nt by an interval of four hundred and sixty
years,--a period as long as that which separates the Black Prince from
the Duke of Wellington, or the age of Perikles from the Christian era.
While Theopompos quite preposterously brings him down as late as the
twenty-third Olympiad, Krates removes him to the twelfth century B. C.
The date ordinarily accepted by modern critics is the one assigned by
Herodotos, 880 B. C. Yet Mr. Gladstone shows reasons, which appear to me
convincing, for doubting or rejecting this date.

I refer to the much-abused legend of the Children of Herakles, which
seems capable of yielding an item of trustworthy testimony, provided
it be circumspectly dealt with. I differ from Mr. Gladstone in
not regarding the legend as historical in its present shape. In my
apprehension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical personages, have no value
whatever; and I faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to accept any
date earlier than the Olympiad of Koroibos. The tale of the "Return of
the Herakleids" is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the legend
of Hengst and Horsa; yet, like the latter, it doubtless embodies
a historical occurrence. One cannot approve, as scholarlike or
philosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who can see in the whole
narrative nothing but a solar myth. There certainly was a time when the
Dorian tribes--described in the legend as the allies of the Children of
Herakles--conquered Peloponnesos; and that time was certainly subsequent
to the composition of the Homeric poems. It is incredible that the Iliad
and the Odyssey should ignore the existence of Dorians in Peloponnesos,
if there were Dorians not only dwelling but ruling there at the time
when the poems were written. The poems are very accurate and rigorously
consistent in their use of ethnical appellatives; and their author, in
speaking of Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding to peoples
directly known to him, as is Shakespeare when he mentions Danes and
Scotchmen. Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwelling in
Peloponnesos; and he knows Dorians also, but only as a people inhabiting
Crete. (Odyss. XIX. 175.) With Homer, moreover, the Hellenes are not the
Greeks in general but only a people dwelling in the north, in Thessaly.
When these poems were written, Greece was not known as Hellas, but
as Achaia,--the whole country taking its name from the Achaians,
the dominant race in Peloponnesos. Now at the beginning of the tr