Among the Ionic portion of Hellas are to be reckoned (besides Athens) Eubœa, and the numerous group of islands included between the southernmost Eubœan promontory, the eastern coast of Peloponnesus and the north-western coast of Krête. Of these islands some are to be considered as outlying prolongations, in a south-easterly direction, of the mountain-system of Attica ; others, of that of Eubœa; while a certain number of them lie apart from either system, and seem referable to a volcanic origin. To the first class belong Keôs, Kythnus, Serīphus, Pholegandrus, Sikinus, Gyarus, Syra, Paros, and Antiparos; to the second class, Andros, Tênos, Mykonos, Dêlos, Naxos, Amorgos ; to the third class, Kimôlus, Mêlos, Thêra. These islands passed amongst the ancients by the general name of the Cyclades and the Sporades ; the former denomination being commonly understood to comprise those which immediately surrounded the sacred island of Dêlos,—the latter being given to those which lay more scattered and apart. But the names are not applied with uniformity or steadiness even in ancient times : at present, the whole group are usually known by the title of Cyclades.

The population of these islands was called Ionic —with the exception of Styra and Karystus in the southern part of Eubœa, and the island of Kyth-nus, which were peopled by Dryopes, the same tribe as those who have been already remarked in the Argolic peninsula; and with the exception also of Mêlos and Thêa, which were colonies from Sparta.

The preceding volume brought down the history of Sparta to the period marked by the reign of Peisistratus at Athens; at which time she had attained her maximum of territory, was confessedly the most powerful state in Greece, and enjoyed a proportionate degree of deference from the rest. I now proceed to touch upon the three Dorian cities on and near to the Isthmus—Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara, as they existed at this same period.

Even amidst the scantv information which has reached us, we trace the marks of considerable maritime energy and commerce among the Corinthians, as far back as the eighth century b.c. The foundation of Korkyra and Syracuse, in the eleventh Olympiad, or 734 b.c. (of which I shall speak farther in connection with Grecian colonization generally), by expeditions from Corinth, affords a good proof that they knew how to turn to account the excellent situation which connected them with the sea on both sides of Peloponnesus : and Thucydides, while he notices them as the chief liberators of the sea in early times from pirates, also tells us that the first great improvement in ship-building— the construction of the trireme, or ship of war, with a full deck and triple banks for the rowers—was the fruit of Corinthian ingenuity. It was in the year 703 b.c, that the Corinthian Ameinoklês built four triremes for the Samians, the first which those islanders had ever possessed: the notice of this fact attests as well the importance attached to the new invention, as the humble scale on which the naval force in those early days was equipped.

On the coast of Asia Minor to the north of the twelve Ionic confederated cities, were situated the twelve Æolic cities, apparently united in a similar manner. Besides Smyrna, the fate of which has already been described, the eleven others were— Têmnos, Larissa, Neon-Teichos, Kymê, Ægæ, Myrina, Gryneium, Killa, Notium, Ægiroëssa, Pitanê. These twelve are especially noted by Herodotus as the twelve ancient continental Æolic cities, and distinguished on the one hand from the insular Æolic Greeks, in Lesbos, Tenedos, and Hekatonnesoi— and on the other hand from the Æolic establishments in and about Mount Ida, which seem to have been subsequently formed and derived from Lesbos and Kymê.

Of these twelve Æolic towns, eleven were situated very near together, clustered round the the Elæitic Gulf: their territories, all of moderate extent, seem also to have been conterminous with each other. Smyrna, the twelfth, was situated to the south of Mount Sipylus, and at a greater distance from the remainder—one reason why it was so soon lost to its primitive inhabitants. These towns occupied chiefly a narrow but fertile strip of territory lying between the base of the woody mountain-range called Sardênê and the sea : Gryneium, like Kolophôn and Milêtus, possessed a venerated sanctuary of Apollo, of older date than the Æolic immigration: Larissa, Têmnos, and Ægae were at some little distance from the sea; the first at a short distance north of the Hermus, by which its territory was watered and occasionally inundated, so as to render embankments necessary; the last two upon rocky mountain-sites, so inaccessible to attack, that the inhabitants were enabled, even during the height of the Persian power, to maintain constantly a substantial independence.

Some notice must be taken of those barbarous or non-Hellenic nations who formed the immediate neighbours of Hellas, west of the range of Pindus, and north of that range which connects Pindus with Olympus—as well as of those other tribes, who, though lying more remote from Hellas proper, were yet brought into relations of traffic or hostility with the Hellenic colonies.

Between the Greeks and these foreign neighbours, the Akarnanians, of whom I have already spoken briefly in my preceding volume, form the proper link of transition. They occupied the territory between the river Achelôus, the Ionian Sea, and the Ambrakian Gulf: they were Greeks, and admitted as such to contend at the Pan-Hellenic games, yet they were also closely connected with the Amphilochi and Agræi, who were not Greeks: in manners, sentiments, and intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and half-Epirotic—like the Ætolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. Even down to the time of Thucydidês, these nations were subdivided into numerous petty communities, lived in unfortified villages, were frequently in the habit of plundering each other, and never permitted themselves to be unarmed: in case of attack, they withdrew their families and their scanty stock, chiefly cattle, to the shelter of difficult mountains or marshes. They were for the most part light-armed, few among them being trained to the panoply of the Grecian hoplite; but they were both brave and skilful in their own mode of warfare, and the sling in the hands of the Akarnanian was a weapon of formidable efficiency

Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, the Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among themselves, and a hill near the Amphilochian Argos, on the shores of the Ambrakian Gulf, had been fortified to serve as a judgmentseat, or place of meeting for the settlement of disputes.

If, on one side, the Phenicians were separated from the productive Babylonia by the Arabian Desert, on the other side, t n e western portion of the same desert divided them from the no less productive valley of the Nile. In those early times which preceded the rise of Greek civilization, their land trade embraced both regions, and they served as the sole agents of international traffic between the two. Conveniently as their towns were situated for maritime commerce with the Nile, Egyptian jealousy had excluded Phenician vessels not less than those of the Greeks from the mouths of that river, until the reign of Psammetichus (672–618 B.C.); and thus even the merchants of Tyre could then reach Memphis only by means of caravans, employing as their instruments (as I have already observed) the Arabian tribes, alternately plunderers and carriers. Respecting Egypt, as respecting Assyria, since the works of Hekataeus are unfortunately lost, our earliest information is derived from Herodotus, who visited Egypt about two centuries after the reign of Psammetichus, when it formed part of one of the twenty Persian satrapies. The Egyptian marvels and peculiarities which he recounts, are more numerous, as well as more diversified, than the Assyrian, and had the vestiges been effaced as completely in the former as in the latter, his narrative would probably have met with an equal degree of suspicion.

Darius had now acquired full authority throughout the Persian empire, having put down the refractory satrap Orœtês, as well as the revolted Medes and Babylonians. He had moreover completed the conquest of Ionia, by the important addition of Samos; and his dominion thus comprised all Asia Minor with its neighbouring islands. But this was not sufficient for the ambition of a Persian king, next but one in succession to the great Cyrus. The conquering impulse was yet unabated among the Persians, who thought it incumbent upon their king, and whose king thought it incumbent upon himself, to extend the limits of the empire. Though not of the lineage of Cyrus, Darius had taken pains to connect himself with it by marriage: he had married Atossa and Artystonê, daughters of Cyrus—and Parmys, daughter of Smerdis the younger son of Cyrus. Atossa had been first the wife of her brother Kambysês; next, of the Magian Smerdis his successor; and thirdly of Darius, to whom she bore four children. Of those children the eldest was Xerxês, respecting whom more will be said hereafter.

Atossa, mother of the only Persian king who ever set foot in Greece—the Sultana Validi of Persia during the reign of Xerxês—was a person of commanding influence in the reign of her last husband, as well as in that of her son, and filled no inconsiderable space even in Grecian imagination, as we may see both by Æschylus and Herodotus.

With Hippias disappeared the mercenary Thracian garrison, upon which he and his father before him had leaned for defence as well as for enforcement of authority; and Kleomenês with his Lacedæmonian forces retired also, after staying only long enough to establish a personal friendship, productive subsequently of important consequences, between the Spartan king and the Athenian Isagoras. The Athenians were thus left to themselves, without any foreign interference to constrain them in their political arrangements.

It has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, that the Peisistratids had for the most part respected the forms of the Solonian constitution: the nine archons, and the probouleutic or preconsidering Senate of Four Hundred (both annually changed), still continued to subsist, together with occasional meetings of the people—or rather of such portion of the people as was comprised in the gentes, phratries, and four Ionic tribes. The timocratic classification of Solon (or quadruple scale of income and admeasurement of political franchises according to it) also continued to subsist—but all within the tether and subservient to the purposes of the ruling family, who always kept one of their number as real master, among the chief administrators, and always retained possession of the acropolis as well as of the mercenary force.