There is a particular tendency which may be traced throughout all the accounts that have come down to us of early Grecian history, viz., of reducing everything to a genealogical form. It was much encouraged by the opinion of the later historians, that every town and valley had received its name from some ancient prince or hero; thus even Pausanias meets with persons who explained everything by means of genealogies;2138 who, for example, out of the Pythian temple at Delphi made a son of Delphus Pythis, a prince of early times. This tendency, however, is manifestly founded on the genuine ancient language of mythology. With the inventors of these fabulous narratives, nations, cities, mountains, rivers, and gods became real persons, who stood to one another in the relation of human beings, were arranged in families, and joined to one another in marriage. Now although such fictions are in many cases easily seen through, and the meaning of the connexion may be readily deciphered, yet these genealogies, as there was nothing of arbitrary and fanciful invention in them, in after-times passed for real history; and were, both by early and late historians, with full confidence in their general accuracy, made use of for the establishment of a sort of chronology. On these principles, then, the genealogies which were formed in the age of the later epic poets, and perhaps even of the early historians, cannot be considered as pure invention; these too must have been founded on certain arguments and facts, which were generally believed at that time. We will endeavour to point this out in the famous genealogy of the [pg 490] chief races of the Greeks, which was taken from the Ἠοῖαι of Hesiod.2139

[Transcriber's Note: Here are the relationships shown in the table:

Prometheus and Pandora had Deucalion.

Deucalion and Pyrrha had Hellen.

Hellen had Dorus, Xuthus, and Æolus.

Xuthus had Achæus and Ion.]

Now the passage of Hesiod only mentions the three brothers, Dorus, Xuthus, and Æolus, without naming the sons of Xuthus; but it is evident that in this series Xuthus must also represent some race or races; and since no tribe ever bore the title of Xuthi, this name must have been used by Hesiod to signify the Ionians and Achaæns, as in Apollodorus, and other writers.2140 According to another tradition, perhaps of equal antiquity, Zeus, the father of gods and men, was, instead of Deucalion, the husband of Pyrrha.2141

It is evident that the above genealogy was intended to represent the chief races of the Hellenes, or Greeks, as belonging to one nation; and consequently could not have been made before the name Hellenes was applied to the whole nation; which in the Iliad2142 is only the name of a small tribe in Phthia.2143 The more extended use of the name falls in the period of the poems which went under the name of Hesiod:2144 it is first thus used in the “Works and [pg 491] Days” of the real Hesiod,2145 before which time, therefore, the above genealogy cannot have been formed. But that the author of it did not make an arbitrary fiction is evident from the circumstance that he put Xuthus instead of Achæus and Ion; by which he greatly deranged the symmetry of his genealogy. It is clear that he thought himself bound to respect the tradition, that Achæus and Ion were the sons of Xuthus; which prevented him from making Hellen their father. As yet, therefore, the other brothers were not recognised in tradition as having any fathers; and some obscure legends, such as that of Dorus, the son of Apollo,2146 had not obtained a general belief. There can be no doubt that Hellen was recognised in the most ancient tradition. Now in the fictions of mythology the invention was bound by a sort of fanciful regularity; and in a fabulous genealogy the part was deduced from the whole, the species from the genus, as an inferior and subordinate being: thus in the Theogony the hills are the children of the earth, and the sun and the moon of light.2147 Accordingly the poet (or whoever was his authority) sang of Æolus, Dorus, and Xuthus, the progenitors of nations, being the sons of Hellen, the son of Zeus, or grandson of Prometheus. It is possible that before this entire genealogy others had been invented, e.g., that Dorus was a son of Hellen; since, as early as the time of Lycurgus, the Spartans were commanded by the Pythian oracle to worship Zeus Hellanius and Athene Hellania;2148 and since both the judges in the Spartan army2149 and the judges of the Olympic games were called Hellanodicæ. And when I consider the celebrated oracle just quoted, and the close connexion of Sparta and Olympia with Delphi, the sacred families of the Delphians (the ὅσιοι), who referred their origin to Deucalion,2150 and on [pg 492] the other hand remember that a Bœotian poem, composed in the neighbourhood of the Pythian oracle, first uses the word “Hellenes” in this extended sense; I cannot help conjecturing that this national sanctuary of the Hellenic name had a large share in the formation of that really beautiful legend; by which all the different races of Greece, separated for so many centuries by violent and unceasing contention, were united into the peaceable fellowship of brotherly affection and concord.

Cnosus,2151 the Minoian Cnosus, was, even so late as the time of Plato, the first city in Crete, and the chief domicile of the Cretan laws and customs: and Plato, in his Treatise on Laws, takes a Cnosian as the representative and defender of the Cretan laws in general;2152 although Cnosus about his time had declined from internal corruption, and the fame of having preserved the good laws of ancient Crete soon passed from her to Gortyna and Lyctus.2153 In earlier times, however, the Cretan laws (Κρητικοὶ νόμοι), which Archilochus even mentions as being of a distinct character,2154 were preserved in the greatest purity at Cnosus. Now when modern writers admit indeed that the Cretan laws were founded upon the customs of the Doric race, but affirm that this race did not penetrate into Crete before the expedition of the Heraclidæ, and that migrations subsequently took place from Peloponnesus; it is necessary for them first of all to show that Cnosus received its Doric inhabitants from that country, that is, probably either from Argos or Sparta. But had such been the case, the memory of these migrations would assuredly never have been lost: Argos and Sparta would have been too proud to possess such a colony. Cnosus must therefore have received its Doric inhabitants at an earlier date, in the dark ages of mythology; and the subsequent colonies from Peloponnesus to Lyctus, Gortyna, and other places, helped to increase the Doric population, which in Homer's time2155 was confined to a part of the island, over the whole of Crete; as was the case in [pg 494] late ages. And at the time which Homer describes, not only the language, but the customs and laws were probably also different; whereas Archilochus appears to mention the Cretan laws as prevalent over the whole island. Upon the whole, the Dorians in Crete—and this is a fact of great importance—never seem to stand, with regard to the Dorians of Peloponnesus, in the relation of a colony to its mother country. In Greece, the parent state—so great was the pride of higher antiquity—never condescended to take the institutions of a colony as models for its own, as was the case with Sparta and Crete; nor did the mother country ever procure priests from its colony, as was the case when the Pythian Apollo sent Cretan priests to Sparta.2156 In short, everything seems to prove that the Doric institutions were of great antiquity in Crete, and that the distinction which has lately been taken between the laws of Minos and the Doric institutions and customs of Crete—a distinction directly opposed to the unanimous testimony of antiquity—is false and untenable.

But in retaining his conviction respecting a Doric settlement in Crete before the migration of the Heraclidæ, and in viewing it as the only means of explaining many facts in the religious and political history of the Greeks, the Author does not imply that this Doric colony was exactly similar to a later migration of Dorians from Argos and Sparta. The condition of the Dorians in Hestiæotis must have been very different from that to which the same race attained in Peloponnesus. The mixture with other races, which had gone so far, that the head of the mythical settlement bears a Pelasgic name (Teutamus), does not agree with the character of the later Dorians. At that time no line of princes, calling themselves Heraclidæ, could have stood at the head of the Dorians; for in Crete, Heraclidæ only occur in cities which were colonised from Peloponnesus; for example, they do not occur in Cnosus. Moreover, a maritime, and especially a piratical life (upon which the maritime supremacy [pg 495] of Minos was founded) does not agree with the principles followed by the Dorians in Peloponnesus, where they relied upon a tranquil and secure possession of land. These principles, however, could not be developed so long as the Dorians were excluded from the rich plain of Thessaly, and were forced to eke out their scanty means by hunting and piracy. How different was the rough and perilous life of the ancient sea-kings of the Normans from the proud and secure existence of the barons in Normandy! Yet the eye of the observant historian can trace a unity of national character even in the most different circumstances. By a similar analogy, this remarkable expedition of Doric adventurers from Hestiæotis to Crete will explain the zeal of the Cretans for the worship of Apollo, the ancient connexion of Crete and Delphi, and the early existence in Crete of notions respecting a strict regulation of public life (κόσμος).

In the course of the year 481 B.C. (Olymp. 74. 3/4) Xerxes set out from his residence at Susa (Herod. VII. 20), found the great army assembled in Cappadocia, and marched to Sardis, from which town he sent ambassadors to the Greek cities (ib. 32). Having wintered here, the army marched in the spring of 480 B.C. (Olymp. 74. 4) to Abydos;2157 when it had reached the passes of Pieria, the Persian envoys returned (ib. 131). Soon after this they met at Thermopylæ the Greek forces, which had set out before the 75th Olympiad and the Carnean games, about June 480 B.C. Battles of Thermopylæ and Artemisium in μέσον θέρος (VIII. 12.) both perhaps a short time before the Olympic festival (VIII. 26). Conquest of Attica, four months after the beginning of the διάβασις τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου (VIII. 51). Battle of Salamis, a little after the time of the Ιακχος, after the εἰκὰς of Boëdromion Olymp. 75. 1., as the Etesian winds were either blowing or had ceased to blow [pg 498] (they last from the summer solstice to the rising of the dog-star), VII. 168. Mardonius winters in Thessaly and Macedonia, the Persian fleet at Cume and Samos. Battle of Platæa on the 26th or 27th of Panemus (Metagitnion), Olymp. 75. 2. 479 B.C. at the same time as that of Mycale. The year ends with the taking of Sestos.

2. The Greeks certainly received early intelligence of the preparations in Persia (VII. 138), even if the story related by Herodotus (VII. 239.) about the secret message of Demaratus is not true. They either refused or gave earth and water to the envoys late in the year 481 B.C. (VII. 138.). The states which refused to submit held a congress;2158 and they are now called by Herodotus, “the Greeks allied against the Persians,” (οἱ συνωμόται Ἑλλήνων ἐπὶ τῷ Πέρσῃ, VII. 148.). This assembly of course was formed by deputies from the different cities: the manner of its formation may be inferred from the place at which it sat; and it will be shown presently that it first assembled at Corinth, which city belonged to the Peloponnesian confederacy. It appears therefore that Sparta must have convened an assembly at Corinth, to which the extra-Peloponnesian states, which had refused earth and water, sent envoys. This congress first put an end to the internal dissensions of Greece (VII. 145.), in which good service Chileus of Tegea and Themistocles are said to have earned the gratitude of their countrymen (Plutarch Themist. 6.). Secondly, when they heard that Xerxes was at Sardis, they despatched spies thither, and at the same time envoys to Argos, Sicily, Corcyra, and Crete. (VII. 145. 199.) The envoys are stated by Herodotus to have been sent by the Lacedæmonians and their allies.2159 They also made a vow to decimate to the Delphian God all those Greeks who had unnecessarily given earth and water to the Persians (VII. 132.); the persons [pg 499] who made this vow are called by Diodorus XI. 3. “the Greeks assembled in congress at the Isthmus,” οἱ ἐν Ἰσθμῷ συνεδρεύοντες τῶν Ἑλλήνων.

3. In this narrative taken from Herodotus there still remains one contradiction, viz., that if the Greeks did not assemble till after they had refused earth and water (as appears from VII. 138. cf. 145.), the Argives had no longer any option whether they would join the league or not. Likewise the dismission of the Greek envoys would fall too late in the unfavourable season for sailing, and there would scarcely be time for the messages to the oracles (c. 148, 169.), and the other proceedings. It is therefore probable that this congress was formed before the arrival of the Persian envoys, which was late in 481 B.C.: and Diodorus seems to be correct in stating that of the nations some gave earth and water, while the Persian army was in the valley of Tempe, and others after its departure (XI. 3.); and therefore none till early in 480 B.C.: previously the ambassadors were probably in the north; Herodotus in VII. 138. appears to mean only the ambassadors of Darius. With this the following statements agree, which he adds in VII. 172. “As soon as the Thessalians had heard that the Persians wished to invade Europe”—which they must have known in the winter of 481-80 B.C.—“they sent envoys to the Isthmus.” Ἐν δὲ τῷ Ἰσθμῷ (i.e., in the village which had grown up about the temple of Neptune), ἔσαν ἁλισμένοι πρόβουλοι (plenipotentiaries, VI. 7.) τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἀραιρημένοι ἀπὸ τῶν πολίων τῶν τὰ ἀμείνω φρονεουσέων περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα. Now this assembly, while the Persian king was at Abydos, and therefore very early in 480 B.C., sent the army to Tempe, which soon returned (VII. 173.), and indeed returned to the Isthmus, which must therefore have been the head-quarters of the allied army. When it returned, the congress was still sitting at the Isthmus.2160 This synedrion or assembly (which is again mentioned in this place by Diodorus XI. 4.) now resolved to defend the [pg 500] passes of Thermopylæ and Artemisium: and when the intelligence arrived that the Persians were in Pieria, διαλυθέντες ἐκ τοῦ Ἰσθμοῦ (i.e., departing from the Isthmus) ἐστρατεύοντο αὐτῶν οἱ μὲν ἐς Θερμοπύλας πεζῇ, ἄλλοι δὲ κατὰ θάλασσαν ἐπ᾽ Ἀρτεμίσιον. But that the Isthmus was still the place in which the congress sat, is evident from the fact, that Sandoces, Aridolis, and Penthylus, who fell into the hands of the Greeks before the battle of Artemisium, were sent thither (VII. 195.). At this time indeed the Peloponnesians were celebrating the Olympiad, and the Spartans the Carnea, at their respective homes,2161 after which, as had been previously arranged, they were to take the field with all their forces (πανδημεὶ, VII. 206. VIII. 26.). Nevertheless, the decree that the ships which came too late for Artemisium should assemble in the Trœzenian Pogon (VIII. 42.), as well as the other, that the Isthmus should be fortified (VIII. 40, 71.), which measure was not thought of before the battle of Thermopylæ, must have been passed in this interval. Diodorus (XI. 16.) mentions the synedrion in connexion with this decree. The fortification began after the Carnea (VIII. 72.). The fleet was commanded (as is evident from VIII. 2, 9, 56, 58, 74, 108, 111. IX. 90.) by the Spartan admiral and a council, a συνέδριον of the στρατηγοὶ or ἐν τέλει ὄντες (IX. 106.), in which the admiral τὸν λόγον προετίθει (VIII. 59.) put the question to the vote (ἐπεψήφιζε, c. 61.), and gave out the decree. This commander was armed with very large powers, and Leotychidas concluded an alliance with the Samians (IX. 92.), and even the captains of the fleet debated on the projected migration of the Ionians (IX. 106.). Nor is it ever mentioned that the fleet received orders from the Isthmus. But the circumstance of the fleet's sailing to the Isthmus, after the battle of Salamis, for the decree on the ἀριστεῖα (VIII. 123.), is a proof that the Isthmus was still the seat of the confederate assembly. Diodorus likewise represents this decree as proceeding from the συνέδριον (XI. 55.); probably the [pg 501] “Greeks,” who refused to confirm the vote of the commanders (VIII. 124.), were the members of the league. The ships which had been engaged in the battle returned home without any decision. Late in the year, after the eclipse of the sun on the 2nd of October, Cleombrotus had led the great allied army from the Isthmus, and soon afterwards died (IX. 10.). The decree for the following year, that the fleet should go to Ægina (VIII. 131.), may have proceeded either from the synedrium of the preceding year, or from Sparta. For that there were no longer any deputies assembled at Corinth is evident from the circumstance that the Ionian envoys only went to Sparta and Ægina (VIII. 132.); nor is the Isthmus afterwards mentioned as the seat of an assembly, although it was fortified until the middle of summer, till the time of the Hyacinthia (IX. 7.). After this time, Athens, Platæa, and Megara sent their envoys to Sparta, where there were also Peloponnesian envoys, as for instance Chileus of Tegea (IX. 9.), who was mentioned above among the πρόβουλοι; and all these, together with the ambassadors of the three states just mentioned, are, as it appears, called by Herodotus οἱ ἄγγελοι οἱ ἀπιγμένοι ἀπὸ τῶν πολίων, IX. 10. There must probably have been some joint act of the allies,2162 by virtue of which Pausanias was able to collect the great Peloponnesian army. After the battle of Platæa there was in the army a kind of council of war, doubtless a συνέδριον τῶν ἐν τέλει ὄντων, which regulated the number of the sacred offerings, divided the booty (IX. 81, 85.), and determined on the expedition against Thebes (c. 86.): the persons who were given up, Pausanias seems at Corinth to have ordered to execution on his own authority (c. 88.).

4. Such is the substance of the narrative of Herodotus; in which we can only be surprised, that of the most remarkable event, viz., the treaty of Pausanias, he should say not a word: a silence which can only be explained by supposing [pg 502] that he had intended to mention it in another passage of his unfinished work. When Pausanias, with the assistance of the allies, had won the battle of Platæa, he sacrificed in the market-place of Platæa to Zeus Eleutherius, and convened an assembly of all the Greeks, in which the Platæans (who annually performed certain honorary rites to those who had fallen in the battle, Thuc. III. 58.) were promised that their country and city should remain independent, and that no one should attack them without lawful reason, or with intention to reduce them to subjection: and that, in case these conditions were not observed, all the allies then present would protect them (Thuc. VI. 71. cf. III. 56, 59.); an engagement which the Spartans themselves afterwards broke, on the ground that the Platæans had first unjustly given up τὸ ξυνώμοτον (II. 74.). For in “the ancient treaty of Pausanias after the Persian war,” it was ordered that the allies in general, and the Platæans among them, should remain at peace with each other (Thuc. III. 68. cf. II. 72.). The further conditions of this treaty may be collected from Thucyd. I. 67, (for it is evidently this treaty which is in question,) where the Æginetans complain that they are not independent, “according to the treaty;” for the thirty years' truce (I. 115.) cannot be meant, as it was not concluded till after the subjection of Ægina (the former in Olymp. 83. 3. the latter in Olymp. 80. 4.); whence it is likewise evident that the treaty, which was violated by the siege of Potidæa, and the exclusion of the Megarians from the market of Attica, (I. 67, 87. cf. c. 144.) was the same ancient act, only renewed by later treaties. Thus Plutarch states that the latter prohibition was “contrary to the common principles of justice, and the solemn oaths of the Greeks.”2163 And in another place he mentions that, in a general assembly of the Greeks after the battle of Platæa, Aristides proposed a decree that the Greeks should annually send deputies and sacred messengers [pg 503] to Platæa, and that the Eleutheria should be solemnised every five years.2164 Also, that it was agreed that an allied Greek armament should be organised against the Persians, consisting of 10,000 heavy-armed infantry, 1000 cavalry, and 100 ships: and that the Platæans should be considered sacred and inviolable. From what has been stated above, it is clear how much of this account is true, and how much added by Athenian partiality.

5. In the following years, when Sparta still continued the war against the Persians and their allies by means of Pausanias and Leotychidas, there must have been a congress, though not constantly sitting; since the Spartans would not have determined the amount of “the war contribution”2165 on their own authority; and there is much probability in the account of Diodorus (XI. 55.), that the Spartans summoned Themistocles for his share in the treason of Pausanias before the common-council of the Greeks, which used at this time to assemble at Sparta. At least it is not contradicted by Thucydides; indeed his narrative (I. 135.) perfectly agrees in this point with that of Diodorus. The words ἐν τῇ Σπάρτῃ, which are omitted in some MSS. of Diodorus, and suspected by Wesseling (yet, it should be observed, only these words), cannot be well spared; and, even if they were expunged, the whole chapter would show that the congress was sitting at Sparta; for it was evidently under Lacedæmonian influence, and therefore met in the Peloponnese; and, since the instance mentioned above, it does not appear that any of its meetings were held at the Isthmus.

This account likewise proves that, after Pausanias had occasioned the defection of the Ionians and Æolians from Sparta, who were now considered as the separate allies of Athens, a confederate council, which included other states besides the Peloponnesians, continued to sit at Sparta; and [pg 504] affords fresh grounds for supposing that this abandonment of the Spartan alliance was not considered as a transfer of the chief command to Athens, but that Sparta only intrusted the Athenians, together with those Greeks who dwelt in the territory of the Persian king, with the continuation of the war in Asia, and the management of all affairs connected with it; and still considered Athens as under her command, until that state revolted in Olymp. 79. At last the internal wars of Peloponnesus, Olymp. 79-81, subverted all the relations of Athens and Sparta.