THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 173
174 WHO WERE THE MAKERS ?
Ossa. We saw that two tombs of the Mycenean type have
monuments on which Centaurs are portrayed carrying off
been discovered on this famous mountain. If we can show
women another
; group of stories presents the Centaurs of
that no Achean or Dorian ever dwelt down to the classical
Pelion in quite another light'.
Chiron son of Philyra and
times on the slopes of Ossa, but that on the contrary
it was
Cornus is represented as a beneficent sage,
successful in the
always occupied by two very ancient tribes, of whose Pelasgic
chase^, skilled in leechcraft and all cunning lore, a tutor meet
character there is no doubt, we shall have once more for the sons of produced
kings, nay, even for the offspring of the blessed
a strong piece of testimony in favour of the Pelasgic authorship
gods
of the Mycenean Ẇhen culture.
Apollo snatched the child Asclepius from the pyre of
Strabo tells us' that "because the Perrhaebians and
his mother Lapithae
Coronis, he bore him to the ' Magnesian Centaur,'
lived intermingled together, Simonides calls all those "
who dwelt in a cave on Pelion, that he should teach him to be
peoples
Pelasgiotae, who occupy the eastern parts about Gyrton and
a healer of the many-plaguing maladies of men." It was thus
the mouths of the Peneius, Ossa, Pelion, and the country about
from Chiron that the divine physician learned to loose each
Demetrias, and the places in the from his "
plain, Larisa, Crannon,
infirmity, some with emollient spells,
some by kindly
Scotussa, Mopsium, Atrax, and the parts near the lakes Nessonis
potions, or else he hung their limbs with charms, or by chirurgery
he raised them up to healths"
and Boebeis." Strabo then proceeds to say that Homer joins
the Aenianes and Perrhaebians together as if they dwelt near
It was he who reared Jason, the heir of the Minyan
line of
each other, and that later writers said that the Aenianes for a
lolcus, and to Chiron also Peleus, the chief of the ne\v Achean
long time were settled in the Dotian plain, which is near to
dynasty, committed the education of Achilles. A black figured
Perrhaebia, Ossa and the lake Boebeis. Hesiod spake of this
vase shows the hero bringing the little Achilles to Chiron, who
country thus "
: as a chaste maiden, who dwells on the sacred
is depicted as a venerable old man with a white beard and clad
heights of the twin in
hills, comes to the Dotian
a plain in front of
long robe from under the back of which issues the hinder
Amyrus, abounding with vines, to bathe her fet't in the lake
part of a diminutive pony, the equine portion being a mere
"
Boebeis According to Callimachus-, the Pelasgians planted
adjunct to the complete human figured
in the Dotian land near lake Boebeis a grove in honour of
Some have seen in the Centaurs a personification
of the
Demeter.
mountain torrents"', which when sw^ollen by rains sweep down
We may therefore conclude that fn^m the remotest times
in headlong furv to the plains, working havoc in their course ;
others hold
Ossa was the home of Pelasgic tribes, who continued
that
to hold
the myth arose from the fact that the
their own there even after the invasions of both
Thessalians
Acheans and
were such adroit riders, that man and horse seemed
the Thessali, as the one.
Magnetos maintained themselves on
But such
Pt'lion.
explanations are only partial, for it is impossible
That the Magnetos had oceupiefj Pelion from a to conceive the venerable form of Chiron as a swollen mountain
period long
before any Achoaii coiuiut'st can be shown l)y th