AEGINA, though not in Peloponnesus, belongs to it more than to any other country out of Peloponnesus. According to the statement which makes its circumference largest, it amounted only to 180 stadia, or about twenty-two English miles; it is therefore probably much smaller than it is generally drawn in our maps, and its importance is to us a real mystery, seeing that as a maritime power it was not only equal but superior to Athens. Yet the mystery may perhaps be solved. Hydra and Spezzia are barren rocks, which Aegina is not; they are also smaller than Aegina, and yet their maritime pursuits procured them a population of several thousands; the soil of the small state of Ragusa is rocky, and produces no more corn than is required for a few months, and yet Ragusa as a republic kept many hundred ships, and even during the present revolution it has had many ships, some of which were well armed. When, however, we read of an Aeginetan fleet of from seventy to eighty galleys, each of which required about 200 marines, we cannot suppress our astonishment. Still more surprising is the statement of Athenaeus, that the island once had 470,000 slaves, for which he refers to no less an authority than Aristotle. There must be some error here, or else Athenaeus had misunderstood Aristotle, for the statement is absolutely impossible. The highest prosperity of Aegina belongs to a period when slavery did not yet prevail very much in Greece; and at other times, as I shall show presently, Aegina was by no means populous. We may indeed well understand that the island, which at an early period had a democratic form of government, may have had a navy more powerful than that of Athens before the time of Themistocles, as Athens had so long been governed by its great aristocratic landowners. During the period between the Pisistratids and the Persian wars, the struggle for the supremacy was carried on between Athens and Aegina with great exasperation and varying success, until Themistocles decided it by inducing Athens to apply all her energy to her navy, to make Phaleros a good harbour, and to build an imposing fleet. During the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, the Athenians had the upper hand and subdued the Aeginetans; at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians expelled the inhabitants of Aegina from their island, because they did not trust them, and the Lacedaemonians gave up Cythera (Cerigo) to them.[25] The fact that they maintained and supported themselves there is a proof that their number was very small. After the Peloponnesian war they were led back, but although Athens was so much reduced, Aegina never recovered its former importance. During the first war between Philip and the Romans, P. Sulpicius took Aegina, and reduced the whole population to slavery, from which they were afterwards ransomed by the kindness of their friends on the mainland.[26] Afterwards it fell into the hands of