Gymnopædia,(1860) and by his victories in the chariot race at Olympia,(1861) he increased the fame of his city; by his boldness, which was even shown in his conduct at Olympia, at a time when the Spartans were excluded from the contests;(1862) but which was still more conspicuous in his truly Spartan declaration to the satrap Tissaphernes;(1863) and, lastly, by his policy in endeavouring to prevent the premature aggression of the Ionians against the Persians.(1864) 6. The flourishing age of CRETE, in manners as well as in power, is anterior to the historical period; and the early corruption of her ancient institutions was accompanied with universal barbarism and degeneracy. Of her maritime sovereignty of the mythical age nothing but piracy remained; the different states were not combined under the supremacy of a single city; and, even in the reign of Alcamenes, Sparta attempted to settle the mutual dissensions of those very cities(1865) which it had a century before taken for the models of its own constitution. The Cretans did not, however, confine their quarrelsome disposition to domestic feuds; but they began in early times to hire themselves as mercenaries to foreign states, which was certainly one cause of the internal corruption that made this once illustrious island act so ignoble a part in the history of Greece. If the verse of Epimenides (cited by St. Paul(1866)) is genuine, that prophet so early as about 600 B.C. accused his countrymen of being habitual liars, evil beasts, and indolent gluttons. Yet some particular cities (among which we may especially mention the Spartan town of Lyctus) retained with their ancient institutions the noble and pure customs of better times.(1867) We have already more than once had occasion to explain how about the time of the Persian war ARGOS, by the changes in its constitution, and the direction of its policy, succeeded in obliterating almost every trace of the Doric character:(1868) but one revolution only led to another, and none produced a stable and healthy state of affairs. Argos indeed only adopted the worst part of the republican institutions of Athens; for their better parts could not be naturalized in a people of a race and nature totally different.(1869)