century BCE, Greeks considered the Dorian invasion a major turning point in their history, and it was reckoned as the beginning of the main line of historical continuity for Dorian states in the Peloponnese.

The earliest surviving attestation of the myth is in the work of the seventh-century BCE Spartan poet Tyrtaeus. The term used for the Heraclidae's return by Herodotus is , which can mean both "descent" and "return from exile". By the sixth century BCE, the ethnic divisions between