Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore
Exile and low condition of the Herakleids.—Their reappearance as a powerful force along with the Dorians.—Mythical account of this alliance, as well as of the three tribes of Dorians.—Têmenus, Kresphontês, and Aristodêmus, invade Peloponnêsus across the gulf of Corinth.—The pr...
Exile and low condition of the Herakleids.—Their reappearance as a powerful force along with the Dorians.—Mythical account of this alliance, as well as of the three tribes of Do...
2. CHAPTER XIX.Different schemes of chronology proposed for the mythical events.—The data essential to chronological determination are here wanting.—Modern chronologists take up the same probl...
3. CHAPTER XX.Legendary poems of Greece valuable pictures of real manners, though giving no historical facts.—They are memorials of the first state of Grecian society—the starting-point of Gr...
4. CHAPTER XXI.Two classes of epic poetry—Homeric—Hesiodic.—Didactic and mystic Hexameter poetry—later as a genus than the epic.—Lost epic poems.—Epic poets and their probable dates.—Epic cycl...
5. CHAPTER I.Northern boundary of Greece—Olympus.—Scardus and Pindus—their extension and dissemination through southern Greece and Peloponnesus.—Ossa and Pelion—to the Cyclades.—Geological f...
6. CHAPTER II.The Hellens generally.—Barbarians—the word used as antithesis to Hellens.—Hellenic aggregate—how held together. 1. Fellowship of blood. 2. Common language.—Greek language essent...
7. CHAPTER III.Amphiktyonic races.—Non-Amphiktyonic races.—First period of Grecian history—from 776-560 B. C.—Second period—from 560-300 B. C.—Important differences between the two—the first p...
8. CHAPTER IV.Distribution of Peloponnesus about 450 B. C.—Continuous Dorian states.—Western Peloponnesus.—Northern Peloponnesus—Achaia.—Central region—Arcadia.—Difference between this distri...
9. CHAPTER V.Ætolian emigration into Peloponnesus.—Dorians of Sparta and Stenyklêrus—accompanying or following them across the Corinthian gulf.—Settlement at Sparta made by marching along th...
10. CHAPTER VI.Lykurgus—authorities of Plutarch respecting him.—Uncertainties about his genealogy.—Probable date of Lykurgus.—Opinion of O. Müller (that Sparta is the perfect type of Dorian ch...
11. CHAPTER VII.Authorities for the history of the Messenian wars.—Chiefly belong to the time after the foundation of Messênê by Epameinondas.—Absence of real or ancient traditions concerning t...
12. CHAPTER VIII.State of Arcadia.—Tegea and Mantineia the most powerful Arcadian towns, before the building of Megalopolis.—Encroachments of Sparta upon the southern boundary of Arcadia.—Unsucc...
13. CHAPTER XVIII.In one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the descending series of the two most distinguished mythical families in Peloponnêsus,—the Perseids and the Pelopids: we have fo...
14. vii. 49, who, however, gives the narrative differently bySuch is the foundation-legend of Thêra, believed both by the Lacedæmonians and by the Theræans, and interesting as it brings before us, characteristically as well as vividly, th...
15. CHAPTER XIX.I need not repeat, what has already been sufficiently set forth in the preceding pages, that the mass of Grecian incident anterior to 776 B. C. appears to me not reducible eithe...
16. CHAPTER XX.Though the particular persons and events, chronicled in the legendary poems of Greece, are not to be regarded as belonging to the province of real history, those poems are, neve...
17. book ii. p. 63) gives too lofty an idea, in my judgment, of theBut though, in the primitive Grecian government, the king is the legitimate as well as the real sovereign, he is always conceived as acting through the council and agora. Both t...
18. xiv. 87-93): always the associate and companion of Zeus, thehighest god. In Hesiod, (Theog. 901,) she is the wife of Zeus: in Æschylus, (Prometh. 209,) she is the same as Γαῖα: even in Plato, (Legg. xi. p. 936,) witnesses swear (to want...
19. ix. 99): Zeus or the king is a judge, not a lawmaker; he issuesdecrees or special orders to settle particular disputes, or to restrain particular men; and, agreeable to the concrete forms of ancient language, the decrees are treated as if t...
20. Part I. ch. 2, p. 15.)“Charlevoix observes, (says Dr. Ferguson, Essay on Civil Society, Part II. § 2, p. 145,) that the nations among whom he travelled in North America never mentioned acts of genero...
21. CHAPTER XXI.At the head of the once abundant epical compositions of Greece, most of them unfortunately lost, stand the Iliad and Odyssey, with the immortal name of Homer attached to each of...
22. CHAPTER I.Greece Proper lies between the 36th and 40th parallels of north latitude, and between the 21st and 26th degrees of east longitude. Its greatest length, from Mount Olympus to Cap...
23. CHAPTER II.The territory indicated in the last chapter—south of Mount Olympus, and south of the line which connects the city of Ambrakia with Mount Pindus,—was occupied during the historic...
24. ii. 162; the amputation of the nose and cars of Patarbêmis, byApries, king of Egypt (Xenophon, Anab. i. 9-13). There were a large number of men deprived of hands, feet, or eyesight, in the satrapy of Cyrus the younger, who had inflicted al...
25. CHAPTER III.Having in the preceding chapter touched upon the Greeks in their aggregate capacity, I now come to describe separately the portions of which this aggregate consisted, as they pr...
26. CHAPTER IV.We now pass from the northern members to the heart and head of Greece,—Peloponnesus and Attica, taking the former first in order, and giving as much as can be ascertained respec...
27. CHAPTER V.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, sout...
28. CHAPTER VI.“Concerning the lawgiver Lykurgus, we can assert absolutely nothing which is not controverted: there are different stories in respect to his birth, his travels, his death, and a...
29. part iv. sect. 3, p. 609.There is much confusion and discrepancy of opinion about the Spartan tribes. Cragius admits six (De Republ. Lacon. i. 6); Meursius, eight (Rep. Lacon. i. 7): Barthélemy (Voyage...
30. iv. 8), who are ready before the rest, and march against theBut the more usual employment of it is, to mean, the unprivileged or less privileged members of the same political aggregate living without the city, in contrast with the full-p...
31. i. 145) conceived all the free inhabitants of Laconia not asAchæans, but as Dorians. He believes in the story of the legend, that the Achæans, driven out of Laconia by the invading Dorians and Herakleidæ, occupied the territory in the no...
32. CHAPTER VII.That there were two long contests between the Lacedæmonians and Messenians, and that in both the former were completely victorious, is a fact sufficiently attested. And if we co...
33. v. Δυσπόντιον which shows that the inhabitants of the Pisatid34. CHAPTER VIII.I have described in the last two chapters, as far as our imperfect evidence permits, how Sparta came into possession both of the southern portion of Laconia along the coast of t...
35. iii. 12, 2): and to prove this, he refers to the very passagejust cited from the Hellenica of Xenophon, which, as far as it proves anything, proves the contrary of his position. He gives no other evidence to support it, and I think it in...