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
Thus complicated were the results which followed the Dorian
migration. They show sufficiently how little we have here to do with
a transformation effected at one blow, like the result of a fortunate
campaign. After the races had long wandered up and down in a varying
series of territorial disputes and mutual agreements, the fate of the
peninsula was gradually decided. Only when men had forgotten the tedious
period of unrest and ferment, which memory can adorn with no incidents,
could the reconstitution of the peninsula be regarded as a sudden turn of
events by which the Peloponnesus had become Dorian.
Even in those districts which the invaders especially contended for and
occupied, the transformation of the people into a Dorian population was
only effected very gradually and in a very imperfect fashion. How could
it have been otherwise? Even the conquering hosts themselves were not of
purely Dorian blood, but intermixed with people of all sorts of races.
Nor was it as Dorians but as relatives of the Achæan princes that the
leaders of their armies laid claim to power and rule. Thus Plato saw in
the march of the Heraclids a union between Dorians and Achæans, dating
from the times of the movement of the Greek peoples, and how little
unity originally existed between the commander and his men is shown by a
series of undoubted facts. For no sooner had the force of the warriors
won a firm footing in the districts, than the interests of Heraclids and
Dorians diverged and such dissensions broke out as either endangered or
nullified the whole success of the colony.
The leaders sought to effect amalgamation of the old and new populations,
that they might thus attain a broader foundation for their power and
place themselves in a position independent of the influence of the Dorian
warriors. Everywhere do we find the same phenomena, and most distinctly
in Messenia. But in Laconia also, the Heraclids made themselves detested
by their warriors, by trying to assimilate the non-Dorian to the Dorian
people, and in Argolis we see the Heraclid Deïphontes, whose name is
thoroughly Ionic, allied with Hyrnetho, who is the representative of the
original population of the coast district. It is this same Deïphontes
who helps to establish the throne of the Temenids in Argos, to the
indignation of the other Heraclids and of the Dorians: here, therefore,
their new kingdom undoubtedly rests on the support of the pre-Dorian
population.
Thus the bonds between the Heraclids and the Dorians were loosened in all
three countries, soon after their occupation. The political institutions
were established in spite of the Dorians, and if the newly imported
popular force was to have a fruitful and beneficial effect on the soil
of the country, it required the art of a wise legislation to conciliate
opposition and regulate the forces which threatened to destroy it. The
first example of such legislation was given, as far as we know, on the
island of Crete.
DORIANS IN CRETE
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