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Of all the answers that had reached him, this pleased him far the
best, for it seemed incredible that a mule should ever come to be king
of the Medes, and so he concluded that the sovereignty would never
depart from himself or his seed after him. Afterwards he turned his
thoughts to the alliance which he had been recommended to contract, and
sought to ascertain by inquiry which was the most powerful of the
Grecian states. His inquiries pointed out to him two states as
pre-eminent above the rest. These were the Lacedaemonians and the
Athenians, the former of Doric, the latter of Ionic blood. And
indeed these two nations had held from very, early times the most
distinguished place in Greece, the being a Pelasgic, the other a
Hellenic people, and the one having never quitted its original seats,
while the other had been excessively migratory; for during the reign of
Deucalion, Phthiotis was the country in which the Hellenes dwelt,
but under Dorus, the son of Hellen, they moved to the tract at the
base of Ossa and Olympus, which is called Histiaeotis; forced to
retire from that region by the Cadmeians, they settled, under the
name of Macedni, in the chain of Pindus. Hence they once more
removed and came to Dryopis; and from Dryopis having entered the
Peloponnese in this way, they became known as Dorians.
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