14. To this internal discord were added the continual disputes with Lacedæmon. Herodotus states, that in ancient times (_i.e._ about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B.C.) the whole eastern coast of Peloponnesus as far as Malea (comprising the towns of Prasiæ, Cyphanta, Epidaurus Limera, and Epidelium), together with Cythera, and the other islands, belonged to the Argives.(659) According to the account of Pausanias the territory of Cynuria, a valley between two ranges of mountains, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argos, inhabited by a native Peloponnesian race, had been from early times a perpetual subject of contention between the two states. The Lacedæmonians had subdued this district in the reigns of Echestratus and Eurypon.(660) During the reigns of Labotas and Prytanis, the Spartans complained of an attempt of the Argives to alienate the affections of their Periœci in Cynuria:(661) as, however, we know not by what authority this statement is supported, we shall allow it to rest on its own merits. In the reign of Charilaus the Lacedæmonians wasted the territory of Argos.(662) His son Nicander made an alliance with the Dryopians of Asine against Argos. Accordingly this people were expelled by Eratus, the Argive king, from their town,(663) and fled to their allies in Laconia; from whom they obtained, after the end of the first Messenian war, a maritime district, where they built a new Asine, and for a long time preserved their national manners,(664) as well as their connexion with the ancient religious worship of their kinsmen, the inhabitants of Hermione.(665)