Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/468

 4i>2 HISTORY OF GREECE. inhabitants of Orneae also, whom Argos had reduced to the same dependent condition, traced their eponymous hero to an Ionic stock, Orneus was the son of the Attic Erechtheus. 1 Strabo seems to have conceived the Kynurians as occupying originally, not only the frontier district of Argolis and Laconia, wherein Thyrea is situated, but also the northwestern portion of Argolis, under the ridge called Lyrkeium, which separates the latter from the Arcadian territory of Stimphalus. 2 This ridge was near the town of Orneae, which lay on the border of Argolis near the con- fines of Phlius ; so that Strabo thus helps to confirm the state- ment of Herodotus, that the Orneates were a portion of Kynu- rians, held by Argos along with the other Kynurians in the condition of dependent allies and Periceki, and very probably also of Ionian origin. The conquest of Thyrea (a district valuable to the Lacedaemo- nians, as we may presume from the large booty which the Arge- ians got from it during the Peloponnesian war) 3 was the last territorial acquisition made by Sparta. She was now possessed of a continuous dominion, comprising the whole southern portion of the Peloponnesus, from the southern bank of the river Nedon on the western coast, to the northern boundary of Thyreatis on the eastern coast. The area of her territory, including as it did both Laconia and Messenia, was equal to two-fifths of the entire peninsula, all governed from the single city, and for the exclu- sive purpose and benefit of the citizens of Sparta. Within all this wide area there was not a single community pretending to independent agency. The townships of the Periceki, and the villages of the Helots, were each individually unimportant ; nor do we hear of any one of them presuming to treat with a foreign 1 Pausan. ii. 25, 5. Mannert (Geographic der Griechen und Homer Gricchenland, book ii. ch. xix. p. 618) connects the Kynurians of Arcadia and Argolis, though Herodotus tells us that the latter were lonians : he gives to this name much greater importance and extension than the evidence bears out. 2 Strabo, viii. p. 370 6 'lva%of fyuv TUI; Trrjyuf La Avpneiov TOV KOTU, Kvvovpiav bpovg rijc 'Ap/cad/af. Coray and Grosskurd gain nothing here by the conjectural reading of 'Apyeiac in place of 'AfKaSiaf, for the rid/re ot Lyrkeium ran between the two, and might, therefore, be connected with either without impropriety. Thncyd. vi 95.