End of the Bronze Age in Greecetested anywhere in the ancient world in the Bronze Age, and
one can hardly posit such an event for LH in Greece without
some very good evidence to that effect. The only evidence thus
far advanced is an allegorization of the legend that Heracles,
"the Dorian hero par excellence," was once in servitude to Eu-
rystheus, king of Tiryns. 19 The legend can hardly make credi-
ble the thesis that the armed forces—including over a thousand
charioteers—of the Mycenaean palace states could have been
"under the heel" of an administrative class and its Minoan
clerks. Altogether, Chadwick's thesis has very little to be said
in its favor, and much against it.
The thesis presented by Desborough in 1964 is initially at-
tractive, but has disabling weaknesses. An infiltration of Do-
rians into the Peloponnese in the eleventh century might pos-
sibly be reconcilable with the story of a Dorian migration. It
does not, however, explain the story of the Return of the Her-
aclidae, which assumes a more organized and violent entry into
the land. Three arguments tell powerfully against Desbor-
ough's thesis. The first is Snodgrass's point that the cist graves
(and there is virtually no other archaeological evidence for a
population movement ca. 1075—1050 B.C.) do not match the
geography of Doric Greece. A second argument is linguistic:
in order for the Doric dialect to have been transplanted into the
Peloponnese without suffering considerable modifications from
South Greek, something other than an infiltration would have
been required. On Desborough's thesis, a core of South Greek
speakers (numerous enough to account for the continuity in
pottery and other artifacts) must have continued to occupy the
Argolid, Laconia, Messenia, and other Doric destinations all
through the eleventh century. The absence of South Greek ele-
- Ibid., 117: "Can we not see how historical truth has here been
slightly warped to present the Dorian people in the guise of their hero com-
pelled to serve alien masters? He does eventually launch attacks on several
Mycenaean kingdoms: Eurystheus himself is killed in Attica, and Elis and
Pylos suffer under Herakles' assaults. Here we have a reflexion of later Do-
rian successes in replacing their erstwhile masters."
213