Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/377

Rh klês, and were therefore, in their own belief, descended from Hêraklês himself: we may suppose the Herakleids, specially so called, comprising the two regal families, to have been the elder brethren of the tribe of Hylleis, the whole of whom are sometimes spoken of as Herakleids, or descendants of Hêraklês. But there seem to have been also at Sparta, as in other Dorian towns, non-Dorian inhabitants, apart from these three tribes, and embodied in tribes of their own. One of these, the Ægeids, said to have come from Thebes as allies of the Dorian invaders, is named by Aristotle, Pindar, and Herodotus, —while the Ægialeis at Sikyôn, the tribe Hyrnêthia at Argos and Epidaurus, and others, whose titles we do not know, at Corinth, represent, in like manner, the non-Dorian portions of their respective communities. At Corinth, the total number of tribes is said to have been eight. But at Sparta, though AVC seem to make out the existence of the three Dorian tribes, we do not know how many tribes there were in all: still less do we know what relation the Obæ, or Obes, another subordinate distribution of the people, bore to the tribes. In the ancient Rhetra of Lykurgus, the Tribes and Obés are directed to be maintained unaltered: but the statement of O. Müller and Boeckh that there were thirty