Double shamed

Ok, I've been shamed into updating this blog by a friend that graduated high school with me and went to college with me. She says I'm a slacker and all, so I picked up the Peloponnesian War because (1. we're about to get back into the ancients in homeschool, 2. this was an interesting read the last time I read it, and 3. it's on the top of my to-read list on my blog) and right off the bat learnt something that made me feel even dumber and more-shameder...

Before the Trojan war there is no indication of any common action in Hellas, nor indeed of the universal prevalence of the name; on the contrary,before the time of Hellen, son of Deucalion, no such appellation existed, but the country went by the names of the different tribes, in particular of the Pelasgian. It was not till Hellen and his sons grew strong in Phthiotis, and were invited as allies into the other cities, that one by one they gradually acquired from the connection the name of Hellenes; though a long time elapsed before that name could fasten itself upon all. The best proof of this is furnished by Homer. Born long after the Trojan War, he nowhere calls all of them by that name.

Now, I knew that early Greece was tribal and disunified, only coming together under the name of Hellen later - but somehow I never put it together that Hellen was not the same person as Helen of Troy. Duh! From Wikipedia:

Hellen (Ancient Greek: Ἕλλην, Héllēn), Greek Katharevousa:([Héllēn] (help·info)) was the mythological patriarch of the Hellenes, the son of Deucalion (or sometimes Zeus) and Pyrrha, brother of Amphictyon and father of Aeolus, Xuthus, and Dorus. The word comes from the prefix έλ- (el- "sun, bright, shiny", (elios, "sun")) + λάς (las "rock, stone"). Ελλάς: "The land of the sun and the rock". His name is also another name for Greek, meaning a person of Greek descent or pertaining to Greek culture, and the source of the adjective "Hellenic". Each of his sons founded a primary tribe of Greece - Aeolus the Aeolians, Dorus the Dorians and Xuthus the Achaeans (from Xuthus's son Achaeus) and the Ionians (from Xuthus's probably illegitimate son Ionas ) together with his sister's Pandora's and Thyia's sons with Zeus and according to Hesiod's (probably) "Eoiae" (Greek : Ηοίαι (ancient Greek Ἠοῖαι from Ἠ' οἷαι = "or such women as") or "Catalogue of Women"[1], Graecus the Graecians, Makednos the Makedones and Magnes the Magnetes . They conquered the Greek area of Phthia and subsequently spread their rule to other Greek cities. The people of those areas came to be called Hellenes, after the name of their ancestor.

Want to read it for free? Check out the Gutenberg e-text. Otherwise, if you want to actually buy a paper copy of this super-cool history, please buy it at my Amazon store: