although ancient interpreters have in vain laboured to give a satisfactory explanation of this name. 9. The early inhabitants of Corinth were, according to the expression of Thucydides,(326) Æolians; and their traditions and religion show that they were very nearly connected with the Minyans of Iolcus and Orchomenus.(327) Their kings were the Sisyphidæ, whose genealogy closes with Hyantidas and Doridas. We find in the last name the same confusion which has been pointed out (amongst others) in the legend of Thessalus the son of Jason,(328) viz., that the arrival of a different nation was expressed by connecting the new comers genealogically with the heroes of the ruling race. Thus Doridas, _i.e._ the Dorians in a patronymic form, is the descendant of Sisyphus. Here begins the sovereignty of the Dorians; who, however, did not, as Pausanias(329) states, altogether expel the ancient inhabitants, but formed the aristocratic class of the new state. Pindar and Callimachus, indeed, call the whole Corinthian nation _Aletiadæ_(330) but merely by a poetical license; the only lineal descendants of Aletes being the ruling house, the Bacchiadæ, from which for a long time were taken the kings and Prytanes of Corinth and all its colonies. There were, however, at Corinth distinguished families of a different origin. The family of Cypselus, which afterwards obtained possession of the tyranny, was, according to Herodotus, of the blood of the Lapithæ, and descended from Cæneus.(331) They came, according to Pausanias, from Gonusa, near Sicyon, to assist the Dorians against Corinth:(332) Aletes, however, at the advice of an oracle, at first refused to receive them, but presently admitted them into the city, where they afterwards overthrew his own descendants. We shall allow this narrative, which contains a _post eventum_ prophecy of the tyranny of the Cypselidæ, to rest on its own merits, remarking only that the Cænidæ had more reason to assist the ancient Æolians than the Dorians; and shall merely infer from it the existence of distinguished families in Corinth not of Doric descent.