Greek characters) .may have some meaning also. The story of the marriage may or may not be true; yet, no doubt, the history of the times of the Condottieri would furnish analogies. The origin of the sovereignty of the Sforzas over Milan was owing to the marriage of the great leader of the free companions, Francesco Sforza, with Bianca Visconti, as may be seen in the sixth book of Machiavelli's Italia. The great kingdom of Argos, over which the Achaei presided, seems to have retained its relations with the tribes of the North, and other countries without the Isthmus. Traces of this perhaps are to be found in the legends of the persecution of Hercules by Eurystheus, of the wars of Thebes, and of an Acrisius king of Argos, who arranged the constituency of the Amphityonic Council. Wachsmuth[1] conceives that this last mentioned tradition can be accounted for only by supposing that something which took place after the return of the Heraclidae had become mixed up with the more ancient mythology[2]. But it may have been an institution controuled by the monarch of the great kingdom of Argos in the South, as the confederation of the Rhine was by Napoleon[3].
This brings us to the monarchy of the Atridas. I conjecture therefore that (Greek characters) may be the name which designated the warriors of those roving bands, whose prevalence
in Greece was so common, according to Thucydides, and
who were the founders of the kingdom the monarch of
which headed the confederation against Troy. It may originally have been confined to the chiefs; but my hypothesis
is that it ultimately belonged to every member of the band.
We will now recur to the five conditions proposed, and see
whether this hypothesis will fall in with them.
The first condition agrees with it well enough; every
body admitted into the ranks on a military expedition would
acquire the title.
As for the second condition, the word, in the mouths of this race, might easily come to signify a soldier.
The third condition is rather less manageable. Yet, in the conflicts and struggles which gave extension, first to the
