The settlements of the Dorians without the Peloponnese.

1. On account of the multiplicity of subjects which it will be now necessary to consider, we shall be compelled to shorten the discussion of several points, and to take for granted many collateral questions, except where we may be encouraged to enter into greater detail by the hope of disclosing fresh fields for the inquiries of others.

It will be the most convenient method to make the mother-states the basis of our arrangement, as these are known with far greater certainty than the dates of the foundation of their respective colonies; by which means we shall also be enabled to take in a regular order those settlements which lie near to, and were connected with, one another.

First, the colonies of Argos, Epidaurus, and Trœzen. We will treat of these together, as they all lie in the same direction, and as the colonies of the two last states more or less recognised the supremacy of Argos, and not unfrequently followed a common leader. These extend as far as the southern extremity of Asia Minor.

The Dorians on the south-western coast of Asia Minor derived their origin, according to Herodotus, from the Peloponnese. And indeed they were generally considered as an Argive colony (from which state Strabo derives Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Cos), led by princes of the Heraclidæ, from whom the noble families of Rhodes, for example the Eratidæ or Diagoridæ at Ialysus, claimed to be descended.

On the comic, tragic, and lyric poetry of the Dorians.

1. At Athens, a coarse and ill-mannered jest was termed a Megarian joke; which may be considered as a certain proof of the decided propensity of that people to humour. This is confirmed by the claims of the Megarians, who disputed the invention of comedy with the Athenians, and perhaps not without justice, if indeed the term invention be at all applicable to the rise of the several branches of poetry, which sprung so gradually, and at such different times, from the particular feelings excited by the ancient festival rites, that it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to fix upon the period at which the species of composition to which each gave rise was sufficiently advanced to be called a particular kind of poetry. Yet it is in the highest degree probable that the Athenians were indebted for the earliest form of their comic poetry to the Megarians. The Megarian comedy is ridiculed by Ecphantides, one of the early comic poets of Athens, as of a rude and unpolished kind, which circumstance alone makes its higher antiquity probable. Ecphantides, whom Aristophanes, Cratinus, and others ridicule as rough and unpolished, looks down in his turn on those who had introduced comedy from Megara, and claims the merit of first seasoning the uncouth Megarian productions with Attic salt.

On the worship of Diana in the Doric and other states.

1. We now proceed to consider the worship of Diana; a subject which need not be so fully examined as that of Apollo, as it does not, like the worship of that god, every where present the same fundamental notions, and therefore cannot, in all its first beginnings, be derived from the religion of the Dorians. But as in general the Grecian mythology adopted the most various and inconsistent religious views and ideas, so in the name of the single goddess Diana were united almost opposite branches of ancient worship, which we must attempt to separate. Lest, however, it should be supposed that we are unable to trace the association of ideas, which saw a simple character in the “various forms of that great goddess, who, having her origin in the interior of Asia, passed from thence into Greece, and was worshipped as the moon, the goddess of the woods, the huntress, the nurse of children, and a nurse of the universe, as well by the choruses of the virgins of Caryæ, as in the dances of the temples;” we will endeavour to ascertain some historical criterion, which may distinguish the worship of Diana from that of any other deity, and which must not be one of the ideas or symbols of the worship itself, since it is concerning the possibility or impossibility of their connexion that we are to inquire.

General outline of the country.

1. In the Thermaic bay, the modern gulf of Salonichi, three rivers of considerable size fall into the sea at very short distances from one another, but which meet in this place in very different directions. The largest of the three comes from the north-west, and is now called (as indeed it was in the time of Tzetzes and Anna Comnena) the Bardares (or Vardar), and was in ancient days celebrated under the name of Axius. Its stream is increased by large tributary branches on both sides, and chiefly by the Erigon, which flows from the mountains of Illyria. The river next in order runs from the west; it is now called in the interior of the country Potova, and on the coast Carasmac; its ancient name, as is evident from passages in Herodotus and Strabo, was Lydias, or Ludias. And, lastly, after many turnings and windings, the Haliacmon, now called Bichlista, flows from the south-west; in the time of Herodotus it fell into the sea through the same mouth as the Lydias, probably being widened by marshes; and in modern maps the interval between the two rivers is represented as very small.

On the mixture of the Peloponnesian and Thessalian legends of the adventures of Hercules, and the confusion of Hercules with foreign heroes. On the general character of the heroic mythology.

1. We must now entreat the indulgence of our readers when we enter upon an obscure and difficult part of our subject, and one lying beyond the limits of historical record. We allude to the Peloponnesian fable of Hercules; a collection of legends doubtless for the most part invented subsequently to the Doric invasion, and intended by that nation in great measure to justify their conquest of the Peninsula, and to make their expedition appear, not as an act of wrongful aggression, but as a reassertion of ancient right. Some hero (perhaps even of the same name) must have existed in the Argive traditions in the time of the Persidæ, and the resemblance may have been sufficiently striking to identify him with the father of the Doric Hyllus. We shall therefore consider the destroyer of the Nemean lion as a native Argive hero; but the delay experienced at his birth, and his consequent exposure to want and toil, evidently belong to the Doric tradition, as well as the enmity of Juno; fables which were partly borrowed from the worship of Apollo, and may partly have been intended to indicate the contrast between the ancient worship of Argos and that of the invading race.