From their newly-established city on the hill of Ithômê, the Messenians enjoyed a territory extending fifteen miles southward down to the Messenian Gulf, across a plain, then as well as now, the richest and most fertile in Peloponnesus; while to the eastward, their territory was conterminous with that of Arcadia and the contemporary establishment of Megalopolis. All the newly-appropriated space was land cut off from the Spartan dominion. How much was cut off in the direction south-east of Ithômê (along the north-eastern coast of the Messenian Gulf), we cannot exactly say. But it would appear that the Periœki of Thuria, situated in that neighborhood, were converted into an independent community and protected by the vicinity of Messênê.[486] What is of more importance to notice, however, is,—that all the extensive district westward and south-westward of Ithômê,—all the south-western corner of Peloponnesus, from the river Neda southward to Cape Akritas,—was now also subtracted from Sparta. At the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the Spartan Brasidas had been in garrison near Methônê[487] (not far from Cape Akritas); Pylus,—where the Athenian Demosthenes erected his hostile fort, near which the important capture at Sphakteria was effected,—had been a maritime point belonging to Sparta, about forty-six miles from the city;[488] Aulon (rather farther north, near the river Neda) had been at the time of the conspiracy of Kinadon a township of Spartan Periœki, of very doubtful fidelity.[489] Now all this wide area, from the north-eastern corner of the Messenian Gulf westward, the best half of the Spartan territory, was severed from Sparta to become the property of Periœki and Helots, converted into freemen; not only sending no rent or tribute to Sparta, as before, but bitterly hostile to her from the very nature of their tenure. It was in the ensuing year that the Arcadian army cut to pieces the Lacedæmonian garrison at Asinê,[490] killing the Spartan polemarch Geranor; and probably about the same time the other Lacedæmonian garrisons in the south-western peninsula must have been expelled. Thus liberated, the Periœki of the region welcomed the new Messênê as the guarantee of their independence. Epaminondas, besides confirming the independence of Methônê and Asinê, reconstituted some other towns,[491] which under Lacedæmonian dominion had probably been kept unfortified and had dwindled away. [486] Pausan. iv, 31, 2. [487] Thucyd. ii, 25. [488] Thucyd. iv, 3. [489] Xen. Hellen. iii, 3, 8. [490] Xen. Hellen. vii, 1, 25.