Achaean en

Nationality, culture, and style of one of the four major divisions of the ancient Greek people, along with the Aeolians, Doric, and Ionians. The area of historical Achaea, comprising a strip of land between the gulf of Corinth in the north and Elis and Arcadia in the south, containing twelve cities that leagued together prior to the Roman conquest in 146 BCE. As identified in Homer, the culture earlier was more broadly dispersed in the area basically comprising the Mycenaean civilization of the 14th-13th centuries BCE. Thus some scholars identify the culture as synonymous with the Mycenaean, while others believe Achaeans held power in the Mycenaean world only for a few generations. The Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese in historic times were believed by Herodotus to be descendants of these earlier Achaeans.