[132] The Dioscuri helped the Spartans in war, Hdt. v, 75; the Locrian Aias the Locrians in Italy: Paus. 3, 19, 12–13; Conon 18 (artistically elaborated and no longer naive legend but both taken from the same source).
[133] Hdt. vi, 61 (hence Paus. 3, 7, 7); grave of Helen at Therapne, Paus. 3, 19, 8.
[134] Hdt. vi, 69. Thus, too, the Theagenes mentioned above was regarded in Thasos not as the son of Timosthenes, τοῦ Θεαγένους δὲ τῇ μητρὶ Ἡρακλέους συγγενέσθαι φάσμα ἐοικὸς Τιμοσθένει, Paus. 6, 11, 2.—Everyone will be reminded, too, of the fable of Zeus and Alkmene. But it should be noticed how near such stories as that so naively told by Herod. approach the risky novel-plot in which some profane mortal visits in disguise an unsuspecting woman and plays the part of a god or spirit-lover. That in Greece, too, such stories were current we may perhaps deduce from Eur., Ion, 1530 ff. Ov., M. iii, 281; says outright: multi nomine divorum thalamos iniere pudicos. An adventure of this sort is told by the writer of [Aeschines] Ep. 10, and he is able to produce two similar cases which he certainly has not invented himself (8-9).—In more recent times both western and Oriental nations have delighted in telling such stories; a typical Oriental example is the story of “the Weaver as Vishnu” in the Panchatantra (see Benfey, Pantsch. i, § 56); in the West there is the story of Boccaccio dealing with Alberto of Imola as the angel Gabriel, Decam. iv, 2—Very suspicious, too, seems the account of a miracle that occurred in Epidauros: a barren woman comes to the temple of Asklepios to seek advice by ἐγκοίμησις. A big snake approaches her and she has a child. Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1885, pp. 21–2, l. 129 ff.
[135] ἐκ τοῦ ἡρωίου τοῦ παρὰ τῇσι θύρῃσι τῇσι αὐλείῃσι ἱδρυμένου, Hdt. vi, 69.
[136] Hero ἐπὶ προθύρῳ, Callim., Ep. 26; a Hero πρὸ πύλαις, πρὸ δόμοισιν, late epigram from Thrace, Epigr. Gr. 841; ἥρωας πλησίον τῆς τοῦ ἰδόντος οἰκίας ἱδρυμένους, Artemid. iv, 79, p. 248, 9 H. This, too, is how Pindar’s words about the Hero Alkmaion as his γείτων are to be understood: Pyth. viii, 57, see above, [n. 105]. An Aesopian fable dealing with the relations of a man with his neighbour-Hero begins ἥρωά τις ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκίας ἔχων τούτῳ πολυτελῶς ἔθυεν, 161 Halm.; cf. also Babr. 63.—A similar idea is at work when a son put up a monument to his father at the doorway of his house—see the fine lines of Eur., Hel. 1165 ff.
[137] Κύπρῳ ἔνθα Τεῦκρος ἀπάρχει. Aias ἔχει Salamis and Achilles his island in the Pontus; Θέτις δὲ κρατεῖ Φθίᾳ, and so, too, Neoptolemos in Epirus: Pi., N. iv, 46–51; ἀμφέπει used of a Hero, P. ix, 70; τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ ἥρωσι τοῖς κατέχουσι τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν χώραν τὴν Ἀθηναίων: Dem. 18, 184.
[138] Cf. Alabandus whom the inhabitants of Alabanda sanctius colunt quam quemquam nobilium deorum: Cic., ND. iii, 50 (in connexion with an anecdote relating to the fourth century)—Tenem, qui apud Tenedios sanctissimus deus habetur, Cic., V. ii, 1, 49.
CHAPTER V
THE CULT OF SOULS
Greek civilization as we see it reflected in the Homeric poems strikes us as so variously developed, and yet so complete in itself, that if we had no further sources of information, we should naturally suppose that the characteristic culture of the Greeks there reached the highest point attainable under the conditions set by national character and external circumstance. In reality the Homeric poems stand on the border line between an older development that has come to complete maturity and a new, and in many ways differently constituted, order of things. The poems themselves offer an idealized picture of a past that was on the point of disappearing entirely. The profound upheavals of the following centuries can be measured by their final results; we can guess the underlying forces from a study of the individual symptoms. But the fact remains that in the very imperfect state of our information about this period of transformation, we can do little more than recognize the existence of all the conditions necessary for a complete reorganization of Greek life. We can see how the once less-important races in Greece now come into the foreground of history; how they set up new kingdoms by the right of conquest on the ruins of the old, and bring into prominence their own special ways of thinking. Colonization over a wide area meant the expansion of Greek life; while the colonies themselves, as is so often the case, traversed all the stages of development at a much faster rate. Commerce and industry developed, calling forth and satisfying new demands. New elements of the population came to the fore, governments began to fall and the old rule of the kings gave way to Aristocracy, Tyranny, Democracy. In friendly and (in the West especially) hostile relationship the Greeks came into contact more than formerly with foreign peoples in every stage of civilization who influenced them in many directions.