Among incidental references to the Heroic Age one of the most interesting occurs in Hesiod's Works and Days (vv. 156-170), where an age of the heroes[257] who fell at Thebes and Troy is introduced between the bronze age and the iron age. Herodotus' history abounds with references to the Heroic Age, and even Thucydides refers to it not unfrequently, though in a more critical spirit. In later times we have to notice especially antiquarian writers such as Strabo and above all Pausanias. The last-named derived his information very largely from local tradition and consequently the stories which he gives may often be independent of the poems.
We may now consider briefly the chronological aspect of the Greek Heroic Age. It has already been mentioned that a passage in Hesiod's Works and Days speaks of an age of heroes intermediate between the bronze and iron ages, and that it further defines these heroes as those who fought at Thebes and Troy. To the latter number belong no doubt the various characters of the Iliad and Odyssey and the other poems (Cypria, etc.) which dealt with the Trojan cycle of legend, while the deeds of the former must have been treated in the Thebais and the Epigonoi. In the surviving Attic dramas which deal with the Heroic Age the distribution of subjects is as follows. Sixteen plays (three by Aeschylus, three by Sophocles and ten by Euripides, including the Cyclops and Rhesos) treat of the heroes of the Trojan war or their children; six plays (one by Aeschylus, three by Sophocles and two by Euripides) deal with the Theban story; and six plays (one by Sophocles and five by Euripides) are concerned with the doings of Heracles, Theseus or Iason. It is to be observed that the heroes of the Theban story are always represented as belonging to the generation immediately preceding that of the heroes of Troy, while Heracles, Theseus and Iason are all loosely connected with one another and made roughly contemporary with the Theban heroes. The remaining three plays (Aeschylus' Suppliants and Euripides' Ion and Bacchai), if we are justified in regarding them as heroic at all, refer to persons much farther back in the genealogies.
It appears then that the characters who figure most prominently in stories of the Heroic Age were, with few exceptions, ascribed to a period covering not more than three or four generations. There are, it is true, a number of stories referring to much earlier generations—in addition to those treated in the three plays mentioned above—but they seem to have been distinctly less popular than the others. On the other hand there is scarcely any reference to persons later than the children of the heroes who fought at Troy.
With the evidence at our disposal it is impossible to fix any absolute dates for the Heroic Age. All that we can say is that the end of that age appears to coincide with the movement or series of movements, traditionally known as the Return of the Heracleidai, to which the Dorian states in the Peloponnesos were believed to owe their origin. According to the story, the Return took place in the second generation after the siege of Troy, and the grandsons of Agamemnon, the Achaean leader at the siege, were killed or expelled by the Dorians. Certainly it is to be noted that the scheme of tribal or political geography presented to us in the Homeric poems seems to show no trace either of Dorians in the Peloponnesos or of Ionic settlements in the eastern Aegean—another series of movements which are said to have been brought about by the Dorian conquest.
The great majority of scholars apparently regard the story of the conquest as containing at least a nucleus of truth, though it refers to times long anterior to what we should call the historical period. The ancients themselves dated the events in question back to the twelfth or eleventh century (B.C.). But the evidence on which their conclusions were based is not of a very satisfactory character and will require careful consideration.
Before entering upon this question it will be convenient to notice briefly the scenes of the stories and the localities and peoples to which the various characters belong. The scene of the Iliad is laid in the north-west corner of Asia Minor, a short distance south of the Dardanelles. But the stories introduced incidentally refer for the most part to places on the mainland of Greece, less frequently to localities in Asia Minor or Thrace. The distribution of the principal heroes is as follows: Agamemnon's territories, according to the Catalogue of Ships (Il. II 569 ff.), lie in the north-east of the Peloponnesos, including the north-western part of what was later called Argolis and at least the eastern half of Achaia. Elsewhere (Il. IX 149 ff., 291 ff.) he appears to have possessions in Messenia. His brother, Menelaos, rules over Sparta and other places in Laconia. Nestor's kingdom is on the western side of the Peloponnesos, to the south of Elis. Idomeneus belongs to Crete, Achilles to southern Thessaly (Phthiotis), Aias, the son of Telamon, to Salamis, his namesake to the eastern Locris, Diomedes to the eastern and southern parts of Argolis and Odysseus to the Ionian Isles. It must not be overlooked that most of these districts were of little or no political importance during the historical period and, further, that the territories of the kingdoms appear not to have coincided as a rule with the political divisions which we find in later times.
The scene of the Odyssey is laid chiefly in the Ionian Isles, to a much smaller extent in the Peloponnesos. The wanderings of the hero himself appear to lie chiefly in regions to the west of Greece, though there may be reminiscences of the Black Sea. Some scholars relegate them largely or altogether to the realm of fairyland. Incidental references occur to Thesprotis (Epeiros) and the Aegean, as well as to more distant lands such as Egypt.
Thebes was doubtless the scene of the lost Thebais and Epigonoi. The story of Pelops seems to have been connected chiefly with Elis and that of Perseus with Mycenae and Tiryns, while Minos belonged to Crete and Theseus to Athens. Iason's home was in eastern Thessaly, but his story is largely taken up with journeys in the Black Sea and other distant regions. Heracles' adventures are spread over the greater part of Greece and many other lands, though Boeotia and Malis are perhaps the districts most prominent in his story. The scene of the Shield of Heracles is laid in Phthiotis.