Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/21

MYTHICAL BEARING OF THE STORY. g vessel out of which the lots were drawn, a lump of clay instead of a stone, whereby the lots of his brothers were drawn out while his own remained inside. Solemn sacrifices were offered by each upon this partition : but as they proceeded to the ceremony, a miraculous sign was seen upon the altar of each of the brothers, a toad corresponding to Argos, a serpent to Sparta, and a fox to Messene. The prophets, on being consulted, delivered tho import of these mysterious indications : the toad, as an animal slow and stationary,. was an evidence that the possessor of Argos would not succeed in enterprises beyond the limits of his own city; the serpent denoted the aggressive and formidable future reserved to Sparta ; the fox prognosticated a career of wile and deceit to the Messenian. Such is the brief account given by Apollodorus of the Return of the Herakleids, at which point we pass, as if touched by the wand of a magician, from mythical to historical Greece. The story bears on the face of it the stamp, not of history, but of legend, abridged from one or more of the genealogical poets, 1 and presenting such an account as they thought satisfactory, of the first formation of the great Dorian establishments in Pelo- ponnesus, as well as of the semi-^Etolian Elis. Its incidents are so conceived as to have an explanatory bearing on Dorian insti- tutions, upon the triple division of tribes, characteristic of the Dorians, upon the origin of the great festival of the Karneia at Sparta, alleged to be celebrated in expiation of the murder of Karnus, upon the different temper and character of the Dorian states among themselves, upon the early alliance of the Dorians with Elis, which contributed to give ascendency and vogue to the Olympic games, upon the reverential dependence of Dorians towards the Delphian oracle, and, lastly, upon the etymology of the name Naupaktus. If we possessed the narrative more in detail, we should probably find many more examples of color- 1 Herodotus observes, in reference to the Lacedaemonian account of their first two kings in Peloponnesus, (Eurysthenes and Prokles, the twin sons of Aristodemus,) that the Lacedaemonians gavs a story not in harmony with any of the poets, AaKedaipovtoi. -yap, b fj.o'XoysovTE g ovdsvi zrot^rp, lieyovaiv avrbv J Apicfr66ijftoi< fiaaikevovTa uyayetv 0(j>(ac I? ravnfV r^v x&priv TT>V vvv iKriarat, aW.' oi) rotf 'ApiOTodqftov "xalSaf (Herodot *f 52).