12. Besides the possession of Messenia, nothing was of such importance to the Spartans as the influence which they gained over the towns of Arcadia. But in what manner these came into their hands is very little known.[648] During the Messenian war Arcadia was always opposed to Sparta. Hence, in the year 659 B.C., the Spartans suddenly attacked and took the town of Phigalea, in a corner of Messenia and Triphylia; but were soon driven out again by the neighbouring Oresthasians.[649] But the place chiefly dreaded [pg 169] by Sparta, as being one of the most powerful cantons in Arcadia, and commanding the principal entrance to Laconia, was Tegea. Charilaus, one of the early kings of Sparta, is said to have been compelled, by the valour of the Tegeate women, to submit to a disgraceful treaty.[650] At a later period also, in the reigns of Eurycrates and Leon the Eurysthenid,[651] Sparta suffered injury from the same state,[652] until it at last obtained the superiority under the next king, Anaxandridas. It was not, however, merely the ingenuity of a mountain-tribe, in protecting and fortifying its defiles, that made victory so difficult to the Spartans; but, although the pass which separates Tegea from Laconia, and even at the present time retains the vestiges of defensive walls, was of great service in repelling invasions from Laconia,[653] yet Tegea was also formidable in the open field from her heavy-armed troops, which in later times always maintained the second place in the allied army of Peloponnesus.[654]
13. Argos never obtained so great authority in Argolis as Sparta did in Laconia, since, in the former country, the Dorians divided themselves into several ancient and considerable towns;[655] and to deprive Dorians of their independence seems to have been [pg 170] more contrary to the principles of that race, than to expel them, as the Spartans did the Messenians. Argos was thus forced to content itself with forming, and being at the head of a league, which was to unite the forces of the country for common defence, and to regulate all internal affairs. An union of this kind really existed, although it never entirely attained its end. It was probably connected with the temple of Apollo Pythaëus, which, as we remarked above, was considered as common to the Epidaurians and Dryopians. An Argive Amphictyonic council is mentioned in the account of the Messenian war,[656] and is evidently not a fiction, although erroneously there introduced. That it still continued to exist in the 66th Olympiad is clear from the fact, that, when the inhabitants of Sicyon and Ægina furnished Cleomenes with ships to be employed against Argos, each town was condemned to pay a fine of 500 talents.[657] These penalties could not have been imposed by Argos as a single town, but in the name of a confederacy, which was weakened and injured by this act. We find that the Eleans could impose similar penalties in the name of the Olympian Zeus.[658] But the very case here adduced shows how refractory was the conduct of the members of this alliance with regard to the measures taken by the chief confederate.
14. To this internal discord were added the continual disputes with Lacedæmon. Herodotus states, [pg 171] that in ancient times (i.e. about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B.C.) the whole eastern coast of Peloponnesus as far as Malea (comprising the towns of Prasiæ, Cyphanta, Epidaurus Limera, and Epidelium), together with Cythera, and the other islands, belonged to the Argives.[659] According to the account of Pausanias the territory of Cynuria, a valley between two ranges of mountains, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argos, inhabited by a native Peloponnesian race, had been from early times a perpetual subject of contention between the two states. The Lacedæmonians had subdued this district in the reigns of Echestratus and Eurypon.[660] During the reigns of Labotas and Prytanis, the Spartans complained of an attempt of the Argives to alienate the affections of their Periœci in Cynuria:[661] as, however, we know not by what authority this statement is supported, we shall allow it to rest on its own merits. In the reign of Charilaus the Lacedæmonians wasted the territory of Argos.[662] His son Nicander made an alliance with the Dryopians of Asine against Argos. Accordingly this people were expelled by Eratus, the Argive king, from their town,[663] and fled to their allies in Laconia; from whom they obtained, after the end of the first Messenian war, a maritime district, where they built a new Asine, and for a long time preserved their national manners,[664] as well as their connexion with the ancient religious [pg 172] worship of their kinsmen, the inhabitants of Hermione.[665]
15. A clearer point in the Argive and Peloponnesian history is the reign of Pheidon. The accounts respecting this prince having been collected and examined in another work, it is merely necessary to repeat the result.[666] Pheidon the Argive, the son of Aristodamidas, was descended from the royal family of Temenus, the power of which had indeed since the time of Medon, the son of Ceisus, been much diminished, but yet remained in existence for a long time. Pheidon broke through the restrictions that limited his power, and hence, contrary however to the ancient usage of the term, was called a tyrant. His views were at first directed towards making the independent towns of Argolis dependent upon Argos. He undertook a war against Corinth, which he afterwards succeeded in reducing. In all probability Epidaurus, and certainly Ægina, belonged to him; none of the other towns in the neighbourhood were able to withstand the bold and determined conqueror.[667] The finishing stroke [pg 173] of his achievements was manifestly the celebration of the Olympic games, over which he, as descendant of Hercules (the first conqueror at Olympia), after having abolished the Ætolian-Elean Hellanodicæ, presided, in conjunction with the inhabitants of Pisa, the ancient town of Pelops, which at this time, and many centuries after this time, had not relinquished its claims to the management of the festival. This circumstance also enables us to fix with certainty the period of his reign, since, in the Elean registers, the 8th Olympiad was marked as having been celebrated by him (747 B.C.). But it was this usurpation that united the Eleans and Lacedæmonians against him, and thus caused his overthrow. While the undertakings of Pheidon thus remained without benefit to his successors, he has been denounced by posterity as the most rapacious of tyrants in Greece; but, had he succeeded in establishing a permanent state of affairs, he would have received equal honours with Lycurgus. Yet, notwithstanding his failure, some of his institutions survived him, which adorn his memory. He is known to have equalized all weights and measures in Peloponnesus, which before his time were different in each state; he was also the first who coined money. He was enabled to undertake both with the greater success, since the only two commercial towns at that time belonging to Peloponnesus lay in his dominions, viz. Corinth (whence he is sometimes called a Corinthian) and Ægina. According to the most accurate accounts he first stamped silver-money[668] in Ægina (where at that time forges doubtless existed), and, after having circulated these, he consecrated the ancient and [pg 174] then useless bars of metal to Here of Argos, where they were exhibited in later times to strangers.[669]—Many of the most ancient drachmas of Ægina, with the device of a tortoise, perhaps belong to this period, since the Greek coins struck before the Peloponnesian war appear to indicate a progress of many centuries in the art of stamping money. Those however which we have are sufficient to show that the same standard was prevalent throughout Peloponnesus,[670] a difference in weight, measure, and standard not having been introduced till after the Peloponnesian war. This again was a second time abolished by the Achæan league, and an equality of measures restored.[671]
16. After the fall of Pheidon the old dispute with Lacedæmon still continued.[672] In the 15th Olympiad (720 B.C.) the war concerning the frontier territory of Cynuria broke out afresh;[673] the Argives now maintained it for some time,[674] and secured the possession of this district chiefly by the victory at Hysiæ in Olymp. 27. 4. (669 B.C.[675]) And they kept it until the time of Crœsus (Olymp. 58.), when they lost it by the famous battle of the three hundred, in which Othryadas, [pg 175] though faint with his wounds, erected the trophy of victory for Sparta:[676] a history the more fabulous, since it was celebrated by sacred songs at the Gymnopædia.[677] Inconsiderable in extent as was the territory[678] for which so much blood was shed, yet its possession decided which should be the leading power in Peloponnesus. It was not till after this had taken place that Cleomenes, in whose reign the boundary of Lacedæmon ran near the little river Erasinus, was enabled to attack Argos with success.
The power of Argos in the neighbourhood of the city was very insecure and fluctuating. Towards the end of the second Messenian war Argos had conquered the neighbouring town of Nauplia; the Lacedæmonians gave Methone in Messenia to the expelled inhabitants.[679] The temple of Nemea, in the mountains towards Corinth, was, from its situation, the property of the independent Doric town Cleonæ; the Argives took it from them before Olymp. 53. 1. 568 B.C.,[680] [pg 176] and henceforth celebrated the games of Zeus. The Argives however again lost it; and some time before the 80th Olympiad the Cleonæans again regulated the festival,[681] a privilege which they probably did not long retain. It is likely that about 580 B.C. the town of Orneæ, between Argos and Sicyon, which had anciently carried on wars with the latter city, was rendered subject to the former, from which circumstance the Periœci of Argos obtained the general name of Orneatans; to which class the Cynurians also belonged before the battle of Thyrea.[682] But these events properly belong to the period, on the history of which we are now about to enter, and which we will designate in general as the time of the tyrants.
Chapter VIII.
§ 1. The Doric principles of government opposed to despotic (or tyrannical) power. § 2. Tyrants of Sicyon. § 3. Of Corinth. § 4. Of Epidaurus and of Megara overthrown by Sparta. § 5. Other tyrants overthrown by Sparta. § 6. Expedition of Cleomenes against Argos. § 7. Internal history of Argos. § 8. Contests between Megara and Athens.
1. The subject of this chapter may be best expressed in the words of Thucydides:[683] “The tyrants of Athens, and of the rest of Greece, of which many [pg 177] states had been governed by tyrants before the Athenians, were, with the exception of those in Sicily, in most instances, and especially in later times, overthrown by the Lacedæmonians, whose state was never under a despotic government, and who, having become powerful through the early establishment of their own constitution, were enabled to arrange to their own liking the governments of other states.” It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of Greece, that at the same period of time tyrants everywhere obtained the supreme authority in Doric, Ionic, and Æolic cities; a proof that, although these nations were derived from different races, the same stage in the progress of social life was every where attended with the same phenomena. Those states alone in which the features of the Doric character were most strongly marked, viz., Sparta and Argos, resisted this influence; and we shall in general find that it was by a subversion of the Doric principles that the tyrants obtained their power. This will be made evident by a consideration of the absolute monarchies in the Doric states of Peloponnesus.