With this train of thought in our minds, we may start on our voyage from Peiraieus to Nauplia, the first stage of our journey from Athens to Mykênê. The heights of Megaris, the Akrokorinthos itself, come within the distant view; but, as our course is marked out, of Megara and Corinth we shall see something more and nearer, while of the other states which border the gulf we take our nearest glimpse on the present voyage. From the Akropolis of Athens, from not a few other points of Attic soil, we have looked down on the varied outlines of the two rocky islands which form the main features of the maritime landscape. Farther from us lies Aigina, eyesore of Peiraieus; nearer lies Salamis, the proudest name, save one, in Athenian history. In the general view one island is as prominent as the other, and we naturally ask the cause of the wide difference in their history. Aigina is itself a famous island; Salamis is simply an island which became the scene of one of the most famous of events. One of those caprices of destiny which, above all, make and mar the fortunes of commercial states, made Aigina for a while one of the great powers of Greece. The rival of Athens on the element which belonged to Aigina before it belonged to Athens, she became first the subject, then the victim, of her rival. So, when again an independent state in after days, she underwent a blow no less fearful at the hands of Rome and her Aitolian and Pergamene allies. Salamis has no such history. The isle of the Aiakids, the subject of the poetical oratory of Solon, once disputed between Megara and Athens, became an integral part of the Attic land, the scene of the great fight where Athenian and Aiginetan fought side by side against the barbarian. But Salamis had no share in the glories of Aigina, though she had some share in her sorrow. Aigina has a history of her own, though a history in which her relations towards Athens play the chief part. The history of Salamis is simply a part of the history of Attica. Long indeed after the days of Solôn or of Periklês she suffered at Athenian hands only less severely than Aigina had done, but that was when Athens, tossed to and fro from one Macedonian lord to another, suspected Salamis of treacherous dealings with one to whom the city was for a while hostile. Salamis has gained a separate being in the days of Kassandros, as Eleusis has again a separate being in the days of the Thirty. Is the cause of this difference between the conquered rival and the incorporated territory to be found in the fact that there was no power in the Argolic _Aktê_ which could possibly draw Aigina to itself--the island was far more likely to attract its neighbours on the mainland--while Salamis lay near enough to the Attic coast to come within the range of that strange influence which made the history of Attica so opposite to that of all other Hellenic lands? As Eleusis and Marathôn could be fused into Athens, so could Salamis; but Aigina lay