Conquest 69
In short, there is no explanation for what we can surmise from the avail-
able evidence more economic than the one offered by the legend concerning
the Return of the Heraclids.^16 If Ockham’s razor is to be applied, as it must
be if we are not to allow our imaginations to run riot, we must assume that
the Spartans of the classical period were descended from Dorian adventurers
recruited by chieftains of Mycenaean ancestry who led them from northern
Greece—from Hestiaiotis, from the highlands of Mount Pindus, or from Eri-
neos in the upper reaches of the Cephisus river valley in Doris—down to
Naupactus on the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, then across that
body of water into the Peloponnesus in a quest to recover what they repre-
sented as a land given their forefather by all-mighty Zeus.
An Unsettled Age
According to this legend, after the conquest, the Argolid was allotted to
the Heraclid Temenos, Messenia to his brother Kresphontes, and Laconia to
their brother Aristodemos—or, if one prefers to believe the version that circu-
lated outside Sparta, to Eurysthenes and Prokles, the twin sons who survived
Aristodemos. It was from the last two that the Agiad and Eurypontid kings
of later times respectively claimed descent.
The truth is without a doubt considerably messier. In his Inquiries, Hero-
dotus traces the genealogy of the Agiad king Leonidas and that of his Euryp-
ontid colleague Leotychidas back to Heracles; and, in his Guide to Greece,
Pausanias the cultural geographer traces what he represents as the succession
in both royal houses from Heracles down to the time when the dual monarchy
was abolished.^17 Where they overlap in time, the two Agiad lists are identical
and the two Eurypontid lists for the most part coincide; and, where the latter
two lists are at odds, the discrepancies can for the most part easily be ex-
plained and the lists reconciled. One need only acknowledge the obvious: that
the genealogy of a given Spartan king is something other than a list of the
kings in his line preceding him. For, within the two royal families, the throne
did not always in any extended period pass directly from father to son.
Other sources of confusion are, however, less easy to work one’s way
around. In and after the sixth century, we know of childless kings and of cases
of disputed paternity, where a putative son was not allowed to succeed his
supposed father. Given that what we have appear to be genealogies, for a
scholarly reconstruction of these lists as lists of kings to be wholly accurate,