Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/319

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DORIAN EMIGRATION INTO FELOPONNKSUS. 303 territory in 776 B. c. as in 550 B. c. : but the Pisatid had been recently conquered, and was yet imperfectly subjected by the Eleians; while Triphylia seems to have been quite independ- ent of them. Respecting the south-western promontory of Pelo- ponnesus down to Cape Akritas, we are altogether without infor- mation : reasons will hereafter be given for believing that it did not at that time form part of the territory of the Messenian Dorians. Of the different races or people whom Herodotus knew in Peloponnesus, he believed thr.ee to be aboriginal, the Arca- dians, the Aclueans, and the Kynurians. The Achaeans, though belonging indigenously to the peninsula, had yet removed from the southern portion of it to the northern, expelling the previous Ionian tenants : this is a part of the legend respecting the Dorian conquest, or Return of the Herakleids, and we can neither verify nor contradict it. But neither the Arcadians nor the Kynurians had ever changed their abodes. Of the latter, I havu not before spoken, because they were never (so far as history knows them) an independent population. They occupied the larger portion l of the territory of Argolis, from Orneae, near the northern 2 or Phliasian border, to Thyrea and the Thyreatis, on the Laconian border : and though belonging originally (as Herodotus imagines rather than asserts) to the Ionic race they had been so long subjects of Argos in his time, that almost all evidence of their ante- Dorian condition had vanished. But the great Dorian states in Peloponnesus the capital powers in the peninsula were all originally emigrants, accord- ing to the belief not only of Herodotus, but of all the Grecian world : so also were the JEtolians of Elis, the Triphylians, and the Dryopes at Hermione and Asine. All these emigrations are so described as to give them a root in the Grecian legendary world : the Triphylians are traced back to Lemnos, as the off- spring of the Argonautic heroes, 3 and we are too uninformed 1 This is the only way of reconciling Herodotus (viii. 73) with Thucydi- des (iv. 56, and v. 41). The original extent of the Kynurian territory is a point on which neither of them had any means of very ccrrect information , bat there is no occasion to reject the one in favor of the other.

  • Herod, viii. 73. Oi 6e Kwovpiot, avTox&ovef iovref, doKsovat uovvoi

elvai "Iwvej eKfiedupievvrat <5e, viro re 'Apyetuv ap^o/mw /cot rov xpovot 'Opvt rj-rai K.a.1 ntpioitioi, 3 Herodot. ir. 145-146.