308 HISTORY OF GREECE menus the eldest brother of the three, And Herodotus assurea us that at one time all the eastern coast of Peloponnesus down to Cape Melea, including the island of Cythera, all which came afterwards to constitute a material part of Laconia, had belonged to Argos. 1 Down to the time of the first Messenian war, the comparative importance of the Dorian establishments in Pelo- ponnesus appears to have been in the order in which the legend placed them, Argos first, 2 Sparta second, Messene third. It will be seen hereafter that the Argeians never lost the recollec- tion of this early preeminence, from which the growth of Sparta had extruded them ; and the liberties of entire Hellas were more than once in danger from their disastrous jealousy of a more for- tunate competitor. At a short distance of about three miles from Argos, and at the exact point where that city approaches nearest to the sea, 3 was situated the isolated hillock called Temenion, noticed both by Strabo and Pausanias. It was a small village, deriving both its name and its celebrity from the chapel and tomb of the here Temenus, who was there worshipped by the Dorians ; and the statement which Pausanias heard was, that Temenus, with his invading Dorians, had seized and fortified the spot, and employed it as an armed post to make war upon Tisamenus and the Achae- ans. What renders this report deserving of the greater attention, is, that the same thing is affirmed with regard to the eminence called Solygeius, near Corinth : this too was believed to be the place which the Dorian assailants had occupied and fortified against ' Herodot. i. 82. The historian adds, besides Cythera, KOI ai T^nnrai -H>v vfjauv. What other islands are meant, I do not distinctly understand.
- So Plato (Legg. iii. p. 692), whose mind is full of the old mythe and the
tripartite distribution of Peloponnesus among the Herakleids, fj (5* av, irpureiiovaa iv roif TOTE xpovoif roZf Treol TI/V diavofiT/v. rj irepl rd "Apyof, fctc. 3 Pausan. ii. 38, 1 ; Strabo, viii. p. 368. Professor Ross observes, i aspect- ing the line of coast near Argos, " The sea-side is thoroughly flat, and for the most part marshy ; only at the single point where Argos comes nearest to the coast, between the month, now choked by sand, of the united Inachns and Charadrus, and the efflux of the Erasinus, overgrown with weeds and bulrushes, stands an eminence of some elevation and composed of firmei earth, upon which the ancient Temenion was placed." (Roisen im Pclopon ncs, vol. i. sect. 5, p. 149, Berlin, 1841 )
