I have described in the last two chapters, as far as our imperfect evidence permits, how Sparta came into possession both of the southern portion of Laconia along the course of the Eurotas down to its mouth, and of the Messenian territory westward. Her progress towards Arcadia and Argolis is now to be sketched, so as to conduct her to that position which she occupied during the reign of Peisistratus at Athens, or about 560–540 B.C.,—a time when she had reached the maximum of her territorial possessions, and when she was confessedly the commanding state in Hellas.

The central region of Peloponnesus, called Arcadia, had never received any immigrants from without; its autochthonous inhabitants—a strong and hardy race of mountaineers, the most numerous Hellenic tribe in the peninsula, and the constant hive for mercenary troops—were among the rudest and poorest of Greeks, retaining for the longest period their original subdivision into a number of petty hill-villages, each independent of the other; and the union of all who bore the Arcadian name (though they had some common sacrifices, such as the festival of the Lykeean Zeus, of Despoina, daughter of Poseidôn and Dêmêtêr, and of Artemis Hyrania) was more loose and ineffective than that of Greeks generally, either in or out of Peloponnesus. The Arcadian villagers were usually denominated by the names of regions, coincident with certain ethnical subdivisions—the Azānes, the Parrhasii, the Mænalii (adjoining Mount Mænalus), the Eutrêsii, the Ægytse, the Skiritæ, &c.