The district about Taenarus and the coast-country from the borders of Messenia to Malea, afterwards bore the name of _Eleutherolacones_. This tract of country is mentioned by Strabo and Pausanias with praise, and it is said to have contained eighteen towns, the inhabitants of which were designated by that name, because they had made themselves independent of the supremacy of Sparta. Strabo refers the origin of this emancipation to Augustus, but it probably arose from other circumstances. When T. Quinctius Flamininus entered Laconia, and Nabis indulged in several acts of insolence, the Romans, believing it dangerous to wage war against him, connived at it; meantime he committed all possible cruelties against the unfortunate Peloponnesians, and insulted the Romans into the bargain: in short, he carried matters so far, that Flamininus, contrary to his own inclinations, was forced to punish him; and although Flamininus was unwilling, utterly to annihilate him, yet Nabis was afterwards unable to recover himself. The consuls then proceeded to the towns on the coast (the modern Maina, as far as Malea, now St. Angelo), which renounced Nabis, and were constituted by the Romans as free and independent towns. If afterwards, when the Achaean confederacy was broken up, they were restored to Sparta, and remained subject to it until the time of Augustus, the Romans must have given them up at that time; and Strabo’s expression can refer only to a second constitution. But on the whole, those towns were insignificant. The island of CYTHERA (Cerigo) is separated from Laconia by a channel of the sea; in antiquity it was the same as it is now, a rugged, volcanic island, presenting a dismal aspect on account of its dark, burned rocks. Aesthetic historians, anxious to have a more beautiful place for the temple of Cytherea, have described the island as a paradise, and supposed that a devastating change had taken place at a later period. But not a trace of this is found among the ancients. The island was thinly peopled. When the Athenians had expelled the Aeginetans from the island, the Spartans gave up Cythera to them, and from this, as I have already observed, we may infer that, as the island contained but little fertile land, the number of Aeginetans must have been small. If, therefore, Aegina once actually had an enormous population, it can have been owing only to some accidental circumstance, as was the case with Pisa at the time of the conquest of Sardinia.[33] The real central point of the volcanic mountain-range of Peloponnesus and of the Archipelago, is the island of THERA; one branch of the volcanic range proceeds from Thera northward in the direction of Lemnos; another turns to the East towards Rhodes and the coast of Ionia, whence the frequent earthquakes in those parts. The whole district from Delos to Lemnos, thence to the Asiatic coast, and thence again to Thera, forms as it were a circle.