446 HISTORY OF GREECE. in this war, the more distant town of Orchomenus, with its Aristokrates, takes the lead. But the facts of the contest come before us with so poetical a coloring, that we cannot venture to draw any positive inference as to the times to which they are referred. CEnus 1 and Karystus seem to have belonged to the Spartans in the days of Alkman : moreover, the district called Skiritis, bordering on the territory of Tegea, as well as Belemina and Maleatis to the westward, and Karyse to the eastward and south- eastward, of Skiritis, forming altogether the entire northern frontier of Sparta, and all occupied by Arcadian inhabitants, had been conquered and made part of the Spartan territory 2 be- fore 600 B. c. And Herodotus tells us, that at this period the Spartan kings Leon and Hegesiklcs contemplated nothing less than the conquest of entire Arcadia, and sent to ask from the Delphian oracle a blessing on their enterprise. 3 The priestess dismissed their wishes as extravagant, in reference to the whole of Arcadia, but encouraged them, though with the usual equivo- cations of language, to try their fortune against Tegea. Flushed with their course of previous success, not less than by the favora- ble construction which they put upon the words of the oracle, the Lacedaemonians marched against Tegea with such entire con- fidence of success, as to carry with them chains for the purpose 1 Alkman, Fr. 15, Welcker; Strabo, x. p. 446. 'That the SkiritaB were Arcadians is well known (Time. v. 47; Steph. Byz. v. IiKtpof ) ; the possession of Belemina was disputed with Sparta, in the days of her comparative humiliation, by the Arcadians : see Plutarch, Kleomenes, 4 ; Pausan. viii. 35, 4. Respecting Karyae (the border town of Sparta, where the tiiaparripia were sacrificed, Thuc. v. 55), see Photius Kapvureta Loprrj 'Aprt/uJof ruf 6e Kapvae 'ApKuduv ovaa$ UTT-STEJUOVTO A.aKcdaip.6vioi. The readiness with which Karyse and the Maleatcs revolted against Sparta after the battle of Leuktra, even before the invasion of Laconia by the The- bans, exhibits them apparently as conquered foreign dependencies of Sparta, without any kindred of race (Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5, 24-26; vii. 1, 28). Leuktron, in the Maleatis, seems to have formed a part of the territory of Megalopolis in the days of Kleomenes the Third (Plutarch, Kleomenes, 6); ia the Peloponnesian war it was the frontier town of Sparta toward* Mount Lykseum (Thuc. v. 53).
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