Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/55

 KVl'SKLUS AND HIS DYNASTY AT OOttlXTM. 3J time gives a mythical explanation of a phrase seemingly provei bial at Athens " Hippokleides don't care." 1 Plutarch numbers ./Eschiiies of Sikyon 2 among the despots put down by Sparta : at what period this took place, or how it is to be connected with the history of Kleisthenes as given in Her odotus, we are unable to say. Contemporaneous with the Orthagoridse at Sikyon, but beginning a little later and closing somewhat earlier, we find the despots Kypselus and Periander at Corinth. The former appears as the subverter of the oligarchy called the Bacchiadie. Of the manner in which he accomplished his object we find no information : and this historical blank is inadequately filled up by 1 Herod, vi, 127-131. The locution explained is, Ot> povTir'l7nroK^.ei6y: compare the allusions to it in the Paroemiographi. Zenob. v, 31 : Diogcnian. vii. 21; Suidas, xi, 45, ed. Schott. The convocation of the suitors at the invitation of Kleisthenes from all parts of Greece, and the distinctive mark and character of each, is prettily told, as well as the drunken freak whereby Hippokleides forfeits both the favor of Kleisthenes, and the hand of Agariste, which he was on the point of obtaining. It seems to be a story framed upon the model of various inci- dents in the old epic, especially the suitors of Helen. On one point, however, the author of the story seems to have overlooked both the exigencies of chronology and the historical position and feelings of his hero Kleisthenes. For among the suitors who present themselves at Sikyon in conformity with the invitation of the latter, one is Leokedes, son of Pheidon the despot of Argos. Now the hostility and vehement antipathy towards Argos, which Herodotus ascribes in another place to the Sikyonian Kleisthenes, renders it all but impossible that the son of any king of Argos could have become a candidate for the hand of Agariste. I have already recounted the violence which Kleisthenes did to the legendary sentiment of his native town, and the insulting names which he put upon the Sikyonian Dorians, all under the influence of a strong anti-Argcian feeling. Next, as to chronology : Pheidon king of Argos lived some time between 760-730; and his son can never have been a candidate for the daughter of Kleisthenes, whose reign falls 600-560 u. c. Chronologers resort here to the usual resource in cases of difficulty : they recognize a second and later Pheidon, whom they affirm that Herodotus has confounded with the first : or they alter the text of Herodotus, and in place of " son of Pheidon," read " de- scendant of Pheidon." But neither of these conjectures rests upon any lu'.si-; : the text of Herodotus is smooth and clear, and the second Pheidon is nowhere else authenticated. See Larcher and Wcsseling, ad foe.; coraps e also vol. ii, p. 419, part ii, ch. 4, of this History.
 * Plutarch, De Herod. Malign, c. 21, p. 859.