The Dorians crossed over from the mainland in successive troops, accompanied by their wives and children; they spread slowly over the country; but wherever they gained a footing the result was a complete transformation of the conditions of life by their agency. They brought with them their household and tribal institutions; they clung with tenacious obstinacy to their peculiarities of speech and custom; proud and shy, they held aloof from the other Greeks, and instead of becoming absorbed, as the Ionians did, into the older population, they impressed on the new home the character of their own race. The peninsula became Dorian.
But this transmutation came about in a very varied fashion; it did not start from one point, but had three chief centres. The legend of the Peloponnesus has expressed it in this wise: three brothers, Temenus, Aristodemus, and Cresphontes, who were of the race of Heracles [Hercules], the old rightful heir to the dominion of Argos, asserted the claims of their ancestor. They offered common sacrifices on the three altars of Zeus Patrous and cast lots among themselves for the various lordships in the country. Argos was the principal lot, and it fell to Temenus; Lacedæmon, the second, came to the children of Aristodemus, who were minors, whilst the beautiful Messenia passed, by craft, into the third brother’s possession.
This tale of the drawing of lots by the Heraclidæ, arose in the Peloponnesus after the states had assumed their peculiar constitution. It contains the reasons, derived from the old heroic past, for the erection of the three metropolitan towns; the mythical authority for the Peloponnesian claims of the Heraclidæ, and for the new state organisation. The historical kernel of the legend is that, from the very beginning, the Dorians represented, not the interests of their own race, but the interests of their leaders, who were not Dorians, but Achæans; this is why the god, under whose authority the division of the land was made, was none other than the ancient god of the race of Æacidæ. Further, the foundation of the legend lies in the fact that the Dorians, in order to gain possession of the three chief plains of the peninsula, divided, soon after their arrival into three hosts.
Each had its Heraclid as leader of the people. Each was composed of three races, the Hylleans, Dymanes, and Pamphylians. Each host was an image of the entire race. Thus the whole subsequent development of Peloponnesian history depended on the manner in which the different hosts now established themselves in the new regions; on the extent to which, in the midst of the ancient people of the country and in spite of the subservience of their forces to foreign leadership, they remained faithful to themselves and their native customs; and on the method by which mutual relations were established.
MESSENIA
[ca. 1100-1000 B.C.]
The new states were in part, also new territories, as was, for instance, Messenia. For in the Homeric Peloponnesus there is no country of this name: its eastern portion where the waters of the Pamisus connect a higher and lower plain with one another, belongs to the lordship of Menelaus, and the western half to the kingdom of the Neleïdes which has its centre on the coast. The Dorians came from the north into the upper plain, and there obtained a footing in Stenyclarus. Thence they spread farther and drove the Thessalian Neleïdes towards the sea. The high, island-like ocean citadel of old Navarino, seems to have been the last spot on the coast where the latter maintained themselves, till finally, being more and more closely pressed, they forsook the land for the sea. The island-plain of Stenyclarus now became the kernel of the newly-formed district, and could thence be called Messene—that is, the middle or inner country.
With the exception of this great supplanting of one nation by another the change was effected more peacefully than in most other quarters. At least the native legend knows nothing of forcible conquest. A certain portion of arable land and pasture was to be given up to the Dorians; the remainder was to be left to the inhabitants in undisturbed possession. The victorious visitors laid claim to no special and favoured position; the new princes were by no means regarded as foreign conquerors, but were received with friendliness by the nation as relatives of the ancient Æolian kings, and on account of the dislike to the house of the Pelopidæ. With full confidence they and their following settled among the Messenians, and evidently with the idea that under their protection the old and new inhabitants might peacefully amalgamate into one community.
But after this their relations did not develop in the same harmless manner. The Dorians believed themselves betrayed by their leaders, and in consequence of a Dorian reaction Cresphontes found himself compelled to overthrow the old order of things; to abolish equality before the law; to unite the Dorians in one close society in Stenyclarus, and to make this place the capital of the country, while the rest of Messenia was reduced to the position of a conquered district. The disturbances went on. Cresphontes himself became the victim of a bloody insurrection; his family were overthrown and no Cresphontidæ followed. Æpytus succeeded. He is by name and race an Arcadian, brought up in Arcadia whence he penetrated into Messenia, then on the verge of dissolution. He gave order and direction to the development of the country, and hence its subsequent kings are called Æpytidæ. But the whole direction henceforth taken by the history of the country is different, non-Dorian, unwarlike. The Æpytidæ are no soldier-princes, but creators of order, and founders of forms of religious worship. And these forms are not those of the Dorians, but decidedly non-Dorian, old Peloponnesian, like those of Demeter, Æsculapius, the Æsculapidæ. The high festival of the country was a mystery-service of the so-called “great deities” and unknown to the Dorian race, while at Ithome, the lofty citadel of the country, which raises its commanding height between the two plains of the district, ruled the Pelasgic Zeus, whose worship was considered the distinctive mark of the Messenian people.
Scanty as are the relics preserved of the history of the Messenian country, some very important facts undoubtedly underlie them. From the first a remarkable insecurity reigned in this Dorian foundation; a deep gulf between the commander of the army and the people, which had its origin in the king’s connection with the ancient pre-Achæan population. He did not succeed in founding a dynasty, for it is only in subsequent legend, which here, as in the case of all Greek pedigrees, seeks to disguise a violent break, that Æpytus is made to be the son of Cresphontes. But the warlike Dorian nation must have become so weakened by internal conflicts, that it was not in a position to assert itself; the transformation of Messenia into a Dorian country was not carried into effect, and thus the main lines of its history were determined. For rich though the district was in natural resources, uniting as it did two of the finest watersheds with a coast stretching between two seas and well provided with harbours; yet the development of the State was from the first unfortunate. There was here no complete renewal, no powerful Hellenic revival in the district.