Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/104

Rh European Greece we find the race known as the Minyæ, whose early glories are linked with the story of &quot;Jason and the Argonauts &quot; moving southward from the shores of the G.ilf of Pagasae into the valley of Like Copais, and found ing the Bteotian Orchomenus. The early greatness of Thebes is associated with the name of Cadmus, the king- priest who introduces the art of writing, who builds the citadel, who founds a system of artificial irrigation. The Achaean princes, whose chivalrous spirit id expressed in the Homeric Achilles, rule in the fertile valley of the Thessalian Phthiotis. In the Peloponnesus the Pelopidaa at Mycenae reign over Achaeans ; and Agimemnon is said to rule, not only &quot;all Argos,&quot; but &quot;many islands.&quot; The principle on which such legends as that of Agamemnon s sovereignty may best bs estimated has been well stated by Mi- Freeman : l &quot;The legend of Charlemagne, amidst infinite perversions, pre serves a certain groundwork of real history ; I should expect to lind in the legend of Agamemnon a similar groundwork of real history. There is, of course, the all-important difference that we can test the one story, and that we cannot test the other, by the certain evidence of contemporary documents. This gives us certainty in one case, while we cannot get beyond high probability in the other. . . . Later Grecian history would never lead us to believe that there had been once a single dynasty reigning, if not as sovereigns, at least as suzerains, over a large portion of insular and peninsular Greece. So lat.T mediaeval history would never L-ad us to believe thai there had once been a Latin or Teutonic emperor, whosedomiuionsatretched from the Eider to the Ebro. But we know that the Carolingian legend is thus far confirmed by history ; there is, therefore, no a priori objection to the analogous features of the Pelopid legend. The truth is that the idea of such an extensive dominion would not have occurred to a later romancer, unless some real history or tradi tion had suggested it to him. So, again, without some such ground work of history or tradition, no one would have fixed upon Mykene, a place utterly insignificant in later history, as the capital of this extensive empire. The romances have transferred the capital of Karl from Aachen to Paris ; had it really been Paris, no one would have transferred it to Aachen. . . . Whether Agamemnon be a real man or not, the combination of internal and external evidence leads us to set down the Pelopid dynasty at Mykene as an established fact.&quot;

We now come to a phase in the development of early Greece which tradition represents as following, but at no great interval, the age in which a Pelopid dynasty ruled at Mycenae and fought against Troy. This is the period of great displacements of population within the mainland of European Greece. The first of these migrations is that of the people afterwards known as Thessalians. A fierce tribe of mounted warriors, they passed from Thesprotia in Epirusover the range of Pindus, and subdued or drove out an /Eolic population who dwelt about Arm, in the fertile lowlands of southern Thessaly. Those of the /Eolians who had not submitted to the conquerors passed southward into the land thenceforth called Boaotia, where, between Orchomenus and Thebes, they founded a new home. Their conquest of Bueotia appears to have been difficult and gradual ; and even after the fall of Orchomenus and Thebes, Platsea is said to have maintained its independ ence. The legend placed these events about 1124 B.C., or sixty yeirs after the fall of Troy. About twenty years later in the mythical chronology occurs the third and more famous migration, known as the return of the Heraclidse. We need not enter here into the details of the myth. It will be enough to indicate the results to which an examina tion of the legend leads. The Dorians, migrating south ward from the highlands of Macedonia, had established themselves at the northern foot of Parnassus, in the fertile district between that range and (Eta, which was thenceforth called Doris. In setting out from these seats to conquer the Peloponnesus the Dorians were associated with other tribes. Among these were the Hylleans, who were believed to be of Achaean origin, and who traced their descent from

1 &quot;The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early English History,&quot; Essays, 1st series, p. 29.

the hero Hyllus, son of the Tirynthian Heracles. The Hyllean chiefs of the expedition represented themselves, accordingly, as seeking to reconquer that royal dominion of Heracbs in the Peloponnesus of which his descendants had been wrongfully deprived by Eurystheus. Hence the Dorian migration itself came to be called the &quot; Jleturn of the Heraclidai.&quot; The migration had two main results : (1) the Dorians, under leaders claiming Heraclid descent, overthrew the Achaean dynasties in the Peloponnesus, and either expelled or subjugated the Achaean folk ; (2) a por tion of the Achaaans, retiring northward before the Dorian invaders in the south, drove the lonians on the coast of the Corinthian Gulf out of the strip of territory which was thenceforth called Achaia; and these lonians sought refuge with their kinsfolk in Attica. It is in the nature of the heroic myths to represent changes of this kind, which may have been the gradual work of generations, as effected by sudden blows. Some comparative mythologers have main tained with much ingenuity that the &quot; Return of the Heraclidae&quot; is merely one of those alternations which balance each other in the hundred forms of the solar myth. It appears more consistent with reason to believe that there was really a great southward movement of population, which resulted in the substitution of Dorian foe Achaean ascend ency in the Peloponnesus. We cannot pretend to fix either the exact time at which it commenced or the period which was required for its completion. One thing may, however, be affirmed with probability. It cannot have been done all at once, as the myth says that it was. The displacement of the Achaeans was accomplished only by degrees, and perhaps after the lapse of centuries.

The same remark applies to those three streams of migration from European Greece to the coasts of Asia Minor, which are represented as having ensued on the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus, and which may naturally be connected with the disturbance of populations which the southward advance of the Dorians caused. The Aclueans, driven from their old seats in the south, moved northwards ; and, reinforced by yEolic kinsmen from Bceotia and Thessaly, established themselves on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, where Lesbos and Cyme became their strongholds. By degrees their dominion spread inland, until they had become masters of Mysia and the Troad. The /Eolic migration which thus created an Asiatic yEolis was unquestionably the slow work of genera tions. The immediate cause of the Ionic migration, which began later than the yEolie, appears to have been the overcrowding of Attica by the lonians driven out of Achaia. The /Eolic settlements had been the work of a people migrating in large masses. The Ionic colonization seems to have been effected rather by smaller numbers of warlike adventurers, sprung from the noble Ionian families of Attica and the Peloponnesus, who claimed to rule over the Ionic communities already established on the Asiatic coast. The Dorian colonists, following the southward direction of their previous conquests, settled on the south- west coast of Asia Minor. The islands of Cos and Rhodes received Dorian settlers ; and, after what was probably a long struggle, the Dorians subdued Crete.

While the populations had thus been settling down into the places which they were to occupy during the historical age of Greece, a movement had been in progress on the European mainland which tended to quicken among the various tribes a sanse of the unity of the race. This was the establishment of local associations among neighbouring tribes for the common worship of the same god. These associations were of a feleral character: that is, while the members of the association were independent in other matters, they were subject to a common central authority in all that concerned religious worship. Such a federal 