Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/337

 ARGOS AXD SPARTA. 321 of all despots : * bow far he deserved such a reputation, we have no means of judging. We may remark, however, that he lived before the age of despots or tyrants, properly so called, and before the Herakleid lineage had yet lost its primary, half-politi- cal, half-religious character. Moreover, the later historians have invested his actions with a color of exorbitant aggression, by applying them to a state of things which belonged to their time and not to his. Thus Ephorus represents him as having de- prived the Lacedaemonians of the headship of Peloponnesus, which they never possessed until long after him, and also as setting at naught the sworn inviolability of the territory of the Eleians, enjoyed by the latter as celebrators of the Olympic games ; where- as the Agonothesia, or right of superintendence claimed by Elis, had not at that time acquired the sanction of prescription, while the conquest of Pisa by the Eleians themselves had proved that this sacred function did not protect the territory of a weaker people. How Pheidon fell, and how the Argeians lost that supremacy which they once evidently possessed, we have no positive details to inform us : with respect to the latter point, however, we can discern a sufficient explanation. The Argeians stood predomi- nant as an entire and unanimous confederacy, which required a vigorous and able hand to render its internal organization effec- tive or its ascendency respected without. No such leader after- wards appeared at Argos, the whole history of which city is destitute of eminent individuals : her line of kings continued at least down to the Persian war, 2 but seemingly with only titular functions, for the government had long been decidedly popular. The statements, which represent the government as popular an- terior to the time of Pheidon, appear unworthy of trust. That prince is rather to be taken as wielding the old, undiminished prerogatives of the Herakleid kings, but wielding them with un- usual effect, enforcing relaxed privileges, and appealing to the 1 Herodot. vi. 127. Qeiduvof rov ''A.pyeiuv rvpdvvov TOV vj3piaavro( syiara 6r/ 'EM^ijvuv &TTUVTUV. Pausanias (vi. 22, 2) copies the expression. Aristotle cites Pheidon as a person who, being a [3aat%ei)f, made himseif a vpavvoe (Politic, viii. 8, 5). 1 Herodot. vii. 149. VOL. ii. 14* 21oc.