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This digression was necessitated by my desire to develop and confirm the supposition that, of the original inhabitants of Boeotia, the Minyae at least were of Aeolic stock.[1] The name of the inhabitants of the land drained by the Cephissus was in historical times inter alia Αἰαλεῖς Βοιωτοί. Now, the peculiarity of this denomination of a people which formed later on a federal unity, leads to the not unplausible supposition that herein we have a designation of two tribal entities—the Aeolians and the Boeotians; otherwise, it would be difficult to explain a compound name of this character not easily paralleled in the domain of Greek ethnography or elsewhere in Greek, but occurring in at least one cognate language. If in reality the tribe called Βοιωτοί was a part of that body of Dorian Greeks who, as pioneers of a Dorian civilization, left their western home to seek a new habitation in the east, the possibility of a solution of the problem of dialect-mixture in Boeotia becomes at once apparent. The Boeotians left Arne in Thessaly either before or after the Trojan war—our authorities varying between the one date and the other—but that they were necessarily Aeolians is far from being proved by the sporadic testimony of tradition. Pausanias, X 8, 4, couches his opinion in positive language: Θεσσαλίαν γὰρ καὶ οὖτοι (οἱ Βοιωτοί) τὸ ἀρχαιότερα ᾤκησαν καὶ Αἰολεῖς τηνικαῦτα ἐκαλοῦτο, but we have no warrant for the credibility of his source of information. Thucydides doubtless believed them to be Aeolians, since they were “returning” to Boeotia, which was an Aeolic country in his opinion. A dispossessed Aeolic people would naturally take refuge with a kindred race, but their arrival is signalized not by a fraternal welcome, but by the expulsion of the Minyae, once the most powerful tribe of North Greece. If it be granted that the Arneans were Aeolians—and we must confess that the balance of probability according to tradition inclines to this view—we are driven to the conclusion that at this turbulent period, when the Dores themselves were compelled to vacate their settlements, a body of Dorians must have forced their way across the confines of Boeotia and become amalgamated with the remnant of
- ↑ Πευμάττιος (Τεύματτος) Βελφοί, Πενηεύς have been regarded as survivals of the original Aeolic, a proof of the long life af proper names, even under the adverse conditions of the supremacy of an alien tribe.
before its conquest by the Eleans in the fifth century, But from Arcadia the Elean diatect could have derived but few Aeolic ingredients. The general features of the Arcadian dialect are widely different from those of Elis;—thus—υ for ο in ἀπό, ἄλλο; ἐσς for ἐξ; ἰν for ἐν; πός for πρός; termination -νσι accus. pl. -τος, εἱ, ᾶν, ἡναι, -ϝεναι, change of τ to σ.
