Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II. — John Shaqi
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume II.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
And at that period of the reign of Ion when the Eleusinians were at
war with the Athenians, and the Athenians invited Ion to be Commander
in Chief, death seized him in Attica, and he was buried at Potamos,
a village in Attica. And his descendants reigned after him till they
and their people were dispossessed by the Achæans, who in their turn
were driven out by the Dorians from Lacedæmon and Argos. The mutual
feuds between the Ionians and Achæans I shall relate when I have
first given the reason why, before the return of the Dorians, the
inhabitants of Lacedæmon and Argos only of all the Peloponnese were
called Achæans. Archander and Architeles, the sons of Achæus, came to
Argos from Phthiotis and became the sons in law of Danaus, Architeles
marrying Automate, and Archander Scæa. And that they were sojourners in
Argos is shewn very clearly by the name Metanastes (_stranger_) which
Archander gave his son. And it was when the sons of Achæus got powerful
in Argos and Lacedæmon that the name Achæan got attached to the whole
population. Their general name was Achæans, though the Argives were
privately called Danai. And now when they were expelled from Argos and
Lacedæmon by the Dorians, they and their king Tisamenus the son of
Orestes made the Ionians proposals to become their colonists without
war. But the Ionian Court was afraid that, if they and the Achæans were
one people, Tisamenus would be chosen as king over both nations for
his bravery and the lustre of his race. So the Ionians did not accept
the proposals of the Achæans but went to blows over it, and Tisamenus
fell in the battle, and the Achæans beat the Ionians, and besieged
them in Helice to which they had fled, but afterwards let them go upon
conditions. And the Achæans buried the body of Tisamenus at Helice,
but some time afterwards the Lacedæmonians, in accordance with an
oracle from Delphi, removed the remains to Sparta, and the tomb of
Tisamenus is now where the Lacedæmonians have their banquetings, at
the place called Phiditia. And when the Ionians migrated to Attica the
Athenians and their king, Melanthus the son of Andropompus, welcomed
them as settlers, in gratitude to Ion and his services to the Athenians
as Commander in Chief. But there is a tradition that the Athenians
suspected the Dorians, and feared that they would not keep their hands
off them, and received the Ionians therefore as settlers rather from
their formidable strength than from goodwill to them.
[1] Ægialus (αἰγιαλός) is Greek for sea-shore. In this last
view compare the names _Pomerania_, _Glamorganshire_.
[2] Iliad, ii. 575.
CHAPTER II.
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