THUCYDIDES AND PAUSAXTAS. 17 Here, then, we have a summary of alleged Boeotian historj between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, in which no mention is made of the immigration of the mass of Boeotians from Thessaly, and seemingly no possibility left of fitting in so great and capital an incident. The legends followed by Pausanias are at variance with those adopted by Thucydides, but they harmonize much better with Homer. So deservedly high is the authority of Thucydides, that the migration here distinctly announced by him is commonly set down as an ascertained datum, historically as well as chronologi- cally. But on this occasion it can be shown that he only followed one amongst a variety of discrepant legends, none of which there were any means of verifying. Pausanias recognized a migration of the Boeotians from Thes saly, in early times anterior to the Trojan war ; l and the account of Ephorus, as given by Strabo, professed to record a series of changes in the occupants of the country : First, the non-Hellenic Aones and Temmikes, Leleges and Hyantes ; next, the Kad- meians, who, after the second siege of Thebes by the Epigoni, were expelled by the Thracians and Pelasgians, and retired into Thessaly, where they joined in communion with the inhabitants of Arne, the whole aggregate being called Boeotians. After the Trojan war, and about the time of the JEolic emigration, these Boeotians returned from Thessaly and reconquered Bceotia, driving out the Thracians and Pelasgians, the former retiring to Parnassus, the latter to Attica. It was on this occasion (he says) that the Minyte of Orchomenus were subdued, and forcibly incorporated with the Boeotians. Ephorus seems to have fol- lowed, in the main, the same narrative as Thucydides, about the movement of the Boeotians out of Thessaly ; coupling it, however, with several details current as explanatory of proverbs and cus- toms. 2 1 Pausan. x. 8, 3.
- Ephor. Fragm. 30, ed. Marx. ; Strabo, ix. pp. 401-402. The story of
the Boeotians at Arne, in Polysenus (i. 12), probably comes from Ephoras. Diodorns (xix. 53) gives a summary of the legendary history of Thebes from Deukalion downwards : he tells us that the Boeotians were expelled from their country, and obliged to return into Thessaly during the Trojan VOL. II. 2oc.
