The Historians' History of the World 03

Thus Pelops is said to have come from Lydia or Phrygia to the peninsula which has since borne his name. One might be tempted to regard him as the eponymic hero of the Peloponnesus; but Pelopia was also the name of a daughter of Pelias or of Niobe, and of the mother of Cycnus, a son of Ares. Pelops’ mother also is Euryanassa, a daughter of Dione; his paternal grandfather is Xanthus (the “shining one”); two of his sons are called Chrysippus and Alcathous. These names leave no doubt as to the fact that Pelops was originally a solar hero; hence also the story of his contest with Œnomaus for the possession of Hippodamia. The name Peloponnesus, which is also unknown to Homer, means accordingly “Island of the sun-god”; Helios, as is well known, had a celebrated temple at the most extreme southern point of the peninsula, on the promontory of Tænarum. Thus Pelops, originally, was not materially different from Hercules, who for the most part has crowded him out of cult and tradition; just as the genealogy of the Peloponnesian dynasties was traced back to Pelops in ancient times and to Hercules at a later period. Nevertheless Pelops has at least kept the first place in Olympia.

The tradition of the immigration of Danaus from Egypt is closely connected with the legend of the wanderings of Io, which could not have taken on its present form until after Egypt was opened up to the Hellenes, that is not before the end of the seventh century. The legend concerning the Egyptian origin of the old Attic national hero Cecrops grew up much later in the fourth or third century, and never attained general recognition.

We have already seen how Phœnix and his brother Cadmus became Phœnicians. Accordingly Phœnix’s daughter, or according to a later myth his sister, Europa, was carried off by Zeus from Phœnicia to Crete, where she gave birth to Minos. This alone makes it clear that Minos had nothing whatever to do with the Phœnicians, but is a good Grecian god, as are also Phœnix, Cadmus, Europa, his wife Pasiphaë (the “all enlightening”), his daughter Phædra (the “beaming”), and Ariadne the wife of Dionysus. Minos, also, afterwards fell to the rank of a hero; already in Homer he appears as the king of Knossos, and later the Cretans trace their laws back to him. The name Minoa occurs frequently in the islands and on the coast of the Ægean Sea; also in Crete itself, and in Amorgos, Siphnos, and on the coast of Megaris. Hence the conclusion was drawn that Minos had ruled in all these places and must therefore have been a great sea-king, whose dominion extended over the whole of the Cyclades and in fact over the whole Ægean Sea. But in Sicily there was also a Minoa, a daughter city of the Megarian colony of Selinus, and doubtless named after the small island of Minoa near the Nisæan Megara. Thus the tradition arose that Minos had proceeded to Sicily and there found his death. Since Selinus was founded in the year 650 B.C., this myth cannot have come into existence before the sixth century.

At the beginning of the fifth century all these traditions were combined, and connected; on the one hand, with the myths which formed the substance of the epic poems; on the other, with the oldest historic recollections. The genealogies of the heroes as given in part by Homer and more completely by Hesiod served as a chronological basis. At the beginning were placed the Pelasgians, then the immigrations from the east, of Danaus, Pelops, Cadmus, and others. Then followed the expedition of the Argonauts, the march of the Seven against Thebes, the Trojan War, and whatever else of similar nature was related in the epics. Next came the age of the great migrations; first the incursion of the Thessalians into the plains of the Peneus, and the Bœotian migration caused thereby, then the march of the Dorians and their allies, the Eleans, into the Peloponnesus, which was followed by the colonisation of the islands and of the western coast of Asia Minor.

Thus was gained the misleading appearance of a pragmatic history of Grecian antiquity; and although even in ancient times occasional critical doubts were not wanting, this system as a whole was accepted by the Greeks as historical truth.c

FOOTNOTES

[7] [Reproduced by permission from his Griechische Geschichte. The subject here treated is one on which the authorities are by no means agreed. Other views are presented in a subsequent chapter.]

CHAPTER V. THE DORIANS

Land of the lordly mien and iron frame!

Where wealth was held dishonour, Luxury’s smile

Worse than a demon’s soul-destroying wile!

Where every youth that hailed the Day-God’s beam,

Wielded the sword, and dreamt the patriot’s dream;

Where childhood lisped of war with eager soul,

And woman’s hand waved on to glory’s goal.

—Nicholas Michell.