A Topographical and Historical Study of Achaea

Abstract

Among the seven nations inhabiting the Peloponnese, Herodotus counts the Achaeans third. They were, he says, natives of the Peloponnese, but no longer living in their own land. Elsewhere he says that the Ionians of Asia Minor were divided into twelve cities because formerly when they lived in the Peloponnese they were divided into twelve parts, which twelve divisions were maintained by the Achaeans who expelled them. This story was certainly believed generally by Ionians and Achaeans alike in the fourth century B.C., and is accepted by Polybius, Strabo, and Pausanias, who add that the Achaean leader was Tisamenos, son of Orestes. Perhaps when the Homeric Catalogue of Ships was composed Achaea was ruled by princes claiming descent from Agamemnon, some of whose followersThe date of Ogyges, named as the last king, is uncertain, but there is no evidence that the land was ruled by kings at the time when the western colonies were founded. The princes named by Pausanias are surely fictitious, but the tradition of a separate dynasty, that of Preugenes and his son Patreus, suggests that Western Achaea, the area not mentioned by Homer, may have formed a separate kingdom.