Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/196

 164 HISTORY OP GREECE. earned pardon for the murder of his mother, and upon his de- voted friendship for Pylades ; they wove many interesting tales, too, respecting his sisters Iphigeneia and Elektra and his cousin Hermione, names which have become naturalized in every climate and incorporated with every form of poetry. These poets did not at all scruple to depart from Homer, and to give other genealogies of their own, with respect to the chief persons of the Pelopid family. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Aga- memnon is son of Atreus : in the Hesiodic Eoiai and in Stesicho- rus, he is son of Plsisthenes the son of Atreus. 1 In Homer, he is specially marked as reigning at Mykense ; but Stesichorus, Si monides and Pindar 2 represented him as having both resided and perished at Sparta or at Amyklas. According to the ancient Cyprian Verses, Helen was represented as the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis : in one of the Hesiodic poems she was introduced as an Oceanic nymph, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. 3 The genealogical discrepancies, even as to the persons of the principal heroes and heroines, are far too numerous to be cited, nor is it necessary to advert to them, except as they bear upon the un- availing attempt to convert such legendary parentage into a basi? of historical record or chronological calculation. The Homeric poems probably represent that form of the le- gend, respecting Agamemnon and Orestes, which was current and popular among the ^Eolic colonists. Orestes was the great heroic chief of the ^Eolic emigration ; he, or his sons, or his de- scendants, are supposed to have conducted the Achgeans to seek 1 Hesiod. Fragtn. 60. p. 44, cd. Dantzer; Stesichor. Fragm. 44, Kleine. The Scholiast ad Soph. Elektr. 539, in reference to another discrepancy be- tween Homer and the Hesiodic poems about the children of Helen, remarks that we ought not to divert our attention from that which is moral and sal- utary to ourselves in the poets (T& T/'&IKU Kalxpf)ot.[i.a.r][uv rolf Ivrvyxuvovot), in order to cavil at their genealogical contradictions. Welcker in vain endeavors to show that Pleisthenes was originally intro- duced as the father of Atreus, not as his son (Griech. Tragod. p. 678). 2 Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 40. "Opqpoc kv JJLvn^vatf tpijai r& paaiAela TOV 'Aya/ie/^vovof SriyoY^opof <5e Kal S'./iuvidqc, Iv AaKetiaifiovip. Pindar, Pyth. xi. 31 ; Nem. viii. 21. Stesichorns had composed an 'Opeareia, copied in many points from a still more ancient lyric Oresteia by Xanthus : compare Athen. xii. p. 513, and JElian, V. II. ir. 26. 3 Heaiod, ap. Schol. ad Pindar, Nem. x. 150.