We do not know how this dynasty ended, and can only pronounce it probable that it was overthrown at about the same time with that of the Cypselids (B.C. 580), by the intervention of Sparta, which must have been more alarmed and provoked by the innovations of Clisthenes than by the tyranny of Periander. It would seem, from the history of the tribes, that the Dorians recovered their predominance; but gradually, and not so completely as to deprive the commonalty of all share in political rights. On the other side of the isthmus, the little state of Megara passed through vicissitudes similar to those of Corinth and Sicyon, but attended with more violent struggles. Before the Dorian conquest royalty is said to have been abolished there after the last king, Hyperion, son of Agamemnon, had fallen by the hand of an enemy, whom he had provoked by insolence and wrong: and a Megarian legend seems to indicate that the elective magistrates, who took the place of the kings, bore the title of _æsymnetes_. The Dorians of Corinth kept those of Megara, for a time, in the same kind of subjection to which Ægina was reduced by Epidaurus; and the Megarian peasantry were compelled to solemnise the obsequies of every Bacchiad with marks of respect, such as were exacted from the subjects of Sparta on the death of the king. This yoke however was cast off at an early period; and Argos assisted the Megarians in recovering their independence. Henceforth it is probable Megara assumed a more decided superiority over the hamlets of her territory, which had once been her rivals; and she must have made rapid progress in population and in power, as is proved by her flourishing colonies in the east and west, and by the wars which she carried on in defence of them. One of her most illustrious citizens, Orsippus, who, in the fifteenth Olympiad, set the example of dropping all incumbrances of dress in the Olympic foot-race, also conducted her arms with brilliant success against her neighbours--probably the Corinthians--and enlarged her territory to the utmost extent of her claims. But the government still remained in the hands of the great Dorian land-owners, who, when freed from the dominion of Corinth, became sovereigns at home; and they appear not to have administered it mildly or wisely. For they were not only deprived of their power by an insurrection of the commonalty, as at Corinth and Sicyon, but were evidently the objects of a bitter enmity, which cannot have been wholly unprovoked.