and sentiments: they never produced
any political union. The independent sovereignty of each city was a
fundamental notion in the Greek mind. This strongly rooted feeling
deserves particular notice. Careless readers of history are tempted to
suppose that the territory of Greece was divided among comparatively
small number of independent states, such as Attica, Arcadia, Boeotia,
Phocis, Locris, and the like; but this is a most serious mistake, and
leads to a total misapprehension of Greek history. Every separate city
was usually an independent state, and consequently each of the
territories described under the general names of Arcadia, Boeotia,
Phocis, and Locris, contained numerous political communities
independent of one another. Attica, it is true, formed a single state,
and its different towns recognised Athens as their capital and the
source of supreme power; but this is an exception to the general rule.

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY HISTORY OF PELOPONNESUS AND SPARTA, DOWN TO THE END OF THE
MESSENIAN WARS, B.C. 668.

In the heroic age Peloponnesus was occupied by tribes of Dorian
conquerors. They had no share in the glories of the Heroic age; their
name does not occur in the Iliad, and they are only once mentioned in
the Odyssey; but they were destined to form in historical times one of
the most important elements of the Greek nation. Issuing from their
mountain district between Thessaly, Locris and Phocis, they overran the
greater part of Peloponnesus, destroyed the ancient Achaean monarchies
and expelled or reduced to subjection the original inhabitants of the
land, of which they became the undisputed masters. This brief
statement contains all that we know for certain respecting this
celebrated event, which the ancient writers placed eighty years after
the Trojan war (B.C. 1104). The legendary account of the conquest of
Peloponnesus ran as follows:--The Dorians were led by the Heraclidae,
or descendants of the mighty hero Hercules. Hence this migration is
called the Return of the Heraclidae. The children of Hercules had long
been fugitives upon the face of the earth. They had made many attempts
to regain possession of the dominions in the Peloponnesus, of which
their great sire had been deprived by Eurystheus, but hitherto without
success. In their last attempt Hyllus, the son of Hercules, had
perished in single combat with Echemus of Tegea; and the Heraclidae had
become bound by a solemn compact to re