_M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, volume 5, book 8, chapter 3._ ALSO IN _G. Rawlinson, Family of the Achæmenidæ, appendix to book 7 of Herodotus_. See, also, PERSIA, ANCIENT. ACHAIA: "Crossing the river Larissus, and pursuing the northern coast of Peloponnesus south of the Corinthian Gulf, the traveller would pass into Achaia--a name which designated the narrow strip of level land, and the projecting spurs and declivities between that gulf and the northernmost mountains of the peninsula. ... Achaean cities--twelve in number at least, if not more--divided this long strip of land amongst them, from the mouth of the Larissus and the northwestern Cape Araxus on one side, to the western boundary of the Sikyon territory on the other. According to the accounts of the ancient legends and the belief of Herodotus, this territory had been once occupied by Ionian inhabitants, whom the Achaeans had expelled." _G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 4 (volume 2)._ After the Roman conquest and the suppression of the Achaian League, the name Achaia was given to the Roman province then organized, which embraced all Greece south of Macedonia and Epirus. See GREECE: B. C. 280-146. "In the Homeric poems, where ... the 'Hellenes' only appear in one district of Southern Thessaly, the name Achæans is employed by preference as a general appelation for the whole race. But the Achæans we may term, without hesitation, a Pelasgian people, in so far, that is, as we use this name merely as the opposite of the term 'Hellenes,' which prevailed at a later time, although it is true that the Hellenes themselves were nothing more than a particular branch of the Pelasgian stock. ... [The name of the] Achæans, after it had dropped its earlier and more universal application, was preserved as the special name of a population dwelling in the north of the Peloponnese and the south of Thessaly." _Georg Friedrich Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, Introduction._