13. Argos never obtained so great authority in Argolis as Sparta did in Laconia, since, in the former country, the Dorians divided themselves into several ancient and considerable towns;(655) and to deprive Dorians of their independence seems to have been more contrary to the principles of that race, than to expel them, as the Spartans did the Messenians. Argos was thus forced to content itself with forming, and being at the head of a league, which was to unite the forces of the country for common defence, and to regulate all internal affairs. An union of this kind really existed, although it never entirely attained its end. It was probably connected with the temple of Apollo Pythaëus, which, as we remarked above, was considered as common to the Epidaurians and Dryopians. An Argive Amphictyonic council is mentioned in the account of the Messenian war,(656) and is evidently not a fiction, although erroneously there introduced. That it still continued to exist in the 66th Olympiad is clear from the fact, that, when the inhabitants of Sicyon and Ægina furnished Cleomenes with ships to be employed against Argos, each town was condemned to pay a fine of 500 talents.(657) These penalties could not have been imposed by Argos as a single town, but in the name of a confederacy, which was weakened and injured by this act. We find that the Eleans could impose similar penalties in the name of the Olympian Zeus.(658) But the very case here adduced shows how refractory was the conduct of the members of this alliance with regard to the measures taken by the chief confederate.
14. To this internal discord were added the continual disputes with Lacedæmon. Herodotus states, that in ancient times (_i.e._ about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B.C.) the whole eastern coast of Peloponnesus as far as Malea (comprising the towns of Prasiæ, Cyphanta, Epidaurus Limera, and Epidelium), together with Cythera, and the other islands, belonged to the Argives.(659) According to the account of Pausanias the territory of Cynuria, a valley between two ranges of mountains, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argos, inhabited by a native Peloponnesian race, had been from early times a perpetual subject of contention between the two states. The Lacedæmonians had subdued this district in the reigns of Echestratus and Eurypon.(660) During the reigns of Labotas and Prytanis, the Spartans complained of an attempt of the Argives to alienate the affections of their Periœci in Cynuria:(661) as, however, we know not by what authority this statement is supported, we shall allow it to rest on its own merits. In the reign of Charilaus the Lacedæmonians wasted the territory of Argos.(662) His son Nicander made an alliance with the Dryopians of Asine against Argos. Accordingly this people were expelled by Eratus, the Argive king, from their town,(663) and fled to their allies in Laconia; from whom they obtained, after the end of the first Messenian war, a maritime district, where they built a new Asine, and for a long time preserved their national manners,(664) as well as their connexion with the ancient religious worship of their kinsmen, the inhabitants of Hermione.(665)