The traditionary name of this expedition is “_the Return of the descendants of Hercules_.”(182) Hercules, the son of Zeus is (even in the Iliad), both by birth and destiny, the hereditary prince of Tiryns and Mycenæ, and ruler of the surrounding nations.(183) But through some evil chance Eurystheus obtained the precedency, and the son of Zeus was compelled to serve him. Nevertheless he is represented as having bequeathed to his descendants his claims to the dominion of Peloponnesus, which they afterwards made good in conjunction with the Dorians; Hercules having also performed such actions in behalf of this race, that his descendants were always entitled to the possession of one-third of the territory. The heroic life of Hercules was therefore the mythical title, through which the Dorians were made to appear, not as unjustly invading, but merely as reconquering, a country which had belonged to their princes in former times. Hence Hercules is reported to have made war with some degree of propriety, and subdued the principal countries of the Doric race (except his native country Argos), Lacedæmon and the Messenian Pylus, to have established the national festival at Olympia, and even to have laid the foundation of the most distant colonies. To esteem as real these conquests and settlements, these mythical forerunners of real history, is incompatible with a clear view of these matters; and we could scarce seriously ask even the most credulous, how, at a time when sieges were in the highest degree tedious, Hercules could have stormed and taken so many fortresses, surrounded with almost impregnable walls?(184) A severer criticism enjoins us to trace the mythical narrative to its centre, and attempt to ascertain whether the sovereign race of the Dorians did really spring from the early sovereigns of Mycenæ; such being not only the epic account, but also the tradition countenanced in Sparta itself. Tyrtæus said, in his poem called the Eunomia, “_Zeus himself gave this territory_ (Laconia) _to the race of Hercules; united with whom we_ (the Dorians) _left the stormy Erineus, and reached the wide island of Pelops_.”(185) And a still more important proof is the reply of king Cleomenes, mentioned by Herodotus, who, when forbidden by the priestess in the Acropolis of Athens to enter the temple, as being a Dorian, answered, “I am no Dorian, but an Achæan,” referring to his descent from Hercules.(186) From this it would appear that there was amongst the Dorians an Achæan phratria, to which the kings of Argos, Sparta, and Messenia, and the founders and rulers of Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus, Ægina, Rhodes, Cos, &c., belonged; and which, in conjunction with the Dorians, only recovered by conquest its hereditary rights.(187)