The political division of Peloponnesus, or the geography of the population, as might be expected, was different at different periods, from the age of the poetical mythus down to that of the decay of ancient life. If I wanted to confine myself to the intermediate or really classical period, I should render an accurate survey a matter of considerable difficulty, as I should constantly have to refer to earlier and later states of things. I shall therefore notice the different divisions of Peloponnesus from the earliest times, beginning with the mythical geography so far as it is mentioned with any degree of certainty, and then pass on to that of the historical period. We shall accordingly commence with the survey given by Homer in the second book of the Iliad. The Homeric Catalogue is a very remarkable document: it is a very ancient historical piece of composition, drawn up in the verse most favourable to being remembered, and in which the ancients preserved all their traditions; but it is quite foreign to poetry. Few subjects of the Iliad have engaged the attention of the learned in the same degree as this Catalogue; it was not Strabo alone that took it on every occasion as the text of his book, as we see from his work itself, but a number of other writers had done the same thing before him. But our point of view is different from that which was taken about the time of Ephorus. We see that there was a time when the Catalogue was regarded as a historical document, as a conscientious, careful, and learned account of the state of Greece at the time of the Trojan war. I have no doubt that this opinion was the prevailing one at the time of Ephorus, who was a contemporary of Demosthenes and Philip of Macedonia; that it was regarded in this light at an earlier period, is attested by the statement, that in the time of Solon, the Athenians and Megarians endeavoured to establish their claims to the possession of Salamis by appealing to the Catalogue, a fact which at least proves its early historical authority, even though the story should not be true. But since we have arrived at more unbiassed views about Homer, and no longer bind ourselves to the superstition of his undoubted authenticity—an advantage which, though it may possibly be abused, should never again be abandoned—our point of view in judging of this part of the Homeric poems is likewise changed. We find in this Catalogue several statements which are irreconcilable with each other, which refer to different times, and betray a different origin. Thus we meet, for example, with the Heracleido-Doric colonies in Rhodes and the neighbouring islands of Cos and Syme, while according to our traditions those settlements are of a more recent date than those of the Ionians in those parts, and probably the most recent of all, which even if it were not attested by tradition, would in itself be more credible. Here we have an evident interpolation, introduced in a Doric