The founding of Sparta, Pindar’s ’colony of the Dorians’, and especially the legitimation of its presence in the Peloponnese are topics rich in mythological articulations. Sparta was believed to have been founded by Dorians who had no previous connection at all in the Peloponnese. Such a connection was articulated for them in terms of a historicizing genealogy of their leaders, the Herakleidai (descendants of Herakles). In marked contrast to the perception of the newly arrived Dorians, the arrival of these Herakleidai came to be viewed as a kathodos (a word signifying both ‘descent’ and ‘return from exile’). The Return of the Herakleidai – a return to a land which had once been theirs – implied a right of possession vindicated by the foundation of the Dorian cities of the Peloponnese under their leadership.

One of the most prominent and seemingly most straightforward criteria used to distinguish different ethno-cultural groups or subdivide them further was the existence of a distinct dialect, to which the fifth chapter is dedicated. Because of the unrepresentative picture we get from the nature of the surviving epigraphic evidence, we cannot be sure whether some form of the Ionic dialect or accent continued to be spoken in the Roman period. Yet, the continued creative engagement with the Ionic dialect in the fields of historiography and medical writing by authors from all over the Greek world – and not only as imitations of individual canonical authors, but with a clear awareness that they were writing in Ionic Greek – shows that it maintained its very prestigious position as a traditional literary language and that it could still be considered as a meaningful cultural resource.