Its ancient name was Œnone, which is the name of two of the demi in Attica, one near Eleutheræ;
“to inhabit the plains close to Œnone, (Œnoe,) and Eleutheræ;”
and another, one of the cities of the Tetrapolis near Marathon, to which the proverb is applied,
Its [CAS. 375] inhabitants were in succession Argives, Cretans, Epidaurians, and Dorians. At last the Athenians divided the island by lot among settlers of their own. The Lacedæmonians, however, deprived the Athenians of it, and restored it to the ancient inhabitants.
The Æginetæ sent out colonists to Cydonia[207] in Crete, and to the Ombrici. According to Ephorus, silver was first struck as money by Pheidon. The island became a mart, the inhabitants, on account of the fertility of its soil, employing themselves at sea as traders; whence goods of a small kind had the name of “Ægina wares.”
17. The poet frequently speaks of places in succession as they are situated;
“they who inhabited Hyria, and Aulis;”[208]
“and they who occupied Argos, and Tiryns, Hermione, and Asine, Trœzen, and Eïones.”[209]
At other times he does not observe any order;
“Schœnus, and Scolus, Thespeia, and Græa.”[210]
He also mentions together places on the continent and islands
“they who held Ithaca, and inhabited Crocyleia,”[211]
for Crocyleia is in Acarnania. Thus he here joins with Ægina Mases, which belongs to the continent of Argolis.
Homer does not mention Thyreæ, but other writers speak of it as well known. It was the occasion of a contest between the three hundred Argives against the same number of Lacedæmonians; the latter were conquerors by means of a stratagem of Othryadas. Thucydides places Thyreæ in Cynuria, on the confines of Argia and Laconia.[212]
Hysiæ also is a celebrated place in Argolica; and Cenchreæ, which lies on the road from Tegea to Argos, over the mountain Parthenius, and the Creopolus.[213] But Homer was not acquainted with either of these places, [nor with the Lyrceium, nor Orneæ, and yet they are villages in the Argian territory; the former of the same name as the mountain there; the latter of the same name as the Orneæ, situated between Corinth and Sicyon].[214]
18. Among the cities of the Peloponnesus, the most celebrated were, and are at this time, Argos and Sparta, and as their renown is spread everywhere, it is not necessary to describe them at length, for if we did so, we should seem to repeat what is said by all writers.