In the second place, everything that is related concerning the exploits of Hercules in the north of Greece refers exclusively to the history of the Dorians; and conversely all the actions of the Doric race in their earlier settlements are mythically represented under the person of Hercules. Now this cannot be accounted for by supposing that there was only a temporary connexion between this hero and the Doric race.
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.