That the credit of the Battiad princes was impaired by such a series of disasters and enormities, we can readily believe. But it received a still greater shock from the circumstance, that Battus the Third, son and successor of Arkesilaus, was lame and deformed in his feet. To be governed by a man thus personally disabled, was in the minds of the Kyrenæans an indignity not to be borne, as well as an excuse for preëxisting discontents; and the resolution was taken to send to the Delphian oracle for advice. They were directed by the priestess to invite from Mantineia, a moderator, empowered to close discussions and provide a scheme of government,—the Mantineans selecting Demônax, one of the wisest of their citizens, to solve the same problem which had been committed to Solon at Athens. By his arrangement, the regal prerogative of the Battiad line was terminated, and a republican government established seemingly about 543 B. C.; the dispossessed prince retaining both the landed domains[92] and the various sacerdotal functions which had belonged to his predecessors. [92] Herodot. iv, 161. Τῷ βασιλέϊ Βάττῳ τεμένεα ἐξελὼν καὶ ἱρωσύνας, τὰ ἄλλα πάντα τὰ πρότερον εἶχον οἱ βασιλεῖς ἐς μέσον τῷ δήμῳ ἔθηκε. I construe the word τεμένεα as meaning all the domains, doubtless large, which had belonged to the Battiad princes; contrary to Thrige (Historia Cyrênês, ch. 38, p. 150), who restricts the expression to revenues derived from sacred property. The reference of Wesseling to Hesych.—Βάττου σίλφιον—is of no avail for illustrating this passage. The supposition of O. Müller, that the preceding king had made himself despotic by means of Egyptian soldiers, appears to me neither probable in itself, nor admissible upon the simple authority of Plutarch’s romantic story, when we take into consideration the silence of Herodotus. Nor is Müller correct in affirming that Demônax “restored the supremacy of the community:” that legislator superseded the old kingly political privileges, and framed a new constitution (see O. Müller, History of Dorians, b. iii, ch. 9. s. 13.)