Note 470 — Chapter XIV · FICTION IN THE HOMERIC POEMS.

Prof. Meyer (Gesch. d. Alt.2, I p. 680 ff.) has pointed out that, while Thucydides seems to have regarded Minos as a Greek, Herodotus apparently held a different view. Such is certainly the natural inference to be drawn from the language of the two historians, though the evidence is perhaps not quite conclusive in either case. But Herodotus, at all events in VII 171, clearly derived his information from the people of Praisos—a community which cannot have been wholly Greek even in his time. Their account seems to have been due to an attempt to reconcile Greek and native traditions, Homeric influence being shown by the sentence τρίτῃ δὲ γενεῇ μετὰ Μίνωα τελευτήσαντα γενέσθαι τὰ Τρωϊκά, κ.τ.λ. We may compare the Egyptian story of Helen (cf. p. 266). In the Homeric poems themselves Idomeneus is descended from Minos, and no hint is given that either of them was regarded as non-Greek. The same remark appears to be true of Greek tradition elsewhere.