Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/338

 322 HISTORY OF GREECE. old heroic sentiment in reference to Herakles, rather than revo lutionizing the existing relations either of Argos or of Pelopon- nesus. It was in fact the great and steady growth of Sparta, for three centuries after the Lykurgean institutions, which operated as a cause of subversion to the previous order of command and obedience in Greece. The assertion made by Herodotus, that, in earlier times, the whole eastern coast of Laconia as far as Cape Malea, including the island of Kythera and several other islands, had belonged to Argos, is referred by O. Miiller to about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B. c. Perhaps it had ceased to be true at that period ; but that it Avas true in the age of Pheidon, there seem good grounds for believing. "What is probably meant is, that the Dorian towns on this coast, Prasiae, Zarex, Epidaurus Limera, and Breae, were once autonomous, and members of the Argeian confederacy, a fact highly probable, on independent evidence, with respect to Kpidaurus Limera,. inasmuch as that town was a settlement from Epidaurus in the Argolic peninsula : and Boeae too had its own oekist and eponymus, the Herakleid Brous, 1 noway connected with Sparta, perhaps derived from the same source as the name of the town Boeon in Doris. The Argeian confederated towns would thus comprehend the whole coast of the Argolic and Saro- nic gulfs, from Kythera as far as JEgina, besides other islands which we do not know : ^Egina had received a colony of Dorians from Argos and Epidaurus, upon which latter town it continued for some time in a state of dependence. 1 It will at once be seen that this extent of coast implies a considerable degree of com- merce and maritime activity. We have besides to consider the range of Doric colonies in the southern islands of the JEgean and in the south-western corner of Asia Minor, Krete, Kos, Rhodes (with its three distinct cities), Halikarnassus, Knidus, Myndus, Nisyrus, Syme, Karpathus, Kalydna, etc. Of the Doric establishments here named, several are connected (as has been before stated) with the great emigration of the Temenid Althae- menes from Argos : but what we particularly observe is, that they are often referred as colonies promiscuously to Argos, Trcezen, 1 Pausan. iii. 22, 9 ; iii. 23, 4. 1 Herodot. v. 83; Strabo, viii. p. 375.