15. A clearer point in the Argive and Peloponnesian history is the reign of Pheidon. The accounts respecting this prince having been collected and examined in another work, it is merely necessary to repeat the result.(666) Pheidon the Argive, the son of Aristodamidas, was descended from the royal family of Temenus, the power of which had indeed since the time of Medon, the son of Ceisus, been much diminished, but yet remained in existence for a long time. Pheidon broke through the restrictions that limited his power, and hence, contrary however to the ancient usage of the term, was called a _tyrant_. His views were at first directed towards making the independent towns of Argolis dependent upon Argos. He undertook a war against Corinth, which he afterwards succeeded in reducing. In all probability Epidaurus, and certainly Ægina, belonged to him; none of the other towns in the neighbourhood were able to withstand the bold and determined conqueror.(667) The finishing stroke of his achievements was manifestly the celebration of the Olympic games, over which he, as descendant of Hercules (the first conqueror at Olympia), after having abolished the Ætolian-Elean Hellanodicæ, presided, in conjunction with the inhabitants of Pisa, the ancient town of Pelops, which at this time, and many centuries after this time, had not relinquished its claims to the management of the festival. This circumstance also enables us to fix with certainty the period of his reign, since, in the Elean registers, the 8th Olympiad was marked as having been celebrated by him (747 B.C.). But it was this usurpation that united the Eleans and Lacedæmonians against him, and thus caused his overthrow. While the undertakings of Pheidon thus remained without benefit to his successors, he has been denounced by posterity as the most rapacious of tyrants in Greece; but, had he succeeded in establishing a permanent state of affairs, he would have received equal honours with Lycurgus. Yet, notwithstanding his failure, some of his institutions survived him, which adorn his memory. He is known to have equalized all weights and measures in Peloponnesus, which before his time were different in each state; he was also the first who coined money. He was enabled to undertake both with the greater success, since the only two commercial towns at that time belonging to Peloponnesus lay in his dominions, viz. Corinth (whence he is sometimes called a Corinthian) and Ægina. According to the most accurate accounts he first stamped silver-money(668) in Ægina (where at that time forges doubtless existed), and, after having circulated these, he consecrated the ancient and then useless bars of metal to Here of Argos, where they were exhibited in later times to strangers.(669)—Many of the most ancient drachmas of Ægina, with the device of a tortoise, perhaps belong to this period, since the Greek coins struck before the Peloponnesian war appear to indicate a progress of many centuries in the art of stamping money. Those however which we have are sufficient to show that the same standard was prevalent throughout Peloponnesus,(670) a difference in weight, measure, and standard not having been introduced till after the Peloponnesian war. This again was a second time abolished by the Achæan league, and an equality of measures restored.(671)