Modest Hittite tablets tablets from Boghaz Keui, of approximately 1325 b.c., speak of the "Ahhijava" as a people equal in power to the Hittites themselves. An Egyptian record towards 1221 b.c. mentions the "Akaiwasha" as joining other "Peoples of the Sea" in a Libyan invasion of Egypt, and describes them as a roving band "fighting to fill their bellies," In Homer the Achaeans are, specifically, a Greek-speaking people of southern Thessaly; often, however, because they had become the most powerful of the Greek tribes, Homer uses their name for all the Greeks at Troy. Greek historians and poets of the classic age called the Achaeans, like the Pelasgians, autochthonous – native to Greece as far back as memory could recall; and they assumed without hesitation that the Achaean culture described in Homer was one with that which has here been termed Mycenaean. Schliemann accepted this identification, and for a brief while the world of scholarship agreed with him.

In 1901 an unusually iconoclastic Englishman, Sir William Ridgeway, upset this happy confidence by pointing out that though Achaean civilization agreed with the Mycenaean in many ways, it differed in vital particulars. (1) Iron is practically unknown to tile Mycenaeans; the Achaeans are familiar with it. (2) The dead in Homer are cremated; in Tiryns and Mycenae they are buried, implying a different conception of the afterlife. (3) The Achaean gods are the Olympians, of whom no trace has been found in the culture of Mycenae. (4) The Achaeans use long swords, round shields, and safety-pin brooches; no objects of such form appear in the varied Mycenaean remains. (5) There are considerable dissimilarities in coiffure and dress. Ridgeway concluded that the Mycenaeans were Pelasgians, and spoke Greek; that the Achaeans were blond "Celts," or Central Europeans, who came down through Epirus and Thessaly from 2000 onward, brought with them tire worship of Zeus, invaded the Pelopannesus about 1400, adopted Greek speech and many Greek ways, and established themselves as feudal chieftains ruling from their fortress-palaces a subjugated Pelasgian population.

The theory is illuminating, even if it must be substantially modified. Greek literature says nothing of an Achaean invasion; and it would not be wise to hang a rejection of so unanimous a tradition upon a gradual increase in the use of iron, a change in modes of burial or coiffure, a lengthening of swords or rounding of shields, or even a safety pin. It is more likely that the Achaeans, as all classic writers supposed, were a Greek tribe that, in its natural multiplication, expanded from Thessaly into the Peloponnesus during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, mingled their blood with the Pelasgo-Mycenaeans there, and, towards 1250 b.c., became the ruling class. Probably it was they who gave Greek to the Pelasgians, instead of receiving it from them. In such place names as Corinth and Tiryns, Parnassus and Olympia, [And in such Greek words as sesamon (sesame), kyparissos (cypress), hyssopos (hyssop), oinos (wine), sandalon (sandal), chalkos (copper), thalassa (sea), molybdos (lead), zephyros (zephyr), kybernao (steer), sphongos (sponge), laos (people), labyrinthis, dithyrambos, kitharis (zither), syrinx (flute), and paian (paean).] we may have echoes of a Cxeto-Pelasgo-Mycenaean tongue. In the same manner, presumably, the Achaeans superimposed their mountain and sky gods upon the "chthonic" or subterranean deities of the earlier population. For the rest there is no sharp line of separation between the Mycenaean culture and that later phase of it, the Achaean, which we find in Homer; the two ways of life seem to have mingled and melted into one. Slowly, as the amalgamation proceeded, Aegean civilization passed away, dying in the defeat of Troy, and Greek civilization began.

The Heroic Legends

The legends of the Heroic Age suggest both the origins and the destinies of the Achaeans. We must not ignore these stories; for though a sanguinary fancy enlivens them, they may contain more history than we suppose; and they are so bound up with Greek poetry, drama, and art that we should be at a loss to understand these without them. [Perseas . . . Heracles . . . Minos, Theseus, Jason . . . it has been common in modem time m regard these and the other heroes of this age . . . as palely mythical creations. The later Greeks, in criticizing the records of their past, had no doubt that they were historical persons who actually ruled in Argos and other kingdoms; and after a period of extreme skepticism many modern critics have begun to revert to the Greek view as that which explains the evidence most satisfactorily . . . . The heroes of the tales, like the geographical scenes in which they moved, are real." – Cambridge Ancient History, II, 478. We shall assume that the major legends are true in essence, imaginative is detail.]

Hittite inscriptions mention an Atarissyas as King of the Ahhijavas in the thirteenth century b.c.; he is probably Atreus, King of the Achaeans. In Greek story Zeus begat Tantalus [Tantalus angered the gods by divulging their secrets, stealing their nectar and ambrosia, and offering them his son Pelops, boiled and sliced. Zeus put Pelops together again, and punished Tantalus, in Hades, with a raging thirst; Tantalus was placin the midst of a lake whose waters receded whenever he tried to drink of them; over his head benches rich in fruit were hunk which withdrew when he sought to reach them; a great rock was suspended above him, which at every moment threatened to fad and crush him.], King of Phrygia, who begot Pelops, who begat Atreus, who begat Agamemnon. Pelops, being exiled, came to Elis in the western Peloponnesus about 1283, and determined to marry Hippodameia, daughter of Oenomaus, Ellis' king. The east pediment of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia still tells us the story of their courtship. The King made a practice to test his daughter's suitors by competing with them in a chariot race: if the suitor won he would receive Hippodameia; if he lost he was put to death. Several suitors had tried, and had lost both race and life. To reduce the risks Pelops bribed the King's charioteer, Myrtilus, to remove the linchpins from the royal chariot, and promised to share the kingdom with him if their plan succeeded. In the contest that ensued the King's chariot broke down, and he was killed. Pelops married Hippodameia and ruled Elis, but instead of sharing the kingdom with Myrtilus he threw Myrtilus into the sea. As Myrtilus sank he laid an ominous curse upon Pelops and all his descendants.

Pelops' daughter married Sthenelus, son of Perseus and King of Argos; the throne passed down to their son Eurystheus, and, after the latter's death, to his his uncle Atreus. Atreus' sons Agamemnon and Menelaus married ot Clytaemnestra and Helen, daughters of King Tyndareus of Lacedaemon; and when Atreus and Tyndareus died, Agamemnon and Menelaus between them ruled all the eastern Peloponnesus from their respective capitals at Mycenae and Sparta. The Peloponnesus, or Island of Pelops, came to be called after their grandfather, whose descendants had quite forgotten the curse of MyrtiIus.

Meanwhile the remainder of Greece was also busy with heroes, usually founding cities. In the fifteenth century before our era, said Greek tradition, the iniquity of the human race provoked Zeus to overwhelm it with a good, from which one man, Deucalion, and his wife Pyrrha, alone were saved, in an ark or chest that came to rest on Mt. Parnassus. From Deucalion's son Hellen had came all the Greek tribes, and their united name, Hellenes. Hellen was grandfather of Achaeus and ion, who begot the Achaean and Ionian tribes, which, after many wanderings, peopled respectively the Peloponnesus and Attica. One of Ion's descendants, Cecrops, with the help of the goddess Athena, founded (on a site whose acropolis had already been settled by Pelasgians) the city that was named after her, Athens. It was he, said the story, that gave civilization to Attica, instituted marriage, abolished bloody sacrifices, and taught his subjects to worship the Olympian gods – Zeus and Athena above the rest.

The descendants of Cecrops ruled Athens as kings. The fourth in line was Erechtheus, to whom the city, honoring him as a god, would later dedicate one of its loveliest temples. His grandson, Theseus, about 1250, merged the twelve demes or villages of Attica into one political unity, whose citizens, wherever they lived, were to be called Athenians; perhaps it was because of this historic synoikismos, or municipal cohabitation, that Athens, like Thebes and Mycenae, had a plural name. It was Theseus who brought order and power to Athens, ended the sacrifice of her children to Minos, and gave her people security on the roads by slaying the highwayman Procrustes, who had liked to stretch or cut the legs of his captives to make them fit his bed. After Theseus' death Athens worshiped him, too, as a god. As late as 476, in the skeptical age of Pericles, the city brought the bones of Theseus from Scyros and deposited them as sacred relics in the temple of Theseus.

To the north, in Boeotia, a rival capital had equally stirring traditions, destined to become the very substance of Greek drama in the classic age. Late in the fourteenth century b.c. the Phoenician or Cretan or Egyptian prince Cadmus founded the city of Thebes at the meeting of the roads that cross Greece from east to west and from north to south, taught its people letters, and slew the dragon (perhaps an ancient phrase for an infecting or infesting organism) that hindered the settlers from using the waters of the Areian spring. From the dragon's teeth, which Cadmus sowed in the earth, sprang armed men who, like the Greeks of history, attacked one another until only five survived; these five, said Thebes, were the founders of her royal families. The government established itself on a hill citadel called the Cadmeia, where in our own time a "palace of Cadmus" has been unearthed. [Assigned to 1400-1200 b.c. It contained fragments of writing in undeciphered characters, probably of Cretan lineage.] There, after Cadmus, reigned his son Polydorus, his grandson Labdacus, and his great-grandson Laius, whose son Oedipus, as all the world knows, slew his father and married his mother. When Oedipus died his sons quarreled over the scepter, as is the habit of princes. Eteocles drove out Polynices, who persuaded Adrastus, King of Argos, to attempt his restoration. Adrastus tried (ca. 1213), in the famous war of the Seven (Allies) against Thebes, and again sixteen years later in the war of the Epigoni, or sons of the Seven. This time both Eteocles and Polynices were killed, and Thebes was burned to the ground.

Among the Theban aristocrats was one Amphitryon, who had a charming wife, Alcmene. Her Zeus visited while Amphitryon was gone to the wars; and Heracles (Hercules) was their son. ["Zeus," says Diodorus, "made that night three times its normal length; and by the magnitude of the time expended on the procreation he presaged the exceptional might of the child."] Hera, who did not relish these jovial condescensions, sent two serpents to destroy the babe in the cradle; bur the boy grasped one in each hand and strangled them both; therefore he was called Heracles, as having won glory through Hers. Linus, oldest name in the history of music, tried to teach the youth how to play and sing; but Heracles did nor care for music, and slew Linus with the 1Jtre. When he grew up-a clumsy, bibulous, gluttonous, kindly giant-he endettook to kill a lion that was ravaging the flocks of Amphitryon and Thespius. The latter, King of Thespiae, offered his home and his fifty daughters to Heracles, who rose to the occasion manfully.' He slew the lion, and wore its skin as his garb. He married Megara, daughter of Creon of Thebes, and tried to settle down; but Hera sent a madness upon him, and unwittingly he killed his own children. He consulted tile oracle at Delphi, and was instructed to go and live at Tiryns and serve Eurystheus, the Argive king, for twelve years; after which he would become an immortal god. He obeyed, and carried out far Eurystheus his famous twelve labars. [He strangled the lion that troubled the flocks at Nemea; he destroyed the many-headed hydra that ravaged Lema; he captured a fleet stag and carried it to Eurystheus; he caught a wild boar from Mt. Eurytnanthns and carried it to Eurystheus; in one day he cleansed all the stables of Augeas' three thousand oxen by diverting the rivets Alpheus and Peneus into the stalls – and paused long enough in Elis to establish the Olympic games; he destroyed the murderous Stymphalian birds of Arcadia; he captured the mad bull that was devastating Crete, and carried it on his shoulders to Eurystheus; he caught and tamed the man-eating horse of Diomedes; he slew nearly all the Amazons; he sit up two confronting promontories as the "Pillars of Hercules" at the mouth of the Mediterranean, captured the oxen of Geryon and brought them through Gaul, across the Alps, through Italy, and across the sea to Eurysthetu; he found the apples of the Hesperides, and for a while held up the earth for Alas; he descended into Hades, and delivered Theseus and Ascalaphus from torment. – The Hesperides, daughters of Atlas, had been entrusted by Hera with the golden apples given her by Gaea (Earth) at her wedding with Zeus. The apples were guarded by a dragon, and conferred semi-divine qualities upon those who ate them.] Released by the king, Heracles returned to Thebes. He performed many other exploits; he joined the Argonauts, sacked Troy, helped the gods to win their battle against the giants, freed Prometheus, brought Alcestis back to life, and, now and then, killed his own friends by accident. After his death he was worshiped as hero and god; and since he had had countless loves, many tribes claimed him as their progenitor. [This amazing "culture hero," Diodorus thought, was a primitive engineer, a prehistoric Empedodes; the legends told about him meant that he had cleansed the springs, cleaved mountains, changed the courses of rivers, reclaimed waste areas, rid the woods of dangerous beasts, and made Greece a habitable land. In another aspect Herades is the beloved son of god who suffers for mankind, raise the dad to life, descends into Hades, and then ascends into heaven.]

His sons made their home at Trachis in Thessaly; but Eurystheus, fearing lest they depose him in revenge for the unnecessary labors that he had laid upon their father, ordered the Trachinian king to exile them from Greece. The Heracleidae (i.e., children of Heracles) found refuge in Athens; Eurystheus sent an army to attack them, but they defeated and killed him. When Atreus came against them with another force, Hyllus, one of the sons, offered to fight any of Atreus' men in single combat, on condition that if he won, the Heracleidae should receive the kingdom of Mycenae; if he lost, the Heracleidae would depart and not return for fifty years, after which time their children were to receive Mycenae. He lost, and led his partisans into exile. Fifty years later a new generation of Heracleidae returned; it was they, not the Dorians, said Greek tradition, who, being resisted in their claims, conquered the Peioponnesus, and put an end to the Heroic Age.

If the tale of Pelops and his descendants suggests the Asia Minor origin of the Achaeans, the theme of their destiny is struck in the story of the Argonauts. Like so many of the legends that served as both the historical tradition and the popular fiction of the Greeks, it is an excellent narrative, with all the elements of adventure, exploration, war, love, mystery, and death woven into a fabric so rich that after the dramatists of Athens had almost worn it bare it was rewoven into a very passable epic, in Hellenistic days, by Apollotiius of Rhodes. It begins in Boeotian Orchomenos on the harsh note of human sacrifice, Eke Agamemnon's tragedy. Finding his land stricken with famine, King Athamas proposed to offer his son Phrixus to the gods. Phrixus learned of the plan and escaped from Orchomenos with his sister Helle, riding with her through the air on a ram with a golden fleece. But the ram was unsteady, and Helle fell off and was drowned in the strait which after her was called the Hellespont. Phrixus reached land and found his way to Colchis, at the farther end of the Black Sea; there he sacrificed the ram and hung up its fleece as an offering to Ares, god of war. Aietes, King of Colchis, set a sleepless dragon to watch the fleece, for an oracle had said that he should die if a stranger carried it off; and to better assure himself he decreed that all strangers coming to Colchis should be put to death. His daughter Medea, who loved strange men and ways, pitied the wayfarers who entered Colchis, and helped them to escape. Her father ordered her to be confined; but she fled to a sacred precinct near the sea, 2nd lived there in bitter brooding till Jason found her wandering on the shore.

Some twenty years before (Greek chronologists said about 1245), Pelias, son of Poseidon, had usurped the throne of Aeson, King of Iolcus in Thessaly. Aesoti s infant son Jason had been hidden by friends, and had grown up in the woods to great strength and courage. One day he appeared in the market place, dressed in a leopard skin and armed with two spears, and demanded his kingdom. But he was simple as welt as strong, and Pelias persuaded him to undertake a heavy cask as the price of the throne-to recover the Golden Fleece. So Jason built the great ship Argo (the Swift), and called to the adventure the bravest spirits in Greece. Heracles came, with his beloved companion Hylas; and Peleus, father of Achilles; Theseus, Meleager, Orpheus, and the fleet-footed maiden Atalanta. As the vessel entered the Hellespont it was halted, seemingly by some force from Troy, for Heracles left the expedition to sack the city and kill its King Laomedon, and all his sons but Priam.

When, after many tribulations, the Argonauts reached their goal, they were warned by Medea of the death that awaited all strangers in Colchis. But Jason persisted; and Medea agreed to help him gain the Fleece if he would take her to Thessaly and keep her as his wife until he died. He pledged himself to her, captured the Fleece with her aid, and fled back to his ship with her and his men. Many of them were wounded, but Medea quickly healed them with roots and herbs. When Jason reached Iolcus he again asked for the kingdom, and Pelias again delayed. Then Medea, by the arts of a sorceress, deceived the daughters of Pelias into boiling him to death. Frightened by her magic powers, the people drove her and Jason from Iolcus, and debarred him forever from the throne. The rest belongs to Euripides.