The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 1 of 2Müller, Karl Otfried
History
The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 1 of 2
Müller, Karl Otfried
Dorians -- History; Greece -- Antiquities, Dorian; Greece -- History -- Dorian Invasions, approximately 1125-1025 B.C.
Lastly, if we compare as much of the fables concerning Hercules related
below as refers to the Dorians, with those current among the ancient
Argives, and if we separate in mind the links by which the epic poets gave
them an apparent historical connexion, we shall find no real resemblance
between the two. The worship of Apollo, which can in almost every case be
shown to have been the real motive which actuated the Dorians, was wholly
foreign to the Argives. If then an Achæan tribe did arrive amongst the
Dorians, bringing with it the story of Hercules, or a hero so called, this
latter people must have applied and developed his mythology in a manner
wholly different from those to whom they owed it. And after all, we should
be obliged to suppose that long before their irruption into Peloponnesus,
these Heraclidæ had been so intermixed with the Dorians, that their
traditions were formed entirely according to the disposition of that race,
since Hercules in Thessaly is represented as a complete Dorian. Here,
however, we are again at variance with the fable, which represents the
Heraclidæ as having fled to the Dorians a short time only before their
entry into Peloponnesus.
Thus we are continually met with contradictions, and never enabled to
obtain a clear view of the question, unless we assent to the proposition
that Hercules, from a very remote period, was both a Dorian and
Peloponnesian hero, and particularly the hero of the Hyllean tribe, which
in the earliest settlements of the Dorians had probably united itself with
two other small nations, the Heraclidæ being the hereditary princes of the
Doric race. The story of the Heraclidæ being descended from the Argive
Hercules, who performed the commands of Eurystheus, was not invented till
after Peloponnesus had been introduced into the tradition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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