CHAPTER V.
ÆTOLO-DORIAN EMIGRATION INTO PELOPONNESUS.—ELIS, LACONIA, AND MESSENIA.
It has already been stated that the territory properly called Elis, apart from the enlargement which it acquired by conquest, included the westernmost land in Peloponnesus, south of Achaia, and west of Mount Pholoê and Olenus in Arcadia,—but not extending so far southward as the river Alpheius, the course of which lay along the southern portion of Pisatis and on the borders of Triphylia. This territory, which appears in the Odyssey as “the divine Elis, where the Epeians hold sway,”[548] is in the historical times occupied by a population of Ætolian origin. The connection of race between the historical Eleians and the historical Ætolians was recognized by both parties, nor is there any ground for disputing it.[549]
That Ætolian invaders, or emigrants, into Elis, would cross from Naupaktus, or some neighboring point in the Corinthian gulf, is in the natural course of things,—and such is the course which Oxylus, the conductor of the invasion, is represented by the Herakleid legend as taking. That legend (as has been already recounted) introduces Oxylus as the guide of the three Herakleid brothers,—Têmenus, Kresphontês, and Aristodêmus,—and as stipulating with them that, in the new distribution about to take place of Peloponnesus, he shall be allowed to possess the Eleian territory, coupled with many holy privileges as to the celebration of the Olympic games.
In the preceding chapter, I have endeavored to show that the settlements of the Dorians in and near the Argolic peninsula, so far as the probabilities of the case enable us to judge, were not accomplished by any inroad in this direction. But the localities occupied by the Dorians of Sparta, and by the Dorians of Stenyklêrus, in the territory called Messênê, lead us to a different conclusion. The easiest and most natural road through which emigrants could reach either of these two spots, is through the Eleian and the Pisatid country. Colonel Leake observes,[550] that the direct road from the Eleian territory to Sparta, ascending the valley of the Alpheius, near Olympia, to the sources of its branch, the Theius, and from thence descending the Eurotas, affords the only easy march towards that very inaccessible city: and both ancients and moderns have remarked the vicinity of the source of the Alpheius to that of the Eurotas. The situation of Stenyklêrus and Andania, the original settlements of the Messenian Dorians, adjoining closely the Arcadian Parrhasii, is only at a short distance from the course of the Alpheius; being thus reached most easily by the same route. Dismissing the idea of a great collective Dorian armament, powerful enough to grasp at once the entire peninsula,—we may conceive two moderate detachments of hardy mountaineers, from the cold regions in and near Doris, attaching themselves to the Ætolians, their neighbors, who were proceeding to the invasion of Elis. After having aided the Ætolians, both to occupy Elis and to subdue the Pisatid, these Dorians advanced up the valley of the Alpheius in quest of settlements for themselves. One of these bodies ripens into the stately, stubborn, and victorious Spartans; the other, into the short-lived, trampled, and struggling Messenians.
Amidst the darkness which overclouds these original settlements, we seem to discern something like special causes to determine both of them. With respect to the Spartan Dorians, we are told that a person named Philonomus betrayed Sparta to them, persuading the sovereign in possession to retire with his people into the habitations of the Ionians, in the north of the peninsula,—and that he received as a recompense for this acceptable service Amyklæ, with the district around it. It is farther stated,—and this important fact there seems no reason to doubt,—that Amyklæ,—though only twenty stadia or two miles and a half distant from Sparta, retained both its independence and its Achæan inhabitants, long after the Dorian emigrants had acquired possession of the latter place, and was only taken by them under the reign of Têleklus, one generation before the first Olympiad.[551] Without presuming to fill up by conjecture incurable gaps in the statements of our authorities, we may from hence reasonably presume that the Dorians were induced to invade, and enabled to acquire, Sparta, by the invitation and assistance of a party in the interior of the country. Again, with respect to the Messenian Dorians, a different, but not less effectual temptation was presented by the alliance of the Arcadians, in the south-western portion of that central region of Peloponnesus. Kresphontês, the Herakleid leader, it is said, espoused the daughter[552] of the Arcadian king, Kypselus, which procured for him the support of a powerful section of Arcadia. His settlement at Stenyklêrus was a considerable distance from the sea, at the north-east corner of Messenia,[553] close to the Arcadian frontier; and it will be seen hereafter that this Arcadian alliance is a constant and material element in the disputes of the Messenian Dorians with Sparta.
We may thus trace a reasonable sequence of events, showing how two bodies of Dorians, having first assisted the Ætolo-Eleians to conquer the Pisatid, and thus finding themselves on the banks of the Alpheius, followed the upward course of that river, the one to settle at Sparta, the other at Stenyklêrus. The historian Ephorus, from whom our scanty fragments of information respecting these early settlements are derived,—it is important to note that he lived in the age immediately succeeding the first foundation of Messênê as a city, the restitution of the long-exiled Messenians, and the amputation of the fertile western half of Laconia, for their benefit, by Epameinondas,—imparts to these proceedings an immediate decisiveness of effect which does not properly belong to them: as if the Spartans had become at once possessed of all Laconia, and the Messenians of all Messenia: Pausanias, too, speaks as if the Arcadians collectively had assisted and allied themselves with Kresphontês. This is the general spirit which pervades his account, though the particular facts in so far as we find any such, do not always harmonize with it. Now we are ignorant of the preëxisting divisions of the country, either east or west of Mount Taygetus, at the time when the Dorians invaded it. But to treat the one and the other as integral kingdoms, handed over at once to two Dorian leaders, is an illusion borrowed from the old legend, from the historicizing fancies of Ephorus, and from the fact that, in the well-known times, this whole territory came to be really united under the Spartan power.
At what date the Dorian settlements at Sparta and Stenyklêrus were effected, we have no means of determining. Yet, that there existed between them in the earliest times a degree of fraternity which did not prevail between Lacedæmon and Argos, we may fairly presume from the common temple, with joint religious sacrifices, of Artemis Limnatis, or Artemis on the Marsh, erected on the confines of Messenia and Laconia.[554] Our first view of the two, at all approaching to distinctness, seems to date from a period about half a century earlier than the first Olympiad (776 B. C.),—about the reign of king Têleklus of the Eurystheneid or Agid line, and the introduction of the Lykurgean discipline. Têleklus stands in the list as the eighth king dating from Eurysthenes. But how many of the seven kings before him are to be considered as real persons,—or how much, out of the brief warlike expeditions ascribed to them, is to be treated as authentic history,—I pretend not to define.
The earliest determinable event in the internal history of Sparta is the introduction of the Lykurgean discipline; the earliest external events are the conquest of Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ, effected by king Têleklus, and the first quarrel with the Messenians, in which that prince was slain. When we come to see how deplorably great was the confusion and ignorance which reigned with reference to a matter so preëminently important as Lykurgus and his legislation, we shall not be inclined to think that facts much less important, and belonging to an earlier epoch, can have been handed down upon any good authority. And in like manner, when we learn that Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ (all south of Sparta, and the first only two and a half miles distant from that city) were independent of the Spartans until the reign of Têleklus, we shall require some decisive testimony before we can believe that a community so small, and so hemmed in as Sparta must then have been, had in earlier times undertaken expeditions against Helos on the sea-coast, against Kleitor on the extreme northern side of Arcadia, against the Kynurians, or against the Argeians. If Helos and Kynuria were conquered by these early kings, it appears that they had to be conquered a second time by kings succeeding Têleklus. It would be more natural that we should hear when and how they conquered the places nearer to them,—Sellasia, or Belemina, the valley of the Œnus, or the upper valley of the Eurotas. But these seem to be assumed as matters of course; the proceedings ascribed to the early Spartan kings are such only as might beseem the palmy days when Sparta was undisputed mistress of all Laconia.
The succession of Messenian kings, beginning with Kresphontês, the Herakleid brother, and continuing from father to son,—Æpytus, Glaukus, Isthnius, Dotadas, Subotas, Phintas, the last being contemporary with Têleklus,—is still less marked by incident than that of the early Spartan kings. It is said that the reign of Kresphontês was troubled, and himself ultimately slain by mutinies among his subjects: Æpytus, then a youth, having escaped into Arcadia, was afterwards restored to the throne by the Arcadians, Spartans, and Argeians.[555] From Æpytus, the Messenian line of kings are stated to have been denominated Æpytids in preference to Herakleids,—which affords another proof of their intimate connection with the Arcadians, since Æpytus was a very ancient name in Arcadian heroic antiquity.[556]