Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/318

 30& HISTORY OP GREECE. flowed down : a point of common feeling for all Arcadians, from the terrific sanction which this water was understood to impart to their oaths. The distribution of Peloponnesus here sketched, suitable to the Persian invasion and the succeeding half century, may also be said (with some allowances) to be adapted to the whole inter- val between about B. c. 550-370 ; from the time of the conquest of Thyreatis by Sparta to the battle of Leuktra, But it is not the earliest distribution which history presents to us. Not pre- suming to criticize the Homeric map of Peloponnesus, and going back only to 776 B.C., we find this material difference, that Sparta occupies only a very small fraction of the large territory above described as belonging to her. Westward of the summit of Mount Taygetus are found another section of Dorians, independ- ent of Sparta: the Messenian Dorians, whose city is on the hill of Stenyklerus, near the south-western boundary of Arcadia, and whose possessions cover the fertile plain of Messene along the river Pamisus to its mouth in the Messenian gulf: it is to be noted that Messene was then the name of the plain generally, and that no town so called existed until after the battle of Leuktra. Again, eastward of the valley of the Eurotas, the mountainous region and the western shores of the Argolic gulf down to Cape Malea are also independent of Sparta ; belonging to Argos, or rather to Dorian towns in unison with Argos. All the great Dorian towns, from the borders of the Megarid to the eastern frontier of Arcadia, as above enumerated, appear to have existed in 776 B. c. : Achaia was in the same condition, so far as we are able to judge, as well as Arcadia, except in regard to its southern frontier, conterminous with Sparta, of which more will hereafter be said. In respect to the western portion of Peloponnesus, Elis (properly so called) appears to have embraced the same spot embosomed amidst these crags, few of them armed. They were pursued by five thousand Egyptians and Arabians : a very small resistance, in such ground, would have kept the troops at bay, but the poor men either could not or would not offer it. They were forced to surrender : the young- est and most energetic cast themselves headlong from the rocks and per- ished: three thousand prisoners were carried away captive, and sold for slaves at Corinth, Patras, and Modon : all those who were unfit for sale wen massacred on the spot by the Egyptian troops.