Читать книгу History of Greece (Vol. 1-12) - Grote George - Страница 54

In the same passage in which Thucydidês speaks of the Return of the Herakleids, he also marks out the date of another event a little antecedent, which is alleged to have powerfully affected the condition of Northern Greece. “Sixty years after the capture of Troy (he tells us) the Bœotians were driven by the Thessalians from Arnê, and migrated into the land then called Kadmêïs, but now Bœotia, wherein there had previously dwelt a section of their race, who had contributed the contingent to the Trojan war.”

The expulsion here mentioned, of the Bœotians from Arnê “by the Thessalians,” has been construed, with probability, to allude to the immigration of the Thessalians, properly so called, from the Thesprôtid in Epirus into Thessaly. That the Thessalians had migrated into Thessaly from the Thesprôtid territory, is stated by Herodotus,26 though he says nothing about time or circumstances. Antiphus and Pheidippus appear in the Homeric Catalogue as commanders of the Grecian contingent from the islands of Kôs and Karpathus, on the south-east coast of Asia Minor: they are sons of Thessalus, who is himself the son of Hêraklês. A legend ran that these two chiefs, in the dispersion which ensued after the victory, had been driven by storms into the Ionian Gulf, and cast upon the coast of Epirus, where they landed and settled at Ephyrê in the Thesprôtid.27 It was Thessalus, grandson of Pheidippus, who was reported to have conducted the Thesprotians across the passes of Pindus into Thessaly, to have conquered the fertile central plain of that country, and to have imposed upon it his own name instead of its previous denomination Æolis.28

Whatever we may think of this legend as it stands, the state of Thessaly during the historical ages renders it highly probable that the Thessalians, properly so called, were a body of immigrant conquerors. They appear always as a rude, warlike, violent, and uncivilized race, distinct from their neighbors the Achæans, the Magnetes, and the Perrhæbians, and holding all the three in tributary dependence: these three tribes stand to them in a relation analogous to that of the Lacedæmonian Periœki towards Sparta, while the Penestæ, who cultivated their lands, are almost an exact parallel of the Helots. Moreover, the low level of taste and intelligence among the Thessalians, as well as certain points of their costume, assimilates them more to Macedonians or Epirots than to Hellens.29 Their position in Thessaly is in many respects analogous to that of the Spartan Dorians in Peloponnêsus, and there seems good reason for concluding that the former, as well as the latter, were originally victorious invaders, though we cannot pretend to determine the time at which the invasion took place. The great family of the Aleuads,30 and probably other Thessalian families besides, were descendants of Hêraklês, like the kings of Sparta.

There are no similar historical grounds, in the case of the alleged migration of the Bœotians from Thessaly to Bœotia, to justify a belief in the main fact of the legend, nor were the different legendary stories in harmony one with the other. While the Homeric Epic recognizes the Bœotians in Bœotia, but not in Thessaly, Thucydidês records a statement which he had found of their migration from the latter into the former; but in order to escape the necessity of flatly contradicting Homer, he inserts the parenthesis that there had been previously an outlying fraction of Bœotians in Bœotia at the time of the Trojan war,31 from whom the troops who served with Agamemnôn were drawn. Nevertheless, the discrepancy with the Iliad, though less strikingly obvious, is not removed, inasmuch as the Catalogue is unusually copious in enumerating the contingents from Thessaly, without once mentioning Bœotians. Homer distinguishes Orchomenus from Bœotia, and he does not specially notice Thêbes in the Catalogue: in other respects his enumeration of the towns coincides pretty well with the ground historically known afterwards under the name of Bœotia.

Pausanias gives us a short sketch of the events which he supposes to have intervened in this section of Greece between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids. Peneleôs, the leader of the Bœotians at the siege, having been slain by Eurypylus the son of Telephus, Tisamenus, son of Thersander and grandson of Polynikês, acted as their commander, both during the remainder of the siege and after their return. Autesiôn, his son and successor, became subject to the wrath of the avenging Erinnyes of Laius and Œdipus: the oracle directed him to expatriate, and he joined the Dorians. In his place, Damasichthôn, son of Opheltas and grandson of Peneleôs, became king of the Bœotians: he was succeeded by Ptolemæus, who was himself followed by Xanthus. A war having broken out at that time between the Athenians and Bœotians, Xanthus engaged in single combat with Melanthus son of Andropompus, the champion of Attica, and perished by the cunning of his opponent. After the death of Xanthus, the Bœotians passed from kingship to popular government.32 As Melanthus was of the lineage of the Neleids, and had migrated from Pylus to Athens in consequence of the successful establishment of the Dorians in Messênia, the duel with Xanthus must have been of course subsequent to the Return of the Herakleids.

Here, then, we have a summary of alleged Bœotian history between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, in which no mention is made of the immigration of the mass of Bœotians from Thessaly, and seemingly no possibility left of fitting in so great and capital an incident. The legends followed by Pausanias are at variance with those adopted by Thucydidês, but they harmonize much better with Homer.

So deservedly high is the authority of Thucydidês, that the migration here distinctly announced by him is commonly set down as an ascertained datum, historically as well as chronologically. But on this occasion it can be shown that he only followed one amongst a variety of discrepant legends, none of which there were any means of verifying.

Pausanias recognized a migration of the Bœotians from Thessaly, in early times anterior to the Trojan war;33 and the account of Ephorus, as given by Strabo, professed to record a series of changes in the occupants of the country: First, the non-Hellenic Aones and Temmikes, Leleges and Hyantes; next, the Kadmeians, who, after the second siege of Thêbes by the Epigoni, were expelled by the Thracians and Pelasgians, and retired into Thessaly, where they joined in communion with the inhabitants of Arnê,—the whole aggregate being called Bœotians. After the Trojan war, and about the time of the Æolic emigration, these Bœotians returned from Thessaly and reconquered Bœotia, driving out the Thracians and Pelasgians,—the former retiring to Parnassus, the latter to Attica. It was on this occasion (he says) that the Minyæ of Orchomenus were subdued, and forcibly incorporated with the Bœotians. Ephorus seems to have followed, in the main, the same narrative as Thucydidês, about the movement of the Bœotians out of Thessaly; coupling it, however, with several details current as explanatory of proverbs and customs.34

The only fact which we make out, independent of these legends, is, that there existed certain homonymies and certain affinities of religious worship, between parts of Bœotia and parts of Thessaly, which appear to indicate a kindred race. A town named Arne,35 similar in name to the Thessalian, was enumerated in the Bœotian Catalogue of Homer, and antiquaries identified it sometimes with the historical town Chæroneia,36 sometimes with Akræphium. Moreover, there was near the Bœotian Korôneia a river named Kuarius, or Koralius, and a venerable temple dedicated to the Itonian Athênê, in the sacred ground of which the Pambœotia, or public council of the Bœotian name, was held; there was also a temple and a river of similar denomination in Thessaly, near to a town called Iton, or Itônus.37 We may from these circumstances presume a certain ancient kindred between the population of these regions, and such a circumstance is sufficient to explain the generation of legends describing migrations backward and forward, whether true or not in point of fact.

What is most important to remark is, that the stories of Thucydidês and Ephorus bring us out of the mythical into the historical Bœotia. Orchomenus is Bœotized, and we hear no more of the once-powerful Minyæ: there are no more Kadmeians at Thêbes, nor Bœotians in Thessaly. The Minyæ and the Kadmeians disappear in the Ionic emigration, which will be presently adverted to. Historical Bœotia is now constituted, apparently in its federative league, under the presidency of Thêbes, just as we find it in the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.