chapter 5 (volume 1)._

The legendary heroes whose exploits and adventures became the favorite subjects of Greek tragedy and song were Perseus, Hercules, Theseus, the Argonauts, and the heroes of the Siege of Troy.

GREECE: The Migrations of the Hellenic tribes in the Peninsula.

"If there is any point in the annals of Greece at which we can draw the line between the days of myth and legend and the beginnings of authentic history, it is at the moment of the great migrations. Just as the irruption of the Teutonic tribes into the Roman empire in the 5th century after Christ marks the commencement of an entirely new era in modern Europe, so does the invasion of Southern and Central Greece by the Dorians, and the other tribes whom they set in motion, form the first landmark in a new period of Hellenic history. Before these migrations we are still in an atmosphere which we cannot recognize as that of the historical Greece that we know. The states have different boundaries, some of the most famous cities have not yet been founded, tribes who are destined to vanish occupy prominent places in the land, royal houses of a foreign stock are established everywhere, the distinction between Hellene and Barbarian is yet unknown. We cannot realize a Greece where Athens is not yet counted as a great city, while Mycenae is a seat of empire; where the Achaian element is everywhere predominant, and the Dorian element is as yet unknown. When, however, the migrations are ended, we at once find ourselves in a land which we recognize as the Greece of history. The tribes have settled into the districts which are to be their permanent abodes, and have assumed their distinctive characters. … The original impetus which set the Greek tribes in motion came from the north, and the whole movement rolled southward and eastward. It started with the invasion of the valley of the Peneus by the Thessalians, a warlike but hitherto obscure tribe, who had dwelt about Dodona in the uplands of Epirus. They crossed the passes of Pindus, and flooded down into the great plain to which they were to give their name. The tribes which had previously held it were either crushed and enslaved, or pushed forward into Central Greece by the wave of invasion. Two of the displaced races found new homes for themselves by conquest. The Arnaeans, who had dwelt in the southern lowlands along the courses of Apidanus and Enipeus, came through Thermopylae, pushed the Locriams aside to right and left, and descended into the valley of the Cephissus, where they subdued the Minyae of Orchomenus [see MINYI], and then, passing south, utterly expelled the Cadmeians of Thebes. The plain country which they had conquered received a single name. Boeotia became the common title of the basins of the Cephissus and the Asopus, which had previously been in the hands of distinct races. Two generations later the Boeotians endeavoured to cross Cithaeron, and add Attica to their conquests; but their king Xanthus fell in single combat with Melanthus, who fought in behalf of Athens, and his host gave up the enterprise. In their new country the Boeotians retained their national unity under the form of a league, in which no one city had authority over another, though in process of time Thebes grew so much greater than her neighbours that she exercised a marked preponderance over the other thirteen members of the confederation. Orchomenus, whose Minyan inhabitants had been subdued but not exterminated by the invaders, remained dependent on the league without being at first amalgamated with it. {1567} A second tribe who were expelled by the irruption of the Thessalians were the Dorians, a race whose name is hardly heard in Homer, and whose early history had been obscure and insignificant. They had till now dwelt along the western slope of Pindus. Swept on by the invaders, they crossed Mount Othrys, and dwelt for a time in the valley of the Spercheius and on the shoulders of Oeta. But the land was too narrow for them, and, after a generation had passed, the bulk of the nation moved southward to seek a wider home, while a small fraction only remained in the valleys of Oeta. Legends tell us that their first advance was made by the Isthmus of Corinth, and was repulsed by the allied states of Peloponnesus, Hyllus the Dorian leader having fallen in the fight by the hand of Echemus, King of Tegea. But the grandsons of Hyllus resumed his enterprise, and met with greater success. Their invasion was made, as we are told, in conjunction with their neighbours the Aetolians, and took the Aetolian port of Naupactus as its base. Pushing across the narrow strait at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, the allied hordes landed in Peloponnesus, and forced their way down the level country on its western coast, then the land of the Epeians, but afterwards to be known as Elis and Pisatis. This the Aetolians took as their share, while the Dorians pressed further south and east, and successively conquered Messenia, Laconia, and Argolis, destroying the Cauconian kingdom of Pylos and the Achaian states of Sparta and Argos. There can be little doubt that the legends of the Dorians pressed into a single generation the conquests of a long series of years. … It is highly probable that Messenia was the first seized of the three regions, and Argos the latest … but of the details or dates of the Dorian conquests we know absolutely nothing. Of the tribes whom the Dorians supplanted, some remained in the land as subjects to their newly found masters, while others took ship and fled over sea. The stoutest-hearted of the Achaians of Argolis, under Tisamenus, a grandson of Agamemnon, retired northward when the contest became hopeless, and threw themselves on the coast cities of the Corinthian Gulf, where up to this time the Ionic tribe of the Aegialeans had dwelt. The Ionians were worsted, and fled for refuge to their kindred in Attica, while the conquerors created a new Achaia between the Arcadian Mountains and the sea, and dwelt in the twelve cities which their predecessors had built. The rugged mountains of Arcadia were the only part of Peloponnesus which were to escape a change of masters resulting from the Dorian invasion. A generation after the fall of Argos, new war-bands thirsting for land pushed on to the north and west, led by descendants of Temenus. The Ionic towns of Sicyon and Phlius, Epidaurus and Troezen, all fell before them. Even the inaccessible Acropolis which protected the Aeolian settlement of Corinth could not preserve it from the hands of the enterprising Aletes. Nor was it long before the conquerors pressed on from Corinth beyond the isthmus, and attacked Attica. Foiled in their endeavour to subdue the land, they at least succeeded in tearing from it its western districts, where the town of Megara was made the capital of a new Dorian state, and served for many generations to curb the power of Athens. From Epidaurus a short voyage of fifteen miles took the Dorians to Aegina, where they formed a settlement which, first as a vassal to Epidaurus, and then as an independent community, enjoyed a high degree of commercial prosperity. It is not the least curious feature of the Dorian invasion that the leaders of the victorious tribe, who, like most other royal houses, claimed to descend from the gods and boasted that Heracles was their ancestor, should have asserted that they were not Dorians by race, but Achaians. Whether the rude northern invaders were in truth guided by princes of a different blood and higher civilization than themselves, it is impossible to say. … In all probability the Dorian invasion was to a considerable extent a check in the history of the development of Greek civilization, a supplanting of a richer and more cultured by a poorer and wilder race. The ruins of the prehistoric cities, which were supplanted by new Dorian foundations, point to a state of wealth to which the country did not again attain for many generations. On the other hand, the invasion brought about an increase in vigour and moral earnestness. The Dorians throughout their history were the sturdiest and most manly of the Greeks. The god to whose worship they were especially devoted was Apollo, the purest, the noblest, the most Hellenic member of the Olympian family. By their peculiar reverence for this noble conception of divinity, the Dorians marked themselves out as the most moral of the Greeks."

_C. W. C. Oman, History of Greece,