BOOK I. HISTORY OF THE DORIC RACE, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE END OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
§ 1. Earliest Settlement of the Dorians in Thessaly. § 2. Description of the Vale of Tempe. § 3. Of the Passes of Olympus. § 4. And of Hestiæotis. § 5. The Perrhæbians. § 6. The Lapithæ. § 7. Limits of the Territory in Thessaly occupied by the Dorians. § 8. Contents of the Epic Poem Ægimius. § 9. Doric Migration from Thessaly to Crete. § 10. Relation of the Dorians to the Macedonians.
1. “From early times the Dorians and Ionians were the chief races of the Grecian nation; the latter of Pelasgic, the former of Hellenic origin; the latter an aboriginal people, the former a people much addicted to wandering. For the former, when under the dominion of Deucalion, dwelt in Phthiotis; and in the time of Dorus, the son of Hellen, they inhabited the country at the foot of Ossa and Olympus, which was called Hestiæotis. Afterwards, however, being driven from Hestiæotis by the Cadmeans, they dwelt under mount Pindus, and were called the Macednian nation. From thence they again migrated to Dryopis; and having passed from Dryopis into Peloponnesus, they were called the Doric race.”(58)
This connected account cannot be considered as derived immediately from ancient tradition; but can only be viewed as an attempt of the father of history to arrange and reconcile various legends. Nor indeed is it difficult to discover and examine the steps of the argument which led him to this conclusion. It is clear that he considers the genealogy of Hellen,(59) viz. that he was the son of Deucalion and father of Dorus, Xuthus, and Æolus, as an historical fact; although it is at least more recent than the poems of Homer, where the name of Hellenes does not include these races, but is the appellation of a single nation in Phthiotis: and that his object is to establish the position, that the Dorians were the genuine Hellenes. Now since Deucalion, the father of Hellen and grandfather of Dorus, was supposed to have dwelt in Phthiotis,(60) Herodotus represents the Dorians as also coming from Phthiotis; although the people meant in these legends by the names of Deucalion and Hellen were the real ancient Hellenes, the Myrmidons,(61) who were afterwards under the dominion of the Æacidæ,(62) and are entirely distinct from the Dorians. Dorus was next represented as succeeding Hellen as king of the same people; and then, since the name of Dorus was in these fabulous accounts connected with Hestiæotis, he infers that the Dorians went thither from Phthiotis. But the modern mythologist must of course abandon this whole deduction as unfounded; and he can only adopt the datum from which the historian started; namely, that, according to ancient tradition, “Dorus dwelt at the foot of Olympus and Ossa.” Here then the real fact presents itself to us. The chain of Olympus, the divider of nations, whose lofty summit is still called by the inhabitants the _celestial mansion_, is the place in which the Dorians first appear in the history of Greece.