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According to Greek mythology and legendary prehistory of the Aegean region, the Minyans ((ギリシア語:Μινύες)) were an autochthonous group inhabiting the Aegean region. However, the extent to which the prehistory of the Aegean world is reflected in literary accounts of legendary peoples, and the degree to which material culture can be securely linked to language-based ethnicity have been subjected to repeated revision. The Mycenaean Greeks reached Crete as early as 1450 BCE. Greek presence on the mainland, however, dates to 1600 BCE as shown in the latest shaft graves. Other aspects of the "Minyan" period appear to arrive from northern Greece and the Balkans, in particular tumulus graves and perforated stone axes. John L. Caskey's interpretation of his archaeological excavations conducted in the 1950s linked the ethno-linguistic "Proto-Greeks" to the bearers of the "Minyan" (or Middle Helladic) culture. More recent scholars have questioned or amended his dating and doubted the linking of material culture to linguistic ethnicity. ==Classical Greek uses of "Minyans"== Greeks did not always clearly distinguish the Minyans from the Pelasgian cultures that had preceded them. Greek mythographers gave the Minyans an eponymous founder, Minyas, perhaps as legendary as Pelasgus (the founding father of the Pelasgians), which was a broader category of pre-Greek Aegean peoples. These Minyans were associated with Boeotian Orchomenus, as when Pausanias relates that "Teos used to be inhabited by Minyans of Orchomenus, who came to it with Athamas"〔Pausanias. ''Description of Greece'', 7.3.6.〕 and may have represented a ruling dynasty or a tribe later located in Boeotia. Herodotus asserts several times that Pelasgians dwelt in the distant past with the Athenians in Attica, and that those Pelasgians driven from Attica in turn drove the Minyans out of Lemnos.〔Herodotus. ''Histories'', 1.57, 2.51.7, 2.51.12.〕 The same historian also states that Minyans from Amyklai settled on the island of Thera in 800 BC.〔Herodotus. ''Histories'', 4.145ff.〕 Heracles, the hero whose exploits always celebrate the new Olympian order over the old traditions, came to Thebes, one of the ancient Mycenaean cities of Greece, and found that the Greeks were paying tribute of 100 cattle (a ''hecatomb'') each year to Erginus, king of the Minyans.〔''Bibliotheke'' 2.4.11 records the origin of the Theban tribute as recompense for the mortal wounding of Clymenus, king of the Minyans, with a cast of a stone by a charioteer of Menoeceus in the precinct of Poseidon at Onchestus; the myth is reported also by Diodorus Siculus, 4.10.3.〕 Heracles attacked a group of emissaries from the Minyans, and cut off their ears, noses and hands. He then tied them around their necks and told them to take those for tribute to Erginus. Erginus made war on Thebes, but Heracles defeated the Minyans with his fellow Thebans after arming them with weapons that had been dedicated in temples.〔Heracles' behavior showed that Bronze Age rules of social decorum were over: "the deeds of Heracles," Carlo Pavese observed in another context, "can scarcely be adduced as an apt paradigm of the customary" (Pavese, "The New Heracles Poem of Pindar", ''Harvard Studies in Classical Philology'' 72 (1968:47-88) p. 54.〕 Erginus was killed and the Minyans were forced to pay double the previous tribute to the Thebans. Heracles was also credited with the burning of the palace at Orchomenus: "Then appearing unawares before the city of the Orchomenians and slipping in at their gates he burned the palace of the Minyans and razed the city to the ground."〔Diodorus Siculus. ''Bibliotheke'', 4.10.5.〕 The Argonauts were sometimes referred to as "Minyans" because Jason's mother came from that line, and several of his cousins joined in the adventure.〔, ''Metamorphoses'', (7 ): "The Minyans were stark with fear"; .〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Minyans」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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