cauldron and a breastplate,) but with the intent of following up their principle of deposing all tyrants.736 But the besieging of a fortified town, situated upon the sea, and at so great a distance, was beyond the strength of Peloponnesus. The last expedition of Sparta against the tyrants falls after the Persian war, when king Leotychidas, the conqueror at Mycale, was sent for the purpose of ejecting the Aleuadæ of Thessaly, who had delivered up the country to the Persians in 470 B.C. or somewhat later. Aristomedes and Angelus were actually dethroned, but the king suffering himself to be bribed by others, the expedition did not completely succeed.737

We may suppose with what pride the ambassador [pg 190] of Sparta answered Gelon the tyrant of Syracuse (however brilliant and beneficial his reign may have been), when he required the command in the Persian war: “Truly the Pelopid Agamemnon would lament, if he heard that the supremacy was taken from the Spartans by Gelon and the Syracusans!”738

6. To these important changes in the political history of that time we may annex the subordinate events in the interior of Peloponnesus.

Sparta, by the conquest of Cynuria, had obtained the key of the Argive territory. Soon after this, Cleomenes, the eldest son of Anaxandridas the Eurysthenid, succeeded to the throne, a man of great boldness and strength of mind, sagacious, enterprising, accustomed, after the manner of his age and country, to express himself in a concise and emphatic language, only too much inflated by family and personal pride, and in disposition more nearly resembling his contemporaries the tyrants than beseemed a king of Sparta. The first exploit of this prince739 was the expedition against Argos. He landed in some vessels of Sicyon and Ægina on the coast of Tiryns, overcame the Argives at the wood of Argos,740 slew the greater part of the men able to bear arms, and would have [pg 191] succeeded in capturing their city, had he not, from an inconceivable superstition, dismissed the allied army without making any further use of the victory, and contented himself with sacrificing in the temple of Here.741 At the same time Argos, in consequence of this defeat, remained for a long time crippled, and it was even necessary that a complete change in her political condition should take place, in order to renovate the feeble and disordered state into which she had fallen.

7. For after the bond-slaves or gymnesii742 of Argos had for a time governed the state thus deprived of its free inhabitants, until the young men who had in the mean time arisen to manhood overcame and expelled them, the Argives, as Aristotle743 relates, saw themselves compelled, in order to restore the numbers of their free population, to collect about them the surrounding subjects of their city, the Periœci, and to [pg 192] distribute them in the immediate neighbourhood.744 The completion of this plan took place one generation after the fatal battle with Cleomenes, at the time of the Persian war, in which Argos, whose attention was wholly occupied with strengthening her affairs at home, took no part. At that time the Argives, in order to increase their own numbers, dispeopled nearly all the large cities in the surrounding country, and transplanted the inhabitants to Argos;745 particularly Tiryns, Mycenæ, Hyseæ, Orneæ, and Midea.746 Tiryns and Mycenæ were in the time of the Persian war free, and even independent communities, which followed the command of Sparta without the consent of Argos; the latter town indeed contested with Argos the right to the administration of the temple of Here, and the presidency at the Nemean games.747 The destruction of their city, which the Argives undertook in concert with the Cleonæans and Tegeates,748 was effected in the year 464 B.C. (Olymp. 79. 1). But of the Mycenæans, a few only followed the Argives, as the larger number either took refuge at Cleonæ (which city was at that time independent, and had for some time the management of the Nemean games)749, at Ceryneia in Achaia, and even in Macedonia.750 Of the Tirynthians [pg 193] also some fled to Epidaurus, and some to Halieis in the territory of the Dryopians, in which place the expelled Hermioneans also found an asylum.751 For Hermione, which Herodotus during the time of the Persian war considers as a Dryopian city,752 was subsequently taken by the Argives.753 The other cities which have been mentioned, had however, as we know of Orneæ and also Hysiæ, previously belonged to Periœci, being subjects of Argos, and were only then incorporated for the purpose of enlarging the metropolis.754 The Argives, by these arbitrary proceedings, secured themselves as well against external foes as against their former enemies the bond-slaves, and also acquired a large number of laborious and industrious inhabitants, who, by the continuance of peace, soon re-established the prosperity and wealth of Argos.755 The oracle has well marked out the principles which were then expedient for the welfare of that state, when it recommended it, as “the enemy of its neighbours, and friend of the gods, to draw in its arms, and [pg 194] remain in watchful quiet, guarding its head; for that the head would save the body.”756 At the same time, however, by these proceedings, a complete change in the constitution was brought about, and Argos, as we shall see hereafter, gradually lost the peculiar features of the Doric character.

The other actions of Cleomenes of which we have any knowledge refer to the political changes at Athens, and could only be connectedly related in a history of the Athenian constitution, or in reference to the events in Ægina, which we have narrated elsewhere.

8. It is remarkable that during this whole time, in which Sparta founded her empire, we read of no serious contest between Dorians and Ionians. For although the border-states, Megara and Ægina (the latter after its revolt from Epidaurus), carried on a continued war with Athens, the whole race took no part in the contest, and Sparta herself fulfilled the office of an impartial arbitrator between Athens and Megara. Even before the time of Solon, the Athenians and Megarians fought in the territory of Eleusis.757 The chief struggle was for the island of Salamis, which Solon is supposed to have gained by the well known stratagem,758 a fact however which was denied by Daimachus of Platæa.759 According to the Megarian account, some refugees from their own city (named Δορύκλειοι) betrayed the island to the Athenians.760 So much is certain, that five Spartan arbitrators (Critolaidas, Amompharetus, Hypsechidas, Anaxilas, [pg 195] and Cleomenes), in obedience to ancient traditions and fables respecting the original owners of Salamis, adjudged the possession of Salamis to the Athenians. Yet in the troubles which succeeded the banishment of Megacles, this island was again lost, as well as the harbour Nisæa, which had been before conquered.761 They soon however regained it, and Megara appears from that time forth to have given up all hopes of recovery: as in this age the power of Athens increased so rapidly, that Megara could no longer think of renewing her ancient contests.

Since it is not my object to give a continuous and general narration of facts, but only to extract what is most instructive for the condition of the Doric race, I shall not carry on the history of the Dorians out of Peloponnesus to a lower point, as their local connexions would lead us far astray into other regions. For the same reason I will only touch upon a few events of the Persian wars, confining myself to the internal affairs of Peloponnesus during that period, among which the supremacy of Sparta is the most important and remarkable.

1. Sparta, by the conquest of Messenia and Tegea, had obtained the first rank in Peloponnesus, which character she confirmed by the expulsion of the tyrants, and the overthrow of Argos. From about the year 580 B.C. she acted as the recognised commander, not only of Peloponnesus, but of the whole Greek name. The confederacy itself however was formed by the inhabitants of that peninsula alone, on fixed and regular laws; whereas the other Greeks only annexed themselves to it temporarily. The order of precedence observed by the members of this league may be taken from the inscription on the footstool of the statue of Zeus, which was dedicated at Olympia after the Persian war, the Ionians, who were only allied for a time, being omitted.762 It is as follows: Lacedæmon, [pg 197] Corinth, Sicyon, Ægina, Megara, Epidaurus,763 Tegea, Orchomenus, Phlius, Trœzen, Hermione, Tiryns, Mycenæ, Lepreum, and Elis; which state was contented with the last place, on account of the small share which it had taken in the war. The defenders of the Isthmus are enumerated in the following order;764 Lacedæmonians, Arcadians, Eleans, Corinthians, Sicyonians, Epidaurians, Phliasians, Trœzenians, and Hermionians, nearly agreeing with the other list, only that the Arcadians, having been present with their whole force, and also the Eleans, occupy an earlier place; and the Megarians and Æginetans are omitted, as having had no share in the defence. This regular order of precedence is alone a proof of a firm union. The Tegeates, since they had joined the side of Lacedæmon, enjoyed several privileges, and especially the place of honour at the left wing of the allied army.765 Argos remained excluded from the nations of Peloponnesus, as it never would submit to the command of Sparta; the Achæans, indifferent to external affairs, only joined themselves momentarily to the alliance:766 but the Mantineans, though latterly they followed the policy of Argos,767 were long attached to the Peloponnesian league; for at the end of the Persian war they sent an army, which arrived too late for the battle of Platæa;768 having before, together with the other Arcadians, helped to defend the Isthmus;769 they had also been engaged in the first days of the action at [pg 198] Thermopylae;770 and they were at this time still the faithful allies of the Lacedæmonians.771 Their subsequent defection from Sparta may be attributed partly to their endeavours to obtain the dominion of Parrhasia, which was protected by Lacedæmon;772 to their hostility with Tegea,773 which remained true to Sparta after the great war with Arcadia, which began about 470 B.C. and to the strengthening of their city (συνοικισμὸς), and the establishment of a democratic government, through the influence of Argos.774

2. The supremacy of Sparta775 was exercised in the expeditions of the whole confederacy, and in transactions of the same nature. In the first, a Spartan king—after it had been thought proper never to send out two together—was commander-in-chief, in whose powers there were many remains of the authority of the ancient Homeric princes. Occasionally, however, Sparta was compelled to give up her privilege to other commanders, especially at sea, as, for instance, the fleet at Salamis to Eurybiades. When any expedition was contemplated, the Spartans sent round to the confederate states,776 to desire them to have men and stores in readiness.777 The highest amount which each state could be called on to supply was fixed once for all, and it was only on each particular occasion to be determined [pg 199] what part of that was required.778 In like manner, the supplies in money and stores were regularly appointed;779 so that an army, with all its equipment, could be collected by a simple summons. But agricultural labour, festivals, and the natural slowness of the Doric race, often very much retarded the assembling of this army. The contributions, chiefly perhaps voluntary, both of states and individuals, were registered on stone: and there is still extant an inscription found at Tegea, in which the war supplies of the Ephesians, Melians, &c, in money and in corn, are recorded.780 But the Lacedæmonians never exacted from the Peloponnesian confederacy a regular annual contribution, independent of circumstances; which would have been in fact a tribute: a measure of this kind being once proposed to king Archidamus, he answered, “that war did not consume according to rule.781” Pericles, however, properly considers it as a disadvantage to the Peloponnesians that they had no paid troops, and that neither in common nor in the several states they had amassed any treasure.782 The object of an expedition was publicly declared: occasionally however, when secrecy was required, it was [pg 200] known neither to the states nor to their army.783 The single allied states, if necessity demanded it, could also immediately summon the army of the others;784 but it is not clear to what extent this call was binding upon them. The Spartan military constitution, which we will explain hereafter, extended to the whole allied army; but it was doubtless variously combined with the tactics of the several nations.785 To the council of war, which moreover only debated, and did not decide, the Spartan king summoned the leaders of the several states, together with other commanders, and generally the most distinguished persons in the army.786

3. According to the constitution of the Peloponnesian league, every common action, such as a declaration of war, or the conclusion of a peace or treaty, was agreed on at a congress of the confederates. But, as there was no regular assembly of this kind, the several states sent envoys (ἄγγελοι), like the deputies (πρόβουλοι) of the Ionians, who generally remained together only for a short time.787 All the members had legally equal votes;788 and the majority sometimes decided against a strong opposition;789 Sparta was often [pg 201] outvoted, Corinth being at all times willing to raise an opposition.790 We have however little information respecting the exact state of the confederacy; it is probable indeed, from the aristocratic feelings of the Peloponnesians, that, upon the whole, authority had more weight than numbers; and for great undertakings, such as the Peloponnesian war, the assent of the chief state was necessary, in addition to the agreement of the other confederates.791 When the congress was summoned to Sparta, the envoys often treated with a public assembly (ἔκκλητοι)792 of the Spartans; although they naturally withdrew during the division. Of these envoys, besides Sosicles the Corinthian, we also know the name of Chileus of Tegea, who prevailed upon the ephors, after a long delay, to send the army to Platæa, and who did much to allay the differences existing between the members of the then numerous confederacy.793

4. But upon the internal affairs, laws, and institutions of the allied states, the confederacy had legally no influence. It was a fundamental law that every state (πόλις) should, according to its ancient customs (καττὰ πάτρια), be independent and sovereign (αὐτόνομος καὶ αὐτόπολις);794 and it is much to the credit of Sparta, that, so long as the league was in existence, she never, not even when a favourable opportunity offered, deprived any Peloponnesian state of this independence. Nor were disputes between [pg 202] individual states brought before the congress of the allies, which, on account of the preponderance of Sparta, would have endangered their liberty; but they were commonly either referred to the Delphian oracle, or to arbitrators chosen by both states.795 When Elis claimed an ancient tribute from Lepreum, both states agreed to make Sparta their arbitrator by a special reference. In this character Sparta declared that Lepreum, being an independent member of the confederacy, was not bound to pay the tribute: and Elis acted unjustly in refusing to abide by her agreement, on the plea that she had not expected the decision.796 For disputes between citizens of different states there was an entirely free and equal intercourse of justice (commercium juris dandi repetendique).797 The jurisdiction of the states was also absolutely exempt from foreign interference (αὐτόδικοι).798 These are the chief features of the constitution of the Peloponnesian confederacy; the only one which in the flourishing times of Greece combined extensive powers with justice, and a respect for the independence of its weaker members.

5. Sparta had not become the head of this league by agreement, and still less by usurpation; but by tacit acknowledgment she was the leader, not only of this, but of the whole of Greece; and she acted as such in all foreign relations from about the year 580 B.C. Her alliance was courted by Crœsus: and the Ionians, when pressed by Cyrus, had recourse to the Spartans, [pg 203] who, with an amusing ignorance of the state of affairs beyond the sea, thought to terrify the king of Persia by the threat of hostilities. It is a remarkable fact, that there were at that time Scythian envoys in Sparta, with whom a great plan of operations against Persia is said to have been concerted; which it is not easy to believe.799 In the year 520 B.C. the Platæans put themselves under the protection of Cleomenes,800 who referred them to Athens; a herald from Sparta drove the Alcmæonidæ from their city:801 afterwards Aristagoras sought from the protector of Greece802 aid against the national enemy: and when the Æginetans gave the Persians earth and water, the Athenians accused them of treachery before the Spartans: and lastly, during the Persian war, Greece found in the high character of that state the only means of effecting the union so necessary for her safety and success.803

6. In this war a new confederacy was formed, which was extended beyond Peloponnesus; the community of danger and of victory having, besides a momentary combination, also produced an union destined for some duration. It was the assembly of this league—a fixed congress at Corinth during, and at Sparta after, the war—that settled the internal differences of Greece, that invited Argos, Corcyra, and Gelon to join the league, and afterwards called upon Themistocles to answer for his proceedings.804 So much it did for the present emergency. But at the same [pg 204] time Pausanias, the regent of Sparta, after the great victory of Platæa (at which, according to Æschylus, the power of Persia fell by the Doric spear),805 prevailed upon the allies to conclude a further treaty. Under the auspices of the gods of the confederacy, particularly of the Eleutherian (or Grecian) Zeus, they pledged themselves mutually to maintain the independence of all states, and to many other conditions, of which the memory has been lost. To the Platæans in particular security from danger was promised.806 The Ionians also, after the battle of Mycale, were received into this confederacy.807

7. The splendid victories over the Persians had for some time taken Sparta, which was fitted for a quiet and passive existence, out of her natural sphere; and her king Pausanias had wished to betray his country for the glitter of an Asiatic prince. But this state soon perceived her true interest, and sent no more commanders to Asia, “that her generals might not be made worse:” she likewise decided to avoid any further war with the Persians, thinking that Athens was better fitted to carry it on than herself.808 The decision of the Spartans was doubtless influenced by the defection of the Ionians from Pausanias, and their refusal to obey Dorcis, whom the Spartans had sent with a small body of men in his place. Nevertheless, the chief motives which determined them must have lain deeper; for without the Greeks of Asia Minor, they could, by the assistance of the naval powers of Peloponnesus, Corinth, Ægina, &c, have continued a [pg 205] war which promised more gain and plunder than trouble and danger. If the speech were now extant in which Hetoëmaridas the Heraclid proved to the councillors that it was not expedient for Sparta to aim at the mastery of the sea,809 we should doubtless possess a profound view, on the Spartan side, of those things which we are now accustomed to look on with Athenian eyes. Nor is it true that the supremacy over the Greeks was in fact transferred at all from Sparta to Athens, if we consider the matter as Sparta considered it, however great the influence of this change may have been on the power of Athens. But Sparta continued to hold her pre-eminence in Peloponnesus, and most of the nations of the mother-country joined themselves to her: while none but the Greeks of Asia Minor and the islands, who had previously been subjects of Persia, and were then only partially liberated, perhaps too much despised by Sparta, put themselves under the command of Athens.810

8. But the complete liberation of Asia Minor from the Persian yoke, which has been considered one of the chief exploits of Athens, was in fact never effected. Without entering into the discussion respecting the problematical treaty of Cimon,811 we will merely seek to ascertain the actual state of the Asiatic Greeks at this period. Herodotus states, that Artaphernes, the satrap at Sardes under Darius, fixed the tribute to be paid by the Ionians as it remained until the time of the [pg 206] writer,812 i.e. about the end of the Peloponnesian war. It is evident that this was a tribute to be paid to the king of Persia: the exactions of the Athenians were clearly not regulated by any Persian register of property. Again, in the nineteenth year of the war, Tissaphernes sought for assistance against Athens, that he might be able to pay to the king of Persia the tribute due from the Grecian maritime towns, which the Athenians had prevented him from collecting.813 From this it is plain that the shah of Susa was ignorant that the majority of those cities had for more than sixty years paid to the Athenians and not to him, and attributed the arrears only to the negligence of his viceroys. I say only the majority; for the Athenians had been far from completing the glorious work of the great Cimon; and after the war-contributions had become a most oppressive tribute, these cities might not themselves be very desirous to change their master. Hence Themistocles, as a vassal of Persia, possessed undisturbed, at the accession of Artaxerxes, the beautiful towns of Magnesia on the Mæander, Lampsacus, Myus, Percote, and ancient Scepsis.814 At a still later period the descendants of king Demaratus, Eurysthenes, and Procles, ruled by the same title over Halisarna in Mysia.815 The neighbouring towns of Gambrium, Palægambrium, Myrina, and Grynium had [pg 207] been given by Darius to Gongylus, and his descendants still dwelt there after the Peloponnesian war.816 When Athens unjustly expelled the Delians from their island, they found a place of refuge at Adramytteum, on the coast of Æolis, which was granted them by the satrap Pharnaces.817 Thus the Athenian empire did not prevent the vassals and subjects of the king of Persia from ruling over the Greeks of Asia Minor, even down to the very coast. We need not go any further to prove the entire falsehood of the account commonly given by the panegyrical rhetoricians of Athens.

9. Peloponnesus took the less concern in these proceedings, as internal differences had arisen from some unknown cause, which led to an open war between Sparta and Arcadia. We only know, that, between the battle of Platæa (in which Tegea, as also later still, showed great fidelity towards Sparta) and the war with the Helots (i.e. between 479 and 465 B.C.), the Lacedæmonians fought two great battles, the one against the Tegeates and Argives at Tegea, the other against all the Arcadians, with the exception of the Mantineans, at Dipæa in the Mænalian territory. Tisamenus, an Elean, of the family of the Iamidæ, was in both battles in the Spartan army; and in both Sparta was victorious.818 Yet, in an epigram of Simonides, the valour of the Tegeates is praised, who by their death had saved their city from destruction;819 probably after the loss of the first battle. As we find that Argos had a share in this war,820 it is possible [pg 208] that the views of that state were directed against the ascendancy of Sparta; perhaps also the independence of the Mænalians, Parrhasians, &c. had been, as was so often the case, attacked by the more powerful states of Arcadia, and was defended by the head of the Peloponnesian confederacy.

10. This war had not been brought to a termination, when, in the year 465 B.C., in the reign of Archidamus821 and Pleistoanax, a tremendous earthquake (which is said to have been predicted by Anaximander822) destroyed Sparta, and a sudden ruin threatened to overwhelm the state of Greece. For, in the hope of utterly annihilating their rulers, many Helots (perhaps doubly excited by the late outrage on the suppliants at the altar of the Tænarian god),823 especially the ancient inhabitants of Messenia, and two cities of the Periœci, revolted from Sparta; these rebels were all named Messenians, and the war was called the third Messenian war.824 The circumstances of this terrible contest are almost unknown to us; and we can only collect the few fragments extant of its history. Aëimnestus the Spartan, who had killed Mardonius, fought with 300 men at Stenyclarus against a body of Messenians, and was slain with all his men.825 This was followed by a great battle with [pg 209] the same enemy at Ithome,826 in which the Spartans were victorious. Most of the conquered Messenians then intrenched themselves on the steep summit of Ithome, which was even then sacred to Zeus Ithomatas; and they probably restored the ancient walls and defences which had fallen down. Upon this the Lacedæmonians, foreseeing a tedious siege, called in the aid of their allies; and this call was answered among others by the Æginetans,827 the Mantineans,828 the Platæans,829 and the Athenians, who, at the request of the Spartan envoy Periclides, sent 4000 hoplites830 under the command of Cimon; the Spartans, however, dismissed them before the fortress was taken, in which they expected to be aided by the superiority of the Athenians in the art of besieging, not without showing their suspicion of the innovating spirit of their ally.831 In the tenth year of the siege, 455 B.C., Ithome surrendered on terms; and the Messenians, together with [pg 210] their wives and children, quitted Peloponnesus, under a promise of never again entering it. It appears that the war between Lacedæmon and Arcadia was concluded upon conditions, of which one was, that no person should be put to death for the sake of the Lacedæmonian party at Tegea; and another, that Sparta was to expel the Messenians from the country, but not kill them—which were inscribed on a pillar on the banks of the Alpheus.832 The Athenians, however, gave the fugitives the town of Naupactus, which they had shortly before conquered, and which was conveniently situated for tempting them, against their promise, to make inroads and forays in Peloponnesus. The Messenians still continued, in the Peloponnesian war, to be distinguished from the neighbouring people by their Doric dialect.833

11. Immediately after the dismission of the Athenians from Ithome, the people of Athens, in order to resent the affront, annulled the alliance with Sparta, which had subsisted since the Persian war;834 entered into a treaty with Argos, the enemy of Sparta, and also with the Thessalians; and even joined to itself Megara, which was dependent on its commercial intercourse. Then followed the war with the maritime towns of Argolis, in which Athens, after many reverses, at length succeeded in destroying the fleet of [pg 211] Ægina, and subjugating that island (457 B.C.).835 Sparta was compelled to be a quiet spectator of the subjection of so important a member of her confederacy, as she was still occupied with the siege of Ithome, and in the same year had sent out an army to liberate her mother country, Doris, from the yoke of the Phocians. But when, after the execution of this object, the Spartans were hastening back to Peloponnesus, they were compelled to force their passage home by the battle of Tanagra, which, with the assistance of the Thebans, they gained over an army composed of Athenians, Ionians, Argives, and Thessalians. This aid was afforded to them on the condition that they would help the Thebans to regain their supremacy in Bœotia, which the Thebans had lost by their defection from the Grecian cause in the Persian war.836 Sparta, however, after so decisive a victory, concluded a four months' armistice with Athens, during which that state conquered the Thebans at Œnophyta, finished the blockade of Ægina, subdued all Bœotia with the exception of Thebes, and Phocis, and extended its democratical constitution, which after the battle of Tanagra was nearly threatened with destruction,837 even to the city of Thebes. The inactivity of Sparta during these astonishing successes of her enemy (for when she concluded the armistice with Athens she must have partly foreseen its consequences) seems to prove that she was entirely occupied with the final capture [pg 212] of Ithome, and the settlement of her interests in Arcadia.838 But that the war, which was now renewed by Athens, nevertheless extended to the whole Peloponnesian league, is shown by the connected attacks of Tolmides on the Spartan harbour Gytheium, and the cities of Sicyon and Corinth, and also by the expedition of Pericles in the Corinthian gulf. The five years' truce in 451 B.C. was only an armistice between Athens and the Peloponnesian confederacy, which left Bœotia to shake off the Athenian yoke by its own exertions. This was also the time of the Sacred war, in which a Spartan and an Athenian army, one coming after the other, the first gave the management of the temple to the Delphians, and the second, against all ancient right,839 to the Phocians. At the end of these five years Megara revolted from the Athenians, and in consequence an invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians took place, which, though it did not produce any immediate result, was soon followed by the thirty years' truce, in which Athens ceded her conquests in Megaris and Peloponnesus,840 and on the mainland returned within her ancient boundaries; but she preserved the same power over her other confederates. For when the Athenians soon afterwards attacked the revolted island of Samos, the [pg 213] Peloponnesians indeed debated whether they should protect it, but the proposal of Corinth was adopted, that Athens should be allowed to deal with her allies as she pleased.841

12. If now we consider the events which have been briefly traced in the foregoing pages, it will be perceived, that the principle on which the Lacedæmonians constantly acted was one of self-defence, of restoring what had been lost, or preserving what was threatened with danger; whereas the Athenians were always aiming at attack or conquest, or the change of existing institutions. While the Spartans during this period, even after the greatest victories, did not conquer a foot of land, subjugate one independent state, or destroy one existing institution; the Athenians, for a longer or for a shorter time, reduced large tracts of country under their dominion, extended their alliance (as it was called) on all sides, and respected no connexion sanctioned by nature, descent, or antiquity, when it came in conflict with their plans of empire. But the astonishing energy of the Athenian people, which from one point kept the whole of Greece in constant vibration, almost paralysed Sparta; the natural slowness of that state became more and more apparent: which having been, as it were, violently transplanted into a strange region, only began by degrees to comprehend the policy of Athens.

But when Athens saw the Peloponnesian confederacy again established, and as she could not, on account of the truce, attack it directly, she looked to the colonial law, which rested rather on hereditary feelings than on positive institution, for an opportunity of an [pg 214] indirect attack. This was soon found in the defensive treaty with Corcyra, which state was engaged with its mother country Corinth in a war, according to ancient Greek principles, wholly unlawful and unjust. Besides this, however, it was an actual breach of the thirty years' truce.842 And the same principles were expressed in the demand that Potidæa should, for the sake of the Athenian confederacy, give up its original connexion with the parent state. In both these cases it is manifest that the maxims of the Athenian policy were directly at variance with the general feeling of justice entertained by the Greeks, and especially with the respect for affinity of blood; and this fundamental difference was the true cause of the Peloponnesian war.

13. As it would not be consistent with the plan of this work to give a detailed account of the influence of the Peloponnesian war upon the political and private character of the Greeks, we must be content to point out the following obvious points of opposition between the contending parties. In the first place, then, Dorians were opposed to Ionians; and hence in the well-known oracle it was called the Doric war.843 The individual exceptions are for the most part merely apparent;844 also when the Athenians attacked Sicily, all the Doric cities were opposed to them.845 On the side of Athens were ranged all the Ionians of Europe, [pg 215] of the islands, and of Asia, not indeed voluntarily, but still not altogether against their inclination. The union of the free Greeks against the evil ambition of one state. At the beginning of the war the general voice of Greece was in favour of Sparta846 (which was heard through the Delphian oracle, when it promised that state assistance);847 nor did she compel any one to join in it. The allies of Athens, having previously been Persian subjects, were accustomed to obey; and on the present occasion forced to submit; the public assembly of Athens was the only free voice in so large a combination. Land-forces against sea-forces. According to the speech of Pericles, Peloponnesus was able, in an action with heavy-armed troops, to resist all the rest of Greece together; and Athens avoided coming to this mode of engagement with singular ingenuity. The fleet of the Peloponnesians, on the other hand, was at the beginning of the war very inconsiderable.848 Hence it was some time before the belligerent parties even so much as encountered one another. The land was the means of communication for one party, the sea for the other: hence the states friendly to Athens were immediately compelled to build long walls for the purpose of connecting the chief city with the sea, and isolating it from the land; as Megara before, and Argos and Patræ during the war.849 Large bodies of men practised in war against wealth. The Peloponnesians carried on the war with natives: whereas Athens manned her fleet—the basis [pg 216] of her power—chiefly with foreign seamen; so that the Corinthians said justly that the power of Athens was rather purchased than native.850 It was the main principle of Pericles' policy, and it is also adopted by Thucydides in the famous introduction to his History, that it is not the country and people, but moveable property, (χρήματα, in the proper sense of the word,) which makes states great and powerful. Slow and deliberate conviction against determined rashness. This is evident both from the different direction taken by the alliances of the two parties, and from their national character. It was with good reason that the oracle admonished Sparta to carry on the war with decision and firmness; for that state was always cautious of undertaking a war, and ready for peace.851 Maintenance of ancient custom as opposed to the desire of novelty. The former was the chief feature of the Doric, the latter of the Ionic race. The Dorians wished to preserve their ancient dignity and power, as well as their customs and religious feelings: the Ionians were commonly in pursuit of something new, frequently, as in the case of the Sicilian expedition, but obscurely seen and conceived. Union of nations and races against one arbitrarily formed. As has been already shown, this difference was the cause of the war; and indeed Athens in the course of it hardly recognised any duty in small states to remain faithful to cities of the same race, and to their mother countries; otherwise, why was Melos so barbarously punished, for remembering rather that it was a colony of Sparta than an island? Thus also in the interior [pg 217] of states the Athenians encouraged political associations or clubs (ἑταιρίαι), while the Spartans trusted to the ties of relationship.852 Aristocracy against democracy.853 This difference was manifested in the first half of the war by Athens changing, while Sparta only restored governments; for in this instance also the power of Sparta was in strictness only employed in upholding ancient establishments, as an aristocracy may indeed be overthrown, but cannot be formed in a moment.

14. These obvious points of difference are sufficient to substantiate the result which we wish to arrive at. It is manifest that the second of the two forces, which in each of these instances came into collision, must necessarily have always overcome the first. The slow, cumbrous, unwieldy body of the Spartan confederacy was sure to suffer under the blows of its skilful, forward, and enterprising antagonist. The maxims which, according to Thucydides, were current at this time,854 that rashness was to be called courage in a friend's cause, provident foresight hidden cowardice, moderation a cloak for pusillanimity, and that to be prudent in every thing was to be active in nothing, necessarily impeded and shackled the beneficial effects of the measures of the Doric party. The “honesty and openness” of the Doric character, the noble simplicity of the ancient times of Greece, soon disappeared in this tumultuous age.855 Sparta therefore and [pg 218] the Peloponnesians emerge from the contest, altered, and as it were reversed; and even before its termination appear in a character of which they had before probably contained only the first seeds.

But in the second half of the war, when the Spartans gave up their great armaments by land, and began to equip fleets with hired seamen; when they had learnt to consider money as the chief instrument of warfare, and begged it at the court of Persia; when they sought less to protect the states joined to them by affinity and alliance, than to dissolve the Athenian confederacy; when they began to secure conquered states by harmosts of their own, and by oligarchs forced upon the people, and found that the secret management of the political clubs was more to their interest than open negotiation with the government; we see developed on the one hand an energy and address, which was first manifested in the enterprises of the great Brasidas, and on the other a worldly policy, as was shown in Gylippus, and afterwards more strongly in Lysander; when the descendants of Hercules found it advisable to exchange the lion's for the fox's skin.856 And, since the enterprises conducted in the spirit of earlier times either wholly failed or else remained fruitless, this new system, though the state had inwardly declined, brought with it, by the mockery of fate, external fame and victory.857

1. In turning from the history of the external affairs of the Dorians to the consideration of their intellectual existence, our first step must be to enquire into their religion; and for this purpose we will proceed to analyse and resolve it into the various worships and ceremonies of which it was composed, and to trace the origin and connexion of these as they successively arose.

Now it may with safety be asserted, that the principal deities of the Dorians were Apollo and Artemis, since their worship is found to have predominated in all the settlements of that race; and conversely the Doric origin can be either proximately or remotely traced wherever there were any considerable institutions dedicated to the worship of Apollo; insomuch that the adoration of this god may be shown from the most ancient testimonies of mythology to have gradually advanced with the extension of the Doric [pg 220] nation. Yet we are not to understand that the worship of Apollo and the Doric race were so exactly co-extensive that the presence of the latter always proves either the previous or actual existence of the former. Indeed it is certain that in ancient as well as in modern times the worship of particular gods was not only propagated by migration and conquest, but that religious belief was also extended by peaceful intercourse, and, as it were, by moral contact.

In order to rest the claims of the Doric race to the worship of Apollo on a secure foundation, it is necessary first to give a direct contradiction to all those statements which assert its connexion with any race not of Hellenic descent. In the first place, then, Apollo was not a national deity of the aboriginal Pelasgic nations of Greece.858 Had this been the case, he would certainly have enjoyed frequent and distinguished honours in those countries where the numbers of that race remained undiminished; for example, in Arcadia. Now there were very few temples of Apollo in Arcadia; and moreover, the founding of most of these was either connected with a foreign hero, or else attributed to some external influence.859 Secondly, it [pg 221] has been supposed that the worship of this god was introduced from the East (an opinion founded chiefly on the establishments of his religion in Lycia); but we shall presently show that its institution in this quarter was in fact derived from the Dorians. To this we may add, that amongst none of the half-Grecian nations, for example, the Leleges, Carians, Ætolians, Phrygians, and Thracians, the worship of this god can be proved to have been national. The same may be affirmed of the Italian nations. Apollo never occurs in the ancient Etruscan religion. Nor was Rome acquainted with this worship, until it was introduced by the Sibylline oracles; a sacred spot was then allotted on the Flaminian meadow; and the temple erected there (324 A.U.C.) was, up to the time of Cicero, the only one in Rome.860 Nay, that the Italians adopted Apollo altogether as a foreign deity is proved by the circumstance of their not having united him with their native Jupiter, or Mercury, as they did the Grecian Zeus, Hermes, &c. In our inquiries therefore into the origin of the worship of Apollo, we are limited to the races of purely Greek offspring. It remains only to be shown why we have selected the Dorians in particular from all these different tribes. And we merely make this preliminary remark, that the [pg 222] mythical genealogy, in which Dorus is called the son of Apollo,861 was a simple expression for this fact.

2. The most ancient settlements of the Doric race, of which any historical accounts are extant, were, as we before ascertained,862 the country at the foot of Olympus and Ossa, near the valley of Tempe. In this district there were two sanctuaries, bearing the character of the highest antiquity, viz., the Pythium, on the ridge of Olympus, near a steep mountain-pass leading to Macedonia; and the altar in the ravine of the Peneus,863 from which the god himself was called Τεμπείτας; and in an inscription discovered near this spot, on the banks of the river between Tempe and Larissa, are the words ΑΠΛΟΥΝΙ ΤΕΜΠΕΙΤΑ, “To Apollo of Tempe.”864 From another inscription found in this district we gather an account of certain native Thessalian festivals, at which branches of laurel were carried round, that were doubtless procured from the groves in the valley of Tempe; whither also the Delphians every eight years, at the expiration of the sacred period, sent the Pythian theori, who, after the performance of a sacrifice, broke the expiatory branch [pg 223] from the sacred laurel-tree.865 According also to the admission of the Delphians themselves, the temple of Apollo at Tempe was more ancient than their own, since a perfect expiation could only be performed in that sanctuary. In accordance with the tradition that Apollo himself, after having slain the Python, fled to the altar at Tempe to be purified from the pollution, the sacred boy, at each return of the appointed day, went to Tempe by a certain path,866 in imitation of the god whom he honoured, in order to return home amidst the joyful songs of the choruses of virgins, as δαφνηφόρος, or laurel-bearer. The religious usages at this festival will be investigated hereafter; here we will only consider the route which the procession took. It led through Thessaly and Pelasgia (that is, through the plain of the Peneus, which stretches to the south as far as Pheræ); then through the country of the Malians and Ænianes, over mount Œta, through Doris and the western part of Locris;867 avoiding in a remarkable manner the shorter and more frequented road from Thessaly through Thermopylæ, over Phocis, and through the pass of Panopeus and Daulis to Delphi. The reasons of this deviation may have been the opposition offered in early times by hostile tribes from the eastern side of Delphi to the peaceable march of sacred processions; and also that the theoria might in its progress pass through the second settlements of the Dorians, between Œta and Parnassus, where [pg 224] doubtless the worship of Apollo had likewise prevailed.868

3. The first half of the Pythian road, which goes through Thessaly, is very accurately determined by a combination of different testimonies. Its first stage was from Tempe to Larissa. Near this place was a village named Deipnias, where the boy who carried the laurel-branch first broke his long fast;869 as Apollo himself was reported also to have done. That the place received its name from this circumstance is a sufficient proof of the antiquity of the usage. The theoria next proceeded to Pheræ, where the boy, on his way to Tempe, and before his purification, represented the servitude of Apollo when a refugee at the palace of Admetus. This use of slavery as a preparative for the expiation of guilt, is doubtless taken from some very ancient tradition; and it is alluded to by the earliest epic poets; in the Iliad the horses of Eumelus, the son of Admetus, are stated to have derived their excellence from having been under the care of Apollo at Pheræ.870 The harbour of Pheræ was Pagasæ, in the furthest recess of the Pagasæan bay, in which place there was a celebrated altar of the [pg 225] Pagasæan Apollo, situated in an extensive grove,871 where there were large numbers of sacred ravens.872 This sanctuary is the theatre of Hesiod's poem of the Shield of Hercules; and at no great distance the river Anaurus runs into the sea,873 which stream, swollen by violent storms of rain carried away the tomb of Cycnus, the son of Mars; “for thus Apollo, the son of Latona, willed it, because Cycnus had plundered the hecatombs which the nations brought to the temple of Pytho.”874 Hence it is evident that the Pagasæan sanctuary was situated on the road consecrated by the processions to and from Delphi; and we may perceive also in these words of Hesiod an allusion to a fable perhaps much celebrated by early poets, viz., that Cycnus was slain for having profaned the temple of Apollo.875 Moreover, the legend related by Heraclides Ponticus, that Trophonius founded the temple of Apollo at Pagasæ,876 points to the connexion with Delphi; the same Trophonius, a renowned [pg 226] architect of the mythical age, is also said to have built the most ancient temple of Pytho.

4. We thus arrive at Delphi, the second grand station of the worship of Apollo, and, as it were, a focus, from which it diverged in numberless directions, and to which it was again partially reflected. Now although from early times the singular and striking character of the place might often have raised the feelings to ecstasy, and excited in the spectator dim and shadowy forebodings of the future; yet the establishment of a fixed institution, with its sacred regulations and rights, was intimately connected with the introduction of the worship of Apollo. At what time, however, did this first obtain a footing at Delphi? Probably when the Doric race came from Hestiæotis to Parnassus, and settled above Delphi, which event took place at a very early period. This supposition, to which we are led by the preceding inquiry, is not inconsistent with the celebrated tradition that Cretan navigators landed on this coast in the time of Minos, and there introduced the worship of Apollo. In order, however, to reconcile these two accounts, we must first examine the Cretan worship of that god.

5. The population of Crete having been in early times composed of a heterogeneous mixture of different nations, it was natural that the worships of many different gods should prevail there; yet in many cases it is possible to ascertain the nation from which they severally originated. Amongst these, the Dorians, whose chief settlement was on the north-eastern coast near Cnosus (from which point, however, they very soon spread over other parts of the island), had brought over the worship of Apollo from their settlements under Olympus. According to a tradition preserved [pg 227] in the Homeric hymn to Apollo, the ship, which Apollo in the shape of a dolphin conducted to Delphi, set out from the city of Cnosus. Of this city the chief temple was that of Apollo Delphinius.877 In its territory was situated a place called Apollonia; and the remarkable town of Amnisus, with the grotto of Eileithyia, where it was supposed that this goddess, who assisted at the birth of Apollo, was herself born.878 On the same coast are Miletus, where (as will be mentioned hereafter) the worship of Apollo prevailed, and Lato (Camira), whose name reminds us of the goddess Latona. It cannot be doubted that the same worship also prevailed in the ancient Doric town of Lyctus, in the interior of the island.879 Nearer to the southern coast was Gortyna, which, though founded by a different race, yet in later times recognised the dominion and worship of the same nation as Cnosus: accordingly, the most central point of this city was called Pythium.880 Immediately bordering on it was Phæstus, the birthplace of Epimenides, which town was said to have derived its origin and name from a Heraclid of Sicyon.881 Here, together with Hercules, Apollo and Latona received particular honours.882 Further on towards the [pg 228] west, in the mountains, was Tarrha, one of the most ancient and considerable temples of Apollo.883 Here, according to the Cretan tradition, dwelt Carmanor the father of the minstrel Chrysothemis, a priest who was said to have purified Apollo himself from the blood of the Python;884 which legend, when compared with the account of his expiation at the altar in the valley of Tempe, shows how the legends connected with the worship of Apollo crossed over to Crete, and there again took root. With the residence of Apollo when a refugee in the house of Carmanor, there is connected a tradition of his amour with Acacallis, who bore him Naxos,885 or Miletus,886 or Phylander and Phylacis, who, in a sacred offering of the Elyrians at Delphi, were represented as sucking the teat of a she-goat.887 This Elyrus, like most of the ancient towns of Crete, was situated in the mountains of the interior, probably not far from Tarrha.888 Although there have not been preserved [pg 229] accounts sufficient to lead to any general conclusion, yet those which we have adduced establish the position that it was not the original inhabitants of mount Ida or any supposed colonists from Phœnicia, but the Dorian invaders alone who made Crete the head-quarters of the worship of Apollo: we therefore assert that this worship (as originally founded in Crete), had not the slightest connexion with the enthusiastic (and probably Phrygian) orgies of the Idæan Zeus, with the Corybantes, &c. Yet from these ceremonies being celebrated at so short a distance from each other, confusions soon arose; so that in later times the Curetes were called the sons of Apollo.889 According to some writers, Corybas was the father of Apollo, and he was reported to have disputed the sovereignty of Crete with Zeus.890

6. From Crete, we will now proceed to Delos. Virgil, on the authority (as it appears) of some ancient epic poet, calls the Cretans ministers of the Delian altars.891 The voyages of Theseus from Cnosus to Delos is also founded on the same connexion, as will be more fully explained hereafter.892 We must not, however, too hastily conclude, that in the age of Minos, when the Cretans were the dominant nation in the Greek Archipelago, Delos received the worship of Apollo from a Cretan colony.893 It may with greater [pg 230] probability be conjectured, that the Dorians in their first expedition to Crete (which could hardly have traversed so great a distance without leaving behind some traces of its existence) had founded the sanctuary at Delos; since the tradition of the transmission of sacred presents from the country of the Hyperboreans to that island, is most simply explained as a memorial of a religious connexion, which had once been long maintained, by means of sacred processions, with the northern settlements of the Dorians.

7. Now respecting the presence of Cretans at Delphi, it was nothing more than an attempt of these islanders, who dwelt on the very verge of the Grecian territory, to gain for themselves the credit of a reciprocal influence upon the early settlements of their own race and religion. We find in the Hymn of Homer, that Apollo, descending from Olympus, himself founded his temple at Pytho, and afterwards obtained experienced priests, minstrels, and prophets894 from Cnosus; for which purpose he, in the shape of a dolphin, conducted a Cretan vessel to Crissa. Crissa, or Cirrha (for that the same place was originally signified by both names I consider as certain895), a fortified town in the inmost recess of the Crissæan bay, was probably a settlement of this Cretan colony, as the name Κρῖσα seems to signify nothing else than a Cretan city (Κρησία πόλις).896 Although the Pythian sanctuary itself was situated in the territory of Crissa,897 [pg 231] yet the town of Crissa possessed, besides an altar of Apollo Delphinius on the shore, in early times one of the chief temples of Apollo:898 hence in Homer's Catalogue the sacred Crissa is mentioned, together with the rocky Pytho; and the Pythian sanctuary is called Crissæa templa, on the faith of some ancient tradition, by a Roman poet. This expression must have been borrowed from poems anterior to the destruction of Cirrha (about 585 B.C.) before this town had by its extortions and oppression of pilgrims deserved the wrath of the Amphictyonic confederacy; nor is it probable that it retained a share in the management of the Delphian temple up to the very last moment of its political existence, when it was visited with a destruction so complete, as nearly to deprive us of all knowledge of its previous history. The unfortified town of Delphi, which, with the Amphictyons, obtained after that war the sole management of the temple, previously perhaps had not been a place of any importance; at least it is not mentioned in any earlier writings than one of the most recent hymns of Homer, and by Heraclitus of Ephesus.899

8. In ancient times the service of the temple, as appears from the Homeric Hymn, was performed both at Delos and Delphi by Cretans; but it is scarcely possible that they should have constituted the whole population of the country. For, in the first place, the extensive territory of the temple was [pg 232] cultivated by a subject people, of whom we shall speak hereafter, and who were certainly not of Doric, and probably in few cases of Cretan descent;900 besides whom there was a native nobility, whose influence over the temple was very considerable. These are the persons who, according to Euripides, “sat near the tripod, the Delphian nobles, chosen by lot;”901 called also “the lords and princes of the Delphians.” They also formed a criminal court, which, by the Pythian vote, sentenced all offenders against the temple to be hurled from a precipice.902 To the same persons also doubtless belonged the permission and superintendence of the ancient rite of expiation; and it was their duty (as it was that of the court of the Samothracian priests) to determine whether a homicide was expiable or not. Their influence over the oracle was so great, that they may be considered to have been the actual managers of it. Their political bias may be inferred from the fact, that Timasitheus the Delphian distinguished himself by his boldness and resolution among the aristocratical party of Isagoras at Athens.903 It appears that these families originally came to Delphi from the mountainous country in the interior. Thus the chief-priests of the god, the five Ὅσιοι, were chosen by lot from a number of families who derived their descent from Deucalion,904 by which they probably meant to denote their origin [pg 233] from Lycoreia on the heights of Parnassus, founded (as was supposed) by Deucalion, the father of Hellen;905 from which town it is known that great part of the population of Delphi had proceeded.906 Now this place, of which traces still remain in the village of Liacura (now only inhabited in summer by mountain shepherds)907 was in all probability of Doric origin, since it formed the communication between the Tetrapolis and Delphi.908 The language spoken at Delphi was likewise a Doric dialect.909

If then this was the case, Doric mountaineers from the heights of Parnassus, and Cretan colonists on the sea-coast, met together (according to a very uncertain computation about 200 years before the Doric migration into Peloponnesus), in order to establish the Delphian worship. The Doric dialect, it may be observed, which prevailed at Delphi, was common to both parties. It is known from many traditions and historical traces, that the connexion established by the Cretans continued for a long time.910 The ancient tents made of feathers, and a wooden statue of [pg 234] Apollo, perhaps one of the most ancient specimens of rude carving, were also reported to have been brought from Crete. The fabulous series of Delphic minstrels began with Chrysothemis, the son of Carmanor, the above-mentioned priest of Tarrha.911 Crete, however, did not merely send works of sculpture and hymns to Delphi, but sometimes even men,912 for the service of the Pythian Apollo.

9. I know not whether these accounts are sufficient to afford an intelligible description of a time when the worship of Apollo, being established at the foot of Olympus, Parnassus, and in the distant island of Crete, and producing a certain degree of communication between these points, had not as yet penetrated to any part of Greece which lay to the south of Œta and Parnassus.

It is evident, moreover, that the extension of this worship met with a long opposition. Apollo is in ancient traditions represented as himself protecting his own temple.913 The Phlegyans to the east, and the Ætolians to the west, appear to have been particularly adverse to the worship of the Delphian Apollo. That there was a national opposition caused by the Phlegyans possessing the stronghold of Panopeus in the mountain-passes towards Bœotia, is shown by the legends, that Phorbas their leader wrestled there with Apollo; that Phlegyas burned the temple to the ground; and lastly, that Apollo exterminated their whole race with thunder and lightning.914 The same people is here represented as waging war with the [pg 235] great deity of the Dorians, which, under the name of Lapithæ, opposed the Dorians themselves in Thessaly. And on the other side, Apollo was related in the Poems of Hesiod, and the Minyad, to have assisted the Locrian Curetes against the Ætolians, and slain their prince Meleager.915

1. But whilst the worship of Apollo was experiencing so much opposition in the north of Greece, the sea, with the neighbouring coasts and islands afforded ample opportunities for its propagation from the shores of Crete. This serves to account for the singular fact, that the most ancient temples of Apollo throughout the south of Greece, are found in maritime districts, and generally on promontories and headlands.

The colonies of Apollo branched out in various directions from the northern coast of Crete, carrying every where with them the expiatory and oracular ceremonies of his worship.916 The remarkable regularity with which these settlements were established cannot, however, be regarded as the work of missions [pg 236] systematically carried on, or as part of the policy of Minos.917 They are to be accounted for by the natural desire of the tribes of Crete, whilst migrating along the coast of the Ægean sea, to erect, wherever they touched, temples to that god, whose worship was blended with their spiritual existence.

We shall first advert to those settlements which (taking the coast of Crete as our centre) were founded in the direction of Lycia, Miletus, Claros, and the Troad; the first and last of which were the most ancient, the others being perhaps a century later.918

2. It is stated by Herodotus that Sarpedon migrated with some barbarous nations from Crete to Lycia or Milyas.919 This unsupported and singular account is however probably not founded on tradition, the popular idea being that he was a brother of Minos the Cnosian, whom it represented as a prince of purely Hellenic blood. By these means the Cretan laws (that is, the Doric customs, which had been first fully developed in Crete), and also the Doric worship of Apollo, were spread over Lycia. For the situation of the chief temples is a sufficient proof that the settlers of Lycia came, not from the inland countries of Asia, but over the sea to the coast. Xanthus, a city renowned for the valour of its inhabitants,920 and situated on the river of the same name, was a Cretan [pg 237] settlement.921 It seems to have been a Lycian tradition, that Xanthus was the father of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon:922 in this town was a temple sacred to Sarpedon;923 but it is uncertain whether to the elder Sarpedon, the brother of Minos, or to the younger, a hero of the same family mentioned in Homer, whose corpse Apollo rescued from the Greeks, and conveyed to his native country.924 Apollo was also worshipped under the title of Sarpedonius.925 Sixty stadia below the town, and ten from the mouth of the river Xanthus, was a grove sacred to Latona, near an ancient temple of the Lycian Apollo.926 To this spot the goddess had been conducted by wolves; here also she had bathed her new-born babes in the river,927 and been hospitably received by an old woman in a wretched hovel.928 These are the only remains of the national tradition, which in its general character was perhaps only another version of that prevalent at Delos. But the chief temple was one at Patara, in the southern extremity of Lycia,929 the winter habitation of the god, where he also gave out oracles through the mouth of a priestess.930 The oblations of cakes in the shape of lyres, bows and [pg 238] arrows, which were made to Apollo at Patara, remind us of similar customs at Delos, and furnish a fresh proof of the close connexion between the worships of these two countries.931

Further to the east was the oracle of Apollo Thyrxeus, near the Cyanean islands;932 to the west lay Telmissus, with its interpreters of dreams, who attributed their origin to Apollo.933 Not only the towns just mentioned, but almost every other on the coast of Lycia, honoured the god, from whom even the name of the country was derived.934

Amongst these settlements we must probably also reckon that on the promontory of Corycus in Cilicia, since we find in its vicinity the temple of Zeus Sarpedon. The name of the place, if compared with that of the Corycian grotto on Parnassus, is of itself sufficient evidence that the worship of Apollo prevailed there, which is still further proved by the tradition that stags swam over from thence to Curium in Cyprus.935 Here also stood an altar of Apollo, of particular sanctity, which no one was allowed to touch on pain of being thrown from the rocks of the neighbouring promontory. In this punishment we shall presently [pg 239] recognise one form of the expiatory rites, which every where accompanied the worship of Apollo.

3. No place contained so many temples of Apollo within so small a space as the coast of Troy; Cilia, in the recess of the Adramyttian gulf; Chryse, in the territory of the Hypoplacian Thebes;936 the Smintheum, in its immediate neighbourhood;937 the island of Tenedos (whose religious ceremonies were by some unaccountable means transplanted to Corinth and Syracuse),938 are all mentioned in a few verses of the Iliad.939 No less celebrated was Thymbra, situated at the confluence of the Thymbrius and Scamander, where Cassandra was reported to have been brought up in the temple of Apollo, and thus to have learnt the art of prophecy.940 On the Trojan citadel of Pergamus itself was a temple of Apollo, with Artemis and Latona; and hence Homer represents these three deities as protecting the falling city.941 It is however important to remark, that the inhabitants of Zelea, a town on the [pg 240] northern foot of mount Ida, and the native place of the archer Pandarus, the son of Lycaon, worshipped Apollo under the title of Lycius, or Lycegenes; and that Zelea was also called Lycia;942 for these facts show that there was a real connexion between the name of Lycia and the worship of Apollo, and that it was the worship of Apollo which gave the name to this district of Troy, as it had done to the country of the Solymi. In Chryse also Apollo was called Lycæus.943 The origin of this worship can neither be attributed to the native Trojan and Dardan race, nor yet to the later Æolians, although these for the most part adopted it into their religious ceremonies.944 It is however certain, from an ancient tradition, that the Cretans also colonized this coast; though we are not aware what was the precise account of Callinus, the ancient elegiac poet,945 who preserved it. It was however the popular belief that Apollo Smintheus, and indeed the whole Trojan nation, were derived from Crete.946 The last notion, that all the Trojans were of Cretan origin, is in the highest degree improbable; but it will hardly [pg 241] be denied that there came to Troy a Cretan colony in connexion with Apollo Smintheus. Indeed the Cretans who inhabited the district of Troy must often have been mentioned in ancient traditions, as a strange account of their strict administration of justice has been preserved.947 Could we but obtain a more authentic source of traditions relating to the religious worship than the deceitful accounts of poets, we might perhaps discover in it many confirmations of the historical traces to which we have just adverted. Even now we may perceive that the servitude of Apollo under Laomedon948 is the same fable as that of Admetus at Pheræ, the locality alone being changed.

4. By observing Homer's accounts of the worship of Apollo in different Trojan families, we may discover a remarkable consistency and connexion in the ancient tradition.

In the first place he represents it as belonging chiefly to the family of the Panthoidæ. Panthus (from whom a tribe in modern Ilium derived its name Πανθωῒς)949 was a priest of the god,950 and hence his sons were protected by Apollo in battle.951 Hence also Euphorbus, the descendant of Panthus, is selected to kill Patroclus, who, as well as all the other Æacidæ, was in the heroic mythology represented as odious to Apollo.952

The other family, described in the Iliad as connected with Apollo, is that of Æneas, whom, when wounded by Diomed, the god himself conducted to his temple on the citadel of Troy, and delivered over to the care of Latona and Artemis.953 Now that this history was not a mere arbitrary fiction of the poet may be distinctly proved. For we know that, after Troy had fallen, the remaining Trojans still maintained themselves in the mountains; they are mentioned by Herodotus as a separate state existing in the stronghold of Gergis, in the defiles of Ida;954 and, even after the Peloponnesian war, Dardan princes reigned here and at Scepsis.955 It can, we think, be shown that Homer's prophecy956 respecting the future dominion of the descendants of Æneas over the remnant of the Trojan nation, refers solely to the town of Gergis, and perhaps to the neighbouring valleys. Now the chief temple at Gergis was that of Apollo,957 and in the same town there was an ancient Sibylline oracle, known by the name of the Hellespontine or Mermessian. We now see that the ancient poet, being well acquainted with the existence of the Æneadæ at Gergis, their festivals and sacrifices, felt himself bound, according [pg 243] to the spirit of mythology, to represent Apollo as the ancient guardian of that family.

We shall seize this opportunity of briefly pointing out the results which may be drawn from these facts, in illustration of the fable of Æneas. We must first assume that the above oracle of Apollo at Gergis announced to the Trojan Gergithians the re-establishment of their nation under the dominion of the descendants of Æneas. Such a prophecy, in fact, agrees so exactly with the spirit and system of the ancient oracles, that its existence can scarcely be doubted. The hopes, the longing after a restoration of their ancient power, must necessarily have assumed this form among the distressed and conquered Trojans. Now a colony of Gergithians also inhabited the territory of the Æolian Cume,958 where Apollo possessed a magnificent temple;959 and if these oracles had been known to the Cumæans, they would readily have passed over to their kinsmen the Cumans of Campania. At this last place there was, on the summit of a rock, a temple of Apollo (one of the most ancient in the whole settlement, and, as it was pretended, built by Dædalus);960 underneath was the grotto of the sibyl. Here it was said that Æneas landed; and here, according to Stesichorus, he remained, and never went further to the north.961 Nothing was more probable than that these oracles should in both cases have been applied locally, and that a new Troy should in consequence have been [pg 244] founded both in Asia and Italy. Hence, when the Greek sibylline oracles, in connexion with the worship of Apollo, became the state-oracles of Rome, all that had been prophesied of districts near the Hellespont was, without scruple or ceremony (though not without the ingenuity of commentators and interpreters), applied to Rome. It is evident that the origin of the strange fable of Æneas, the father of Romulus, and all that was afterwards added to it, may be explained in this simple manner.

5. The most ancient temple of Apollo in Thrace was also founded by Cretans, as well as that at Ismarus or Maroneia;962 Maron its priest being, according to tradition, a Cretan adventurer.963 With this sanctuary was probably connected the ancient oracular temple of Apollo at Deræa near Abdera,964 alluded to in the device on the coins of Abdera; on one side of which Apollo is seen with the arrow in his hand; and on the reverse is a griffin, a symbol which appears to have been adopted by the Teians in consequence of their having resided for some time in their colony of Abdera.

6. The Cretan worshippers of Apollo also established some considerable temples on the Ionian coast. The principal of these was the Didymæum, in the territory of Miletus. Before the Ionic migration, Miletus was a Cretan fortress, on the coast, in a country at that time called Caria.965 The disagreement of traditions as to whether Sarpedon or Miletus (the Cretan) was the founder, confirms, rather than weakens, the [pg 245] principal fact of its settlement from Crete, both traditions describing the same fact in a different manner. With the founding of this stronghold was connected that of a temple, which is ascribed to Branchus, an expiatory priest966 of Delphi, whose name (which was well fitted for a prophet),967 moulded into a patronymic form, was afterwards adopted by the priests of the temple;968 the temple itself, and even the place (which was also called Didyma). Thus we here again see a fresh connexion between the Delphians and Cretans, there being indeed hardly any distinction between them before they were dispersed by the different migrations of the Doric race. The worship at Didyma was in fact the same with that of Crete and Delphi; expiatory ceremonies and prophecies being united, and the latter delivered with rites very similar to those observed at the Pythian oracle. Apollo was here called Philesius and Delphinius, which names were afterwards adopted by other Ionians;969 with him was connected Zeus, both, according to Callimachus, being the ancestors of Didyma; and also Artemis, who, in an ancient hymn ascribed to Branchus, is with Apollo addressed under the titles of ἑκάεργος and ἑκαέργη.970 The ruins of this temple, so highly honoured in Asia, still bear witness to its ancient fame and splendour. From the temple [pg 246] to the harbour971 Panormus there was a sacred road adorned on both sides with more than sixty statues in a very ancient style of workmanship: amongst these, an Egyptian lion attests the connexion of king Necho with the oracle.972 The Ionians of Miletus, however, acknowledged the god of Branchidæ as the principal deity in their town, and introduced him into their numerous colonies, from Naucratis973 to Cyzicus,974 Parium,975 Apollonia Pontica,976 and the distant Taurica: the coins and inscriptions of which place agree in representing him as the guardian deity (προστάτης).977

7. The twin brother of the Didymæan god, both in origin and in the similarity of worship, is the Clarian Apollo. However fabulous the particular circumstances of its foundation, still it was impossible in ancient times to invent a religious colonial connexion where none in fact existed. The traditions manifestly imply a double dependence of the establishment at Claros: viz., upon Delphi and Crete. Manto, the daughter of Teiresias the Theban soothsayer, was, according to the epic poets, consecrated by the Epigoni to the Delphian Apollo after the [pg 247] taking of Thebes,978 and she was afterwards sent by Apollo to the spot on which the Ionians at a later period founded the city of Colophon; having, in obedience to the commands of the oracle, married on her way Rhacius the Cretan, whose name, according to the dialect of Crete, had the double form Rhacius and Lacius.979 Augias, the Cyclic poet, mentioned the tomb of her father Teiresias at Colophon,980 which was generally supposed to be in Bœotia. The offspring of this marriage was Mopsus, who was probably called the progenitor of the family from which, even in the Roman time, the priests of the oracle were selected.981 The forms of prophecy were in this temple also similar to those at Delphi.

The other temples of Apollo on the coast of Asia Minor were generally connected with some one of the four already mentioned. The temple of Leucæ, between Smyrna and Phocæa (where the Cumæans celebrated a festival),982 was probably a member of the Trojan family, to which the Grynean Apollo, in the territory of Myrina near Cume (where there was also an oracle), appears to be related.983 Apollo [pg 248] Malloeis, in the territory of Mytilene, in Lesbos, was an off-shoot of the Clarian worship:984 to the same branch also belonged the oracle of Apollo at Mallus in Cilicia,985 inasmuch as it was said to have been founded by Mopsus the son of Manto.

8. The worship of Apollo also penetrated to several parts of European Greece, where it was established by Cretan adventurers on capes and headlands—particularly at Trœzen, Tænarum, Megara, and Thoricus.

Trœzen, as has been above remarked,986 shared with Athens both the race of her inhabitants and her worship, together with the connexion between Athens and Crete; the meaning of which will be explained hereafter.987 Hence we may conjecture the Cretan origin of the nine families, which were in existence at a late date at Trœzen, and in early times performed the rites of atonement and purification (of which Orestes was said to have been the first subject) near a laurel-tree in front of the temple of Apollo, and a sacred stone in front of the temple of the Lycean Artemis.988

The expiatory establishment989 on the promontory of Tænarum was also said to have been founded by Tettix, a Cretan,990 who is merely a personified symbol of Apollo, like Lycus, Corax, Cycnus, &c, in other places. Callondas is said to have purified the soul of the murdered Archilochus at this gate of the infernal regions. Considering the proximity of Delium in Laconia991 and of the little island of Minoa to this temple, we may conclude that the origin of the above sanctuary was connected with these places.

In front of the harbour of Megara was another island called Minoa, and numerous legends had been there preserved in which the Cretans of Minoa (though probably only by a corruption of the original tradition) were represented as enemies and plunderers. Megara had two citadels: the Carian with the temple of Demeter, and a more modern one towards the sea, surmounted by temples of Apollo. This is said to have been built by Alcathous the son of Pelops, while Apollo stood by and played upon his lyre. A sounding-block of stone was exhibited at the place where the god lay down his lyre.992 The same fable is also alluded to by Theognis of Megara.993 Here then there is a worship and temples of an earlier date than the Doric migration, and which certainly proceeded [pg 250] from Crete. On the former citadel stood a statue of Apollo Decatephorus,994 “the receiver of tithes,” whose name is explained by the fable that the daughter of Alcathous was once sent as a tribute to Crete, like the Athenian youths and maidens. Thus a fact which will be soon proved with respect to Athens, is also true of Megara—viz., that these missions always conveyed a sacred tithe.995

9. The process of our investigation will shortly lead us to examine the Attic legends, consisting of a confused mass of tradition, with which the worship of all the gods, including that of Apollo, was in that country perplexed.

To commence then with the legends which are connected with the temple of Apollo at Thoricus. Thoricus, situated on the south-eastern coast of Attica, was one of the ancient twelve towns of that country, [pg 251] and always remained a place of consequence, of which there are still extant considerable remains. Favoured by its situation, it soon became a commercial station; Cretan vessels were accustomed in ancient times to anchor in its harbour.996 The fable of Cephalus and Procris appears, from some poetical and mythological accounts, to have been connected with Crete and the worship of Apollo.997 We know for certain that the Cephalidæ, who existed at a still later period in Attica,998 preserved some hereditary rites of Apollo: for when in the tenth generation Chalcinus and Dætus, the descendants of the hero, returned to the country which their ancestor had quitted in consequence of murder, they immediately built a temple to that god on the road to Eleusis.999

10. But the fable of Cephalus was also connected with another great temple of Apollo, which in the west of Greece looked down from the chalky cliffs of the promontory of Leucatas over the Ionian sea, and of which there are ruins still extant.1000 Now Cephalus, the hero of Thoricus, is said to have gained these regions in company with Amphitryon:1001 he is also said to have first made the celebrated leap from the rock of Leucatas.1002 This leap, doubtless, had originally a religious meaning, and was an expiatory [pg 252] rite. At the Athenian festival of Thargelia, a festival sacred to Apollo, criminals, crowned as victims, were led to the edge of a rock, and thrown down to the bottom; and the same ceremony appears to have been performed on certain sacred occasions at Leucatas.1003 Here, however, the fall of the criminal was broken by tying feathers, and even birds, to his body; below, he was taken up, and conveyed to a distance, that he might carry away with him every particle of guilt. This was without doubt the original meaning of the leap of Cephalus, who was stained with the guilt of homicide, and on that very account a fugitive from his country. According to a legend noticed in an ancient epic poem, his purification took place at Thebes;1004 whereas the Leucadian tradition doubtless represented his leap from the rock as the act of atonement.

In later times, indeed, the object of this leap was totally altered; it was supposed to be a specific for disappointed love.1005 This singular application of the ancient custom gave a romantic colour to the legend connected with it. Cephalus and Procris were also represented in after-times as tormented by love and jealousy. Probably the story partly obtained this form in Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite, whither the fable of Cephalus1006 was early carried by Attic settlers. But in whatever manner it was perverted, we cannot doubt that the leap of Cephalus from the [pg 253] Leucadian rock was a part of the expiatory worship of Apollo.

These considerations refer to the Cretan rites solemnized at Thoricus. In Athens itself, the traditions of Crete and Delphi being found united together, it is necessary that we should first return to the latter place, and follow the Pythian worship through Bœotia.

11. This indeed is neither the time nor place to relate how the Pythian worship, in spite of the opposition of hostile races, traced the route of the procession through the passes of Parnassus. The fact is indeed evident from an almost unbroken chain of temples and oracles, the links of which, viz., Thurium, Tilphossium, the temple of Galaxius, the oracle of Eutresis, the Ismenium, Tenerium, Ptoum, and Tegyra, are all connected either by tradition or religious rites with Delphi. Delium is probably the only place on the eastern coast founded from Delos. Pindar represents the establishment of several such temples under the form of a migration of the god himself.1007

I shall content myself with noticing a few of the temples above-mentioned.

The first in order is the oracle at the fountain of Tilphossa under Mount Helicon, famous for the grave of Tiresias and the monument of Rhadamanthus, who is said to have dwelt here with Alcmena the mother of Hercules.1008 To this spot were attached some remarkable traditions of the Cretan worshippers of Apollo, forming a branch of the colonization of Cirrha; which is alluded to in Homer's account of [pg 254] the Thracians' bringing Rhadamanthus to Eubœa for the purpose of seeing Tityus;1009—a remarkable passage, which I can only understand to mean that the Cretan hero was desirous to see Tityus, who was vanquished by Apollo.

Tegyra was a place of great importance in the Bœotian tradition, as being the birthplace of Apollo.1010 The Delphian oracle was more favourable to this tradition than to that of Delos. Pindar1011 represents the youthful god as coming to take possession of Pytho from Tegyra, not, as the Attic poets, from Delos.

12. The identity of the Bœotian with the Delphian worship of Apollo was particularly striking in the temple of Ismene at Thebes. As at Delphi the Python was slain and the laurel broken anew every eight years, so at Thebes a procession of laurel-bearers took place at the same periods, the use of which, as a measure of time, is evident.1012 Here also, as at Delphi, the statue of Athene was placed in front of the temple (πρόναος).1013 Tripods were the sacred vessels in both temples, though never employed in the latter for the purpose of prophecy. In later times the priests were contented with observing omens from the flame and ashes of sacrifices,1014 like the πυρχόοι of Delphi;1015 although [pg 255] the mode of delivering oracles, from a mental enthusiasm, was prevalent also in Thebes at an earlier period; at least Tiresias (whom we may consider as a prophet of the temple of Ismene)1016 does not, either in Homer or the tragedians, appear as a diviner from fire.

That, however, the whole worship of Apollo was not one of those originally instituted at Thebes, will be evident from the following observations. In the ancient legends respecting Cadmus, in which Demeter, Cora, Cadmus, and afterwards Bacchus, predominate in succession, Apollo never appears in a conspicuous character. For particular additions of the poets may be easily distinguished from the genuine popular tradition. The fable, that Cadmus, after the slaughter of the serpent, was, like Apollo, compelled to live eight years in slavery,1017 must be considered as a poetical transposition. Cadmus and Apollo had originally no points of resemblance to each other. The situation of the temple of Apollo at Thebes is a most convincing proof that his worship was totally distinct from any other. Those of the ancient national gods were built on the citadel of Cadmeia, whilst Apollo was not only not worshipped in the citadel, but even without the gates, in the temple of Ismene,1018 which, according to Pausanias, must have been situated opposite to the temple of Hercules and the house of Amphitryon. This proximity of the hero and god, as well as all other points of union between the two at Thebes, will [pg 256] be employed for the purpose of establishing further conclusions, when we explain the legend of Hercules.1019

To settle with any accuracy, from the traditions concerning Tiresias and Hercules, the time at which the Bœotian temples of Apollo were founded, seems hardly possible, since the former contain no chronological information, and the latter are entirely unconnected with the rest of the Theban mythology. A tradition respecting the establishment of the festival of the Daphnephoria places it at the time of the Æolian migration,1020 whence it might perhaps be inferred that the Æolians introduced the worship of Apollo into Bœotia. This hypothesis would however involve us in endless perplexities; and it is most probable that its diffusion was gradually effected, soon after the settlement at Cirrha, about the time at which the worship of Apollo rose to importance at Athens.

13. The introduction of this worship into Attica coincides exactly with the passage of the Ionians into that country. The traditions respecting the most ancient kings, Cecrops, Erichthonius, and Erechtheus, chiefly refer to the temples, symbols, and festival rites of Athene; and this goddess, together with the other deities of the Acropolis, plays the principal part in them, particularly in her connexion with the blessings of husbandry. But with the reign of Ion the Attic mythology assumes quite a different character.1021 This seems to me a complete refutation of the assertion of the Ionians as to their identity with the aboriginal nation of the Pelasgians.1022 Still more evident is it [pg 257] then, that in proportion as the Ionians, being a warlike nation,1023 separated themselves from the original inhabitants, whose employment was agriculture and pasturing, their Hellenic worship deviated from the ancient one of the country. Aristotle indeed speaks of the paternal Apollo (Ἀπόλλων πατρῷος) as being a son of Athene and Hephæstus;1024 but this is nothing more than an endeavour to create a family connexion between the principal gods of the same town: for where do we ever find a temple dedicated conjointly to Athene and Apollo? what ceremonies and sacrifices were offered to them in common? and in what legends are they found connected? Till such an union of the two deities is discovered, we must consider Athene as an ancient and native deity, Apollo as one of much later introduction. The Athenians, indeed, maintained that an ancient hero of their country, Erysichthon, a son of Cecrops himself, erected the first statue of Apollo at Delos:1025 but it is easy to recognise in this account the attempt of the Athenians to fortify their claims to the dominion of the Delian temple, and to represent their rights as prior to all others. In all that is related of the Ionian princes (to whom Ægeus1026 and Theseus belong) with reference to religious institutions, mention is seldom made of the ancient Athenian deities, Athene and Hephæstus. The whole is [pg 258] taken up with accounts either of the establishment of the worship of Poseidon (which prevailed in the Ionian cities and in the places of their national assemblies), or the establishment and maintenance of an intercourse with the temples of Apollo at Delos, Delphi, and Cnosus.

14. In the second place, the fabulous history of these heroes also concerns the worship of Apollo, in so far as the origin of the Pythian Theorias is contained in it. Ion is even a real son or adopted disciple of the Pythian god; and in all probability there was no more difference originally between his two fathers, Apollo and Xuthus,1027 than between the two fathers of Theseus, Ægeus and Poseidon. Theseus consecrated his hair to the same god; a place at Delphi was called Thesea.1028 It is also related of Ægeus, that his kingdom, embracing the plain of Attica, stretched as far as Pythium, where it bordered on Megaris.1029 This Pythium was situated in the “sacred Œnoë,”1030 a fortified borough town of the tribe Hippothoontis, on the frontiers of Megaris, Bœotia, and Attica,1031 to the north of the plain of Eleusis, and in a district of remarkable fertility.1032

This temple was manifestly built on the frontiers in [pg 259] order to afford a resting-place to the sacred procession, which in the beginning of the spring went from Athens to Pytho. For if favourable omens had been observed in the town itself, and it was intended to despatch the procession, the prophet in the Pythium at Œnoë performed sacrifices every day, in order to procure a favourable journey, just as the Delian procession was regulated by omens observed in the Delium at Marathon.1033 The families charged with the preparations for sending the procession (probably all of ancient Ionian extraction) were called Pythaistæ and Deliastæ.1034 The omens looked for were the Pythian lightnings, a very unusual mode of divination in Greece. The Pythaistæ took their station in the town, near the altar of Zeus Astrapæus, between the Olympieium and Pythium, both of which were among the earliest sanctuaries, although they first owed their magnificence to Pisistratus.1035 From this spot it was the custom to watch for nine nights, during three months, a lofty peak of mount Parnes,1036 called Harma; and it was only in case the wished-for lightnings flashed favourably over the heights that the embassy could proceed along the Pythian road. This road led from Athens, near mount Corydallus (on which there was a temple of Apollo),1037 through the Eleusinian [pg 260] plain to Œnoë; from thence through the pass of Dryoscephalæ to Bœotia, where it touched either Thespiæ or Thebes, then Lebadeia and Chæronea, and then passed on by Panopeus and Daulis through the defile between Parnassus and Cirphis to Delphi: a mountain road which the Athenians declared that they had themselves opened,1038 and which Theseus is said to have freed from robbers,1039 in the same manner that he purified the road to the Isthmus from monsters. This was also the sacred road for the Peloponnesians, if we except that part of it which traversed Attica.1040

There still remains to be mentioned a remarkable fact respecting Œnoë, which will greatly assist us in explaining the fable of the voyage of Theseus to Crete: I allude to the existence of a tomb of Androgeus, the son of Minos, whom the natives had put to death as he was passing on the Pythian road.1041 A Cretan was murdered in the sacred way of the Cretan worship; Minos came to take vengeance for the violation of the sacred armistice; and hence Athens was obliged to send a tribute to Cnosus. Now the nature of this tribute may be perceived from a tradition preserved by Aristotle,1042 that the boys who were sent to Crete by the Athenians lived at Cnosus as slaves; and that [pg 261] afterwards, when the Cretans, in consequence of an ancient vow, sent a tithe of men to Delphi, the descendants of these slaves went with them, and subsequently passed from thence to Italy. From this it appears that the Athenians were compelled to send sacred slaves to the chief temple at Cnosus, viz., that of Apollo. For this reason these missions took place every eight years (δι᾽ ἐννέα ἐτῶν);1043 that is, probably at every Ennaëteris of the Cretan and Delphic festival; and for the same reason they consisted of seven young men and women, as this number was especially sacred to Apollo.1044

It is well known how much this tradition was disfigured by the Athenians (originally perhaps in their popular legends, and afterwards by the poets), in what an odious light it was represented, and so mixed up with extraneous matter, that we should only render the problem too difficult if we attempted to investigate the whole of its component parts.

We may however affirm with certainty that the voyage of Theseus to Crete had originally no other meaning than the landings at Naxos1045 and Delos, which were connected with it—viz., a propagation of religious worship.

The landing at Delos is a mythical type of the theorias, which the Athenians, in common with all the Ionian islands, had from early times sent to this place;1046 moreover, the ship which conveyed Theseus home was always regarded as a sacred vessel. It was sent out at the Thargelia, after the priest, on the sixth day of Thargelion, had crowned the poop.1047

Amongst other Delian rites the worship of Eilithyia was also at that time brought over to Athens, probably from the island of Crete, where an ancient cavern of the goddess, near Amnisus, has been already mentioned.1048 One point at which the procession from Attica to Crete touched was the borough town and harbour of Prasiæ, on the eastern coast of Attica, where, besides the temple of Apollo, was the tomb of Erysichthon, the Delian and Athenian hero; and tradition represented the gifts of the Hyperboreans to have been transported from this port to that sacred island.1049

Lastly, the origin of the Delphinian expiatory festival from Delphi and Crete is as evident as its introduction by the Ionian princes; for Ægeus dwelt in the Delphinium, and was there buried. To him was also ascribed the establishment of the Delphinian [pg 263] tribunal. Theseus, previously to his expedition to Crete, here placed the olive-branch, bound with wool, on the sixth day of Munychion,1050 and purified himself from the murder of the Pallantidæ.1051

15. The political situation of the worship of Apollo at Athens still requires to be noticed. From our previous observations it is clear that the Ionians had adopted it from the Dorians; hence Ion himself is called the son of the Pythian god. The paternal deity of Athens was, as Demosthenes says, no other than the Pythian Apollo.1052 We may then assert, without hesitation, that the Ionians were the only race who had gentilitious rites of Apollo, and that they alone could properly be called γενῆται Ἀπόλλωνος πατρῴου. Thus, when the archons at the scrutiny swore, that besides Zeus Herceus, the household god, they worshipped also Apollo πατρῷος;1053 this form of oath originated at a time when the Eupatridæ, that is, the noble Ionic and Hellenic families, were alone eligible to the dignity of the archonship. Nor was it till, by the timocracy of Solon and democracy of Aristides, the richer class in general and the whole [pg 264] people were admitted to this office, that Apollo πατρῷος was considered as a deity common to all families.1054 The democratical judges of Athens also yearly took an oath before this deity:1055 this ceremony was at first perhaps only required of the criminal judges of aristocratical descent, viz., the Ephetæ. It is however clear that originally the religion of Apollo was adapted for the military caste alone, the ancient Hopletes; hence he was not a god of artisans and husbandmen, but of warriors. Hence also Ion or Xuthus adopted him as the Athenian god of war (πολέμαρχος) at the festival of Boedromia,1056 the name of which is derived from the onset of armed troops in battle.

As originally the Eupatridæ alone cultivated the worship of Apollo, they alone possessed the ceremony of purification, which is here, as elsewhere, mixed up with the rites of the Cretan worship. According to Plutarch,1057 Ion had instructed the Athenians in religion, i.e., in that of Apollo; and the same author relates,1058 that Theseus established the Eupatridæ as administrators of the government, judges, and interpreters of the sacred rites (ἐξηγηταὶ ὁσίων καὶ ἱερῶν).