The line of Danae.
In this passage we have Danae exhibited as the head of a line of sovereigns through Perseus, who occupied the most ancient and most distinguished seat of power in Greece, that of the Eastern Peloponnesus. From her, indeed, the derivation of sovereignty is locally continuous down to the time of Homer. Perseus is the father of Sthenelus[627], and Sthenelus of Eurystheus. Next to him, we find Pelops in possession of the throne, with a new sceptre, betokening a new sovereignty. That is to say, he was no longer a merely local sovereign, whose highest honour it was to be first in that class, primus inter pares; but he had also acquired an extensive supremacy, reaching beyond his own borders, or those of the Achaic Argos, and embracing all Greece, with a multitude of islands[628].
Such is the line of Danae downwards: beginning with a son, whose paternal extraction we shall consider hereafter[629]. And her epoch, as we shall see, is six generations before the Trojan war. For tracing her upwards, we have no means from Homer, except such as are afforded by the word Ἀκρισιώνη. The use of a patronymic which describes Danae as the daughter (most probably) of Acrisius, in some degree makes it likely that Acrisius either was the brother of Danaus, or otherwise collaterally related, rather than directly descended from him. For, had Danae herself been descended from Danaus, it seems improbable that she would have drawn her patronymic from the less distinguished Acrisius, unless Danaus was a very remote ancestor. But this is very improbable: for seven generations before Troy form the utmost limit of Homer’s historical knowledge; and where all besides falls within that line, it is improbable that there should be a single exception reaching greatly beyond it. And again, from the course of migration, it is likely that we should find his oldest traditions in Asia, and not in Europe. On the other hand, that Homer should stop short in tracing the lineage onwards, just before he came to the foreign immigrant, is in exact conformity with what he has done in omitting to connect Œdipus and Epicaste[630] with Cadmus, or Pelops with Tantalus. In the former of these two cases, the omission all the more cogently suggests design, because Epicaste is the only woman introduced in the Νεκυΐα without mention of her husband, among all those, eight in number, of whose cases he gives us the detail. It is most probable, therefore, that Homer meant the genealogy to stand as follows: and at the least, it must not be thought that the text of Homer gives countenance either directly or indirectly to those later fables, which throw back the first Greek dynasties into a very remote antiquity.
1. Danaus = Acrisius
|
2. Danae
3. Perseus
4. Sthenelus
5. Eurystheus (= Hercules) = Pelops
6. Atreus = Thyestes
7. Agamemnon = Ægisthus.
Epoch of the dynasty.
According to these presumptions, Danaus is contemporary with Dardanus[631]: and also is just such a person as Homer’s poetic use of the name Δαναοὶ would lead us to expect; one who came from abroad, and is on that account kept in majestic shadow; one who founded a throne, but did not introduce a race: one who may have given his people the name of Δαναοὶ, as Cadmus gave that of Καδμεῖοι, for the time while his dynasty was in power, but whose name disappeared, together with its sway. We have, it will be remembered in Homer, no Homeric legends of the period of the Danaids, so that we do not know whether the name Δαναοὶ was then in any degree national or not.
According to the post-Homeric tradition, Danaus was an Egyptian[632], brother of Ægyptus. He migrated into Greece, and became king of Argos. Acrisius and Prœtus were reputed to be his great-grandsons.
In Homer, too, we have an Acrisius and a Prœtus: but Prœtus is contemporary with Bellerophon, two generations before the Troica, so that he is later by four generations than Acrisius, and later by at least four than Danaus.
The more recent tradition, contradicting Homer positively in this, as in so many instances, carries Prœtus back to the time of Acrisius, and then, paying some respect to the interval between Prœtus and Danaus, gives compensation by thrusting Danaus himself three generations further back.