It was with far different success that a second host of Dorian warriors pressed down the long valley of the Eurotas, which from a narrow gorge gradually widens to the smiling plain of cornfields at the foot of Taygetus, the “Hollow Lacedæmon.” There is no Greek territory in which one plain is so decidedly the very kernel of the whole as it is here. Sunk deep between rugged mountains and severed from the surrounding country by high passes, it holds in its lap all the means of comfort and well-being. Here on the hillocks on the Eurotas above Amyclæ the Dorians pitched their camp, from which grew up the town of Sparta, the youngest city of the plain. If the Dorian Sparta and the Achæan Amyclæ existed for centuries side by side, it is manifest that no uninterrupted state of war continued during this period. Here, no more than in Messenia, can a thorough occupation of the whole district have taken place, but the relations between the old and new inhabitants must have been arranged by agreement. Here, too, the Dorians dispersed through different places and mingled with the foreign nation. ARGOS The third state has its kernel in the plain of the Inachus, which was regarded as the portion of the first-born of the Heraclidæ. For the fame of Atrides’ might, though it was chiefly fixed at Mycenæ, also extended over the state which was founded on the ruins of the Mycenæan kingdom. The nucleus of the Dorian Argos was on the coast, where between the sandy estuary of the Inachus, and that of the copious stream of the Erasinus, a tract of firm land rises in the swampy soil. Here the Dorians had their camp and their sanctuaries; here their commander Temenus had died and had been buried before he had seen his people in secure possession of the upper plain; and after him this coast town preserved the name of Temenium. Its situation shows that the citadels and passes farther inland were maintained by the Achæans with a more steadfast resistance, so that the Dorians were for a long time compelled to content themselves with a thoroughly disadvantageous situation. For it was only by degrees that the whole strip of shore was rendered habitable, and the swampy character of the soil was, according to Aristotle, the main reason why the sovereign town of the Pelopidæ was placed so far back in the upper plain. Now by the advance of the Dorian might, the high rock citadel of Larissa also became the political centre of the district, and the Pelasgian Argos at its foot, which had been the oldest place of assembly for the population, was once more the capital. It came to be the seat of the reigning family of the line of Temenus, and the starting-point for the further extension of their power.