MIGRANT - Argo and Danaids 1 
is they who have given us (among other things) the word "barbaric" and a little background that 'discriminatory accompanying the definition: the "barbarians" are those who stutter, who can not speak our language well ... and one, alas!, sad leap of logic, "barbarians" are those who do not understand, they are strangers, and almost always lower.
"They" are the Greeks, the Hellenes, the Danai ... migratory birds for excellence, in search of a "living space" elsewhere (first on the coasts of Asia Minor \\ Anatolia, then to Ancient Greece \\ Italy + South of Sicily). "Barbarians" they, too, after all.
"Here come the barbarians" become "Mamma them Turks" and "Beware of cumprà Vu." And, with another leap, the Greeks, so careful to keep out dall'Anfizionia Delphic Games and all those who were not sange Hellenic would have appreciated the concept of mind today that an American does not see an immigrant: they accepted the Romans, "barbarians" yesterday, but basically friends, descendants, free ...
It seems that the reality of physical and cultural threat of the foreigner is always subject to the power possessed by those who are the stranger.
But who are the Greeks, after all? First of all Hellenes were descendants of Hellen, who came from Thessaly, and his sons Achaean, Doro, Aeolus (II) and Xuthus (putative father of Ion). But the Greek region of Thessaly is therefore in a sense we can call them indigenous, that is born of the same soil in which they live.
We can therefore say that their ideas of purity and the need to belong to the lineage arise from a background of genetic continuity?
Not really.
read Homer, the father of Greek civilization as the Greeks themselves understood it. The poet called Achaeans the besiegers of Troy, but they also names as Dana and Argos. Danai and Argos are more or less the same thing, because they refer to Argo, the legendary one of the original city (in fact: according to its inhabitants was the first city, but many other cities to challenge the record!), And Danao, its legendary first ... oops!, second or third or fourth king! The Hellenes are
Danai, descendants of Danaus, and for this the Greeks of the Archaic would have had almost nothing to challenge.
Who was Dana?
Imagine the scene: Argo, a day like any other (at the time we were sailing only by day), the harbor area (which was not exactly in the city, but close). A ship overlooking the bay, features a ship from Egypt, the first ship with two bows that had never crossed the sea.
On a venerable old man, his 50 daughters, of course some sailor (the ship has even ruled some of the expert, right?). Landing
the strange congregation, some broken stammer barbaric recognition: Danao, deposed king of Egypt came to claim the throne of Argos. And Dana in a hurry to have the throne, in his say, it's ...
Danao, in fact, would have us believe that he was greek, or at least a native (ie Argive could play for the national team if he had obtained the passport Amphictyonic): He was descended from Io, the daughter of the river Inachus, owned by Zeus tasformata and heifer in order to escape the watchful eyes of the jealous Hera.
But his wife (cornificata) the king of the gods was not stupid: the goddess suspected something. Zeus, in fact, was in itself a shapeshifter ... He also came close as bird numb from the rain, and when she took him in her arms ... the god returned to his human form and raped! However
you give her husband was the cow \\ I, and from there begins a burlesque and tragic sequence of events that leads the poor ego, always in the form of a cow to be taken, carried hither and thither, pursued by a gadfly, cross the Bosporus and arrive in Egypt where he eventually regains human form, it gives birth son of Zeus (Epafo), unites local king and founded the cult of Isis.
Epafo married Memphis, daughter of the Nile, was born and Libya, which had by Poseidon Agenor (the father of a couple of emigrants to return "in Greece) and Belo. From Belo and Anchinoe (another daughter of the Nile), finally, born Danao and Egypt.
Danao was the fifty daughters of whom we said, Egypt had fifty sons. What do better to solve questions of inheritance, which marry the fifty DANIDA with the fifty sons of Egypt? So the thought of Egypt, partly because, by making him the male part of the wedding group, hoped to deprive his brother. So Danao, Malfidano, had to flee in the direction of Argo data, the earth mother (grandmother of the ancient indeed).
Danao asks the throne of Argos, we said, even for a retreat from Egypt and its children, it is certain, they're chasing.
Gelanore, king of Argos, he laughed at the alien claims (after the verb "ghelào" from which derives its name means "laugh", no?). But since we are in Greece, everything turns into a nice democratic debate: Gelanore is likely to remain king if, during the debate, not a wolf appraso, tearing a herd nearby. The Argives, apparently more interested in omens to save the herds, that had it not been interpreted pacifcamente the throne at Dana, if these would be taken by force!
Danao Thus, the immigrant's return, became king of Argos, and his discendnza we'll discuss in a future post.
But what more we want here is another thing: Dana was really a native greek?
reflect: the story of Io and seduced become a victim of the jealous rage of Hera, is detailed and complex, but also covers other than final at the Egyptian: according to Strabo the girl \\ cow would give birth on the island of Euboea (Greece that Greece can not be more) and there would be dead. According to the Byzantine Emperor John Malalas, however, I would give birth to Libya in Argolis, fled to Egypt, but then went on to Syria where he died.
Only in the latter case there is a link with Egypt, but change the name of the divine infant, even if it remains within the genealogy of the "classical".
However there seems no doubt that the myth has had his "life" regardless of what the arrival of Danaus.
The story of Danaus and Danaids landing nell'Argolide is equally detailed and complex (and its development, as stated, will be described in a forthcoming post) and has a value regardless of the myth of Io (the "harbinger of the wolf" could justify the enthronement of the alien beyond his alleged ancestry).
one that seems contrived and the genealogy that connects the two protagonists.
Epafo has been identified with the bull Apis (the sacred cow of Memphis) because it was so from the beginning or was it just to connect two separate origin myths?
Libya (grandson or daughter that I was), Memphis, Nile, Thebes (another alleged daughter Epafo and Memphis) are names of places, the gods (Posedione, but Belo = the Canaanite Baal) appear to fill gaps ...
Agenor descend Phoenix (eponym of Phoenicia), Cilicia (eponym of Cilicia), Thasos (eponymous island of the same name), fine and two other famous immigrants, Cadmus and Europa.
short: a family at least as "geographical," which reminds us of certain lists of the biblical Book of Genesis, where the relatives of eponyms used to determine relations between the peoples of LM.
Hence the question: Dana was really a descendant of Io, or just a foreign sovereign was legendary on the run from his homeland, arrived by chance in the Peloponnese, and there became the protagonist of the myth?
Patone said that a priest of Sais told Solon that the Greeks were always children compared to the Egyptians.
Egyptian origin ennobled and "ancient" lineage, and perhaps only then, when the concept of "barbarian" became synonymous with "different in the negative (and below), it was necessary for the dignity of the race also due to the venerable Egyptian Greek origin. So the descendants of Danaus
no longer wanted to consider foreigners (albeit coming by the illustrious lineage of the Pharaohs), and the Greeks assimilated and absorbed these wolves come from the outside, they'd take the bad with the homelands, if they had not been sold with the good.
