6. We were led to these considerations by the Ætolian legends respecting Hercules, from which we will now return to the Dorians, who possessed the mountainous tract along mount Œta towards Thermopylæ. There was perhaps no region in the whole of Greece which abounded more in local fables of Hercules. It was in the pass of Thermopylæ that he caught those strange monsters the Cercopes;(1770) here it was that Athene caused a hot spring to issue for him from the ground;(1771) on the top of mount Œta, on the Phrygian rock,(1772) was raised the fatal pile, which the brook of Dyras in vain strove to extinguish;(1773) and many adjacent cities claimed a connexion with his exploits:(1774) even the Ænianes (who at a later period settled in this district) attempted to appropriate to themselves these traditions;(1775) and Heraclea Trachinia, not founded till the Peloponnesian war, and the neighbouring Cylicrani, were referred to the mythology of Hercules.(1776) It is certain that local traditions of this kind must have originated with the inhabitants of this district. Is it at least probable that the natives of Argos would have placed the death of their deified hero in a foreign region, if they had been the original inventors of this fiction? The career of the Doric hero doubtless closed on the funeral pile of Œta; and this adventure ended a series of fables, of which there are now extant only some fragments. In this point of view we may perceive a connexion between many of the legends detailed above.
The general tendency and spirit of these legends may be described in the following proposition: The national hero is represented as everywhere preparing the way for his people and their worship; and as protecting them from other races. Thus he opens a communication between Tempe and Delphi, between the fabulous worshippers of Apollo, the Hyperboreans, and the worshippers of his own age. At the same time his own person is an outward symbol of the national worship; he complies with its rites of expiation for homicide, being himself both the victim and the sacrificer.
7. We will next consider the Theban legends of Hercules; and will, for the sake of clearness, first state the propositions which the following discussion is intended to establish.