the kings of Pergamus; but we do not know whether it remained under their dominion until the overthrow of the Achaean confederacy. Aegina is one of those places whose destruction Serv. Sulpicius laments in his consolatory letter to Cicero. It seems to have been during such a devastation that the temple of Zeus Hellenios perished, among the ruins of which were found the celebrated Aegina marbles, which are at present in the museum of Munich. LACONIA. Laconia was of different extent at different times. Laconia, in the reign of Aristodemus and his sons, or the country such as it was originally at the time of the Heracleid conquest, was very far from being as large as the land afterwards bearing the same name; it was not even as large as the Laconia in Strabo or Pausanias, but perhaps similar to what it was during the Macedonian period, especially after the death of Nabis, when the fate of Lacedaemon had been determined by the Achaeans. The Heracleid Laconia, therefore, at the first distribution of the peninsula, could hardly be compared with the Heracleid Argos. As regards the origin of the kingdom of Sparta, the tradition that Eurysthenes and Procles were twin-sons of Aristodemus, is altogether mythical.[27] Any one familiar with the spirit of ancient legendary history, can clearly see the process through which the narrative has passed. Both Herodotus and a fragment of Alcaeus have preserved the statement, that, according to the common tradition, Aristodemus himself reigned at Sparta and died there. But later writers represent him as having died before he arrived with the Heracleids in Peloponnesus, being killed by Apollo at Pytho. The fact is, that as his name was not found among those of the Doric chiefs, tradition made him the father of the two kings, for as Argos had three, so Sparta had two kings corresponding with the two highest among the phylae; and the two Spartan kings are nothing but the heads of the two γένη of the Eurypontids and Agiads, belonging to two different phylae; one of them is designated as the οἰκίη ὑποδεεστέρη, because it belonged to the less noble phyle; whence we cannot be surprised at their not being called Eurysthenids and Proclids. Aristodemus is merely a mythical name, signifying that his descendants are the noblest among their people. The conquerors of Sparta, on their arrival, are said to have found Tisamenus, the son of Orestes. Those who looked upon this tradition as a piece of genuine history, felt that it was difficult to see, how the son of Orestes had come from Mycenae to Sparta; and the ancients extricated themselves by the story, that Orestes, succeeded to the throne of Menelaus by marrying Hermione—a story which is unknown to the author of the first part of the Odyssey, for he speaks of Megapenthes, a son of Menelaus, which again is only an expression of the general idea, that the house of Menelaus ended in sorrow. There can be no doubt that the most ancient form of the tradition