The conquest of Têmenus, the eldest of the three Herakleids, originally comprehended only Argos and its neighborhood; it was from thence that Trœzen, Epidaurus, Ægina, Sikyôn, and Phlius were successfully occupied by Dorians, the sons and son-in-law of Têmenus—Deiphontês, Phalkês, and Keisus—being the leaders under whom this was accomplished.[12] At Sparta, the success of the Dorians was furthered by the treason of a man named Philonomus, who received as recompense the neighboring town and territory of Amyklæ.[13] Messênia is said to have submitted without resistance to the dominion of the Herakleid Kresphontês, who established his residence at Stenyklêrus: the Pylian Melanthus, then ruler of the country, and representative of the great mythical lineage of Nêleus and Nestôr, withdrew with his household gods and with a portion of his subjects to Attica.[14]
The only Dorian establishment in the peninsula not directly connected with the triple partition is Corinth, which is said to have been Dorized somewhat later and under another leader, though still a Herakleid. Hippotês—descendant of Hêraklês in the fourth generation, but not through Hyllus,—had been guilty (as already mentioned) of the murder of Karnus the prophet at the camp of Naupaktus, for which he had been banished and remained in exile for ten years; his son deriving the name of Alêtês from the long wanderings endured by the father. At the head of a body of Dorians, Alêtês attacked Corinth: he pitched his camp on the Solygeian eminence near the city, and harassed the inhabitants with constant warfare until he compelled them to surrender. Even in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the Corinthians professed to identify the hill on which the camp of these assailants had been placed. The great mythical dynasty of the Sisyphids was expelled, and Alêtês became ruler and Œkist of the Dorian city; many of the inhabitants, however, Æolic or Ionic, departed.[15]
The settlement of Oxylus and his Ætolians in Elis is said by some to have been accomplished with very little opposition; the leader professing himself to be descended from Ætolus, who had been in a previous age banished from Elis into Ætôlia, and the two people, Epeians and Ætolians, acknowledging a kindred origin one with the other.[16] At first, indeed, according to Ephorus, the Epeians appeared in arms, determined to repel the intruders, but at length it was agreed on both sides to abide the issue of a single combat. Degmenus, the champion of the Epeians, confided in the long shot of his bow and arrow; but the Ætolian Pyræchmês came provided with his sling,—a weapon then unknown and recently invented by the Ætolians,—the range of which was yet longer than that of the bow of his enemy: he thus killed Degmenus, and secured the victory to Oxylus and his followers. According to one statement, the Epeians were expelled; according to another, they fraternized amicably with the new-comers: whatever may be the truth as to this matter, it is certain that their name is from this moment lost, and that they never reappear among the historical elements of Greece:[17] we hear from this time forward only of Eleians, said to be of Ætolian descent.[18]
One most important privilege was connected with the possession of the Eleian territory by Oxylus, coupled with his claim on the gratitude of the Dorian kings. The Eleians acquired the administration of the temple at Olympia, which the Achæans are said to have possessed before them; and in consideration of this sacred function, which subsequently ripened into the celebration of the great Olympic games, their territory was solemnly pronounced to be inviolable. Such was the statement of Ephorus:[19] we find, in this case as in so many others, that the Return of the Herakleids is made to supply a legendary basis for the historical state of things in Peloponnêsus.
It was the practice of the great Attic tragedians, with rare exceptions, to select the subjects of their composition from the heroic or legendary world, and Euripidês had composed three dramas, now lost, on the adventures of Têmenus with his daughter Hyrnethô and his son-in-law Dêiphontês,—on the family misfortunes of Kresphontês and Meropê,—and on the successful valor of Archelaus the son of Têmenus in Macedonia, where he was alleged to have first begun the dynasty of the Temenid kings. Of these subjects the first and second were eminently tragical, and the third, relating to Archelaus, appears to have been undertaken by Euripidês in compliment to his contemporary sovereign and patron, Archelaus king of Macedonia: we are even told that those exploits which the usual version of the legend ascribed to Têmenus, were reported in the drama of Euripidês to have been performed by Archelaus his son.[20] Of all the heroes, touched upon by the three Attic tragedians, these Dorian Herakleids stand lowest in the descending genealogical series,—one mark amongst others that we are approaching the ground of genuine history.
Though the name Achæans, as denoting a people, is henceforward confined to the North-Peloponnesian territory specially called Achaia, and to the inhabitants of Achæa, Phthiôtis, north of Mount Œta,—and though the great Peloponnesian states always seem to have prided themselves on the title of Dorians,—yet we find the kings of Sparta, even in the historical age, taking pains to appropriate to themselves the mythical glories of the Achæans, and to set themselves forth as the representatives of Agamemnôn and Orestês. The Spartan king Kleomenês even went so far as to disavow formally any Dorian parentage; for when the priestess at Athens refused to permit him to sacrifice in the temple of Athênê, on the plea that it was peremptorily closed to all Dorians, he replied: “I am no Dorian, but an Achæan.”[21] Not only did the Spartan envoy, before Gelôn of Syracuse, connect the indefeasible title of his country to the supreme command of the Grecian military force, with the ancient name and lofty prerogatives of Agamemnôn,[22]—but, in farther pursuance of the same feeling, the Spartans are said to have carried to Sparta both the bones of Orestês from Tegea, and those of Tisamenus from Helikê,[23] at the injunction of the Delphian oracle. There is also a story that Oxylus in Elis was directed by the same oracle to invite into his country an Achæan, as Œkist conjointly with himself; and that he called in Agorius, the great-grandson of Orestês, from Helikê, with a small number of Achæans who joined him.[24] The Dorians themselves, being singularly poor in native legends, endeavored, not unnaturally, to decorate themselves with those legendary ornaments which the Achæans possessed in abundance.
As a consequence of the Dorian establishments in Peloponnêsus, several migrations of the preëxisting inhabitants are represented as taking place. 1. The Epeians of Elis are either expelled, or merged in the new-comers under Oxylus, and lose their separate name. 2. The Pylians, together with the great heroic family of Nêleus and his son Nestôr, who preside over them, give place to the Dorian establishment of Messênia, and retire to Athens, where their leader, Melanthus, becomes king: a large portion of them take part in the subsequent Ionic emigration. 3. A portion of the Achæans, under Penthilus and other descendants of Orestês, leave Peloponnêsus, and form what is called the Æolic emigration, to Lesbos, the Trôad, and the Gulf of Adramyttium: the name Æolians, unknown to Homer, and seemingly never applied to any separate tribe at all, being introduced to designate a large section of the Hellenic name, partly in Greece Proper, and partly in Asia. 4. Another portion of Achæans expel the Ionians from Achaia, properly so called, in the north of Peloponnêsus; the Ionians retiring to Attica.
The Homeric poems describe Achæans, Pylians, and Epeians, in Peloponnêsus, but take no notice of Ionians in the northern district of Achaia: on the contrary, the Catalogue in the Iliad distinctly includes this territory under the dominions of Agamemnôn. Though the Catalogue of Homer is not to be regarded as an historical document, fit to be called as evidence for the actual state of Peloponnêsus at any prior time, it certainly seems a better authority than the statements advanced by Herodotus and others respecting the occupation of northern Peloponnêsus by the Ionians, and their expulsion from it by Tisamenus. In so far as the Catalogue is to be trusted, it negatives the idea of Ionians at Helikê, and countenances what seems in itself a more natural supposition,—that the historical Achæans in the north part of Peloponnêsus are a small undisturbed remnant of the powerful Achæan population once distributed throughout the peninsula, until it was broken up and partially expelled by the Dorians.
The Homeric legends, unquestionably the oldest which we possess, are adapted to a population of Achæans, Danaans, and Argeians, seemingly without any special and recognized names, either aggregate or divisional, other than the name of each separate tribe or kingdom. The post-Homeric legends are adapted to a population classified quite differently,—Hellens, distributed into Dorians, Ionians, and Æolians. If we knew more of the time and circumstances in which these different legends grew up, we should probably be able to explain their discrepancy; but in our present ignorance we can only note the fact.
Whatever difficulty modern criticism may find in regard to the event called “The Return of the Herakleids,” no doubt is expressed about it even by the best historians of antiquity. Thucydidês accepts it as a single and literal event, having its assignable date, and carrying at one blow the acquisition of Peloponnêsus. The date of it he fixes as eighty years after the capture of Troy. Whether he was the original determiner of this epoch, or copied it from some previous author, we do not know. It must have been fixed according to some computation of generations, for there were no other means accessible,—probably by means of the lineage of the Herakleids, which, as belonging to the kings of Sparta, constituted the most public and conspicuous thread of connection between the Grecian real and mythical world, and measured the interval between the Siege of Troy itself and the first recorded Olympiad. Hêraklês himself represents the generation before the siege, and his son Tlepolemus fights in the besieging army. If we suppose the first generation after Hêraklês to commence with the beginning of the siege, the fourth generation after him will coincide with the ninetieth year after the same epoch; and therefore, deducting ten years for the duration of the struggle, it will coincide with the eightieth year after the capture of the city;[25] thirty years being reckoned for a generation. The date assigned by Thucydidês will thus agree with the distance in which Têmenus, Kresphontês, and Aristodêmus, stand removed from Hêraklês. The interval of eighty years, between the capture of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, appears to have been admitted by Apollodôrus and Eratosthenês, and some other professed chronologists of antiquity: but there were different reckonings which also found more or less of support.