Histories

After his gifts to the Delphians, Croesus made a third inquiry of the oracle, for he wanted to use it to the full, having received true answers from it; and the question which he asked was whether his sovereignty would be of long duration. To this the Pythian priestess answered as follows:

1. “When the Medes have a mule as king,
2. Just then, tender-footed Lydian, by the stone-strewn Hermus
3. Flee and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward.”

When he heard these verses, Croesus was pleased with them above all, for he thought that a mule would never be king of the Medes instead of a man, and therefore that he and his posterity would never lose his empire. Then he sought very carefully to discover who the mightiest of the Greeks were, whom he should make his friends.

He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric, and the Athenians among those of Ionic stock. These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far.

For in the days of king Deucalion [*](Deucalion and Pyrrha were the survivors of the Deluge as known to Greek legend.) it inhabited the land of Phthia [22.75,36.2667] (Perseus) Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus (mountain), Nomos Larisis, Thessaly, Greece, Europe Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese [22,37.5] (region), Greece, Europe Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.[*](The localities mentioned in the story of the migration into the Peloponnese [22,37.5] (region), Greece, Europe Peloponnese are all in northern Greece [22,39] (nation), EuropeGreece.)