Apollodôrus, and Pherekydês before him (Frag. 51. Didot),
called Protôgeneia daughter of Deukaliôn; Pindar (Olymp. ix.
64) designated her as daughter of Opus. One of the stratagems
mentioned by the Scholiast to get rid of this genealogical
discrepancy was, the supposition that Deukaliôn had two names
(διώνυμος); that he was also named Opus. (Schol. Pind. Olymp. ix.
85).
That the Deukalidæ or posterity of Deukaliôn reigned in Thessaly,
was mentioned both by Hesiod and Hekatæus, ap. Schol. Apollôn.
Rhod. iv. 265.
Respecting Dôrus the son of Hellên, we find neither legends nor
legendary genealogy; respecting Xuthus, very little beyond the tale
of Kreüsa and Iôn, which has its place more naturally among the
Attic fables. Achæus however, who is here represented as the son of
Xuthus, appears in other stories with very different parentage and
accompaniments. According to the statement which we find in Dionysius
of Halicarnassus, Achæus, Phthius and Pelasgus are sons of Poseidôn and
Larissa. They migrate from Peloponnêsus into Thessaly, and distribute
the Thessalian territory between them, giving their names to its
principal divisions: their descendants in the sixth generation were
driven out of that country by the invasion of Deukaliôn at the head
of the Kurêtes and the Leleges.[230] This was the story of those who
wanted to provide an eponymus for the Achæans in the southern districts
of Thessaly: Pausanias accomplishes the same object by different
means, representing Achæus, the son of Xuthus as having gone back
to Thessaly and occupied the portion of it to which his father was
entitled. Then, by way of explaining how it was that there were Achæans
at Sparta and at Argos, he tells us that Archander and Architelês, the
sons of Archæus, came back from Thessaly to Peloponnêsus, and married
two daughters of Danaus: they acquired great influence at Argos and
Sparta, and gave to the people the name of Achæans after their father
Achæus.[231]
[230] Dionys. H. A. R. i. 17.
[231] Pausan. vii. 1, 1-3. Herodotus also mentions (ii. 97)
Archander, son of Phthius and grandson of Achæus, who married the
daughter of Danaus. Larcher (Essai sur la Chronologie d’Hérodote,
ch. x. p. 321) tells us that this cannot be the Danaus who came
from Egypt, the father of the fifty daughters, who must have
lived two centuries earlier, as may be proved by chronological
arguments: this must be another Danaus, according to him.
Strabo seems to give a different story respecting the Achæans in
Peloponnêsus: he says that they were the original population of
the peninsula, that they came in from Phthia with Pelops, and
inhabited Laconia, which was from them called Argos Achaicum,
and that on the conquest of the Dôrians, they moved into Achaia
properly so called, expelling the Iônians therefrom (Strabo, viii
p. 365). This narrative is, I presume, borrowed from Ephorus.
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