Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/27

 ACH.EAN LEUEXDS ADOPTED BY THE DORIANS. n patron, Archelaus king of Macedonia: we are even told that those exploits which the usual version of the legend ascribed to Temenus, were reported in the drama of Euripides to have been performed by Archelaus his son. 1 Of all the heroes, touched upon by the three Attic tragedians, these Dorian Herakleids stand lowest in the descending genealogical series, one mark amongst others that we are approaching the ground of genuine history. Though the name Acha;ans, as denoting a people, is hence- forward confined to the North-Peloponnesian territory specially called Achaia, and to the inhabitants of Achgea, Phthiotis, north of Mount GEta, and though the great Peloponnesian states always seem to have prided themselves on the title of Dorians, yet we find the kings of Sparta, even in the historical ago, taking pains to appropriate to themselves the mythical glories of the Achseans, and to set themselves forth as the representatives of Agamemnon and Orestes. The Spartan king Kleomenes even went so far as to disavow formally any Dorian parentage ; for when the priestess at Athens refused to permit him to sacrifice in the temple of Athene, on the plea that it was peremptorily closed to all Dorians, he replied : " I am no Dorian, but an Achaean." 1 * Not only did the Spartan envoy, before Gelon of Syracuse, con- nect the indefeasible title of his country to the supreme command of the Grecian military force, with the ancient name and lofty prerogatives of Agamemnon, 3 but, in farther pursuance of the same feeling, the Spartans are said to have carried to Sparta both the bones of Orestes from Tegea, and those of Tisamenus from Helike, 4 at the injunction of the Delphian oracle. There is also a story that Oxylus in Elis was directed by the same oracle to invite into his country an Achaean, as CEkist conjointly with him- 1 Agatharchides ap. Photium, Sect. 250, p. 1332. OW ~Evpnri3ov Kari]yo- Compare the Fragments of the Trjiievidat, 'Ap^tAaof, and KpeoQovTrjf, in Dindorf 's edition of Euripides, with the illustrative remarks of AVelcker, (rriechische Tragodien, pp. 697, 708, 828. The Prologue of the Archelaus seems to have gone through the whole leries of the Herakleidan lineage, from ^Egyptus and Danaus downwards 2 Herodot. v. 72. 3 Herodot. vii. 159. 4 Bcrodot. i. C8; Pausan. vii. 1,3