Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/458

 442 HISTORY OF GREECE. of regions, coincident with certain ethnical subdivisions, the Azanes, the Parrhasii, the Moenalii (adjoining Mount Maenalus), the Eutresii, the JEgytae, the Skiritae, etc.* Some considerable towns, however, there were, aggregations of villages or demes which had been once autonomous. Of these, the principal were Tegea and Mantineia, bordering on Laconia and Argolis, Or- chomenus, Pheneus, and Stymphalus, towards the north-east, bordering on Achaia and Phlius, Kleitor and Heraea, west- ward, where the country is divided from Elis and Triphylia by the woody mountains of Pholoe and Erymanthus, and Phiga- leia, on the south-western border near to Messenia. The most powerful of all were Tegea and Mantineia, 2 conterminous towns, nearly equal in force, dividing between them the cold and high plain of Tripolitza, and separated by one of those capricious torrents which only escapes through katabothra. To regulate the efflux of this water was a difficult task, requiring friendly cooperation of both the towns : and when their frequent jealousies brought on a quarrel, the more aggressive of the two inundated the territory of its neighbor as one means of annoyance. The power of Tegea, which had grown up out of nine constituent townships, originally separate, 3 appears to have been more an- cient than that of its rival ; as we may judge from its splendid heroic pretensions connected with the name of Echemus, and from the post conceded to its hoplites in joint Peloponnesian 1 Pausan. viii. 26, 5 ; Strabo, viii. p. 388. Some geographers distributed the Arcadians into three subdivision*, Azanes, Parrhasii, and Trapezuntii. Azan passed for the son of Areas, and his lot in the division of the paternal inheritance was said to have contained seventeen towns (of e^a^sv 'A&v). Stephan. Byz. v. 'Afaw'a Ha/i/5a<na. Kleitor seems the chief place in Azania, as far as we can infer from geneal- ogy (Pausan. viii. 4, 2, 3). Pseus, or Paos, from whence the Azanian suitor of the daughter of Kleisthene"s presented himself, was between Kleitor and Psophis (Herod, vi. 127 ; Paus. viii. 23, 6). A Delphian oracle, however, reckons the inhabitants of Phigaleia, in the south-western corner of Arcadia, among the Azanes (Paas. viii. 42, 3). The burial-place of Areas was supposed to be on Mount Mamalus (Pan*, viii. 9, 2). 3 Thucyd. v. 65. Compare the descr iption of the ground in Professo* Boss (Reisen im Peloponnes. iv. 7). 3 Strabo. viii. p. 337.