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 typical (perhaps in contrast to Athenians as the only genuine) Hellenes, and traces their numerous wanderings from (1) an original home “in Deucalion’s time” in Phthiotis (the Homeric “Hellas”) in south Thessaly, to (2) Histiaeotis “below Ossa and Olympus” in north-east Thessaly (note that the historic Histiaeotis is “below Pindus” in north-west Thessaly): this was “in the days of Dorus,” i.e. it is at this stage that the Dorians are regarded as becoming specifically distinct from the generic “Hellene”: thence (3) to a residence “in Pindus,” where they passed as a “Macedonian people.” Hence (4) they moved south to the Parnassian Doris, which had been held by Dryopes: and hence finally (5) to Peloponnese. Elsewhere he assigns the expulsion of the Dryopes to Heracles in co-operation not with Dorians but with Malians. Here clearly two traditions are combined:—one, in which the Dorians originated from Hellas in south Thessaly, and so are “children of Hellen”; another, in which they were a “Macedonian people” intruded from the north, from Pindus, past Histiaeotis to Doris and beyond. It is a noteworthy coincidence that in Macedonia also the royal family claimed Heracleid descent; and that “Pindus” is the name both of the mountains above Histiaeotis and of a stream in Doris. It is noteworthy also that later writers (e.g. Andron in Strabo 475) derived the Cretan Dorians of Homer from those of Histiaeotis, and that other legends connected Cretan peoples and places with certain districts of Macedon.

Thucydides agrees in regarding the Parnassian Doris as the “mother-state” of the Dorians (i. 107) and dates the invasion (as above) eighty years after the Trojan War; this agrees approximately with the pedigree of the kings of Sparta, as given by Herodotus, and with that of Hecataeus of Miletus (considered as evidence for the foundation date of an Ionian refugee-colony). Thucydides also accepts the story of Heracleid leadership.

The legend of an organized apportionment of Peloponnese amongst the Heracleid leaders appears first in the 5th-century tragedians,—not earlier, that is, than the rise of the Peloponnesian League,—and was amplified in the 4th century; the Aetolians’ aid, and claim to Elis, appear first in Ephorus. The numerous details and variant legends preserved by later writers, particularly Strabo and Pausanias, may go back to early sources (e.g. Herodotus distinguished the “local” from the “poetic” versions of events in early Spartan history); but much seems to be referable to Ephorus and the 4th-century political and rhetorical historians:—e.g. the enlarged version of the Heracleid claims in Isocrates (Archidamus, 120) and the theory that the Dorians were mere disowned Achaeans (Plato, Laws, 3). Moreover, many independent considerations suggest that in its main outlines the Dorian invasion is historical.

The Doric Dialects.—These dialects have strongly marked features in common (future in  ; 1st pers. plur. in ;  for  ;  ), but differ more among themselves than do the Ionic. Laconia with its colonies (including those in south Italy) form a clear group, in which and  lengthen to  and  as in Aeolic. Corinth (with its Sicilian colonies), the Argolid towns, and the Asiatic Doris, form another group, in which and  become  and  as in Ionic. Connected with the latter (e.g. by and  ) are the “northern” group:—Phocis, including Delphi, with Aetolia, Acarnania, Epirus and Phthiotis in south Thessaly. But these have also some forms in common with the “Aeolic” dialect of Boeotia and Thessaly, which in historic times was spoken also in Doris; Locris and Elis present similar northern “Achaean-Doric” dialects. Arcadia, on the other hand, in the heart of Peloponnese, retained till a late date a quite different dialect, akin to the ancient dialect of Cyprus, and more remotely to Aeolic. This distribution makes it clear (1) that the Doric dialects of Peloponnese represent a superstratum, more recent than the speech of Arcadia; (2) that Laconia and its colonies preserve features alike,  and  which are common to southern Doric and Aeolic; (3) that those parts of “Dorian” Greece in which tradition makes the pre-Dorian population “Ionic,” and in which the political structure shows that the conquered were less completely subjugated, exhibit the Ionic and  ; (4) that as we go north, similar though more barbaric dialects extend far up the western side of central-northern Greece, and survive also locally in the highlands of south Thessaly; (5) that east of the watershed Aeolic has prevailed over the area which has legends of a Boeotian and Thessalian migration, and replaces Doric in the northern Doris. All this points on the one hand to an intrusion of Doric dialect into an Arcadian-and-Ionic-speaking area; on the other hand to a subsequent expansion of Aeolic over the north-eastern edge of an area which once was Dorian. But this distribution does not by itself prove that Doric speech was the language of the Dorian invaders. Its area coincides also approximately with that of the previous Achaean conquests; and if the Dorians were as backward culturally as traditions and archaeology suggest, it is not improbable that they soon adopted the language of the conquered, as the Norman conquerors did in England. As evidence of an intrusion of northerly folk, however, the distribution of dialects remains important. See.

The common calendar and cycle of festivals, observed by all Dorians (of which the Carneia was chief), and the distribution in Greece of the worships of Apollo and Heracles, which attained pre-eminence mainly in or near districts historically “Dorian,” suggest that these cults, or an important element in them, were introduced comparatively late, and represent the beliefs of a fresh ethnic superstratum. The steady dependence of Sparta on the Delphic oracle, for example, is best explained as an observance inherited from Parnassian ancestors.

The social and political structure of the Dorian states of Peloponnese presupposes likewise a conquest of an older highly civilized population by small bands of comparatively barbarous raiders. Sparta in particular remained, even after the reforms of Lycurgus, and on into historic times, simply the isolated camp of a compact army of occupation, of some 5000 families, bearing traces still of the fusion of several bands of invaders, and maintained as an exclusive political aristocracy of professional soldiers by the labour of a whole population of agricultural and industrial serfs. The serfs were rigidly debarred from intermixture or social advancement, and were watched by their masters with a suspicion fully justified by recurrent ineffectual revolts. The other states, such as Argos and Corinth, exhibited just such compromises between conquerors and conquered as the legends described, conceding to the older population, or to sections of it, political incorporation more or less incomplete. The Cretan cities, irrespective of origin, exhibit serfage, militant aristocracy, rigid martial discipline of all citizens, and other marked analogies with Sparta; but the Asiatic Dorians and the other Dorian colonies do not differ appreciably in their social and political history from their Ionian and Aeolic neighbours. Tarentum alone, partly from Spartan origin, partly through stress of local conditions, shows traces of militant asceticism for a while.

Archaeological evidence points clearly now to the conclusion that the splendid but overgrown civilization of the Mycenaean or “late Minoan” period of the Aegean Bronze Age collapsed rather suddenly before a rapid succession of assaults by comparatively barbarous invaders from the European mainland north of the Aegean; that these invaders passed partly by way of Thrace and the Hellespont into Asia Minor, partly by Macedon and Thessaly into peninsular Greece and the Aegean islands; that in east Peloponnese and Crete, at all events, a first shock (somewhat later than 1500 ) led to the establishment of a cultural, social and political situation which in many respects resembles what is depicted in Homer as the “Achaean” age, with principal centres in Rhodes, Crete, Laconia, Argolis, Attica, Orchomenus and south-east Thessaly; and that this régime was itself shattered by a second shock or series of shocks somewhat earlier than 1000 These latter events correspond in character and date with the traditional irruption of the Dorians and their associates.

The nationality of these invaders is disputed. Survival of fair hair and complexion and light eyes among the upper classes in Thebes and some other localities shows that the blonde type of mankind which is characteristic of north-western Europe had already penetrated into Greek lands before classical times; but