Even more characteristic perhaps is the account of the migration of the Bœotians. According to Homer, Cadmeans lived in Thebes, Minyæ in Orchomenos. Hence it followed that the Bœotians must have immigrated after the Trojan War, like the Thessalians. But a great many Thessalian names of places and religious practices occur in Bœotia. Hence nothing was more simple than to make the Bœotians immigrate from Thessaly, thus at the same time explaining what had become of the original inhabitants of Thessaly after the influx of Thessalians. To be sure this original population, as represented by the serfs (_penestai_) of the Thessalian nobles, presented a very different appearance; still these two views could very well be combined: one needed only to suppose that one part of the former population of the region had fallen into bondage, and that the other had emigrated. Moreover, Homer already mentions Bœotians in the region which they occupied in historic times. That made the further supposition necessary that a part of the people had already settled in Bœotia before the Trojan War; or else the opposite hypothesis was made, that the Bœotians had been driven out of Bœotia after the Trojan War by the Pelasgians and Thracians, and had returned thither after several generations. We see plainly from this example how all such suppositions were dependent on the epic poems. The migration of the Eleans is a similar case. Elis is an old district name, consequently no Eleans can ever have existed outside of Elis. But Homer mentions the Epeans as being inhabitants of the country; consequently it was stated that the Eleans did not enter the Peloponnesus until after the Trojan War, and that they came from Ætolia, where Oxylus, the mythical ancestor of the Elean royal house, was also worshipped as a hero. According to an opposite version Ætolia was settled by emigrants from Elis; and these two views were then combined, and the Eleans were made first to move to Ætolia and then, after ten generations, to move back again. As a matter of fact the Homeric Epeans are nothing else than the inhabitants of Epea in Triphylia, whose name was extended to include the inhabitants of the surrounding districts, like the name of the neighbouring Pylians, since the knowledge of the Ionic rhapsodists concerning the western part of the Peloponnesus is very scanty.