230 Angela Ganter, née Kühr
they named early tribes by spinning the ethnonyms out of toponyms, which had existed
for a long time and which seemed to be relics attesting the former existence of these
tribes. This is how history acquired a face. That does not mean that Pausanias or other
historiographers invented these myths. It is very difficult to say how old specific layers of
foundation stories are. In this case, however, mythographers of later times tried to bring
into a chronological scheme what was circulating on the early history of the region. Who
came first? Several versions may have existed. Sometimes there was only a name left, a
linguistic ruin such as the byname “Ogygian” classifying Thebes as being a very old city.
And then people tried to make sense out of this relic; they spun history out of a name.
From a modern point of view, such an account reflects less what really happened in
the Bronze Age or during the Dark Ages than what people telling these foundation sto-
ries believed had happened at the dawn of local history. In the version presented by
Pausanias, the early history of Thebes was defined by several ethnic groups succeed-
ing or even fighting each other, a history of plagues extinguishing tribes, of which only
names remained, and a history of invading groups, who enforced migration or permit-
ted integration of defeated former inhabitants. What is more, Pausanias gives a cultural
reading of the events by presenting them as progressive chapters in a story that will cul-
minate in the foundation of the city. In contrast to the Aones, the former inhabitants still
living in village communities, Kadmos founded a city, Pausanias concludes. The foun-
dation hero of Thebes is thus characterized as a cultural hero lifting regional culture to
a new level.
Apparently, the old contrast betweenpoleisandethneis lurking behind this interpreta-
tion. Thucydides (Thuc. 1.5.3; 1.47; 2.68; 2.81; 3.94.4–5) and Aristotle (Aristot.Pol.
1252b 19–20; 1257a 23–27; 1326b 4–26) had already, long before Pausanias, defined
poleisas the most cultivated form of living together, the Greek contribution to human
civilization, whereasethne, in the sense of tribal communities, were regarded as deficient.
What does Pausanias’ teleological narrative, in which each stage progresses toward the
final stage of the city, mean when investigating ethnicity in local myths? First and fore-
most, we have to take into account that Pausanias should be read within the context
of his own time. Though he certainly relied on older local histories of the region, it is
hard to know which kind of sources he used exactly. To a certain degree, he himself
alludes to them when citing “poets,” when mentioning local informants by interjections
such as “they say” or “it is said,” and when declaring a conclusion being his own by
adding “I think,” as in the passage cited earlier. However, if we are interested in discern-
ing conceptions ofethneand ethnicity in local myths that preceded the second century
AD, we should investigate the transmitted evidence systematically by choosing a generic
approach. Changes in the manner of telling and re-telling myths may offer ways of chart-
ing changes in identity.
How can we uncover the stratigraphy, as it were, of the account as it is related by Pau-
sanias? Regarding myths, we not only face the problem of corrupt written records but
also have to know that usually they were transmitted orally. They are traditional stories of
collective significance, which are in a constant flow and which coexist in many versions.
The transmitted versions are singular manifestations out of a myriad of variants, of innu-
merable stories told within a stream of oral tradition extending over hundreds of years.
Of course, there is no alternative to looking at the transmitted evidence. By establishing