Notes to Pages 66–69 173
by the linguistic evidence and by human and bovine DNA studies: note Robert S. P. Beekes, The
Origins of the Etruscans (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandes Akademievan Wetenschappen,
2003); then, see Cristiano Vernesi et al., “The Etruscans: A Population-Genetic Study,” American
Journal of Human Genetics 74:4 (April 2004): 694–704; Alessandro Achilli et al., “Mitochondrial
DNA Variation of Modern Tuscans Supports the Near Eastern Origin of Etruscans,” American
Journal of Human Genetics 80:4 (April 2007): 759–68; and Marco Pellechia et al., “The Mystery of
Etruscan Origins: Novel Clues from Bos taurus Mitochondrial DNA,” Proceedings of the Royal
Society: Biological Sciences 274 (2007): 1175–79. For another case where a DNA study confirms
a group’s oral traditions about its biological origins, see Mark Thomas et al., “Y Chromosomes
Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba—the ‘Black Jews of
Southern Africa,’ ” American Journal of Human Genetics 66:2 (February 2000): 674–86.
- The broad claims to the contrary advanced by some classicists on the basis of Jan M.
Vansina, The Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, tr. H. M. Wright (Chicago: Aldine,
1965), and Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), should be
taken with a large grain of salt. Among other things, as Kõiv, ATEGH, 9–34; “The Origins, Devel-
opment, and Reliability of the Ancient Tradition about the Formation of the Spartan Constitu-
tion,” 233–64; and STAS, 25–66, points out, Vansina’s findings suggest that oral traditions having
to do with the formation and reshaping of communities often have staying power. - Spartan fascination with genealogy: Pl. Hipp. Maj. 285b7–286a5. Cf. Rosalind Thomas,
Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 108–13,
who underestimates, in my judgment, the degree to which cultural imperatives in early Greece
encouraged the well-born to cherish and pass on family lore, with James Allan Stewart Evans, The
Beginnings of History: Herodotus and the Persian Wars (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006),
271–89. - See I A C P, passim.
- See Oswyn Murray, “Herodotus and Oral History” and “Herodotus and Oral History
Reconsidered,” as well as Rosalind Thomas, “Herodotus’ Histories and the Floating Gap,” all in The
Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, ed. Nino Luraghi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
16–44, 198–210, 314–25. - See Joachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery, tr. Kevin
Windle and Rosh Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See also Louise Schofield, The
Mycenaeans (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), 186–97, and Jorrit M. Kelder, The Kingdom
of Mycenae: A Great Kingdom in the Late Bronze Age Aegean (Besthesda, MD: CDL Press, 2010). - Date posited for the end of the Trojan War: Eratosth. FGrH 241 F1. Isocrates’ Archidamus
(6.16–33) elegantly summarizes the legend. See also Apollod. Bibl. 2.8.2–4 and Diod. 4.37.3–4,
57–58, 7.8–9. For further details, see Tyrtaeus F3.12–15, 11.1–2 (West); Pindar Pyth. 1.62–65,
Isthm. 9.3–4; Hdt. 1.56.2–3, 6.52.1, 8.31, 9.26.2–5, 27.2; Thuc. 1.9.2, 12.3, 107.2, 3.92.3; Ephorus
FGrH 70 F121; Isoc. 12.255; Strabo 9.4.7; Paus. 5.1, 8.5.1–6; Steph. Byz. s.v. Naúpaktos. For a
complete collection of the ancient testimonia, see Friedrich Prinz, Gründungsmythen und Sagen
chronologie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1979), 420–50.
13.Legends dovetail: Hdt. 2.171.2–3, 8.73; Xen. Hell. 7.1.23; Strabo 8.7.1; Paus. 2.18.2, 38.1,
3.2.1, 5.1.1–2, 7.1.1–9, 6.1–2, 18.5. - See Oscar Broneer, “The Cyclopean Wall on the Isthmus of Corinth and Its Bearing on
Late Bronze Age Archaeology,” Hesperia 35:4 (October–December 1966): 346–62, and “The Cy-
clopean Wall on the Isthmus of Corinth, Addendum,” Hesperia 37:1 (January–March 1968): 26–35.
For a brief summary, see James Wiseman, The Land of the Ancient Corinthians (Göteborg: P.
Åström, 1978), 59–60. For the context, see also Schofield, The Mycenaeans, 186–97. - Roughly speaking, wherever in Greece the ancient traditions speak of there being inter-
lopers who conquered the local population subsequent to the fall of Troy, the latter later reappear
as subjects of the former: consider the examples of this species of subjection collected by Hans van
Wees, “Conquerors and Serfs: Wars of Conquest and Forced Labour in Archaic Greece,” in HMLM,
33–80.
16.For a further discussion of the historical value of the legends pertaining to Greece in and
after the Bronze Age, see Margalit Finkelberg, Greeks and PreGreeks: Aegean Prehistory and Greek
Heroic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).