This text is part of:
τὸ μέν: obviously the Pelasgic race, although this sense is inconsistent with what H. says of Pelasgians in Asia Minor (146. 1) or of those in Attica (vi. 137); he writes too absolutely, having in view only the contrast between the mass of the Athenians, who were οὐ μετανάσται (vii. 161. 3), and the much-wandering Dorians. These are placed first in Phthiotis, because this was the traditional home of Deucalion, the Greek Noah, the grandfather of Aeolus, Xuthus, and Dorus. H. may be following the post-Homeric epic, ‘Aegimius.’ Histiaeotis was in north-west Thessaly; H. transfers it to the north-east (the district really of Thessaliotis (57. 1)), probably in accordance with Cretan tradition (for Dorians in Crete cf. Od. xix. 177). The invaders of Crete must have originally lived on the sea coast. Καδμείων. For the Cadmeans cf. v. 61. 2 n.; as there it is said that the Cadmeans fled to the Illyrian Encheleis, their migration must have been to north-west; hence it is obvious that the legend placed the Dorians in north-west Thessaly (not north-east). Πίνδῳ. P. is one of the towns of the Dorian Tetrapolis, the others being Erineus (cf. viii. 43 and Tyrtaeus, u. s.), Boeum, and Cytinium (Strabo, 427); it lay on a river of the same name on the south-east of Mount Oeta; for it cf. Pind. Pyth. i. 65 “ἔσχον δ᾽ Ἀμύκλας ὄλβιοι Πινδόθεν ὀρνύμενοι”. Others (less probably) take Pindus to be the mountain chain, i. e. H. would bring his Dorians from north-east to north-west Thessaly and then later (ἐνθεῦτεν αὖθις) to their home in Doris. Μακεδνόν. Stein doubts whether H. means to connect the Dorians with the Macedonians (cf. viii. 43), arguing that H., if he had believed this, would have explained the unusual form (Μακεδνόν) by the common one (Μακεδών). It seems, however, as if H. must have been thinking of the claim of the Macedonian kings to be Argives (cf. v. 22. 2; viii. 137); but this would prove nothing as to connexion of the races. He may be referring to some unknown tradition, connecting the Dorians in north-west Thessaly with their Macedonian neighbours to the north; e. g. Myres (J. H. S. xxvii. 178) shows that in the Homeric Catalogue the strip of coast between Mount Olympus and the Axius is unaccounted for; he argues that the Dorians (unknown to Homer except in Od. xix. 177) had already reached this. Δρυοπίδα. D. was the original name of the lower part of the Pindus valley, which in historic times was Doris (viii. 31; cf. Strabo, 434). The Dryopians originally dwelt on both sides of Mount Oeta, and south as far as Parnassus; they are said to have been expelled from the coast by the Malians, and by Heracles from the Pindus valley (Apollod. ii. 7. 7). Heracles was especially honoured by the Malians (vii. 176. 3), and in the east of Central Greece generally (Meyer, ii. 166). Here the Dorians learned his worship, and made his son Hyllus to be adopted by king Aegimius, and so to be the ancestor of the Spartan kings. The expelled Dryopes settled at Hermione and Asine in the Peloponnese (viii. 73. 2), at Styra (viii. 46. 4), and Carystus in Euboea (Thuc. vii. 57. 4); also in Cythnus (viii. 46. 4) and in Ionia (146. 1). For an account of the Dryopes, based in part on cult usage, cf. Paus. iv. 34. 6. οὕτως: i. e. they get their Dorian name when they conquer the Peloponnese. This is probably wrong; ‘it is native in the upper Cephissus valley’ (Meyer, ii. 47).
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.