Nations called by a name which is derived from a national source, are likely to retain it longer than those which are designated dynastically from the head of a ruling family: as they must change their dynasties more frequently than they can receive new infusions of race and blood, powerful enough to acquire a predominance over the old.
Strabo indeed says[479], that Homer calls the Cadmeans of the Troic war by the name of Minyæ. But no Minyæ are named in Homer at all, although he speaks of the Ὀρχόμενος Μινυήïος, and of the ποταμὸς Μινυήïος in Peloponnesus, and though there was perhaps there also a Minyan Orchomenos. Even if Minyæ were named in Homer as a race, it would be strange that Homer should without a reason alter, for the period of the war, that use of the Cadmean name, to which he adheres elsewhere so strictly, as to show that he is acting on a rule. Whereas the transition to Βοιωτοὶ is not only intelligible, but politically descriptive.
Upon the foregoing facts we may found several observations:
1. The Cadmean name would seem to be strictly dynastic: as it makes its first appearance on the spot where Cadmus has reigned, and disappears at the same point, along with the extinction of his family.
2. The use of the Cadmean name by Homer, compared with his departure from it, each having appropriate reference to the circumstances of different epochs, appears to be a marked example of a careful and historic manner of handling local names with reference to the exact circumstances of place, time, and persons, and not in the loose manner of later poetry.
3. Our whole view of Cadmus and the Cadmeans from Homer has been attained by circuitous inference: and, presuming it to be a just one, we have here a very singular example of the poet’s reticence with respect to all infusion of foreign blood and influence into his country.
[428] Nägelsbach, Homerische Theologie 80-3.
[429] There were columns outside the doors, for example, of the palace of Ulysses in Ithaca. Od. xvii. 29. This construction of the metaphor would come nearly to the same point, by making it mean the doors of Ocean.
[430] Hermann Opusc. vii. 253. Nägelsbach, ii. 9, note.
[431] Blakesley’s Introduction to Herodotus, p. xiv.