1. We now come to the _third_ epoch of the propagation of the worship of Apollo. The first embraced the earliest migrations of the Doric nation, when the great temples at Delphi, Cnosus, and Delos were founded from Tempe. The second period is that of the maritime supremacy of Minos, when the coasts of Asia and Greece were covered with groves and expiatory altars of this god. The third comprehends the chief migration of the Dorians, and others occasioned by it. Through these means Apollo became the principal deity in Peloponnesus, where, in early times, we find few traces of his existence. That the Carnean Apollo of the Lacedæmonians, and the Apollo Nomius of the Arcadians, form no exceptions to our assertion, will be proved in a subsequent inquiry into the nature and origin of these worships.(1065) After the Doric conquest of Peloponnesus, the chief temples were every where consecrated to Apollo. We have already spoken of the sanctuary of Apollo Pythaëus, in which the Argive confederacy held their meetings;(1066) nor was the temple of Apollo Lyceus in the market-place less celebrated.(1067) The Spartans also worshipped this deity under the former name,(1068) and the inhabitants of Sicyon under the latter.(1069) Hecatus, it is pretended, was a soothsayer, who came with the sons of Aristodemus to Sparta; and his descendant, in the second Messenian war, held the same office:(1070) the name of this family refers to the worship of Apollo Hecatus (the far-darting god). At Sparta Apollo was the national deity; the kings sacrificed to him on the first and seventh days of every month;(1071) the influence of the capital city had also caused its general extension throughout the country.(1072) Corinth,(1073) Epidaurus,(1074) Ægina,(1075) and Trœzen(1076) followed the same example. The name of the Delphian god had now attained throughout Peloponnesus the universal respect which it so long enjoyed: it had even led the way to the settlement and conquest of that peninsula, and hence Apollo was called by the Dorians their _leader_ and _founder_.(1077) It was not till a later period that the kings of Messenia (who upon the whole adhered less strictly to the Doric customs than the Spartans) entered into a connexion with the sanctuary at Delos, which had then already fallen into the power of the Ionians. About the fifth Olympiad (760 B.C.) Eumelus, the Corinthian poet, composed an ode for a Messenian chorus to that holy island.(1078) On the other hand, it was owing to the Dorians (particularly to the Spartans) that the Pythian sanctuary remained independent, in the hands of the Delphians; to preserve it in this state was one of the duties which they inherited from their fathers;(1079) and they protected it more than once, particularly against the Athenians.