Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/249

 WESTERN LACON1A. 227 and protected by the vicinity of Messene. 1 What is of more im- portance to notice, however, is, that all the extensive district westward and south-westward of Ithome, all the south-westers corner of Peloponnesus, from the river Neda southward to Cape Akritas, was now also subtracted from Sparta. At the begin- ning of the Peloponnesian war, the Spartan Brasidas had been in garrison near Methone 2 (not far from Cape Akritas) ; Pylus, where the Athenian Demosthenes erected his hostile fort, near which the important capture at Sphakteria was effected, had been a maritime point belonging to Sparta, about forty-six miles from the city ; 3 Aulon (rather farther north, near the river Neda) had been at the time of the conspiracy of Kinadon a township of Spartan Perioeki, of very doubtful fidelity. 4 Now all this wide area, from the north-eastern corner of the Messenian Gulf westward, the best half of the Spartan territory, was severed from Sparta to become the property of Perioeki and Helots, converted into free- men ; not only sending no rent or tribute to Sparta, as before, but bitterly hostile to her from the very nature of their tenure. It was in the ensuing year that the Arcadian army cut to pieces the Lace- daemonian garrison at Asine, 5 killing the Spartan polemarch Gera- nor ; and probably about the same time the other Lacedaemonian garrisons in the south-western peninsula must have been expelled. Thus liberated, the Perioeki of the region welcomed the new Mes- sene as the guarantee of their independence. Epaminondas, besides confirming the independence of Methone and Asine, re-constituted some other towns, 6 which under Lacedaemonian dominion had probably been kept unfortified and had dwindled away. 1 Pausan. iv, 31, 2. 2 Thucyd. ii, 25. 3 Thucyd. iv, 3. 4 Xen. Hellen. iii, 3, 8. 5 Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 25. 6 Pausan. iv, 27, 4. UVUKL^OV Se KOL uTJ^a noTi'ia/iara, etc. Pausanias, fol- lowing the line of coast from the mouth of the river Pamisus in the Mes- senian Gulf, round Cape Akritas to the mouth of the Neda in the Western Sea, enumerates the following towns and places, Korone, Kolonides, Asine, the Cape Akritas, the Harbor Phrenikus, Methone, or Mothone, Py- lus, Aulon (Pausan. iv, 34, 35, 36). The account given by Skylax (Peri- plus, c. 46, 47) of the coast of these regions, appears to me confused and unintelligible. He reckons Asine and Mothone as cities of Laconia ; but he seems to have conceived these cities as being in the central southern pro- jection of Peloponnesus (whereof. Cape Taenarus forms the extremity) ; and