Читать книгу History of Greece (Vol. 1-12) - Grote George - Страница 53

In one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the descending series of the two most distinguished mythical families in Peloponnêsus,—the Perseids and the Pelopids: we have followed the former down to Hêraklês and his son Hyllus, and the latter down to Orestês son of Agamemnôn, who is left in possession of that ascendancy in the peninsula which had procured for his father the chief command in the Trojan war. The Herakleids, or sons of Hêraklês, on the other hand, are expelled fugitives, dependent upon foreign aid or protection: Hyllus had perished in single combat with Echemus of Tegea, (connected with the Pelopids by marriage with Timandra sister of Klytæmnêstra,1) and a solemn compact had been made, as the preliminary condition of this duel, that no similar attempt at an invasion of the peninsula should be undertaken by his family for the space of one hundred years. At the end of the stipulated period the attempt was renewed, and with complete success; but its success was owing, not so much to the valor of the invaders as to a powerful body of new allies. The Herakleids reappear as leaders and companions of the Dorians,—a northerly section of the Greek name, who now first come into importance,—poor, indeed, in mythical renown, since they are never noticed in the Iliad, and only once casually mentioned in the Odyssey, as a fraction among the many-tongued inhabitants of Krête,—but destined to form one of the grand and predominant elements throughout all the career of historical Hellas.

The son of Hyllus—Kleodæus—as well as his grandson Aristomachus, were now dead, and the lineage of Hêraklês was represented by the three sons of the latter,—Têmenus, Kresphontês, and Aristodêmus, and under their conduct the Dorians penetrated into the peninsula. The mythical account traced back this intimate union between the Herakleids and the Dorians to a prior war, in which Hêraklês himself had rendered inestimable aid to the Dorian king Ægimius, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest with the Lapithæ. Hêraklês defeated the Lapithæ, and slew their king Korônus; in return for which Ægimius assigned to his deliverer one third part of his whole territory, and adopted Hyllus as his son. Hêraklês desired that the territory thus made over might be held in reserve until a time should come when his descendants might stand in need of it; and that time did come, after the death of Hyllus, (see Chap. V.) Some of the Herakleids then found shelter at Trikorythus in Attica, but the remainder, turning their steps towards Ægimius, solicited from him the allotment of land which had been promised to their valiant progenitor. Ægimius received them according to his engagement, and assigned to them the stipulated third portion of his territory:2 and from this moment the Herakleids and Dorians became intimately united together into one social communion. Pamphylus and Dymas, sons of Ægimius, accompanied Têmenus and his two brothers in their invasion of Peloponnêsus.

Such is the mythical incident which professes to explain the origin of those three tribes into which all the Dorian communities were usually divided,—the Hyllêis, the Pamphyli, and the Dymanes,—the first of the three including certain particular families, such as that of the kings of Sparta, who bore the special name of Herakleids. Hyllus, Pamphylus, and Dymas are the eponymous heroes of the three Dorian tribes.

Têmenus and his two brothers resolved to attack Peloponnêsus, not by a land-march along the Isthmus, such as that in which Hyllus had been previously slain, but by sea, across the narrow inlet between the promontories of Rhium and Antirrhium, with which the Gulf of Corinth commences. According to one story, indeed,—which, however, does not seem to have been known to Herodotus,—they are said to have selected this line of march by the express direction of the Delphian god, who vouchsafed to expound to them an oracle which had been delivered to Hyllus in the ordinary equivocal phraseology. Both the Ozolian Lokrians, and the Ætolians, inhabitants of the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth, were favorable to the enterprise, and the former granted to them a port for building their ships, from which memorable circumstance the port ever afterwards bore the name of Naupaktus. Aristodêmus was here struck with lightning and died, leaving twin sons, Eurysthenês and Proklês; but his remaining brothers continued to press the expedition with alacrity.

At this juncture, an Akarnanian prophet named Karnus presented himself in the camp3 under the inspiration of Apollo, and uttered various predictions: he was, however, so much suspected of treacherous collusion with the Peloponnesians, that Hippotês, great-grandson of Hêraklês through Phylas and Antiochus, slew him. His death drew upon the army the wrath of Apollo, who destroyed their vessels and punished them with famine. Têmenus, in his distress, again applying to the Delphian god for succor and counsel, was made acquainted with the cause of so much suffering, and was directed to banish Hippotês for ten years, to offer expiatory sacrifice for the death of Karnus, and to seek as the guide of the army a man with three eyes.4 On coming back to Naupaktus, he met the Ætolian Oxylus, son of Andræmôn, returning to his country, after a temporary exile in Elis, incurred for homicide: Oxylus had lost one eye, but as he was seated on a horse, the man and the horse together made up the three eyes required, and he was adopted as the guide prescribed by the oracle.5 Conducted by him, they refitted their ships, landed on the opposite coast of Achaia, and marched to attack Tisamenus son of Orestês, then the great potentate of the peninsula. A decisive battle was fought, in which the latter was vanquished and slain, and in which Pamphylus and Dymas also perished. This battle made the Dorians so completely masters of the Peloponnêsus, that they proceeded to distribute the territory among themselves. The fertile land of Elis had been by previous stipulation reserved for Oxylus, as a recompense for his services as conductor: and it was agreed that the three Herakleids,—Têmenus, Kresphontês, and the infant sons of Aristodêmus,—should draw lots for Argos, Sparta, and Messênê. Argos fell to Têmenus, Sparta to the sons of Aristodêmus, and Messênê to Kresphontês; the latter having secured for himself this prize, the most fertile territory of the three, by the fraud of putting into the vessel out of which the lots were drawn, a lump of clay instead of a stone, whereby the lots of his brothers were drawn out while his own remained inside. Solemn sacrifices were offered by each upon this partition: but as they proceeded to the ceremony, a miraculous sign was seen upon the altar of each of the brothers,—a toad corresponding to Argos, a serpent to Sparta, and a fox to Messênê. The prophets, on being consulted, delivered the import of these mysterious indications: the toad, as an animal slow and stationary, was an evidence that the possessor of Argos would not succeed in enterprises beyond the limits of his own city; the serpent denoted the aggressive and formidable future reserved to Sparta; the fox prognosticated a career of wile and deceit to the Messenian.

Such is the brief account given by Apollodôrus of the Return of the Herakleids, at which point we pass, as if touched by the wand of a magician, from mythical to historical Greece. The story bears on the face of it the stamp, not of history, but of legend,—abridged from one or more of the genealogical poets,6 and presenting such an account as they thought satisfactory, of the first formation of the great Dorian establishments in Peloponnêsus, as well as of the semi-Ætolian Elis. Its incidents are so conceived as to have an explanatory bearing on Dorian institutions,—upon the triple division of tribes, characteristic of the Dorians,—upon the origin of the great festival of the Karneia at Sparta, alleged to be celebrated in expiation of the murder of Karnus,—upon the different temper and character of the Dorian states among themselves,—upon the early alliance of the Dorians with Elis, which contributed to give ascendency and vogue to the Olympic games,—upon the reverential dependence of Dorians towards the Delphian oracle,—and, lastly, upon the etymology of the name Naupaktus. If we possessed the narrative more in detail, we should probably find many more examples of coloring of the legendary past suitable to the circumstances of the historical present.

Above all, this legend makes out in favor of the Dorians and their kings a mythical title to their Peloponnesian establishments; Argos, Sparta, and Messênê are presented as rightfully belonging, and restored by just retribution, to the children of Hêraklês. It was to them that Zeus had specially given the territory of Sparta; the Dorians came in as their subjects and auxiliaries.7 Plato gives a very different version of the legend, but we find that he, too, turns the story in such a manner as to embody a claim of right on the part of the conquerors. According to him, the Achæans, who returned from the capture of Troy, found among their fellow-citizens at home—the race which had grown up during their absence—an aversion to readmit them: after a fruitless endeavor to make good their rights, they were at last expelled, but not without much contest and bloodshed. A leader named Dorieus, collected all these exiles into one body, and from him they received the name of Dorians instead of Achæans; then marching back, under the conduct of the Herakleids into Peloponnêsus, they recovered by force the possessions from which they had been shut out, and constituted the three Dorian establishments under the separate Herakleid brothers, at Argos, Sparta, and Messênê. These three fraternal dynasties were founded upon a scheme of intimate union and sworn alliance one with the other, for the purpose of resisting any attack which might be made upon them from Asia,8 either by the remaining Trojans or by their allies. Such is the story as Plato believed it; materially different in the incidents related, yet analogous in mythical feeling, and embodying alike the idea of a rightful reconquest. Moreover, the two accounts agree in representing both the entire conquest and the triple division of Dorian Peloponnêsus as begun and completed in one and the same enterprise,—so as to constitute one single event, which Plato would probably have called the Return of the Achæans, but which was commonly known as the Return of the Herakleids. Though this is both inadmissible and inconsistent with other statements which approach close to the historical times, yet it bears every mark of being the primitive view originally presented by the genealogical poets: the broad way in which the incidents are grouped together, was at once easy for the imagination to follow, and impressive to the feelings.

The existence of one legendary account must never be understood as excluding the probability of other accounts, current at the same time, but inconsistent with it: and many such there were as to the first establishment of the Peloponnesian Dorians. In the narrative which I have given from Apollodôrus, conceived apparently under the influence of Dorian feelings, Tisamenus is stated to have been slain in the invasion. But according to another narrative, which seems to have found favor with the historical Achæans on the north coast of Peloponnêsus, Tisamenus, though expelled by the invaders from his kingdom of Sparta or Argos, was not slain: he was allowed to retire under agreement, together with a certain portion of his subjects, and he directed his steps towards the coast of Peloponnêsus south of the Corinthian Gulf, then occupied by the Ionians. As there were relations, not only of friendship, but of kindred origin, between Ionians and Achæans, (the eponymous heroes Iôn and Achæus pass for brothers, both sons of Xuthus), Tisamenus solicited from the Ionians admission for himself and his fellow-fugitives into their territory. The leading Ionians declining this request, under the apprehension that Tisamenus might be chosen as sovereign over the whole, the latter accomplished his object by force. After a vehement struggle, the Ionians were vanquished and put to flight, and Tisamenus thus acquired possession of Helikê, as well as of the northern coast of the peninsula, westward from Sikyôn; which coast continued to be occupied by the Achæans, and received its name from them, throughout all the historical times. The Ionians retired to Attica, many of them taking part in what is called the Ionic emigration to the coast of Asia Minor, which followed shortly after. Pausanias, indeed, tells us that Tisamenus, having gained a decisive victory over the Ionians, fell in the engagement,9 and did not himself live to occupy the country of which his troops remained masters. But this story of the death of Tisamenus seems to arise from a desire, on the part of Pausanias, to blend together into one narrative two discrepant legends; at least the historical Achæans in later times continued to regard Tisamenus himself as having lived and reigned in their territory, and as having left a regal dynasty which lasted down to Ogygês,10 after whom it was exchanged for a popular government.11

The conquest of Têmenus, the eldest of the three Herakleids, originally comprehended only Argos and its neighborhood; it was from thence that Trœzen, Epidaurus, Ægina, Sikyôn, and Phlius were successfully occupied by Dorians, the sons and son-in-law of Têmenus—Deiphontês, Phalkês, and Keisus—being the leaders under whom this was accomplished.12 At Sparta, the success of the Dorians was furthered by the treason of a man named Philonomus, who received as recompense the neighboring town and territory of Amyklæ.13 Messênia is said to have submitted without resistance to the dominion of the Herakleid Kresphontês, who established his residence at Stenyklêrus: the Pylian Melanthus, then ruler of the country, and representative of the great mythical lineage of Nêleus and Nestôr, withdrew with his household gods and with a portion of his subjects to Attica.14

The only Dorian establishment in the peninsula not directly connected with the triple partition is Corinth, which is said to have been Dorized somewhat later and under another leader, though still a Herakleid. Hippotês—descendant of Hêraklês in the fourth generation, but not through Hyllus,—had been guilty (as already mentioned) of the murder of Karnus the prophet at the camp of Naupaktus, for which he had been banished and remained in exile for ten years; his son deriving the name of Alêtês from the long wanderings endured by the father. At the head of a body of Dorians, Alêtês attacked Corinth: he pitched his camp on the Solygeian eminence near the city, and harassed the inhabitants with constant warfare until he compelled them to surrender. Even in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the Corinthians professed to identify the hill on which the camp of these assailants had been placed. The great mythical dynasty of the Sisyphids was expelled, and Alêtês became ruler and Œkist of the Dorian city; many of the inhabitants, however, Æolic or Ionic, departed.15

The settlement of Oxylus and his Ætolians in Elis is said by some to have been accomplished with very little opposition; the leader professing himself to be descended from Ætolus, who had been in a previous age banished from Elis into Ætôlia, and the two people, Epeians and Ætolians, acknowledging a kindred origin one with the other.16 At first, indeed, according to Ephorus, the Epeians appeared in arms, determined to repel the intruders, but at length it was agreed on both sides to abide the issue of a single combat. Degmenus, the champion of the Epeians, confided in the long shot of his bow and arrow; but the Ætolian Pyræchmês came provided with his sling,—a weapon then unknown and recently invented by the Ætolians,—the range of which was yet longer than that of the bow of his enemy: he thus killed Degmenus, and secured the victory to Oxylus and his followers. According to one statement, the Epeians were expelled; according to another, they fraternized amicably with the new-comers: whatever may be the truth as to this matter, it is certain that their name is from this moment lost, and that they never reappear among the historical elements of Greece:17 we hear from this time forward only of Eleians, said to be of Ætolian descent.18

One most important privilege was connected with the possession of the Eleian territory by Oxylus, coupled with his claim on the gratitude of the Dorian kings. The Eleians acquired the administration of the temple at Olympia, which the Achæans are said to have possessed before them; and in consideration of this sacred function, which subsequently ripened into the celebration of the great Olympic games, their territory was solemnly pronounced to be inviolable. Such was the statement of Ephorus:19 we find, in this case as in so many others, that the Return of the Herakleids is made to supply a legendary basis for the historical state of things in Peloponnêsus.

It was the practice of the great Attic tragedians, with rare exceptions, to select the subjects of their composition from the heroic or legendary world, and Euripidês had composed three dramas, now lost, on the adventures of Têmenus with his daughter Hyrnethô and his son-in-law Dêiphontês,—on the family misfortunes of Kresphontês and Meropê,—and on the successful valor of Archelaus the son of Têmenus in Macedonia, where he was alleged to have first begun the dynasty of the Temenid kings. Of these subjects the first and second were eminently tragical, and the third, relating to Archelaus, appears to have been undertaken by Euripidês in compliment to his contemporary sovereign and patron, Archelaus king of Macedonia: we are even told that those exploits which the usual version of the legend ascribed to Têmenus, were reported in the drama of Euripidês to have been performed by Archelaus his son.20 Of all the heroes, touched upon by the three Attic tragedians, these Dorian Herakleids stand lowest in the descending genealogical series,—one mark amongst others that we are approaching the ground of genuine history.

Though the name Achæans, as denoting a people, is henceforward confined to the North-Peloponnesian territory specially called Achaia, and to the inhabitants of Achæa, Phthiôtis, north of Mount Œta,—and though the great Peloponnesian states always seem to have prided themselves on the title of Dorians,—yet we find the kings of Sparta, even in the historical age, taking pains to appropriate to themselves the mythical glories of the Achæans, and to set themselves forth as the representatives of Agamemnôn and Orestês. The Spartan king Kleomenês even went so far as to disavow formally any Dorian parentage; for when the priestess at Athens refused to permit him to sacrifice in the temple of Athênê, on the plea that it was peremptorily closed to all Dorians, he replied: “I am no Dorian, but an Achæan.”21 Not only did the Spartan envoy, before Gelôn of Syracuse, connect the indefeasible title of his country to the supreme command of the Grecian military force, with the ancient name and lofty prerogatives of Agamemnôn,22—but, in farther pursuance of the same feeling, the Spartans are said to have carried to Sparta both the bones of Orestês from Tegea, and those of Tisamenus from Helikê,23 at the injunction of the Delphian oracle. There is also a story that Oxylus in Elis was directed by the same oracle to invite into his country an Achæan, as Œkist conjointly with himself; and that he called in Agorius, the great-grandson of Orestês, from Helikê, with a small number of Achæans who joined him.24 The Dorians themselves, being singularly poor in native legends, endeavored, not unnaturally, to decorate themselves with those legendary ornaments which the Achæans possessed in abundance.

As a consequence of the Dorian establishments in Peloponnêsus, several migrations of the preëxisting inhabitants are represented as taking place. 1. The Epeians of Elis are either expelled, or merged in the new-comers under Oxylus, and lose their separate name. 2. The Pylians, together with the great heroic family of Nêleus and his son Nestôr, who preside over them, give place to the Dorian establishment of Messênia, and retire to Athens, where their leader, Melanthus, becomes king: a large portion of them take part in the subsequent Ionic emigration. 3. A portion of the Achæans, under Penthilus and other descendants of Orestês, leave Peloponnêsus, and form what is called the Æolic emigration, to Lesbos, the Trôad, and the Gulf of Adramyttium: the name Æolians, unknown to Homer, and seemingly never applied to any separate tribe at all, being introduced to designate a large section of the Hellenic name, partly in Greece Proper, and partly in Asia. 4. Another portion of Achæans expel the Ionians from Achaia, properly so called, in the north of Peloponnêsus; the Ionians retiring to Attica.

The Homeric poems describe Achæans, Pylians, and Epeians, in Peloponnêsus, but take no notice of Ionians in the northern district of Achaia: on the contrary, the Catalogue in the Iliad distinctly includes this territory under the dominions of Agamemnôn. Though the Catalogue of Homer is not to be regarded as an historical document, fit to be called as evidence for the actual state of Peloponnêsus at any prior time, it certainly seems a better authority than the statements advanced by Herodotus and others respecting the occupation of northern Peloponnêsus by the Ionians, and their expulsion from it by Tisamenus. In so far as the Catalogue is to be trusted, it negatives the idea of Ionians at Helikê, and countenances what seems in itself a more natural supposition,—that the historical Achæans in the north part of Peloponnêsus are a small undisturbed remnant of the powerful Achæan population once distributed throughout the peninsula, until it was broken up and partially expelled by the Dorians.

The Homeric legends, unquestionably the oldest which we possess, are adapted to a population of Achæans, Danaans, and Argeians, seemingly without any special and recognized names, either aggregate or divisional, other than the name of each separate tribe or kingdom. The post-Homeric legends are adapted to a population classified quite differently,—Hellens, distributed into Dorians, Ionians, and Æolians. If we knew more of the time and circumstances in which these different legends grew up, we should probably be able to explain their discrepancy; but in our present ignorance we can only note the fact.

Whatever difficulty modern criticism may find in regard to the event called “The Return of the Herakleids,” no doubt is expressed about it even by the best historians of antiquity. Thucydidês accepts it as a single and literal event, having its assignable date, and carrying at one blow the acquisition of Peloponnêsus. The date of it he fixes as eighty years after the capture of Troy. Whether he was the original determiner of this epoch, or copied it from some previous author, we do not know. It must have been fixed according to some computation of generations, for there were no other means accessible,—probably by means of the lineage of the Herakleids, which, as belonging to the kings of Sparta, constituted the most public and conspicuous thread of connection between the Grecian real and mythical world, and measured the interval between the Siege of Troy itself and the first recorded Olympiad. Hêraklês himself represents the generation before the siege, and his son Tlepolemus fights in the besieging army. If we suppose the first generation after Hêraklês to commence with the beginning of the siege, the fourth generation after him will coincide with the ninetieth year after the same epoch; and therefore, deducting ten years for the duration of the struggle, it will coincide with the eightieth year after the capture of the city;25 thirty years being reckoned for a generation. The date assigned by Thucydidês will thus agree with the distance in which Têmenus, Kresphontês, and Aristodêmus, stand removed from Hêraklês. The interval of eighty years, between the capture of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, appears to have been admitted by Apollodôrus and Eratosthenês, and some other professed chronologists of antiquity: but there were different reckonings which also found more or less of support.