Curetes (tribe)

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This article discusses the legendary tribe of the Curetes. For the dancing attendants of Rhea, see Korybantes.

Homer, in the Iliad (ix. 529 ff), mentions the Curetes as a legendary people who took part in the quarrel over the Calydonian Boar. Strabo mentioned that the Curetes were assigned multiple identities and places of origin (i.e. either Acarnanians, Aetolians, from Crete, or from Euboea). However, he clarified the identity of the Curetes and regarded them solely as Aetolians.[1] Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentioned the Curetes as the old name of the Aetolians.[2]

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  1. ^ Strabo. Geography. Book X, Chapter 3. LacusCurtius As for the Curetes, some assign them to the Acarnanians, others to the Aetolians; and some assert that they originated in Crete, but others in Euboea; but since Homer mentions them, I should first investigate his account. It is thought that he means that they were Aetolians rather than Acarnanians, if indeed the sons of Porthaon were "Agrius and Melas, and, the third, Oeneus the knight; and they lived in Pleuron and steep Calydon.1 These are both Aetolian cities, and are referred to in the Aetolian catalogue; and therefore, since, even according to the poet, the Curetes obviously lived in Pleuron, they would be Aetolians. Those writers who oppose this view are misled by Homer's mode of expression when he says, the Curetes were fighting, and the Aetolians steadfast in battle, about the city of Calydon;2 for, they add, neither would he have spoken appropriately if he had said, "the Boeotians and the Thebans were fighting against one another"; or "the Argives and the Peloponnesians." But, as I have shown heretofore,3 this habit of expression not only is Homeric, but is much used by the other poets also. This interpretation, then, is easy to defend; but let those writers explain how the poet could catalogue the Pleuronians among the Aetolians if they were not Aetolians or at least of the same race.
  2. ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities. Book 1, 17. LacusCurtius Afterwards some of the Pelasgians who inhabited Thessaly, as it is now called, being obliged to leave their country, settled among the Aborigines and jointly with them made war upon the Sicels. It is possible that the Aborigines received them partly in the hope of gaining their assistance, but I believe it was chiefly on account of their kinship; 2 for the Pelasgians, too, were a Greek nation originally from the Peloponnesus. They were unfortunate in many ways but particularly in wandering much and in having no fixed abode. For they first lived in the neighbourhood of the Achaean Argos, as it is now called, being natives of the country, according to most accounts. They received their name originally from Pelasgus, their king. 3 Pelasgus was the p57son of Zeus, it is said, and of Niobê the daughter of Phoroneus, who, as the legend goes, was the first mortal woman Zeus had knowledge of. In the sixth generation afterwards, leaving the Peloponnesus, they removed to the country which was then called Haemonia and now Thessaly. The leaders of the colony were Achaeus, Phthius and Pelasgus, the sons of Larisa and Poseidon. When they arrived in Haemonia they drove out the barbarian inhabitants and divided the country into three parts, calling them, after the names of their leaders, Phthiotis, Achaia and Pelasgiotis. After they had remained there five generations, during which they attained to the greatest prosperity while enjoying the produce of the most fertile plains in Thessaly, about the sixth generation they were driven out of it by the Curetes and Leleges, who are now called Aetolians and Locrians, and by many others who lived near Parnassus, their enemies being commanded by Deucalion, the son of Prometheus and Clymenê, the daughter of Oceanus.

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