Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/479

 SPARTA AXD AHCOS. 463 trere more employed, and where the country was much more favorable to them.i We have no historical knowledge of any military practice in Peloponnesus anterior to the hoplites with close ranks and protended spears. One Peloponnesian state there was, and one alone, which disdained to acknowledge the superiority or headship of Lace- daemon. Argos never forgot that she had once been the chief power in the peninsula, and her feeling towards Sparta was that of a jealous, but impotent, competitor. By what steps the de- cline of her power had taken place, we are unable to make out, nor can we trace the succession of her kings subsequent to Phei- don. It has been already stated that, about G69 B. c., the Ar- geians gained a victory over the Spartans at HysiaB, and that they expelled from the port of Nauplia its preexisting inhabi- tants, who found shelter, by favor of the Lacedaemonians, at the port of Mothone, in Messenia r 2 Damokratidas was then king of Argos. Pausanias tells us that Meltas, the son of Lakides, was the last descendant of Temenus who succeeded to this dignity ; he being condemned and deposed by the people. Plutarch, however, states that the family of the Herakleids died out, and that another king, named JEgon, was chosen by the people at the indication of the Delphian oracle. 3 Of this story, Pausanias appears to have know r n nothing. His language implies that the kingly dignity ceased w r ith Meltas, wherein he is undoubtedly mistaken, since the title existed, though probably with very lim- ited functions, at the time of the Persian war. Moreover, there is some ground for presuming that the king of Argos was even at that time a Herakleid, since the Spartans offered to him a third part of the command of the Hellenic force, conjointly with 1 Xenoph. Hellcn. iii. 4, 19. * Pausnn. iv. 24, 2 ; iv. 35, 2. 5 Pausan. ii. 19, 2 ; Plutarch (Cur Pythia mine non rcdilat oracula, etc. c. > ; p. 396 ; De Fortuna Alexandri, c. 8, p. 340). Lakides, king of Argos, is also named by Plutarch as luxurious and effeminate (Dc capicnda ab hosti- bus utilitate, c. 6, p. 89). O. Miiller (Hist, of Dorians, iii. 6, 10) identifies Lakides, son of Mcltas, named by Pausanias, with Leokedes son of Pheidon, named by Herodotus as one of the suitors for the daughter 01' Kleisthcues the Sikyonian (vi. 127) ; and he thus infers that Meltas must have been deposed and succeeded by ^Egon, about 560 B. c. This conjecture seems to me not much to b trusted.