DORIANS. In classical times a fourfold division ran through the Greek world, linguistic and partially social. The Dorians rep resent one section of this division, the remaining three being Aeolians, Ionians and Arcado-Cyprians or Achaeans. They were settled in the Peloponnese where they were the dominant race, in the Sporades and in Crete, in south-western Asia Minor, and in a string of colonies along the eastern and southern coasts of Sicily. Between Mounts Parnassus and Oeta was a small district called Doris, whose inhabitants in historic times spoke an Aeolic dialect. They were distinguished from other Greeks by their dialect, by a calendar of festivals, and by certain social and politi cal institutions. The worship of Apollo and of Heracles was looked upon by the Greeks as being in some sense more particu larly Dorian, though not confined to Dorian peoples.
The Doric dialect, of which there were several varieties, was allied with a group known as North-west Greek, spoken in Phocis, Locris and Elis, as opposed to Aeolic, Ionic, Attic and Arcado Cyprian, which may be said to have formed loosely an eastern group. Some of its characteristics are the retention of r where Attic shows v in verbal endings such as 61.6eDrc, in -K LTCOC as the termination in the hundreds in place of -K001,0L etc. ; the forma tion of the nominative plural of the article in Tot, Tai ; 'roKa for orm, Tore, *Ore etc. ; the termination of the first person plural active in .-µes instead of -AU, e.g., 4 poµes; the formation of the future in -c€w; the lengthening of € and o to and co in place of Et and ov; the reduction of intervocalic a to it and in some cases its complete disappearance. The Cretan dialects showed peculiarities of their own. The Doric dialects continued in use until displaced by the KOcvI based upon Attic, which became the common language of Greece in Hellenistic times. The modern Tzakonian dialect spoken in the neighbourhood of Sparta exhibits characteristics which entitle it to be regarded as the descendant of an ancient Doric dialect, possibly Laconian. Within the Doric group Laconian inclined in certain respects to agreement with Aeolic where Corinthian and Argolic show rather more similarity to Ionic.
It is clear that the Dorians were a conquering stratum of the population in the Peloponnese. Beside the fact that a non-Doric dialect survived in Arcadia closely akin to the dialects of Cyprus, the social structure of the Doric cities provides evidence that the Dorians had conquered and were holding in subjection a former population. Sparta was the armed camp of a close aristocracy which alone possessed political rights. The majority of the popu lation, known as Helots, were serfs, hostile to their masters and breaking into rebellion whenever opportunity presented itself. Be tween the Helots and the Spartiate families was a class known as Perioeci (q.v.) who were not slaves but did not enjoy Spartan rights. In the 8th and 7th centuries B,C., Sparta subjugated and annexed Messenia, the district that lay along the west coast of the Peloponnese, but there is no evidence as to whether the Messen ians were Dorian or otherwise. They appear to have spoken a Doric dialect, but so probably did the Achaeans along the Pelo ponnesian shore of the Corinthian gulf, and the latter in other re spects were definitely regarded as non-Doric. It is possible that the Doric dialects were the speech of the pre-Dorian inhabitants of the Peloponnese, the Homeric Achaeans, and that this was adopted by the conquerors. There is insufficient evidence to war rant a decision. The other Doric cities of the Peloponnese, no tably Argos and Corinth, though their constitutions differed widely from that of Sparta, presented similar strata of population, be tween whom a social and political compromise had been reached. Sparta was not typical but peculiar. The so-called constitution of Lycurgus, however, under which she was governed, was closely reflected in Dorian Crete. The double kingship suggests pre historical amalgamation. Owing to Sparta's dominant position in the Dorian world in historical times the rest of Greece was in clined to regard what was peculiarly Spartan as typically Dorian. The rivalry of race between Dorian and Ionian underlay the struggles of the Greek world until at least the 4th century, being prominent in the Peloponnesian War at the close of the 5th century.
When and from what direction did the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese take place? Homer knew of Dorians only in Crete. The mainland of Greece was inhabited in Homeric times by a people called Achaeans, which was the general name for Greeks, afterwards replaced by the name Hellenes. In the Hesiodic gen ealogies Dorus appears as a son of Hellen beside Aeolus and Xuthus the father of Ion and Achaeus. It is evident that at that time (7th or 6th century) these four divisions were regarded as comprising together the whole Greek world. The Hellenes of Homer's time were a small Thessalian tribe, and the extension of their name illustrates the possibility of a similar process in the case of that of the Dorians. The inheritance of Dorus was in central Greece between that of Aeolus in Thessaly and of Xuthus in the Peloponnese. Under Aegimius, a descendant of Dorus, the Dorians acquired the country between Mounts Parnassus and Oeta, thenceforward known as Doris. An alliance took place be tween Aegimius and the Heracleidae, Hyllus son of Heracles being adopted by Aegimius. There followed the expeditions to the Peloponnese to assist the Heracleidae to recover their inherit ance there. The route of the invasion was through Aetolia and Elis, the Corinthian Gulf being crossed at Naupactus. After several attempts the conquest of the Peloponnese was achieved. Thucydides dates the invasion 8o years subsequent to the Trojan War, and it was generally regarded as having taken place in the second half of the z 2th or early in the i i th century. Megara and Corinth were conquered rather later. From the alliance between Aegimius and the Heracleidae dated the threefold Dorian division into Hylleis, Dymanes and Pamphyli.
A second tradition, current in the 4th century, brought the Argive Dorians to the eastern Peloponnese by sea. Their starting point is not stated. It is assumed to be the Maliac gulf, which is the nearest sea-coast to Doris in central Greece. The Cretan Dorians were regarded as an offshoot of this expedition from which they were considered to have separated in Histiaeotis.
The facts of the Dorian overlordship in the Peloponnese show the invasion and conquest to have been historical, and light may be thrown upon the whereabouts of the former homes of the in vaders by the names of the three Dorian tribes. Hylleis is the name of a large and widespread Illyrian tribe settled upon the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic and centring around the promon tory known anciently as Hyllis, now as Sabbioncello. Indeed the name Illyrii may be identical with that of the Hylleis except for an additional suffix. Again the tribal name Dymanes has a ter mination frequent in Epirus and exemplified in such names as Atintanes, Athamanes, Akarnanes, etc. Both these names point decisively to the north-west and confirm the tradition of an in vasion across the Corinthian gulf from Aetolia to Elis, of an Illyrian or Epirote tribe. What of the Pamphyli? The second tradition, that the Dorian conquerors of Argolis reached the east coast of the Peloponnese by sea, has already been mentioned. Is it possible that it is wrongly assumed that the starting-point of this expedition was the Maliac gulf, and that such an invasion took place, but from Crete and the south-eastern Aegaean? Is it too bold to connect the name Pamphyli with the familiar Ana tolian Pamphylia? In Homeric times Dorians are recorded only in Crete. The constitution of Lycurgus at Sparta was tra ditionally derived from Crete. We know that the Achaeans were in pre-Homeric times in the eastern Aegaean and later in the Pelo ponnese and the Greek mainland. Thus a Dorian migration from east to west across the Aegaean would have merely followed in the wake of previous Achaean migrations, while Dorian attacks upon the Peloponnese from Crete would have been no more than repetitions of previous Minoan history. Thus an invasion of the Achaean Peloponnese by northern hordes was coincident with at tacks from Crete and the Aegaean. It may well have been de signedly coincident, one set of invaders calling in the other as allies, and such an amalgamation may well explain the double kingship at Sparta. If the name Dorian first applied to a small tribe in Crete and later became extended to the new masters of the Peloponnese as a whole, this fact is no stranger than the in crease of scope of the name Hellenes, which underwent an even wider development. The Parnassian Doris was never in historical times the home of Dorians. It represents perhaps no more than a coincidence of name, which is not surprising and far from un paralleled, especially if it connects with the root of Spvs, 8op", tree, etc. It is possible that the northern invaders occupied it for a time before their irruption into the Peloponnese.
A widely-held view would bring all Greek-speaking peoples by land to Greece from the north in three successive waves, Ionian, Achaean and Dorian, the first two being the promotors of Mycen ean civilization. This presupposes an original "Helladic" popula tion of Greece, whose language is unknown and whose origin is unexplained. All Greek settlements in the Aegaean, Asia Minor and Cypress were on this view colonized from the mainland of Greece.
Doris was also in historical times the collective name of the Dorian cities in south-western Asia Minor, corresponding with Ionia and Aeolis. Whether or not Dorians had dwelt in this region since Homeric times, that is to say, since a date previous to their occupation of the Peloponnese, these cities had received an influx of population from the Peloponnese and looked to it in historical times as the home of their mother-cities.