The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03 : $b Greece to the Peloponnesian War
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03 : $b Greece to the Peloponnesian War
World history
The tradition of the immigration of Danaus from Egypt is closely
connected with the legend of the wanderings of Io, which could not
have taken on its present form until after Egypt was opened up to the
Hellenes, that is not before the end of the seventh century. The legend
concerning the Egyptian origin of the old Attic national hero Cecrops
grew up much later in the fourth or third century, and never attained
general recognition.
We have already seen how Phœnix and his brother Cadmus became Phœnicians.
Accordingly Phœnix’s daughter, or according to a later myth his sister,
Europa, was carried off by Zeus from Phœnicia to Crete, where she gave
birth to Minos. This alone makes it clear that Minos had nothing whatever
to do with the Phœnicians, but is a good Grecian god, as are also Phœnix,
Cadmus, Europa, his wife Pasiphaë (the “all enlightening”), his daughter
Phædra (the “beaming”), and Ariadne the wife of Dionysus. Minos, also,
afterwards fell to the rank of a hero; already in Homer he appears as the
king of Knossos, and later the Cretans trace their laws back to him. The
name Minoa occurs frequently in the islands and on the coast of the Ægean
Sea; also in Crete itself, and in Amorgos, Siphnos, and on the coast of
Megaris. Hence the conclusion was drawn that Minos had ruled in all these
places and must therefore have been a great sea-king, whose dominion
extended over the whole of the Cyclades and in fact over the whole
Ægean Sea. But in Sicily there was also a Minoa, a daughter city of the
Megarian colony of Selinus, and doubtless named after the small island of
Minoa near the Nisæan Megara. Thus the tradition arose that Minos had
proceeded to Sicily and there found his death. Since Selinus was founded
in the year 650 B.C., this myth cannot have come into existence before
the sixth century.
At the beginning of the fifth century all these traditions were
combined, and connected; on the one hand, with the myths which formed
the substance of the epic poems; on the other, with the oldest historic
recollections. The genealogies of the heroes as given in part by Homer
and more completely by Hesiod served as a chronological basis. At the
beginning were placed the Pelasgians, then the immigrations from the
east, of Danaus, Pelops, Cadmus, and others. Then followed the expedition
of the Argonauts, the march of the Seven against Thebes, the Trojan War,
and whatever else of similar nature was related in the epics. Next came
the age of the great migrations; first the incursion of the Thessalians
into the plains of the Peneus, and the Bœotian migration caused thereby,
then the march of the Dorians and their allies, the Eleans, into the
Peloponnesus, which was followed by the colonisation of the islands and
of the western coast of Asia Minor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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