So too the digamma is called " Aeolic " by grammarians, and is found on Aeolic and Doric inscriptions.
Even in northern and westcentral Greece, all vestige of any former prevalence has been obliterated by the spread of " Aeolic " dialects akin to those of Thessaly and Boeotia; even the northern Doris, for example, spoke "Aeolic" in historic times.
The use of that dialect (instead of Aeolic) by the Boeotian poet Hesiod, in a kind of poetry which was not of the Homeric type, tends to the conclusion that the literary ascendancy of the epic dialect was anterior to the Iliad and Odyssey, and independent of the influence exercised by these poems.
From the scanty notices of Greek legend it may be gathered that an influx of tribes from the north contributed largely to its population, which was reckoned as Aeolic. It is probable that the country was originally of greater extent, for there was a tradition that the Phocians once owned a strip of land round Daphnus on the sea opposite Euboea, and carried their frontier to Thermopylae; in addition, in early days they controlled the great sanctuary of Delphi.
The northern Doris, for example, spoke Aeolic, while Elis, Phocis, and many non-Dorian districts of north-west Greece spoke dialects akin to Doric. Many Dorian states had additional " nonDorian tribes "; Sparta, which claimed to be of pure and typical Dorian origin, maintained institutions and a mode of life which were without parallel in Peloponnese, in the Parnassian and in the Asiatic Doris, and were partially reflected in Crete only.
