Histories

Herodotus

Herodotus. Godley, Alfred Denis, translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, Ltd., 1920-1925 (printing).

This, then, is what he did regarding Adrastus, but as for the tribes of the Dorians, he changed their names so that these tribes should not be shared by Sicyonians and Argives. In this especially he made a laughing-stock of the Sicyonians, for he gave the tribes names derived from the words ‘donkey’ and ‘pig’ changing only the endings. The name of his own tribe, however, he did not change in this way, but rather gave it a name indicating his own rule, calling it Archelaoi, rulers of the people. The rest were Swinites, Assites and Porkites.

These were the names of the tribes which the Sicyonians used under Cleisthenes' rule and for sixty years more after his death. Afterwards, however, they took counsel together and both changed the names of three to Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanatae, and added a fourth which they called Aegialeis after Aegialeus son of Adrastus.