End of the Bronze Age in Greeceon those who told it: the Dorians are the descendants of Hera-
cles, whose sons were wrongfully expelled from the Pelo-
ponnese. This legitimizing element in the legend is as ficti-
tious as Heracles himself. However, the story that the
newcomers in three divisions established three regimes in the
Peloponnese—one in Laconia, one in Messenia, and one in the
Argolid—can not be explained as a charter myth. The Dorians
did establish themselves in these places, they did so by force
(there is, as we have seen, no persuasive alternative), and they
may have come to all three regions at about the same time.
As has recently been pointed out, the legend of the return
does not depict the Dorians as destroyers, nor as founders of a
new way of life, but as conquerors 28 (who, for example, merely
displaced the ruling house in Messenia and coexisted with the
rest of the Messenian population). 29 If we imagine smallish
companies of Dorians taking over the most profitable parts of
the Peloponnese, we shall have no difficulty at all in explaining
why other small companies went as far as Crete and even
Rhodes: they went not in search of land that they themselves
could cultivate, but in hopes of taking over an agricultural
population inured to service. Whatever communities had in
Mycenaean times been productive and profitable, the Dorians
saw as attractive. The legend of the Return of the Heraclidae
can tell no more than a partial story. While some Doric speak-
ers were taking over the best parts of the Peloponnese, others
must have been carving out domains in Crete and the other
islands where in historical times the people spoke Doric. A
memory of the Dorians' conquest of Rhodes may appear at Iliad
2.653—57: here the descendants of Heracles, once again bri-
- D. Musti's paper, "Continuita e discontinuity tra Achei e Dori
nelle tradizione storiche," delivered at the Rome colloquium, is summa-
rized by Brillante, "L'invasione doricaoggi," 180—81. In the legends, the
Dorians "appaiono piuttosto come conquisatori e organizzatori di forme di
rapporto nuove con i vinti." - For the tradition see Pausanias 4.3.6—7.
221