Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/210

 194 HISTORY OF GREECE. Cape Lekton, was the second. Like so many other Grecian colo- nies, the original city of Mitylene was founded upon an islet divided from Lesbos by a narrow strait ; it was subsequently extended on to Lesbos itself, so that the harbor presented two distinct en- trances. 1 It appears that the native poets and fabulists who professed to deliver the archaeology of Lesbos, dwelt less upon the JEolic settlers than upon the various heroes and tribes who were al- leged to have had possession of the island anterior to that settle- ment, from the deluge of Deukalion downwards, just as the Chian and Samian poets seem to have dwelt principally upon the ante-Ionic antiquities of their respective islands. After the Pe- lasgian Xanthus son of Triopas, comes Makar son of Krinakus, the great native hero of the island, supposed by Plelm to be the eponym of an occupying race called the Makares : the Homeric Hymn to Apollo brings Makar into connection with the ^Eolic inhabitants by calling him son of .ZEolus, and the native historian Myrsilus also seems to have treated him as an yEolian. 2 To dwell upon such narratives suited the disposition of the Greeks ; but when we come to inquire for the history of Lesbos, we find ourselves destitute of any genuine materials, not only for the period prior to the JEolic occupation, but also for a long time after it : nor can we pretend to determine at what date that occu- pation took place. We may reasonably believe it to have occurred before 776 B. c., and it therefore becomes a part of the earliest manifestations of real Grecian history : both Kyme, with its eleven sister towns on the continent, and the islands Lesbos and Tenedos, were then ^lolic ; and I have already remarked that the migration of the father of Hesiod the poet, from the .2Eolic Kyme to Askra in Boeotia, is the earliest authentic fact known to us on contemporary testimony, seemingly between 776 and 700 B. C. 1 Diodor. xiii, 79; Strabo, xiii, p. 617 ; Thucyd. iii, 6. 8 Hymn, ad Apollin. v, 37. Ar/3of r' r^adey, MKopoc fSof AhMuvof. Myrsilns ap. Clemen. Alexandr. Protreptic. p. 19 ; Diodor. v, 57-82 ; Dionys Halik. A. R. i, 18; Stephan. Byz. v, MVTI^TJVTJ. Plehn (Lesbiaca, c. 2, pp. 25-37) has collected all tbe principal fables re- specting this Lesbian archsec Jo<ry : compare also Raoul Rochette (Ilistoir* les Colonies Grecqnes, t. i, c 5, p. If 2 etc )