Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/119

 98 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. up later by Sparta to extend a kind of protectorate over the holy city, in virtue of her right to be considered as the pre-eminently Dorian commonwealth. It would appear that the names Hellenes and Hellas assumed now for the first time the character of an ethnical denomination. Accordingly the term Hellenes covered all the tribes that took part in the association, and Hellas the whole territory inhabited by them. In their passage through Peloponnesus, in their dispersion around the iCgean, Dorians and their auxiliaries alike carried this denomination in after days, and popularized it everywhere. The extent of the territory occupied by the Dorians in that contracted Greece of which Delphi was the centre, bore no relation to the superior situation they had carved for themselves, or to the ambitious designs suggested by the consciousness of their numerical strength and integrity. Hence the desire to push further their conquests awoke in them with irresistible force. There never lived, says Herodotus, a more roving race than the Dorians.* Over the mountains which could be descried from the southern sides of Parnassus, rising on the further shore of the bay, stretched away the Achaean states of Peloponnesus, and the rumour of their wealth excited the best of the Dorian clans. They too were led by chieftains who claimed Achaean descent, and who now put forward claims upon the royal domains which they pretended to have received from their illustrious ancestor Heracles, unjustly deprived of his rights by Eurystheus. In its legendary form the tale of the successive invasions of these clans, and their final subjection of the whole peninsula, is known as the " return of the Heracleids." ^ The four Doric hamlets were not forsaken ; but a host went forth, to swell whose numbers mountaineers poured down from all the surrounding districts, induced to join the expedition for the sake of plunder or adventure.^ They first tried to force a passage through Attica ; and Hyllus is supposed to have advanced as far as the isthmus, where he was slain in single combat by Echimus of Tegea.* ' Herodotus: AwptKov yivoq icoKvnXavriTov K&pra, ^ *H rcJv HpaicXeih^y jcdOoSoc (Strabo). The main Dorian tribe paid honour to Hyllus, as their ancestor and the son of the Tirynthian Heracles. ^ The third Doric tribe was called " Pamphylian," because it was made up of folk of different race and origin.
 * Herodotus.