Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/199

 GREECE 187 The earliest authentic traditions represent the new comers as arriving among autochthonous populations, and bringing with them religion and the arts from their primeval home. The Greeks were fond of tracing their origin back to a common ancestor, Hellen, the son of Deu- calion and Pyrrha, the survivors of the deluge ; and the great divisions of the race, the Dori- ans, ^Eolians, lonians, and Achseans, claimed to be descended from Dorus and JEolus, sons of Hellen, and Ion and Achseus, sons of Xuthus, the third son of Hellen. According to the popular belief, ^olus succeeded Hellen as king of Phthia in Thessaly, and his descendants spread over central Greece as far as the isth- mus of Corinth, and occupied the W. coast of the Peloponnesus. The Dorians, from which race the Spartans of the historic time were descended, were confined to Doris, between Thessaly and Phocis ; the lonians, the progeni- tors of the Athenians of the historic period, occupied Attica and the north of the Pelopon- nesus ; the Achaeans in the heroic age occupied Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta, in the Pelopon- nesus, and the original abode of the Hellenes in Thessaly. The first inhabitants of Greece were called Pelasgians by the Greeks them- selves, and were considered by them as a dif- ferent race from the Hellenes, with a different language. Whether the Pelasgians themselves came in from Asia, at a period beyond the reach of tradition, cannot be satisfactorily de- termined. The most consistent hypothesis is that which considers the Pelasgic populations as representing the body of the primitive in- habitants of Greece, and as having formed the basis of the subsequent nationalities. We may consider the Hellenic as representing the later and more civilized accessions, which, blending with the Pelasgic, developed that peculiar type of intellectual character which distinguished the Greek from every other ancient race. It was believed that Egyptian and Phoenician immigrants, arriving at a very early period, and bringing with them arts, culture, and re- ligious rites, from countries of a much more ancient civilization, contributed largely to this result. Thus Cecrops, according to the tra- ditions, brought civilization from Sais in Egypt to Athens ; and the name of Cecropia, borne by the Athenian Acropolis, commemorated this. Argos was founded by Danaus, who fled from Egypt with his fifty daughters, to escape the persecutions of the fifty sons of ^Egyptus. Pelops led a colony from Asia Minor, and gave the name of Peloponnesus to the S. peninsula, Cadmus came from Phoenicia to Thebes, and introduced the Phoenician art of writing. It is quite possible that all these legends may have their origin in historical facts. It is cer- tain^ that there was a frequent intercourse by sea in the earlier periods between the Greeks and Phoenicians; and the Greek alphabet, at whatever time it was introduced, is appa- rently of Phoenician origin. E. Curtius, a high authority, has recently elaborated the theory of the early lonians. (See IONIANS.) The he- roic age of Greece is the legendary period in which flourished a race of men represented as being descended from the gods, and who are called heroes, a term implying the possession of a nature superior to that of common mor- tals, as Hercules, Theseus, and Minos. In this period were placed by the poets a series of expeditions and exploits, famous in the lit- erature of Greece, as the voyage of the Argo- nauts in search of the golden fleece, the war of the seven chiefs against Thebes, the war of the Epigoni, and, last and most famous of all, the siege and capture of Troy, and the return of the heroes, which form the conclusion of the heroic age. Here, too, we may reason- ably suppose that historical facts furnished the germ of the legends ; but as the whole treat- ment of them is poetical, it is impossible to separate fact from fiction with any certainty or even probability. The poems of Homer contain all that we know of the manners and society of the heroic age ; and the general de- lineations of heroic society, as given in them, may be received as representing substantial- ly what was believed by the Greeks them- selves in the subsequent period. Among the later legends are those of the migrations of the Boeotians from Thessaly into the country called from them Bceotia, said to have taken place 60 years after the fall of Troy ; and the conquest of the Peloponnesus by the Dori- ans, placed 20 years later. They were said to have been led by the descendants of Hercules, who claimed the possession of the country as an ancestral right. This enterprise gave rise to the Dorian states of the Peloponnesus, and is known in history as the return of the Hera- clidse. The establishment of Greek colonies in Asia Minor belongs to the period following the Trojan war. The migrations appear to have continued through several ages, and were, partly at least, owing to movements and disturbances among the populations of Greece. In the course of time Greek colonies were spread over the whole W. coast of Asia Minor, and numerous cities were founded. The N. portion of the coast, with the islands of Tene- dos and Lesbos, was occupied by the ^Eolians; the lonians took the central part, with the islands of Chios, Samos, and the Cyclades ; while the S. W. corner, with the islands of Ehodes and Cos, was settled by the Dorians. The jEolian migration was the earliest, but the Ionian was the most important. There were eleven ^Eolian cities in historical times. The lonians formed twelve states united by the worship of Poseidon at the Pan-Ionic festival. The Dorians had six colonies, which formed the confederation of the Doric Hexapolis. We have no trustworthy chronology for whatever of historical events may form the basis of these traditions ; but there can be no question of the facts of such migrations having taken place, and we may assume the date of about 1000 B. C. as closing the period within which these