The Historians' History of the World 03

The epic poem designates Agamemnon’s followers, and indeed all the Greeks before Troy, as Argives, Achæans, or Danaans—terms which are used wholly synonymously even in the oldest parts of the Iliad. Now we know that not only in Homeric times, but already centuries earlier, before the colonisation of Crete and Asia Minor, Argolis was inhabited by the same people that we find there in historic times. It would not of itself be impossible to suppose that this people, who afterwards had no common tribal name, should have called themselves Achæans or Danaans, in prehistoric times, although it would be difficult to understand how this tribal name could have been lost. But as a matter of fact a tribe called Danaan never did exist. Danaus is an old Argive hero who is said to have transformed the waterless Argos into a well-watered country; his daughters, the Danaides, are water nymphs; Danæ also, the mother of the solar hero Perseus, and herself a goddess, cannot be separated from Danaus. The Danaans, accordingly, are the “people of Danaus”; they belong like him to tradition, and have been transposed from heaven to earth like the Cadmeans and Minyæ to whom we shall return later on. The name Achæan, however, was applied in historic times to the inhabitants of the northern coast of the Peloponnesus and of the south of Thessaly, and it is hardly probable that it should have been more widely spread in historic times. Agamemnon seems rather, according to the oldest tradition, to have been a Thessalian prince, like Achilles, who continued to be regarded as such. At the time, however, when the epic was being formed in Ionia, the Peloponnesian Argos outshone all other parts of the Grecian peninsula, and the poets in consequence were obliged to transpose the governmental seat of the powerful ruler from Thessaly to the Peloponnesus. His Achæans of course migrated with him.

Since, now, in Homer the name Achæan includes all the Grecian tribes under Agamemnon’s command, it could no longer be used to designate the inhabitants of one single region. Consequently in the epic the name Achaia is not used for the northern coast of the Peloponnesus, but this region is simply called “coast-land,” or Ægialea. This then gave rise to the tradition—if we still call such combinations tradition—that the Achæans who were driven out of Laconia by the Dorians had settled in Ægialea and given their name to the country. Ionians were said to have lived there previously, a theory which was supported by the existence of a sanctuary of the Heliconian Poseidon on the promontory of Mycale.

Furthermore Homer mentions various peoples upon the Grecian peninsula and the surrounding islands, which in historic times no longer existed there; for example, the Abantes, who appear in the catalogue of ships as inhabitants of Eubœa, whereas in the rest of the Iliad they are not localised. It is possible that there has here been a preservation of the old tribal name of the Eubœans, which later must have been lost; but it is also just as possible, and more probable, that the Abantes had originally nothing whatever to do with Eubœa, but that they were the inhabitants of Abæ in Phocis, whose name then, for the sake of some theory, was transferred to the neighbouring island. The Caucones according to the Telemachus must have dwelt in the western part of the Peloponnesus, not far from Pylus, whereas the Iliad calls them allies of the Trojans; and in reality even in historic times Caucones are said to have been found on the Paphlagonian coast. The name was thus evidently transferred from Asia Minor to the Peloponnesus, for which the river Caucon near Dyme in Achaia may have given a reason. A comparatively late part of the Iliad tells of a war between the Curetes and the inhabitants of Calydon in Ætolia. In Hesiod, on the other hand, the Curetes are divine beings, related to the nymphs and satyrs. They appear also as beneficent dæmons in the Cretan folk-lore; they are said to have taught mankind all sorts of useful arts and also to have brought up the infant Zeus. They belong thus to mythology, not to history. They were probably located in Ætolia only because there was a mountain there called Curion; and as a matter of course it was said that they had immigrated from Crete. Since on the Ætolian coast at the foot of the Curion there was a city called Chalcis, they were further transferred to the Eubœan Chalcis.