Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/339

 DORIANS IN ASIA AND IN THE ISLANDS. 323 Epidauras 1 more frequently however, as it seems, to Argos. All these settlements are doubtless older than Pheidon, and we may conceive them as proceeding conjointly from the allied Dorian towns in the Argolic peninsula, at a time when they were more in the habit of united action than they afterwards became : a captain of emigrants selected from the line of Herakles and Temenus was suitable to the feelings of all of them. We may thus look back to a period, at the very beginning of the Olym- piads, when the maritime Dorians on the east of Peloponnesus maintained a considerable intercourse and commerce, not only among themselves, but also with their settlements on the Asiatic coast and islands. That the Argolic peninsula formed an early centre for maritime rendezvous, we may farther infer from the very ancient Amphiktyony of the seven cities (Hermione, Epi- daurus, JEgina, Athens, Prasiae, Nauplia, and the Minyeian Or- chomenus), on the holy island of Kalauria, off the harbor of Tro3zen. 2 The view here given of the early ascendency of Argos, as the head of the Peloponnesian Dorians and the metropolis of the Asiatic Dorians, enables us to understand the capital innovation of Pheidon, the first coinage,, and the first determinate scale of weight and measure, known in Greece. Of the value of such improvements, in the history of Grecian civilization, it is super- fluous to speak, especially when we recollect that the Hellenic states, having no political unity, were only held together by the 1 Rhodes, Kos, Knidus, and Halikarnassus are all treated by Strabo (xiv p. 653) as colonies of Argos: Rhodes is so described by Thucydides (vii. 57), and Kos by Tacitus (xii. 61). Kos, Kalydna, and Nisyrus are described bv Herodotus as colonies of Epidaurus (vii. 99) : Halikarnassus passes sometimes for a colony of Trcezen, sometimes of Trcezen, and Argos con- jointly: "Cum Melas et Areuanius ab Argis et Troezene coloniam com- munem eo loco induxerunt, barbaros Caras et Leleges ejecerunt ( Vitruv. ii. 8, 12 : Steph. Byz. v. 'A?uKupvaaffO )." Compare Strabo, x. p. 479 ; Conon, Narr. 47 ; Diodor. v. 80. Raoul Rochette (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, t. iii. ch. 9) and 0. Miil- !er (History of the Dorians, ch. 6) have collected the facts about theso Asiatic Dorians. The little town of Bcese had its counterpart of the same name in Kr$te (Steph. Byz. v. Botov). Strabo, p. 374.