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Updated: June 8, 2025
The fable which makes Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, the sons of Helen, declares that while Dorus was sent forth to conquer other lands, Aeolus succeeded to the domain of Phthiotis, and records no conquests of his own; but attributes to his sons the origin of most of the principal families of Greece.
His name was Sisyphus, and he was punished in Tartarus—Pluto’s world below—by having always to roll a stone up a mountain so steep that it was sure to come down upon him again. Dorus was, of course, the father of the Dorians; and Xuthus had a son, called Iôn, who was the father of the Ionians.
From Hellen kings renowned for giving laws, Great Dorus and the mighty Xuthus sprang, And Aeolus, whose chief delight was horse. For if poets did not take this liberty, how mean, how grovelling and flat, would be their verse! As suppose they wrote thus, From this sprung Hercules, from the other Iphitus.
Of these Dorus and AEolus gave their names to the DORIANS and AEOLIANS; and Xuthus; through his two sons Ion and Achaeus, became the forefather of the IONIANS and ACHAEANS. Thus the Greeks accounted for the origin of the four great divisions of their race. The descent of the Hellenes from a common ancestor, Hellen, was a fundamental article in the popular faith.
It does not matter whether you take Dorus as the son of Apollo or the son of Helen; he equally symbolises the power of light: while his brother, Æolus, through all his descendants, chiefly in Sisyphus, is confused or associated with the real god of the winds, and represents to you the power of the air.
Aristotle and Philostratus speak of pygmy people descended from Pygmaeus, son of Dorus. In the seventeenth century van Helmont supposed that there were pygmies in the Canary Islands, and Abyssinia, Brazil, and Japan in the older times were repeatedly said to contain pygmy races.
In the southern part of Thessaly was Pharsalia, the battle-ground between Cæsar and Pompey, and near it was Pyrrha, formerly called Hellas, where was the tomb of Hellen, son of Deucalion, whose descendants, Æolus, Dorus and Ion, are said to have given name to the three nations, Æolians, Dorians, and Ionians, Still further south, between the inaccessible cliffs of Mount Œta and the marshes which skirt the Maliaeus Bay, were the defiles of Thermopylæ, where Leonidas and three hundred heroes died defending the pass, against the army of Xerxes, and which in one place was only twenty-five feet wide, so that, in so narrow a defile, the Spartans were able to withstand for three days the whole power of Persia.
By a curious coincidence all the names of eponymous heroes chanced to remind people of beasts. But whence come the names of eponymous heroes? From their tribes, of course Ion from Ionians, Dorus from Dorians, and so on. Indeed, the names of totem-kins are the names of animals wolves, bears, cranes. Mr. His name, then, could not, before they invented it, remind them of a bear.
And know that he shall become a great nation, and that his children in time to come shall dwell in the islands of the sea, and in the lands that border thereon, and that they shall be called Ionians after his name. Know also that thou shalt bear children to Xuthus Dorus and Æolus and that these also shall become fathers of nations."
So Dorus, feigning a love in attendance on Pamela, told her, in the presence of her mistress, the story of the two friends, Pyrocles and Musidorus, but in such words that Pamela understood who it was that was speaking, and carried to Philoclea the news that her Dorus had fallen out to be none other than the Prince Musidorus, famous over all Asia for his heroical enterprises; and, later, Pyrocles, finding himself in private conference with Philoclea, did avow himself Prince of Macedon, and her true lover, and they passed the promise of marriage, and she, to entertain him from a more straight parley, did entreat him to tell the story of his life, and what he did until he came to the shipwreck.
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