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8

treatises on the dialect of Boeotia have failed to investigate the source of its dialect-mixture, an examination of this problem may not be without value.

Upon the arrival of the expatriated Arneans in Boeotia, they found there a imxed population, of which the Cadmeans and the Minyae certainly formed a portion. (The Thebans are said to have taken possession of their land—συμμίκτους ἀνθρώπους ἐξελάσαντες.) Busolt denies that the Cadmeans were of Phoenician origin, though it is impossible to tell with any certainty to what race they belonged. It is, however, probable that upon their expulsion they settled in Claros, Laconia, in Melos and in Thera. Tradition informs us that Erchomenos, the city of the Minyae, of which Athanias, the son of Aeolos, was king, was connected with Ioleos[1] in Thessaly, an Aeolic city, called an ἀποικία of the Minyae. if we remember that the seats of the Minyae were originally on the Pagasaean Gulf, and that they emigrated thence to the Copaic valley, we cannot fail to see that Boeotia and Thessaly were originally united into one territorial district.[2]

Athamas was worshipped as a hero at Alos in Achaea Phthiotis, having a chapel connected with the temple of Zeus Laphystios.[3] Here human sacrifice had been permitted—an importation from Boeotia, where it had been introduced by Phoenicians. In Boeotia and m Phthiotis was an Ἀθαμάντιον πεδίον. Near the Boeotian Coroneia was a temple dedicated to the Itonian Athena; a similar temple near a town called Itonus existed in Thessaly; cf Grote, Chap. XVIII. The architectural remains of the Minyae at Erchomenos are testimonials of Aeolic genius contemporaneous with those at Mycenae. The Achaeans were an Αἰολικὸν ἔθνος; and the Dorians did not develop at this remote period any architectonic greatness.

When the new-comers from Thessaly took possession of Boeotia, the Minyae fled to Lemnos, Phocaea and Teos, and thence to Triphylia in Elis.[4] Pelias of Iolcos, and Neleus of Pylos, which was identified with the Triphylian Pylos, were brothers (λ 254). Busolt (Griech. Geschichte, I 95) finds it difficult to explain the origin of the settlement of the Minyae in Triphylia, and characterizes the Elean dialect as “related to the Arcadian.” The Arcadians,

  1. Jason, leader of the Argonauts from Iolcos, was one of the Minyae.
  2. See Curtius, Hist. Greece, American reprint, I 100.
  3. In Boeotia Zeus Laphystios had a temple near Erchomenos.
  4. Hdt. IV 145–49. ποταμὸς Μινυήιος, Λ 722.