will serve to throw light both on the picture just CHAP. given, and on several parts of the ensuing history. X. in Arcadia. Mantinea. We have scarcely any thing to say, during this Forms of period, of the state of parties, or even the forms of government government, in Arcadia, Elis, and Achaia. If Arcadia was ever subject to a single king, which seems to be intimated by some accounts of its early history, it was probably only, as in Thessaly, by an occasional election, or a temporary usurpation. The title of king however appears not to have been everywhere abolished down to a much later time, as we find a hint that it was retained at Orchomenus even in the fifth century before our era.1 That the republican constitutions were long aristocratical can scarcely be doubted, as the two principal Arcadian cities, Tegea and Mantinea, Tegea and were at first only the chief among several small hamlets, which were at length united in one capital. This, whenever it happened, was a step toward the subversion of aristocratical privileges; and it was no doubt with this view that the five Mantinean villages were incorporated by the Argives, as Strabo mentions without assigning the date of the event. But it is not probable that Argos thus interfered before her own institutions had undergone a like change, which, as we shall see, did not take place before a later period than our history has yet reached. Whether the union of the nine villages, which included Tegea as their chief, was effected earlier or later, does not appear. But, after she had once acknowledged the supremacy of Sparta, Tegea was sheltered by Spartan influence from popular innovations, and was always the less inclined to adopt them when they prevailed at Mantinea: for as the position of the two Arcadian neighbours 1 Plut. Paral. 32. The story of the murder of Romulus transferred to Arcadia. The whole being so palpable a fiction, I should hardly have thought it a sufficient ground even for the remark in the text, if it had not been cited with confidence by Mueller, Dor. i. 7. 11. n. s. [In the second edition of the English translation Mueller has added the remark, In this strange composition (the Parallels) arbitrary fictions are curiously mixed with learned notices.] CHAP. Heraa. Elis. tended to connect the one with Sparta, and the other with Argos, so it supplied occasion for interminable feuds between them, especially as the contiguous plains, which formed the main part of their territories, were liable to be much damaged by the waters that descended from their mountains, which might easily be diverted toward either side.1 At a much later period a like incorporation took place, through Spartan intervention, at Heræa, which had also been the chief of nine hamlets.2 It was probably after this event that the constitution of Heræa underwent the changes mentioned by Aristotle3, produced by the extraordinary heat of competition for public offices, which rendered it necessary to fill them up by lot, instead of the ancient mode of election. But, in general, the history of the western states of Arcadia is wrapt in deep obscurity, which was only broken, in the fourth century B. C., by the foundation of a new Arcadian capital. In Elis the monarchical form of government continued for some generations in the line of Oxylus, but appears to have ceased there earlier than at Pisa, which, at the time it was conquered and destroyed by the Eleans, was ruled by chiefs, who were probably legitimate kings. Immediately after the conquest, in the fiftieth olympiad, the dignity of Hellanodices, which had been held by the kings of Elis, or shared by them with those of Pisa, was assigned to two Elean officers by lot; a proof that royalty was then extinct. The constitution by which it was replaced seems to have been rigidly aristocratical, perhaps no other than the narrow oligarchy described by Aristotle1,-who observes that the whole number of citizens exercising any political functions was small-confined perhaps 1 Thục. v. 65. * Strabo, viii. p. 337. 3 Pol. v. 3. 4 Pol. v. 6. In the comparison with the Spartan Gerusia, a negative seems to have dropt out of the text. to the six hundred mentioned by Thucydides1; and that the senate, originally composed of ninety members, who held their office for life, and filled up vacancies at their pleasure, had been gradually reduced to a very few. Elis, the capital, remained in a condition like that of the above-mentioned Arcadian towns until the Persian war, when the inhabitants of many villages were collected in its precincts.2 This was probably attended by other changes of a democratical nature—perhaps by the limitation which one Phormis is said to have effected in the power of the senate3 — and henceforth the number of the Hellanodicæ corresponded to that of the tribes or regions into which the Elean territory was divided; so that, whenever any of these regions was lost by the chance of war, the number of the Hellanodice was proportionately reduced. So too the matrons who presided at the games in honour of Heré, in which the Elean virgins contended at Olympia, were chosen in equal number from each of the tribes.5 CHAP. X. In Achaia, the royal dignity was transmitted in the Achaia. line of Tisamenus down to Ogyges, whose sons, affecting despotic power, were deposed, and the government was changed to a democracy, which is said to have possessed a high reputation. From the language of 1 v. 47. Strabo, viii. p. 337. Plutarch, Reip. Ger. Præc. c. 10. Paus. v. 9. The text of Paus. manifestly requires some correction in the date assigned to the appointment of nine Hellanodicæ, in the room of the two who are said to have filled that office for a very long time (ẻπl #λeîoTov) after the 50th olympiad. But it is doubtful what number ought to be substituted for that which is found in the manuscripts ol. 25. Mueller, in an interesting essay on the subject, in the new Rheinisches Museum, ii. 2. p. 168., proposes ol. 75. as the epoch mentioned by Pausanias. He has there rendered it highly probable, that, of the twelve regions which composed the Elean territory in its greatest extent, four belonged to the proper, or hollow, Elis, four to Pisa, and four to the Triphylian states. It was this last portion that often changed masters in the wars between Elis and her neighbours, and thus occasioned the variation in the number of the Hellanodicæ. Yet it is remarkable that the nine, who were appointed when the number was first enlarged, had not all one office, but presided, three over the chariot-race, three over the pentathlon, and three over the other contests. (Paus. v. 9. 5.) 7 Strabo, v. p. 384. 5 Paus. v. 16. 5. 6 Polybius, ii. 41. CHAP. X. Argos. Pausanias it would rather seem as if the title of king had been held by a number of petty chiefs at once.1 If so, the revolution must have had its origin in causes more general than those assigned to it by Polybius. It was probably accelerated by the number of Achæan emigrants who sought refuge in Achaia from other parts of Peloponnesus, and who soon crowded the country, till it was relieved by its Italian colonies. What Polybius and Strabo term a democracy may however have been a polity, or a very liberal and welltempered form of oligarchy. Of its details we know nothing; nor are we informed in what relation the twelve principal Achaian towns — a division adopted from the Ionians-stood to the hamlets, of which each had seven or eight in its territory, like those of Tegea and Mantinea.2 As little are we able to describe the constitution of the confederacy in which the twelve states were now united. More light has been thrown by ancient authors on the history of the states in the north-east quarter of Peloponnesus, those of Argolis in the largest sense of the word. At Argos itself, regal government subsisted down to the Persian wars, although the line of the Heracleid princes appears to have become extinct toward the middle of the preceding century. Pausanias remarks, that, from a very early period, the Argives were, led by their peculiarly independent spirit to limit the prerogatives of their kings so narrowly, that Medon (grandson of Temenus the Conqueror) and his posterity retained no more than the name of royalty, and his descendant Maltas was condemned by the people, and entirely deprived of his dignity. We cannot however place much reliance on 1 vii. 6. 2. * Strabo, viii. p. 386., who remarks, oi μèv 'Iŵves kwμnddv čkovv, oi 8''Axatol πόλεις ἔκτισαν. * 3 ii. 19. 2. ̓Αργεῖοι, ἅτε ἰσηγορίαν καὶ τὸ αὐτόνομον ἀγαπῶντες, ἐκ παλαιοτάτου τὰ τῆς ἐξουσίας τῶν βασιλέων ἐς ἐλάχιστον προήγαγον. κ. τ. λ. such a general reflection of a late writer. But we They CHAP. Among the states of the Argolic acte, Epidaurus Epidaurus deserves notice, not so much for the few facts which and Egina. are known of its internal history, as on account of its relation to Ægina. This island, destined to take no inconsiderable part in the affairs of Greece, was long subject to Epidaurus, which was so jealous of her sovereignty as to compel the Æginetans to resort 1 yʊμvîtes (Pollux, iii. 8. § 83.) yuμvýσioι (Steph. Byz. Xios. Eustath. ad Dion. Per. 533.). |