ACHAEANS. The name Achaeans is used in the Homeric poems in much the same sense as that in which the name Hellenes came to be used in later times. To Homer the Hellenes were a small tribe in Southern Thessaly (Il. ii. 684), but from the 8th century onwards the name became a general designation for all Greek-speaking peoples. Whether the name Achaeans was quite so general in its application is still a matter of doubt, but for practical purposes we may regard it as parallel. According to the traditional genealogies Achaeus was the son of Xuthus, son of Hellen.
The name has been connected with that of the Germanic tribe, Ingaevones, a connection that is possible but, perhaps, not very convincing. No light is thrown by it upon the meaning of the name. The Achaeans were a Greek-speaking people, but whether their dialect was Aeolic, Ionic or of the Arcadian type is a ques tion that cannot yet be decided. The Homeric poems are in an artificial literary dialect.
The exact relationship between the Achaeans and Mycenaean culture is still a matter of doubt. The view held by Sir William Ridgeway was that the Achaeans were invaders from the north, a people of northern characteristics, of the fair-haired, grey eyed type, bringing to Greece a civilization of Danubian origin distinguished by the use of iron, similar to the Hallstatt and Villanova cultures. The former inhabitants were, in his view, of a short, dark Mediterranean type, but Greek-speaking. It was the Achaeans who, according to this view, brought the labialising dialects to Greece.
The view more generally held, however, has been that the Mycenaean peoples were not Greek-speaking. The question de pends to some extent upon another : What was the language spoken by the Minoan peoples of Crete, of whose culture the Myce naean was an offshoot? There is no real evidence that the Minoans spoke Greek, or even an Indo-European language at all, and in deed there are many considerations that point to the conclusion that they did not.
A third and more recent view is that the Greek-speaking peoples came to Greece in three separate waves, Ionian, Achaean and Dorian, the first invasion occurring about the 17th century B.C. The Mycenaean civilization was an Achaean civilization, Greek speaking, and differing in certain notable respects, for example, in dress, from the Minoan. The Greek invaders subdued a previ ous non-Greek population and first destroyed the Minoan civili zation, afterwards reconstituting it, mingled with northern elements, their advent having much the same effect as the bar barian conquest of the Roman empire.
The facts hitherto known are these. There had existed an early population of Greece having a close connection with Ana tolia. A large number of place names occur throughout the Greek mainland as well as in Macedonia, Epirus and Thrace which are paralleled in Asia Minor, notably those in -veos and = (Taos. These are generally regarded as being non-Indo-European and therefore non-Greek. The Greeks were aware of the exist ence of earlier inhabitants of their country and the Aegean islands, whom they called by the general name of Pelasgians (q.v.), distinguishing, however, Leleges and Carians, the latter of whom inhabited the south-western corner of Asia Minor in historical times.
Again, it is probable, if not certain, that the whole Pelopon nese, and possibly parts of Central Greece, were inhabited by Ionians previous to their conquest by Achaeans. The traditional home of ,the Ionians was in the north-eastern Peloponnese, whence they were driven to Attica and the Cyclades by an Achaean in vasion. The fact that the name Ionian was applied to the sea west of Greece, on whose shores no Ionians lived in historical times, nor could have done so for many centuries previously, shows that the whole Peloponnese at least must once have been regarded as Ionian. The Achaeans emerge into history in the middle of the 14th century B.C. In the year 1922 a reference to them (Akhkhiyawa) in one of the Hittite texts of that date was read by Dr. Forrer. They were at that time an important naval power situated in the western regions of Asia Minor and the island of Lesbos, and were under the leadership of a prince named Attarsiyas. They appear to have been also in Cyprus and Pamphylia. Later, as has been already mentioned, in the Homeric age the Achaeans were lords of the Peloponnese and as far north as Thessaly, and their name; so far as can be gathered, was employed as a general designation for all Greeks.
The physical characteristics of the Achaeans are difficult to determine, and not a very safe guide. Three passages in the Odyssey refer to tallness of stature as a mark of beauty, and it was, perhaps, therefore rare. Heroes are sometimes referred to both by Homer and Hesiod as fair-haired (though the epithet may mean nothing more than not having black hair) and we know that both in classical and Roman times blue or grey eyes were rare in Greece.
In classical times the name Achaeans was confined to the people inhabiting the strip of land along the north coast of the Peloponnese, between the Corinthian gulf and the northern Arcadian mountains. They were for the most part subject' to Dorian overlords, and their dialect was Doric. Af ter the days of the Macedonian supremacy the Achaean League became one of the most powerful influences in Greece, and it was this fact that led the Romans, when they made the country into a province, to give it the name of Achaea. (See DORIANS ; IONIANS ; GREECE, History.)