The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

Nor does Homer know anything of Thracians outside of their historic abodes to the north of the Ægean Sea. Later tradition places them in Phocian Daulis and in Bœotia on the Helicon. The most direct cause for this was probably furnished by the race of Thracidæ, which attained a prominent position in Delphi and which had probably spread into other Phocian cities as well; another reason was the name of the Daulian king, Tereus, which had a Thracian sound, and lastly, the cult of the Muses which had a home on the Helicon, as also on Olympus in Thracian Pieria. Mysteries were connected with this cult even at a comparatively early period, as is shown by the legends of Orpheus and Musæus. Hence Eumolpus, the mythical founder of the Eleusinian mysteries, was held to be a Thracian; his very name shows that he is connected with the worship of the Muses, even if he were not expressly said to be the son of Musæus. The historic value of this tradition is thus sufficiently demonstrated.

There were also traditions of immigrations from the Orient into Greece. These were based in part upon solar myths, which have given rise to similar legends among the most widely separated peoples; they also reflect the consciousness that the rudiments of a higher civilisation were brought to the Greeks from the East. In the form in which we have them, these myths are without exception late formations, which presuppose close relations between Greece and the old civilisations of Asia and Egypt. In Homer, accordingly, there is no trace of them.

Thus Pelops is said to have come from Lydia or Phrygia to the peninsula which has since borne his name. One might be tempted to regard him as the eponymic hero of the Peloponnesus; but Pelopia was also the name of a daughter of Pelias or of Niobe, and of the mother of Cycnus, a son of Ares. Pelops’ mother also is Euryanassa, a daughter of Dione; his paternal grandfather is Xanthus (the “shining one”); two of his sons are called Chrysippus and Alcathous. These names leave no doubt as to the fact that Pelops was originally a solar hero; hence also the story of his contest with Œnomaus for the possession of Hippodamia. The name Peloponnesus, which is also unknown to Homer, means accordingly “Island of the sun-god”; Helios, as is well known, had a celebrated temple at the most extreme southern point of the peninsula, on the promontory of Tænarum. Thus Pelops, originally, was not materially different from Hercules, who for the most part has crowded him out of cult and tradition; just as the genealogy of the Peloponnesian dynasties was traced back to Pelops in ancient times and to Hercules at a later period. Nevertheless Pelops has at least kept the first place in Olympia.

The tradition of the immigration of Danaus from Egypt is closely connected with the legend of the wanderings of Io, which could not have taken on its present form until after Egypt was opened up to the Hellenes, that is not before the end of the seventh century. The legend concerning the Egyptian origin of the old Attic national hero Cecrops grew up much later in the fourth or third century, and never attained general recognition.