If we look at Dorian art, as contrasted with Ionian, there can be no doubt that the earliest centre was Corinth in the Peloponnesus, to which various discoveries in art are specially ascribed. In architecture, there were many leading ideas, such as the setting up of clay figures in the tympanum of their temples, and the use of panels or soffits, as they were called, in ceilings, which came first from Corinth. But when we descend to better-known times, there are three other Dorian states which quite eclipse Corinth, I suppose because the trading instinct, as is sometimes the case, crushed out or weakened her enthusiasm for art. These states are Ægina, Sikyon, and Argos. Sikyon rose to greatness under the gentle and enlightened despotism of Orthagoras and his family, of whom it was noticed that they retained their sovereignty longer than any other dynasty of despots in Greece. Ægina seems to have disputed the lead with Corinth as a commercial mart, from the days of Pheidon, whose coinage of money was always said to have been first practised at Ægina.(170) The prominence of Ægina in Pindar’s Epinikian Odes shows not only how eagerly men practised athletics, and loved renown there, but how well able they were to pay for expensive monuments of their fame. Their position in the Persian war, among the bravest of the Greeks, corroborates the former part of my statement; the request of an Ionian Greek lady, captured in the train of Mardonius, to be transported to Ægina, adds evidence for the second, as it shows that, to a person of this description, Ægina was the field for a rich harvest, and we wonder how its reputation can have been greater in this respect than that of Corinth.(171) But, a short time after, the rise of the Athenian naval power crushed the greatness of Ægina, and it sank into insignificance, and was absorbed into the Attic power.