Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/457

 ARCADIA. 441 CHAPTER VIII. CONQUESTS OF SPARTA TOWARDS ARCADIA AND ARGOL1S. I HAVE described in the last two chapters, as far as our im- perfect evidence permits, how Sparta came into possession both of the southern portion of Laconia along the coast of the Euro- tas down to its mouth, and of the Messenian territory westward. Her progress towards Arcadia and Argolis is now to be sketched, so as to conduct her to that position which she occupied durin^ the reign of Peisistratus at Athens, or about 560-540 B. c., u time when she had reached the maximum of her territorial pos- sessions, and when she was confessedly the commanding state in Hellas. The central region of Peloponnesus, called Arcadia, had never received any emigrants from without. Its indigenous inhabitants, a strong and hardy race of mountaineers, the most numerous Hellenic tribe in the peninsula, and the constant hive for merce- nary troops, 1 were among the rudest and poorest of Greeks, retaining for the longest period their original subdivision into a number of petty hill-villages, each independent of the other ; while the union of all who bore the Arcadian name, though they had some common sacrifices, such as the festival of the Ly- koean Zeus, of Despoina, daughter of Poseidon and Demeter, and of Artemis Hymnia, 2 was more loose and ineffective than that of Greeks generally, either in or out of Peloponnesus. The Arcadian villagers were usually denominated by the names 1 Hermippus ap. Athenae. i. p. 27. 'Ariipun-oJ' EK tpvyiof, unb J' 'A iTTiKovpovf. Also, Xcnoph. Hellen. vii. 1, 23. irfalarov de v%ov TUV VIKUV rb 'ApKadiKbv elij, etc. 2 Paasan. viii. 6, 7 ; viii. 37, 6 ; viii. 38, 2. Xenias, one of the generals of Greek mercenaries in the service of Cyrus the younger, a native of the Parrhasian district in Arcadia, celebrates with great solemnity, during tho march upward, the festival and games of toe Lykaea (Xenoph. Anabas. 5. 3 10 ; compare Pindar, Olymp. ix. 142). Many of the forests in Arcadia contained not only wild boars, but bean, in the days of Pausanias (viii. 23, 4). 19*