Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/28

 12 HISTORY OF GREKCK self; and that he called in Agorius, the great-grandson ot Ores, tes, from Helike, with a small number of Achaeans who joined him. 1 The Dorians themselves, being singularly poor in native legends, endeavored, not unnaturally, to decorate themselves with those legendary ornaments which the Achaeans possessed in abundance. As a consequence of the Dorian establishments in Pelopon- ne~sus, several migrations of the preexisting inhabitants are rep- resented as taking place. 1. The Epeians of Elis are either expelled, or merged in the new-comers under Oxylus, and lose their separate name. 2. The Pylians, together with the great heroic family of Neleus and his son Nestor, who preside over them, give place to the Dorian establishment of Messenia, and retire to Athens, where their leader, Melanthus. becomes king : a large portion of them take part in the subsequent Ionic emigra- tion. 3. A portion of the Achasans, under Penthilus and other descendants of Orestes, leave Peloponnesus, and form what is called the .ZEolic emigration, to Lesbos, the Troad, and the Gulf of Adramyttium : the name ^Euliatis, unknown to Homer, and seemingly never applied to any separate tribe at all, being intro- duced to designate a large section of the Hellenic name, partly in Greece Proper, and partly in Asia. 4. Another portion of Aclue- ans expel the lonians from Achaia, properly so called, in the north of Peloponnesus ; the lonians retiring to Attica. The Homeric poems describe Achaeans, Pylians, and Epeians, in Peloponnesus, but take no notice of lonians in the northern district of Achaia : on the contrary, the Catalogue in the Iliad distinctly includes this territory under the dominions of Agamem- non. Though the Catalogue of Homer is not to be regarded as an historical document, fit to be called as evidence for the actual state of Peloponnesus at any prior time, it certainly seems a better authority than the statements advanced by Herodotus and others respecting the occupation of northern Peloponnesus by the loni- ans, and their expulsion from it by Tisamenus. In so far as the Catalogue is to be trusted, it negatives the idea of lonians at Helike, and countenances what seems in itself a more natural 1 Pausan. T. 4, 8.