ABSTRACT
The middle word of this chapter's title, like my agnostic discussion of the destructions and depopulation in southern Greece during the latest Mycenaean period, conceals a parti pris. For although an impressive roll-call of scholars has attempted to explain the archaeological facts (if they are facts) set out in Chapter 6 in terms of the ‘tradition’ concerning the Dorians and their movements (Buck 1969, 280 n. 31; Rubinsohn 1975), most of these have not perceived that the ‘tradition’ must itself first be evaluated on its own merits before it is appropriate to apply external tests. When the ‘tradition’ is thus evaluated, it is seen that the literary evidence is so far removed from the ‘Dorian invasion’ in time and so distorted according to the bias or ignorance of the speaker or writer that an extreme sceptic like Beloch (1913, 76–96) could even legitimately deny its very occurrence. I shall argue that scepticism need not be carried so far, but a glance at the main items of literary evidence (Hooker 1977, 213–22) will help to explain Beloch's stance. The deceptively coherent narrative of the Dorian migration and occupation of the Peloponnese produced by a rationalizing mythographer like Apollodoros in the second century represents ‘only the main element in the tradition’; and there are other elements recorded by various authors at sundry times and places which are ‘conflicting and even contradictory’ (Tomlinson 1972, 59–61).
