Having thus got Hellas as an aggregate with its main cementing forces,
we march on to its subdivision into parts, through Æolus, Dôrus and
Xuthus, the three sons of Hellen;[224] a distribution which is far
from being exhaustive: nevertheless, the genealogists whom Apollodôrus
follows recognize no more than three sons.
[224] How literally and implicitly even the ablest Greeks
believed in eponymous persons, such as Hellên and Iôn, as the
real progenitors of the races called after him, may be seen by
this, that Aristotle gives this common descent as the definition
of γένος (Metaphysic. iv. p. 118, Brandis):—
Γένος λέγεται, τὸ μὲν ... τὸ δὲ, ἀφ᾽ οὗ ἂν ὦσι πρώτου κινήσαντος
εἰς τὸ εἶναι. Οὕτω γὰρ λέγονται οἱ μὲν, Ἕλληνες τὸ γένος, οἱ δὲ,
Ἴωνες· τῷ, οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ Ἕλληνος, οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Ἴωνος, εἶναι πρώτου
γεννήσαντος.
The genealogy is essentially post-Homeric; for Homer knows Hellas and
the Hellênes only in connection with a portion of Achaia Phthiôtis.
But as it is recognized in the Hesiodic Catalogue[225]—composed
probably within the first century after the commencement of recorded
Olympiads, or before 676 B. C.—the peculiarities of it, dating from
so early a period, deserve much attention. We may remark, first,
that it seems to exhibit to us Dôrus and Æolus as the only pure and
genuine offspring of Hellên. For their brother Xuthus is not enrolled
as an eponymus; he neither founds nor names any people; it is only
his sons Achæus and Iôn, after his blood has been mingled with that
of the Erechtheid Kreüsa, who become eponyms and founders, each of
his own separate people. Next, as to the territorial distribution,
Xuthus receives Peloponnêsus from his father, and unites himself with
Attica (which the author of this genealogy seems to have conceived as
originally unconnected with Hellên) by his marriage with the daughter
of the indigenous hero, Erechtheus. The issue of this marriage, Achæus
and Iôn, present to us the population of Peloponnêsus and Attica
conjointly as related among themselves by the tie of brotherhood, but
as one degree more distant both from Dôrians and Æolians. Æolus reigns
over the regions about Thessaly, and called the people in those parts
Æolians; while Dôrus occupies “the country over against Peloponnêsus on
the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf,” and calls the inhabitants
after himself, Dôrians.[226] It is at once evident that this
designation is in no way applicable to the confined district between
Parnassus and Œta, which alone is known by the name of Dôris, and its
inhabitants by that of Dôrians, in the historical ages. In the view of
the author of this genealogy, the Dôrians are the original occupants of
the large range of territory north of the Corinthian Gulf, comprising
Ætôlia, Phôkis, and the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians. And this
farther harmonizes with the other legend noticed by Apollodôrus,
when he states that Ætolus, son of Endymiôn, having been forced to
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