3. Although the worship of these deities, and of Here in particular, had probably been more prevalent before than after the Doric invasion, the religion of DEMETER was still more depressed. This worship was nearly extirpated by the Dorians, a fact which we know from Herodotus, who, in speaking of some rites of Demeter Thesmophoria which were supposed to have been founded by the daughters of Danaus, states that when the Peloponnesians were driven out by the Dorians, these rites were discontinued, and were only kept up by those Peloponnesians who remained behind, and by the Arcadians.(1662) Consequently we meet with few traces of the worship of Demeter in the chief cities of the Doric name.(1663) Thus it appears that in Argos the ceremonies in honour of this goddess were on one side driven into the marshes of Lerna, and on the other to the eastern extremity of the peninsula, inhabited by the Dryopes. In the former of these two places some mystical rites were long performed, and in the latter the chief worship was that of the deities of the earth and the infernal regions (χθόνιοι θεοί). Some inscriptions found at Hermione, which besides Demeter and Cora mention the name of Clymenus,(1664) an epithet of Pluto, agree well with the beginning of the hymn which Lasus the Hermionean addressed to the deities of his native city: “I sing of Demeter and the Melibœan Cora, the wife of Clymenus, sounding the deep-toned Æolic harmony of hymns.”(1665) And that the Hermioneans considered the temple of the earthly Demeter (which was connected with the entrance of the infernal regions supposed to be at Hermione) as the first in the city, is also evident from the fact that the Asinæans, expelled from Argolis and resident in Messenia, sent sacrifices and sacred missions from thence to their national goddess at Hermione.(1666)