Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/326

 810 HISTORY OF GREECE. we find embodied in the explanation of an old adage), re ing Hippotes the father of Aletes as having crossed the Malias gulf 1 (the sea immediately bordering on the ancient MaleanSj Dryopians, and Dorians) in ships, for the purpose of colonizing. And if it be safe to trust the mention of Dorians in the Odyssey, as a part of the population of the island of Crete, we there have nn example of Dorian settlements which must have been effected by sea, and that too at a very early period. " "We must suppose (observes O. Miiller, 2 in reference to these Kretan Dorians) that the Dorians, pressed by want or restless from inactivity, con- structed piratical canoes, manned these frail and narrow barks with soldiers who themselves worked at the oar, and thus being changed from mountaineers into seamen, the Normans of Greece, set sail for the distant island of Krete." In the same manner, we may conceive the expeditions of the Dorians against Argos and Corinth to have been effected ; and whatever difficul- ties may attach to this hypothesis, certain it is that the difficulties of a long land-march, along such a territory as Greece, are still more serious. The supposition of Dorian emigrations by sea, from the Ma- liac gulf to the north-eastern promontory of Peloponnesus, is farther borne out by the analogy of the Dryopes, or Dryopians. During the historical times, this people occupied several detached settlements in various parts of Greece, all maritime, and some insular; they were found at Hermione, Asine, and Eion, in the Argolic peninsula (very near to the important Dorian towns 1 Aristot. ap. Prov. Vatican, iv. 4, Mi^a/cdv K^OIOV. also. Prov. Suidaa, X. 2. 2 Hist, of Dorians, ch. i. 9. Andron positively affirms that the Dorians came from Ilistircotis to Krete ; but his affirmation does not seem to me to constitute any additional evidence of the fact : it is a conjecture adapted to the passage in the Odyssey (xix. 174), as the mention of Achaeans and Pelasgians evidently shows. Aristotle (ap. Strab. viii. p. 374) appears to have believed that the Hera- kleids returned to Argos out of the Al,tic Tetrapolis (where, according to the Athenian legend, they had obtained shelter when persecuted by Eurys- theus), accompanying a body of lonians who then settled at Epidaurus. He cannot, therefore, have connected the Dorian occupation of Argos with the expedition from Naupaktus.