Dorians

[1] They are almost always referred to as just "the Dorians", as they are called in the earliest literary mention of them in the Odyssey,[2] where they already can be found inhabiting the island of Crete.

They were diverse in way of life and social organization, varying from the populous trade center of the city of Corinth, known for its ornate style in art and architecture, to the isolationist, military state of Sparta; and yet, all Hellenes knew which localities were Dorian and which were not.

In the 5th century BC, Dorians and Ionians were the two most politically important Greek ethnē, whose ultimate clash resulted in the Peloponnesian War.

At one extreme Édouard Will [fr] concludes that there was no true ethnic component in fifth-century Greek culture, in spite of anti-Dorian elements in Athenian propaganda.

One theory, widely believed in ancient times, is that they originated in the mountainous regions of Greece, such as Macedonia and Epirus, and obscure circumstances brought them south into the Peloponnese, to certain Aegean islands.

The geographic and ethnic information found in the west's earliest known literary work, the Iliad, combined with the administrative records of the former Mycenaean states, prove to universal satisfaction that East Greek (Ionian) speakers were once dominant in the Peloponnesus but suffered a setback there and were replaced at least in official circles by West Greek (Doric) speakers.

The Dorian invasion is a modern historical concept attempting to account for: On the whole, none of the objectives has been met, but the investigations served to rule out various speculative hypotheses.

[8] Pylos tablet Fn867 records it in the dative case as do-ri-je-we, *Dōriēwei, a third- or consonant-declension noun with stem ending in w. An unattested nominative plural, *Dōriēwes, would have become Dōrieis by loss of the w and contraction.

[12] The dōri- segment is from the o-grade (either ō or o) of Proto-Indo-European *deru-, "tree", which also gives the Homeric Δούρειος Ἵππος (Doureios Hippos, "Wooden Horse").

A second popular derivation was given by the French linguist, Émile Boisacq, from the same root, but from Greek δόρυ (doru) 'spear-shaft' (which was made of wood); i.e., "the people of the spear" or "spearmen.

[16] Hall cites the tradition, based on a fragment of the poet, Tyrtaeus, that "Sparta is a divine gift granted by Zeus and Hera" to the Heracleidae.

Hall makes comparisons of Spartans to Hebrews as a chosen people maintaining a covenant with God and being assigned a Holy Land.

To arrive at this conclusion, Hall relies on Herodotus' version of the myth (see below) that the Hellenes under Dorus did not take his name until reaching the Peloponnesus.

[citation needed] A minor, and perhaps regrettably forgotten, episode in the history of scholarship was the attempt to emphasize the etymology of Doron with the meaning of 'hand'.

This in turn was connected to an interpretation of the famous lambda on Spartan shields, which was to rather stand for a hand with outstanding thumb than the initial letter of Lacedaimon.

Women in ancient Sparta possessed the greatest agency and economic power, likely due to the prolonged absences of men during military campaigns.

This tunic was pinned at the shoulders by brooches and had slit skirts which bared the thighs and permitted more freedom of movement than the voluminous Ionian chiton (costume).

[19] The Doric dialect was spoken in northwest Greece, the Peloponnese, Crete, southwest Asia Minor, the southernmost islands of the Aegean Sea, and the various Dorian colonies of Magna Graecia in Southern Italy and Sicily.

Tsakonian, a descendant of Doric Greek, is still spoken in some parts of the southern Argolid coast of the Peloponnese, in the modern prefecture of Arcadia.

The scattering of cults of the sun god in Sicyon, Argos, Ermioni, Epidaurus and Laconia, and his holy livestock flocks at Taenarum, seem to suggest that the deity was considerably important in Dorian religion, compared to other parts of ancient Greece.

The latter were a remnant of the Achaeans conquered "two generations before", which suggests a rise to supremacy at the end of the Dark Age rather than during and after the fall of Mycenae.

He also says: For Cronus' Son Himself, Zeus the husband of fair-crowned Hera, hath given this city to the children of Heracles, with whom we came into the wide isle of Pelops from windy Erineus.Erineus was a village of Doris.

He stressed patriotism: For 'tis a fair thing for a good man to fall and die fighting in the van for his native land, ... let us fight with a will for this land, and die for our children and never spare our lives.Herodotus was from Halicarnassus, a Dorian colony on the southwest coast of Asia Minor; following the literary tradition of the times he wrote in Ionic Greek, being one of the last authors to do so.

[25] He goes on to expand in mythological terms, giving some of the geographic details of the myth:[26]1.56.2-3 And inquiring he found that the Lacedemonians and the Athenians had the pre-eminence, the first of the Dorian and the others of the Ionian race.

In central Greece were Doris (the former Dryopia) and in the south Peloponnesus, specifically the states of Lacedaemon, Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus and Troezen.

Among the Dorians was Lacedaemon,[34] Corcyra, Corinth and Epidamnus,[35] Leucadia, Ambracia,[36] Potidaea,[37] Rhodes, Cythera, Argos,[38] Syracuse, Gela, Acragas (later Agrigentum), Acrae, Casmenae.

Athens headed one and Lacedaemon the other:[40]For a short time the league held together, till the Lacedaemonians and Athenians quarreled, and made war upon each other with their allies, a duel into which all the Hellenes sooner or later were drawn.He adds: "the real cause I consider to be ... the growth of the power of Athens and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon...." In the Platonic work Laws is mentioned that the Achaeans who fought in the Trojan War, on their return from Troy were driven out from their homes and cities by the young residents, so they migrated under a leader named Dorieus and hence they were renamed "Dorians".

[41] Now during this period of ten years, while the siege lasted, the affairs of each of the besiegers at home suffered much owing to the seditious conduct of the young men.

For when the soldiers returned to their own cities and homes, these young people did not receive them fittingly and justly, but in such a way that there ensued a vast number of cases of death, slaughter, and exile.

[citation needed] After displacing the Dryopes, he went to the assistance of the Dorians, who lived in a land called Hestiaeotis under king Aegimius and were campaigning against the numerically superior Lapithae.