Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/325

 DORIAN CONQUEST OF ARGOS AND COBINTL. 309 the preexisting Corinthians in the city. Situated close upon the Saronic gulf, it was the spot which invaders landing from that gulf would naturally seize upon, and which Nikias with his powerful Athenian fleet did actually seize and occupy against Corinth in the Peloponnesian Avar. 1 In early days, the only way of overpowering the inhabitants of a fortified town, generally also planted in a position itself very defensible, was, that the invaders, entrenching themselves in the neighborhood, harassed the inhabitants and ruined their produce until they brought them to terms. Even during the Peloponnesian war, when the art of besieging had made some progress, we read of several instances in which this mode of aggressive warfare was adopted with effi- cient results. 2 We may readily believe that the Dorians obtain- ed admittance both into Argos and Corinth in this manner. And it is remarkable that, except Sikyon (which is affirmed to have been surprised by night), these were the only towns in the Argo- lic region which are said to have resisted them ; the story being, that Phlius, Epidaurus, and Trcezen had admitted the Dorian intruders without opposition, although a certain portion of the previous inhabitants seceded. We shall hereafter see that the non-Dorian population of Sikyon and Corinth still remained con- siderable. The separate statements which we thus find, and the position of the Temenion and the Solygeius, lead to two conjectures, first, that the acquisitions of the Dorians in Peloponnesus were also isolated and gradual, not at all conformable to the rapid strides of the old Herakleid legend ; next, that the Dorian invad- ers of Argos and Corinth made their attack from the Argolic and the Saronic gulfs, by sea and not by land. It is, indeed, difficult to see how they can have got to the Temenion in any other way than by sea ; and a glance at the map will show that the eminence Solygeius presents itself, 3 with reference to Corinth, as the nearest and most convenient holding-ground for a mari- time invader, conformably to the scheme of operations laid by Nikias. To illustrate the supposition of a Dorian attack by sea on Corinth, we may refer to a story quoted from Aristotle (vrtich 1 Thucyd. iv. 42. T uoyd. i. 122 ; iii. 85, vii. 18-27 ; viii. 38-40. Thucyd. iv. 42.