CHAPTER IV.

EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS. DORIANS IN ARGOS AND THE NEIGHBORING CITIES.

Distribution of Peloponnesus about 450 B. C.—Continuous Dorian states.—Western Peloponnesus.—Northern Peloponnesus—Achaia.—Central region—Arcadia.—Difference between this distribution and that of 776 B. C.—Portions of the population which were believed to be indigenous Arcadians, Kynurians. Achæans.—Emigrant portions—Dorians, Ætolo-Eleians, Dryopes, Triphylians.—Legendary account of the Dorian emigration.—Alexandrine chronology from the return of the Herakleids to the first Olympiad.—Spartan kings.—Herakleid kings of Corinth.—Argos and the neighboring Dorians greater than Sparta in 770 B. C.—Early settlements of the Dorians at Argos and Corinth—Temenion—Hill of Solygeius.—Dorian settlers arrived by sea.—Early Dorians in Krete.—The Dryopians—their settlements formed by sea.—Dorian settlements in Argos quite distinct from those in Sparta and in Messenia.—Early position of Argos—metropolis of the neighboring Dorian cities.—Pheidôn the Temenid—king of Argos.—His claims and projects as representative of Hêraklês.—He claims the right of presiding at the Olympic games.—Relations of Pisa with Pheidôn, and of Sparta with Elis.—Conflict between Pheidôn and the Spartans, at or about the 8th Olympiad, 747 B. C.—Pheidôn the earliest Greek who coined money and determined a scale of weight.—Coincidence of the Æginæan scale with the Babylonian.—Argos at this time the first state in Peloponnesus.—Her subsequent decline, from the relaxation of her confederacy of cities.—Dorians in the Argolic peninsula—their early commerce with the Dorian islands in the Ægean.—From hence arose the coinage of money, etc., by Pheidôn.—Pheidonian coinage and statical scale—belong originally to Argos, not to Ægina. 298-325