HERACLIDAE, the general name for the numerous descendants of Heracles (Hercules) ; the name is especially used in antiquity for Hyllus and his descendants, the leaders of the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese. The Dorian invasion and the collapse of the Heroic civilization is represented in Greek tradi tion as the "return of the Heraclids," seeking their father's inheri tance, primarily Argos, of which he had been defrauded by Eurys theus. The legend appears to have been reduced to order by Ephorus, and the date fixed at 1104 B.C. It is difficult to give a coherent account of the story owing to the variations in even the earliest tradition, and the intrusion into the story of a mass of quite worthless legend in later writings.
The two main traditions may be summarized thus—chiefly from Herodotus and Pindar. The first centres round Echemus, king of Arcadia, who defeated the Heraclidae at the Isthmus before the Trojan war. They covenanted to stay away for three generations. At the end of this period the three sons of Aristomachus returned to Peloponnesus, captured it and divided the territory, Temenus taking Argus, the sons of Aristodemus Sparta and Cresphontes Messene. The second, implicit in Herodotus' account of the corn ing of the Dorians, tells of the adoption by Aegimius, the Thes salian ancestor of the Dorians, of Hyllus as co-heir with his own sons (hence the Dorian tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyloi and Dymanes) ; and of the subsequent conquest of Peloponnesus by the three and their followers. It is difficult to reconcile these traditions, and, considered separately, each presents problems. It is probable that Messene was never Dorian until its conquest by Sparta.
There are further complications in addition to the confusion introduced by later writers; for instance, there is a Heraclid called Aletes (the Wanderer) who appears in Peloponnesus in one of the stories; he may have come from Rhodes. And Herodotus has a story of a Heraclid dynasty in Lydia, who ruled for the 505 years before the Mermnadae dynasty (685), the last being Candaules, who was killed by Gyges the founder of the Mermnad house.