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 from the "Cadmean" stock of prehistoric Thebes. Before the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus, while the lands beneath Taygetus on the eastern side were still possessed by the Achaean masters of Amyclae, the Aegeidae had settled among them, as well as some Minyans from Lemnos. After the Dorian conquest the Aegeidae, though of Cadmean descent, appear to have been adopted by the Spartans into one of the three Dorian tribes ; and hence Pindar can say,—"fame tells that from Sparta comes the fair glory of our house; thence sprang the Aegeidae, my sires, who went to Thera" (Pyth. V. 68). Elsewhere he alludes to the still earlier chapter in the story of the family, when they, sons of Thebes, "took Amyclae, by the oracles of Delphi" (Isthm. vi. 14). The Aegeidae had a branch at Cyrene as well as at Thera, Sparta, and Thebes. Pindar speaks of the Theban Aegeidae as "showing honour at the banquet" to Cyrene, when they keep the festival of the Carneia—a festival which, though in historical times associated with Dorians and especially with Sparta, had been originally brought from Thebes to Amyclae by the Cadmean Aegeidae, and had been of old associated with the worship of Demeter rather than with that of Apollo. Thus connected, by a lineage of which he was evidently proud, both with Cadmean Thebes and with Dorian Sparta, Pindar was not likely to have much personal sympathy with any