ÆTOLO-DORIAN EMIGRATION INTO PELOPONNESUS.—ELIS, LACONIA, AND
MESSENIA.
It has already been stated that the territory properly called Elis,
apart from the enlargement which it acquired by conquest, included
the westernmost land in Peloponnesus, south of Achaia, and west
of Mount Pholoê and Olenus in Arcadia,—but not extending so far
southward as the river Alpheius, the course of which lay along the
southern portion of Pisatis and on the borders of Triphylia. This
territory, which appears in the Odyssey as “the divine Elis, where
the Epeians hold sway,”[548] is in the historical times occupied by
a population of Ætolian origin. The connection of race between the
historical Eleians and the historical Ætolians was recognized by both
parties, nor is there any ground for disputing it.[549]
[548] Odyss. xv. 297.
[549] Strabo, x. p. 479.
That Ætolian invaders, or emigrants, into Elis, would cross from
Naupaktus, or some neighboring point in the Corinthian gulf, is in
the natural course of things,—and such is the course which Oxylus,
the conductor of the invasion, is represented by the Herakleid legend
as taking. That legend (as has been already recounted) introduces
Oxylus as the guide of the three Herakleid brothers,—Têmenus,
Kresphontês, and Aristodêmus,—and as stipulating with them that, in
the new distribution about to take place of Peloponnesus, he shall
be allowed to possess the Eleian territory, coupled with many holy
privileges as to the celebration of the Olympic games.
In the preceding chapter, I have endeavored to show that the
settlements of the Dorians in and near the Argolic peninsula, so
far as the probabilities of the case enable us to judge, were not
accomplished by any inroad in this direction. But the localities
occupied by the Dorians of Sparta, and by the Dorians of Stenyklêrus,
in the territory called Messênê, lead us to a different conclusion.
The easiest and most natural road through which emigrants could
reach either of these two spots, is through the Eleian and the
Pisatid country. Colonel Leake observes,[550] that the direct road
from the Eleian territory to Sparta, ascending the valley of the
Alpheius, near Olympia, to the sources of its branch, the Theius,
and from thence descending the Eurotas, affords the only easy march
towards that very inaccessible city: and both ancients and moderns
have remarked the vicinity of the source of the Alpheius to that
of the Eurotas. The situation of Stenyklêrus and Andania, the
original settlements of the Messenian Dorians, adjoining closely
the Arcadian Parrhasii, is only at a short distance from the course
of the Alpheius; being thus reached most easily by the same route.
Dismissing the idea of a great collective Dorian armament, powerful
enough to grasp at once the entire peninsula,—we may conceive two
moderate detachments of hardy mountaineers, from the cold regions
in and near Doris, attaching themselves to the Ætolians, their
neighbors, who were proceeding to the invasion of Elis. After having
aided the Ætolians, both to occupy Elis and to subdue the Pisatid,
these Dorians advanced up the valley of the Alpheius in quest of
settlements for themselves. One of these bodies ripens into the
stately, stubborn, and victorious Spartans; the other, into the
short-lived, trampled, and struggling Messenians.
[550] Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. iii. ch. 23, p. 29; compare
Diodor. xv. 66.
The distance from Olympia to Sparta, as marked on a pillar which
Pausanias saw at Olympia, was 660 stadia,—about 77 English miles
(Pausan. vi. 16, 6).
Amidst the darkness which overclouds these original settlements, we
seem to discern something like special causes to determine both of
them. With respect to the Spartan Dorians, we are told that a person
named Philonomus betrayed Sparta to them, persuading the sovereign
in possession to retire with his people into the habitations of the
Ionians, in the north of the peninsula,—and that he received as a
recompense for this acceptable service Amyklæ, with the district
around it. It is farther stated,—and this important fact there
seems no reason to doubt,—that Amyklæ,—though only twenty stadia
or two miles and a half distant from Sparta, retained both its
independence and its Achæan inhabitants, long after the Dorian
emigrants had acquired possession of the latter place, and was only
taken by them under the reign of Têleklus, one generation before
the first Olympiad.[551] Without presuming to fill up by conjecture
incurable gaps in the statements of our authorities, we may from
hence reasonably presume that the Dorians were induced to invade,
and enabled to acquire, Sparta, by the invitation and assistance of
a party in the interior of the country. Again, with respect to the
Messenian Dorians, a different, but not less effectual temptation
was presented by the alliance of the Arcadians, in the south-western
portion of that central region of Peloponnesus. Kresphontês, the
Herakleid leader, it is said, espoused the daughter[552] of the
Arcadian king, Kypselus, which procured for him the support of a
powerful section of Arcadia. His settlement at Stenyklêrus was a
considerable distance from the sea, at the north-east corner of
Messenia,[553] close to the Arcadian frontier; and it will be seen
hereafter that this Arcadian alliance is a constant and material
element in the disputes of the Messenian Dorians with Sparta.
[551] Strabo, viii. pp. 364, 365; Pausan. iii. 2, 5: compare the
story of Krius, Pausan. iii. 13, 3.
[552] Pausan. iv. 3, 3; viii. 29, 4.
[553] Strabo (viii. p. 366) blames Euripidês for calling Messênê
an inland country; but the poet seems to have been quite correct
in doing so.
We may thus trace a reasonable sequence of events, showing how
two bodies of Dorians, having first assisted the Ætolo-Eleians to
conquer the Pisatid, and thus finding themselves on the banks of
the Alpheius, followed the upward course of that river, the one to
settle at Sparta, the other at Stenyklêrus. The historian Ephorus,
from whom our scanty fragments of information respecting these early
settlements are derived,—it is important to note that he lived in the
age immediately succeeding the first foundation of Messênê as a city,
the restitution of the long-exiled Messenians, and the amputation
of the fertile western half of Laconia, for their benefit, by
Epameinondas,—imparts to these proceedings an immediate decisiveness
of effect which does not properly belong to them: as if the Spartans
had become at once possessed of all Laconia, and the Messenians of
all Messenia: Pausanias, too, speaks as if the Arcadians collectively
had assisted and allied themselves with Kresphontês. This is the
general spirit which pervades his account, though the particular
facts in so far as we find any such, do not always harmonize with
it. Now we are ignorant of the preëxisting divisions of the country,
either east or west of Mount Taygetus, at the time when the Dorians
invaded it. But to treat the one and the other as integral kingdoms,
handed over at once to two Dorian leaders, is an illusion borrowed
from the old legend, from the historicizing fancies of Ephorus, and
from the fact that, in the well-known times, this whole territory
came to be really united under the Spartan power.
At what date the Dorian settlements at Sparta and Stenyklêrus
were effected, we have no means of determining. Yet, that there
existed between them in the earliest times a degree of fraternity
which did not prevail between Lacedæmon and Argos, we may fairly
presume from the common temple, with joint religious sacrifices, of
Artemis Limnatis, or Artemis on the Marsh, erected on the confines
of Messenia and Laconia.[554] Our first view of the two, at all
approaching to distinctness, seems to date from a period about half
a century earlier than the first Olympiad (776 B. C.),—about the
reign of king Têleklus of the Eurystheneid or Agid line, and the
introduction of the Lykurgean discipline. Têleklus stands in the
list as the eighth king dating from Eurysthenes. But how many of the
seven kings before him are to be considered as real persons,—or how
much, out of the brief warlike expeditions ascribed to them, is to be
treated as authentic history,—I pretend not to define.
[554] Pausan. iv. 2, 2. μετεῖχον δὲ αὐτοῦ μόνοι Δωρίεων οἵ τε
Μεσσήνιοι καὶ Λακεδαιμόνιοι.
The earliest determinable event in the _internal_ history of
Sparta is the introduction of the Lykurgean discipline; the
earliest _external_ events are the conquest of Amyklæ, Pharis, and
Geronthræ, effected by king Têleklus, and the first quarrel with
the Messenians, in which that prince was slain. When we come to see
how deplorably great was the confusion and ignorance which reigned
with reference to a matter so preëminently important as Lykurgus
and his legislation, we shall not be inclined to think that facts
much less important, and belonging to an earlier epoch, can have
been handed down upon any good authority. And in like manner, when
we learn that Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ (all south of Sparta,
and the first only two and a half miles distant from that city)
were independent of the Spartans until the reign of Têleklus, we
shall require some decisive testimony before we can believe that a
community so small, and so hemmed in as Sparta must then have been,
had in earlier times undertaken expeditions against Helos on the
sea-coast, against Kleitor on the extreme northern side of Arcadia,
against the Kynurians, or against the Argeians. If Helos and Kynuria
were conquered by these early kings, it appears that they had to be
conquered a second time by kings succeeding Têleklus. It would be
more natural that we should hear when and how they conquered the
places nearer to them,—Sellasia, or Belemina, the valley of the Œnus,
or the upper valley of the Eurotas. But these seem to be assumed
as matters of course; the proceedings ascribed to the early Spartan
kings are such only as might beseem the palmy days when Sparta was
undisputed mistress of all Laconia.
The succession of Messenian kings, beginning with Kresphontês,
the Herakleid brother, and continuing from father to son,—Æpytus,
Glaukus, Isthnius, Dotadas, Subotas, Phintas, the last being
contemporary with Têleklus,—is still less marked by incident than
that of the early Spartan kings. It is said that the reign of
Kresphontês was troubled, and himself ultimately slain by mutinies
among his subjects: Æpytus, then a youth, having escaped into
Arcadia, was afterwards restored to the throne by the Arcadians,
Spartans, and Argeians.[555] From Æpytus, the Messenian line of
kings are stated to have been denominated Æpytids in preference to
Herakleids,—which affords another proof of their intimate connection
with the Arcadians, since Æpytus was a very ancient name in Arcadian
heroic antiquity.[556]
[555] Pausan. iv. 3, 5-6.
[556] Homer, Iliad, ii. 604.—
Οἳ δ᾽ ἔχον Ἀρκαδίην, ὑπὸ Κυλλήνης ὄρος αἰπὺ,
Αἰπύτιον παρὰ τύμβον.
Schol. _ad loc._ ὁ δ᾽ Αἴπυτος ἀρχαιότατος ἥρως, Ἀρκὰς τὸ γένος.
There is considerable resemblance between the alleged behavior of
Kresphontês on first settling at Stenyklêrus, and that of Eurysthenês
and Proklês at Sparta,—so far as we gather from statements alike
meagre and uncertified, resting on the authority of Ephorus. Both
are said to have tried to place the preëxisting inhabitants of
the country on a level with their own Dorian bands; both provoked
discontents and incurred obloquy, with their contemporaries as
well as with posterity, by the attempt; nor did either permanently
succeed. Kresphontês was forced to concentrate all his Dorians in
Stenyklêrus, while after all, the discontents ended in his violent
death. And Agis, the son of Eurysthenês, is said to have reversed
all the liberal tentatives of his father, so as to bring the whole
of Laconia into subjection and dependence on the Dorians at Sparta,
with the single exception of Amyklæ. So odious to the Spartan Dorians
was the conduct of Eurysthenês, that they refused to acknowledge him
as their œkist, and conferred that honor upon Agis; the two lines of
kings being called Agiads and Eurypontids, instead of Eurystheneids
and Prokleids.[557] We see in these statements the same tone of mind
as that which pervades the Panathenaic oration of Isokratês, the
master of Ephorus,—the facts of an unknown period, so colored as to
suit an _idéal_ of haughty Dorian exclusiveness.
[557] Compare the two citations from Ephorus, Strabo, viii.
pp. 361-365. Unfortunately, a portion of the latter citation
is incurably mutilated in the text: O. Müller (History of the
Dorians, book i. ch. v. 13) has proposed an ingenious conjecture,
which, however, cannot be considered as trustworthy. Grosskurd,
the German translator, usually skilful in these restorations,
leaves the passage untouched.
For a new coloring of the death of Kresphontês, adjusted by
Isokratês so as to suit the purpose of the address which he puts
into the mouth of Archidamus king of Sparta, see the discourse
in his works which passes under that name (Or. iv. pp. 120-122).
Isokratês says that the Messenian Dorians slew Kresphontês,
whose children fled as suppliants to Sparta, imploring revenge
for the death of their father, and surrendering the territory to
the Spartans. The Delphian god advised the latter to accept the
tender, and they accordingly attacked the Messenians, avenged
Kresphontês, and appropriated the territory.
Isokratês always starts from the basis of the old legend,—the
triple Dorian conquest made all at once: compare Panathenaic. Or.
xii. pp. 270-287.
Again, as Eurysthenês and Proklês appear, in the picture of Ephorus,
to carry their authority at once over the whole of Laconia, so
too does Kresphontês over the whole of Messenia,—over the entire
south-western region of Peloponnesus, westward of Mount Taygetus
and Cape Tænarus, and southward of the river Neda. He sends an
envoy to Pylus and Rhium, the western and southern portions
of the south-western promontory of Peloponnesus, treating the
entire territory as if it were one sovereignty, and inviting the
inhabitants to submit under equal laws.[558] But it has already been
observed, that this supposed oneness and indivisibility is not less
uncertified in regard to Messenia than in regard to Laconia. How
large a proportion of the former territory these kings of Stenyklêrus
may have ruled, we have no means of determining, but there were
certainly portions of it which they did not rule,—not merely during
the reign of Têleklus at Sparta, but still later, during the first
Messenian war. For not only are we informed that Têleklus established
three townships, Poiêessa, Echeiæ,[559] and Tragium, near the
Messenian gulf, and on the course of the river Nedon, but we read
also a farther matter of evidence in the roll of Olympic victors.
Every competitor for the prize at one of these great festivals was
always entered as member of some autonomous Hellenic community,
which constituted his title to approach the lists; if successful, he
was proclaimed with the name of the community to which he belonged.
Now during the first ten Olympiads, seven winners are proclaimed
as Messenians; in the 11th Olympiad, we find the name of Oxythemis
Korônæus,—Oxythemis, not of Korôneia in Bœotia, but of Korônê in the
western bend of the Messenian gulf,[560] some miles on the right
bank of the Pamisus, and a considerable distance to the north of the
modern Coron. Now if Korônê had then been comprehended in Messenia,
Oxythemis would have been proclaimed as a Messenian, like the seven
winners who preceded him; and the fact of his being proclaimed as a
Korônæan, proves that Korônê was then an independent community, not
under the dominion of the Dorians of Stenyklêrus. It seems clear,
therefore, that the latter did not reign over the whole territory
commonly known as Messenia, though we are unable to assign the
proportion of it which they actually possessed.
[558] Ephorus ap. Strabo, viii. p. 361. Dr. Thirlwall observes
(History of Greece, ch. vii. p. 300, 2d edit.), “The Messenian
Pylus seems long to have retained its independence, and to have
been occupied for several centuries by one branch of the family
of Neleus; for descendants of Nestor are mentioned as allies of
the Messenians in their struggle with Sparta in the latter half
of the seventh century B. C.”
For this assertion, Dr. Thirlwall cites Strabo (viii. p. 355).
I agree with him as to the matter of fact: I see no proof that
the Dorians of Stenyklêrus ever ruled over what is called the
Messenian Pylus; for, of course, if they did not rule over it
before the second Messenian war, they never acquired it at all.
But on reference to the passage in Strabo, it will not be found
to prove anything to the point; for Strabo is speaking, not of
the Messenian Pylus, but of the _Triphylian Pylus_: he takes
pains to show that Nestor had nothing to do with the _Messenian
Pylus_,—Νέστορος ἀπόγονοι means the inhabitants of Triphylia,
near Lepreum: compare p. 350.
[559] Strabo, viii. p. 360. Concerning the situation of Korônê,
in the Messenian gulf, see Pausanias, iv. 34, 2; Strabo, viii. p.
361; and the observations of Colonel Leake, Travels in Morea, ch.
x. vol. i. pp. 439-448. He places it near the modern Petalidhi,
seemingly on good grounds.
[560] See Mr. Clinton’s Chronological Tables for the year 732
B. C.; O. Müller (in the Chronological Table subjoined to
his History of the Dorians) calls this victor, _Oxythemis of
Korôneia_, in Bœotia. But this is inadmissible, on two grounds:
1. The occurrence of a Bœotian competitor in that early day
at the Olympic games. The first eleven victors (I put aside
Oxythemis, because he is the subject of the argument) are all
from western and southern Peloponnesus; then come victors from
Corinth, Megara, and Epidaurus; then from Athens; there is one
from Thebes in the 41st Olympiad. I infer from hence that the
celebrity and frequentation of the Olympic games increased only
by degrees, and had not got beyond Peloponnesus in the eighth
century B. C. 2. The name Coronæus, Κορωναῖος, is the proper
and formal title for a citizen of Korônê, not for a citizen of
Korôneia: the latter styles himself Κορωνεύς. The ethnical name
Κορωνεὺς, as belonging to Korôneia in Bœotia, is placed beyond
doubt by several inscriptions in Boeckh’s collection; especially
No. 1583, in which a citizen of that town is proclaimed as
victorious at the festival of the Charitesia at Orchomenus:
compare Nos. 1587-1593, in which the same ethnical name occurs.
The Bœotian Inscriptions attest in like manner the prevalence
of the same etymological law in forming ethnical names, for
the towns near Korôneia: thus, _Chærôneia_ makes Χαιρωνεὺς;
_Lebadeia_, Λεβαδεὺς; _Elateia_, Ἐλατεὺς, or Ἐλατειεύς.
The Inscriptions afford evidence perfectly decisive as to the
ethnical title under which a citizen of Korôneia in Bœotia would
have caused himself to be entered and proclaimed at the Olympic
games; better than the evidence of Herodotus and Thucydidês,
who both call them Κορωναῖοι (Herodot. v. 79; Thucyd. iv. 93):
Polybius agrees with the Inscription, and speaks of the Κορωνεῖς,
Λεβαδεῖς, Χαιρωνεῖς (xxvii. 1). O. Müller himself admits, in
another place (Orchomenos, p. 480), that the proper ethnical
name is Κορωνεύς. The reading of Strabo (ix. p. 411) is not
trustworthy: see Grosskurd, _ad loc._; compare Steph. Byz.
Κορώνεια and Κορώνη.
In regard to the formation of ethnical names, it seems the
general rule, that a town ending in η or αι, preceded by a
consonant, had its ethnical derivative in αιος; such as Σκιώνη,
Τορώνη, Κύμη, Θῆβαι, Ἀθῆναι; while names ending in εια had their
ethnicon in ευς, as Ἀλεξάνδρεια, Ἀμάσεια, Σελεύκεια, Λυσιμάχεια
(the recent cities thus founded by the successors of Alexander
are perhaps the best evidences that can be taken of the analogies
of the language), Μελάμπεια, Μελίτεια, in addition to the
Bœotian names of towns above quoted. There is, however, great
irregularity in particular cases, and the number of towns called
by the same name created an anxiety to vary the ethnicon for
each: see Stephan. Byz. v. Ἡράκλεια.
The Olympic festival, in its origin doubtless a privilege of
the neighboring Pisatans, seems to have derived its great and
gradually expanding importance from the Ætolo-Eleian settlement in
Peloponnesus, combined with the Dorians of Laconia and Messenia.
Lykurgus of Sparta, and Iphitus of Elis, are alleged to have joined
their efforts for the purpose of establishing both the sanctity of
the Olympic truce and the inviolability of the Eleian territory.
Hence, though this tale is not to be construed as matter of fact,
we may see that the Lacedæmonians regarded the Olympic games as a
portion of their own antiquities. Moreover, it is certain, both that
the dignity of the festival increased simultaneously with their
ascendency,[561] and that their peculiar fashions were very early
introduced into the practice of the Olympic competitors. Probably,
the three bands of coöperating invaders, Ætolians and Spartan and
Messenian Dorians, may have adopted this festival as a periodical
renovation of mutual union and fraternity; from which cause the games
became an attractive centre for the western portion of Peloponnesus,
before they were much frequented by people from the eastern, or still
more from extra-Peloponnesian Hellas. For it cannot be altogether
accidental, when we read the names of the first twelve proclaimed
Olympic victors (occupying nearly half a century from 776 B. C.
downwards), to find that seven of them are Messenians, three Eleians,
one from Dymê, in Achaia, and one from Korônê; while after the 12th
Olympiad, Corinthians and Megarians and Epidaurians begin to occur;
later still, extra-Peloponnesian victors. We may reasonably infer
from hence that the Olympic ceremonies were at this early period
chiefly frequented by visitors and competitors from the western
regions of Peloponnesus, and that the affluence to them, from the
more distant parts of the Hellenic world, did not become considerable
until the first Messenian war had closed.
[561] The entire nakedness of the competitors at Olympia was
adopted from the Spartan practice, seemingly in the 14th
Olympiad, as is testified by the epigram on Orsippus the
Megarian. Previous to that period, the Olympic competitors had
διαζώματα περὶ τὰ αἰδοῖα (Thucyd. i. 6).
Having thus set forth the conjectures, to which our very scanty
knowledge points, respecting the first establishment of the Ætolian
and Dorian settlements in Elis, Laconia, and Messenia, connected
as they are with the steadily increasing dignity and frequentation
of the Olympic festival, I proceed, in the next chapter, to that
memorable circumstance which both determined the character, and
brought about the political ascendency, of the Spartans separately: I
mean, the laws and discipline of Lykurgus.
Of the preëxisting inhabitants of Laconia and Messenia, whom we are
accustomed to call Achæans and Pylians, so little is known, that we
cannot at all measure the difference between them and their Dorian
invaders, either in dialect, in habits, or in intelligence. There
appear no traces of any difference of dialect among the various
parts of the population of Laconia: the Messenian allies of Athens,
in the Peloponnesian war, speak the same dialect as the Helots,
and the same also as the Ambrakiotic colonists from Corinth: all
Doric.[562] Nor are we to suppose that the Doric dialect was at all
peculiar to the people called Dorians. As far as can be made out
by the evidence of Inscriptions, it seems to have been the dialect
of the Phokians, Delphians, Lokrians, Ætolians, and Achæans of
Phthiôtis: with respect to the latter, the Inscriptions of Thaumaki,
in Achæa Phthiôtis, afford a proof the more curious and the more
cogent of native dialect, because the Phthiôts were both immediate
neighbors and subjects of the Thessalians, who spoke a variety
of the Æolic. So, too, within Peloponnesus, we find evidences of
Doric dialect among the Achæans in the north of Peloponnesus,—the
Dryopic inhabitants of Hermionê,[563]—and the Eleuthero-Lacones, or
Laconian townships (compounded of Periœki and Helots), emancipated
by the Romans in the second century B. C. Concerning the speech
of that population whom the invading Dorians found in Laconia, we
have no means of judging: the presumption would rather be that it
did not differ materially from the Doric. Thucydidês designates
the Corinthians, whom the invading Dorians attacked from the hill
Solygeius, as being Æolians, and Strabo speaks both of the Achæans as
an Æolic nation, and of the Æolic dialect as having been originally
preponderant in Peloponnesus.[564] But we do not readily see what
means of information either of these authors possessed respecting the
speech of a time which must have been four centuries anterior even to
Thucydidês.
[562] Thucyd. iii. 112: iv. 41: compare vii. 44, about the
sameness of sound of the war-shout, or pæan, as delivered by all
the different Dorians.
[563] Corpus Inscript. Boeckh, Nos. 1771, 1772, 1773; Ahrens, De
Dialecto Doricâ, sect. i-ii. 48.
[564] Thucyd. iv. 42: Strabo, viii. p. 333.
Of that which is called the Æolic dialect there are three marked
and distinguishable varieties,—the Lesbian, the Thessalian, and the
Bœotian; the Thessalian forming a mean term between the other two.
Ahrens has shown that the ancient grammatical critics are accustomed
to affirm peculiarities, as belonging to the Æolic dialect generally,
which in truth belong only to the Lesbian variety of it, or to
the poems of Alkæus and Sappho, which these critics attentively
studied. Lesbian Æolic, Thessalian Æolic, and Bœotian Æolic, are
all different: and if, abstracting from these differences, we
confine our attention to that which is common to all three, we shall
find little to distinguish this abstract Æolic from the abstract
Doric, or that which is common to the many varieties of the Doric
dialect.[565] These two are sisters, presenting, both of them, more
or less the Latin side of the Greek language, while the relationship
of either of them to the Attic and Ionic is more distant. Now it
seems that, putting aside Attica, the speech of all Greece,[566]
from Perrhæbia and Mount Olympus to Cape Malea and Cape Akritas,
consisted of different varieties, either of the Doric or of the
Æolic dialect; this being true (as far as we are able to judge) not
less of the aboriginal Arcadians than of the rest. The Laconian
dialect contained more specialties of its own, and approached
nearer to the Æolic and to the Eleian, than any other variety of
the Dorian: it stands at the extreme of what has been classified
as the strict Dorian,—that is, the farthest removed from Ionic and
Attic. The Kretan towns manifest also a strict Dorism; as well as
the Lacedæmonian colony of Tarentum, and, seemingly, most of the
Italiotic Greeks, though some of them are called Achæan colonies.
Most of the other varieties of the Doric dialect (Phokian, Lokrian,
Delphian, Achæan of Phthiôtis) exhibit a form departing less widely
from the Ionic and Attic: Argos, and the towns in the Argolic
peninsula, seem to form a stepping-stone between the two.
[565] See the valuable work of Ahrens, De Dialecto Æolicâ. sect.
51. He observes, in reference to the Lesbian, Thessalian, and
Bœotian dialects: “Tres illas dialectos, quæ optimo jure Æolicæ
vocari videntur—quia, qui illis usi sunt, Æoles erant—comparantem
mirum habere oportet, quod Asianorum Æolum et Bœotorum dialecti
tantum inter se distant, quantum vix ab aliâ quâvis Græcæ linguæ
dialecto.” He then enumerates many points of difference: “Contra
tot tantasque differentias pauca reperiuntur eaque fere levia,
quæ utrique dialecto, neque simul Doricæ, communia sint.... Vides
his comparatis tantum interesse inter utramque dialectum, ut
dubitare liceat, an Æoles Bœoti non magis cum Æolibus Asianis
conjuncti fuerint, quam qui hodie miro quodam casu Saxones
vocantur cum antiquis Saxonibus. Nihilominus Thessalicâ dialecto
in comparationem vocata, diversissima quæ videntur aliquo vinculo
conjungere licet. Quamvis enim pauca de eâ comperta habeamus,
hoc tamen certum est, alia Thessalis cum Lesbiis, alia cum solis
Bœotis communia esse.” (P. 222-223.)
[566] About the Æolic dialect of the Perrhæbians, see Stephanus
Byz. v. Γόννος, and ap. Eustath. ad Iliad, p. 335.
The Attic judgment, in comparing these different varieties
of Greek speech, is expressed in the story of a man being
asked—Whether the Bœotians or the Thessalians were most of
barbarians? He answered—The Eleians (Eustath. ad Iliad. p. 304).
These positions represent the little which can be known respecting
those varieties of Grecian speech which are not known to us by
written works. The little presumption which can be raised upon them
favors the belief that the Dorian invaders of Laconia and Messenia
found there a dialect little different from that which they brought
with them,—a conclusion which it is the more necessary to state
distinctly, since the work of O. Müller has caused an exaggerated
estimate to be formed of the distinctive peculiarities whereby Dorism
was parted off from the rest of Hellas.