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μωρίη. H.'s argument is that the number ‘twelve’ is determined by history only, not by exclusive and superior purity in the Dodecapolis. He is obviously attacking some one (Intr. p. 25); cf. for a like acerbity of tone ii. 16. 1. Paus. vii. 2. 3-9 gives additional details as to this migration.

Ἄβαντες. Aristotle (in Strabo, 445) said this tribe were Thracians, who passed from Abae in Phocis to Euboea.

Μινύαι. The Minyans settled in Teos (Paus. vii. 3. 6), the Cadmeans (but cf. v. 61. 2 n.) in Priene (ib. vii. 2. 10) and in Colophon (ib. vii. 3. 1-3, where the oracle was connected with the daughter of Tiresias), the Dryopes in Styra (ib. iv. 34. 11), the Phocians in Phocaea (Paus. vii. 3. 10). These statements it is impossible to test; they may rest on genealogical evidence.

No other tradition connects the Molossi (Thuc. i. 136. 2) who lived in the east of Epirus, north of Ambracia, with Asia Minor. Probably the reference is to some forgotten story, connecting Dodona (cf. Aesch. P. V. 829) with the migration to the East. Pausanias (vii. 4. 2) makes Ionians from Epidaurus (not Dorians) settle in Samos. The ἄλλα ἔθνεα are probably not Lydians and Carians (as Stein), but other Greek tribes from Hellas proper; H. mentions the admixture of native races below.

ἀποδάσμιοι. Cf. ii. 103. 2 ἀποδασάμενος. H. lays stress on the fact that Phocaea was founded by a part of the Phocians, who left their home by a voluntary migration, not from external compulsion; in this it resembled the later colonies, and not its contemporary foundations. The Arcadians are called ‘Pelasgi’, because they were αὐτόχθονες (cf. viii. 73. 1) and not immigrants, cf. 66. 2 n.


πρυτανηίου. For connexion with Athens as a test of Ionism cf. 147. 2. H. writes as if prehistoric migrations had been carried out with the ceremonies of colony-founding in his own day; for the ‘common hearth’ cf. Frazer, iv. 441-2. The argument is again directed against Ionian pride of birth; even the purest-blooded of them had foreign wives and foreign rulers (147. 1); but the claims of Athens as μητρόπολις are asserted.


Pausanias (vii. 2. 6) tells the same tale shortly. H. here seems to be incorporating in his argument a piece of very early custom. Among some savage tribes, e.g. the Caribs in North America, the wife neither eats with the husband nor calls him by his name (cf. Frazer, iv. 116). The myth of Cupid and Psyche preserves in a curious form this primitive separation of husband and wife. There may have been some strange survival of this at Miletus, but it can hardly have been as absolute as H. states.

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hide References (5 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (5):
    • Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 829
    • Pausanias, Description of Greece, 7.2.3
    • Pausanias, Description of Greece, 7.3.10
    • Pausanias, Description of Greece, 7.3.6
    • Thucydides, Histories, 1.136.2
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