In later times, _Patrae_ was of greater importance as a commercial town; in the earliest ages it is not mentioned as a place of any consequence, though its harbour is beautiful. It acquired its importance, which it retained until its destruction in our own days, at the time when Pompey established a colony there, which was increased by Augustus. Pompey restored it as a maritime town, for it had been destroyed in the Achaean war. He compelled some of the Asiatic pirates to settle there, and Augustus made it a Roman colony, whence, like Corinth, it issued coins with Latin inscriptions. Throughout the middle ages, under Constantine Porphyrogenitus, as well as under the Frankish and Venetian dominion, Patrae was the most flourishing city in all Peloponnesus. The other places are too unimportant to engage our attention. The coast of Achaia bore the peculiar name of Aegialos. What is said of it in the Homeric Catalogue, remained essentially the same after the destructive immigrations; hence its case was quite different from that of other countries of Peloponnesus, especially the coast of Messenia, where nothing remained except Cyparissia. Its topography also underwent scarcely any change on account of the uniformity of its history: thus the course of events is often marked in the geography of a country. GREECE BEYOND PELOPONNESUS. ATTICA AND MEGARIS. ATTICA and MEGARIS, if we look at their physical features, form but one country, and in this light they were viewed in the earliest times of which we still have the traditions. The tradition that all this country, from the Isthmus as far as the coast opposite to Euboea, was formerly called Ionia, and inhabited by Ionians, cannot be reconciled with the other, that the Ionians, when expelled from Achaia, went to Attica, and that through them Attica was changed into Ionia. If we wish to form any clear notion at all about the matter, it will probably be most correct to suppose, that originally both coasts, Aegialos and Attica, as well as the whole of the intervening country, Sicyon, Corinth, etc., were inhabited by one and the same Pelasgian branch, that is, by Ionians. This hypothesis gives consistency to the geography of those countries, and we obtain a definite idea of them, which has at least great probability in its favour. The column said to have been erected in the time of Theseus, with the strange inscriptions— Τάδ’ ἐστὶ Πελοπόννησος οὐκ Ἰωνιά, and Τάδ’ οὐχὶ Πελοπόννησος ἀλλ’ Ἰωνία,