Absence of the Heraclidae at Troy
Recently, in reviewing my blogposts I noticed many posts on similar topics. I hope my research is building on itself rather than circling endlessly around the same two posts. So I wrote my friend Maya for help. I believe she is brilliant and having read everything I have written she might have some insights on my work. So the question here, is why there were so few Heraclidae at Troy. My answwer is threefold, speculative and maybe a little ludicrous.
First, tradition informs us that Heracles had myriad sons, after all Thespius had fifty daughters. But our knowledge of that tradition is based on Herodotus (5th century BC ) and Pausanias & Apollodorus (2nd century AD). Hesiod (8th century BC) mentions none and Homer only four;
“And Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, a valiant man and tall, led from Rhodes nine ships” (Iliad 2.653)
“And they that held Nisyrus and Crapathus and Casus and Cos, the city of Eurypylus, and the Calydnian isles, these again were led by Pheidippus and Antiphus, the two sons of king Thessalus, son of Heracles. And with them were ranged thirty hollow ships. “ (Iliad 2.676)
So my first suggestion on why there are so few Hraclidae at Troy is that they did not enter literary tradition for another 300 years yet.
Second suggestion involves the notion of many people who confound the Heraclidae and Dorians. If the Dorians did not enter Greece until 1100 BC and the traditional date for Troy is 1285, then there can be no Heraclidae at Troy because their people (the Dorians) haven't arrived yet.
Third, a belief among the Greeks “particularly the anti-Dorian Athenians with their marked likeness to Ionians” that the Dorians were not true Greeks. (1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dorians). If the primal audiences of god-like Homer were Ionian and his publisher the Athenian Peisistratos, maybe Homer and his Athenian editors removed reference to the Dorians in order to better please their audience
In summary, the Heraclldae did not appear in large numbers at Troy, because there were not that many in the mythic tradition at that time, there were no Dorians in Greece at the time of the Trojan War and anti-Dorian bias among audiences and editors required their removal from the cultural memory.
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Bill,
ReplyDeleteBy what definition were the Dorians not in Greece before 1100 BC? If we define Greece as the country populated by Greeks, then they, being Greeks, cannot have resided outside Greece. If we define Greece as the Mycenaean territory, then some Dorians are likely to have been outside it, others inside. We have no idea what dialects spoke the Mycenaean commoners, we know only what the scribes used.
It is possible that Homer, as a non-Dorian, would try to downplay the Dorians. However, the descendants of Heracles in the Iliad seem all to come from Ionian territories, so denying them kleos would do no harm to Dorians. I suppose that Homer downplayed Heracles (and maybe his descendants) in order not to eclipse Achilles.
Maya,
ReplyDeleteAelous was a son of Hellen and the nymph Orseïs, and a brother of Dorus (ancestor of the Dorians) and Xuthus (ancestors of the Ionians). The theory is that the Indo-Europeans arrived in waves, the Dorians being the last to arrive. I think your point about not wanting to eclipse Achilles is the best answer