Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/46

 30 HISTORY OF GREECE would otherwise be a contradiction in the legendary chronol- ogy- 1 Another Dorian emigration from Peloponnesus to Krete, which extended also to Rhodes and Kos, is farther said to have been conducted by Althoemenes, who had been one of the chiefs in the expedition against Attica, in which Krodus perished. This prince, a Hcrakleid, and third in descent from Temenus, was in- duced to expatriate by a family quarrel, and conducted a body of Dorian colonists from Argos first to Krete, where some of them remained ; but the greater number accompanied him to Rhodes, in which island, after expelling the Karian possessors, he founded the three cities of Lindus, lalysus, and Kameirus. 2 It is proper here to add, that the legend of the Rhodian archae- ologists respecting their oekist Althoemenes, who was worshipped in the island with heroic honors, was something totally different from the preceding. Althsemenes was a Kretan, son of the king Katreus, and grandson of Minos. An oracle predicted to him that he would one day kill his father : eager to escape so igrrible a destiny, he quitted Krete, and conducted a colony to Rhodes, where the famous temple of the Atabyrian Zeus, on the lofty summit of Mount Atabyrum, was ascribed to his foundation, built so as to command a view of Krete. He had been settled on the island for some time, when his father Katreus, anxious again to embrace his only son, followed him from Krete : he landed ia Rhodes during the night without being known, and a casual collis- ion took place between his attendants and the islanders. Althse- menes hastened to the shore to assist in repelling the supposed enemies, and in the fray had the misfortune to kill his aged father.3 Either the emigrants who accompanied Althrernenes, or some 1 See Diodor, iv. 60 ; v. 80. From Strabo, (I. c.) however, we sec that others rejected the story of Andron. O. Mailer (History of the Dorians, b. i. c. 1, 9) accepts the story as sub- stantially true, putting aside the name Dorus, and even regards it as certain that Minos of Knossus was a Dorian ; but the evidence with which he sup- ports this conclusion appears to me loose and fanciful. 1 Diodor. v. 59 ; Apollodor. iii. ?,, 3. In the Chnpter next but one preceding
 * Conon, Narrat. 47 ; Ephorus, Fragm. 62, ed. Marx.