DRY´OPES
Eth.
DRY´OPES (
Δρύοπες), one of the aboriginal tribes of Greece. Their earliest abode is said to have been on Mount Oeta and its adjacent valleys, in the district called after them, Dryopis (
Δρυοπίς.) The Dorians settled in that part of their country which lay between Oeta and Parnassus, and which was afterwards called Doris [
DORIS]; but Dryopis originally extended as far north as the river Spercheius.
The name of Dryopis was still applied to the latter district in the time of Strabo, who calls it a tetrapolis, like Doris. (
Hdt. 1.56,
8.31;
Strab. ix. p.434.) Heracles, in conjunction with the Malians, is said to have driven the Dryopes out of their country, and to have given it to the Dorians; whereupon the expelled Dryopes settled at Hermione and Asine in the Argolic peninsula, at Styrus and Carystus in Euboea, and in the island of Cythnus.
These are the five chief places in which we find the Dryopes in historical times. (
Hdt. 8.43,
46,
73;
Diod. 4.57; Aristot. ap.
Strab. viii. p.373;
Paus. 4.34.9, seq., 5.1.2.) Dicaearchus (5.30, p. 459, ed. Fuhr) gives the name of Dryopis to the country around Ambracia, from which we might conclude that the Dryopes extended at one time from the Ambraciot gulf to Mount Oeta and the Spercheius. (Müiller,
Dorians, book 1.100.2; Grote,
Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 384.)
