The first year of Darius I. was the 233d of the building of Rome. Tarquin the Proud was then on the throne, and about ten years afterwards was expelled, when the consular government was substituted to that of the kings. In the succeeding part of this period happened the war against Porsenna; the creation of the tribunes of the people; Coriolanus’s retreat among the Volsci, and the war that ensued thereupon; the wars of the Romans against the Latins, the Veientes, the Volsci, and other neighbouring nations; the death of Virginia under the Decemvirate; the disputes between the people and senate about marriages and the consulship, which occasioned the creating of military tribunes instead of consuls. This period of time terminates in the 323d year from the foundation of Rome. The second part, which consists of twenty-seven years, extends from the 43d year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, to the death of Darius Nothus; that is, from the year of the world 3573, to the year 3600. It contains the first nineteen years of the Peloponnesian war, which continued twenty-seven, of which Greece and Sicily were the seat, and wherein the Greeks, who had before triumphed over the barbarians, turned their arms against each other. Among the Athenians, Pericles, Nicias, and Alcibiades; among the Lacedæmonians, Brasidas, Gylippus, and Lysander, distinguished themselves in the most extraordinary manner. Rome continues to be agitated by different disputes between the senate and the people. Towards the end of this period, and about the 350th year of Rome, the Romans formed the siege of Veji, which lasted ten years. (M8) I have already observed, that eighty years after the taking of Troy, the Heraclidæ, that is, the descendants of Hercules, returned into the Peloponnesus, and made themselves masters of Lacedæmon, where two brothers, Eurysthenes and Procles, sons of Aristodemus, reigned jointly together. Herodotus observes,(227) that these two brothers were, during their whole lives, at variance; and that almost all their descendants inherited the like disposition of mutual hatred and antipathy; so true it is, that the sovereign power will admit of no partnership, and that two kings will always be too many for one kingdom! However, after the death of these two, the descendants of both still continued to sway the sceptre jointly: and, what is very remarkable, these two branches subsisted for near nine hundred years, from the return of the Heraclidæ into the Peloponnesus, to the death of Cleomenes, and supplied Sparta with kings without interruption, and that generally in a regular succession from father to son, especially in the elder branch of the family. The Origin and Condition of the Elotæ, or Helots.