In taking a review of all these statements, it appears to me that the political sagacity was almost past belief, with which the ancient constitution of Sparta protected the power, the dignity, and welfare of the office of king, yet without suffering it to grow into a despotism, or without placing the king in any one point either above or without the law. Without endangering the liberty of the state, a royal race was maintained, which, blending the pride of their own family with the national feelings, produced, for a long succession of years, princes of a noble and patriotic disposition. Thus it was in fact with the two Heraclide families, to which Theopompus, Leonidas, Archidamus II., Agesilaus, Cleomenes III., and Agis III. belonged; and the greater number of the later kings retained, up to the last period, a genuine Spartan disposition, which we find expressed in many nervous and pithy apophthegms. 10. It may be inferred that it was the case in all, as we know it to have been in many Dorian states, with the exception of later colonies, that they were governed by princes of the Heraclide family. In Argos, the descendants of Temenus reigned until after the time of Phidon, and the kingly office did not expire till after the Persian war;(451) in Corinth, the successors of Aletes, and afterwards of Bacchis, reigned until about the 8th Olympiad. How long the Ctesippidæ reigned in Epidaurus and Cleonæ,(452) we are not informed. In Megara we find the name, but the name only, of a king at a very late period.(453) In Messenia the Æpytidæ ruled as kings until the subjugation of the country; and when Aristomenes was compelled to quit it, he took refuge with Damagetus, the king of Ialysus, in the island of Rhodes, of the Heraclide family of the Eratidæ.(454) Also the Hippotadæ at Cnidos and Lipara,(455) the Bacchiadæ at Syracuse and Corcyra,(456) the Phalantidæ at Tarentum,(457) probably had in early times ruled as sovereign princes, as well as the Heraclidæ at Cos, who derived their origin from Phidippus and Antiphus.(458) In Crete we find but little mention of the Heraclidæ, the only exceptions being Althæmenes of Argos, and Phæstus of Sicyon.(459) In this island the family of Teutamas had reigned from a remote period: with regard to the time during which kings existed in this country, it can only be conjectured from the circumstance that a king named Etearchus reigned at Oaxus not long before the building of Cyrene.(460) Cyrene, as has been already shown, was under the dominion of a Minyean, its mother-city Thera, under that of an Ægide family.(461) Delphi was also at an early period under the rule of kings.(462) Of the aristocratic offices, which were substituted in the place of the royal authority, we shall presently speak, when treating of the power of the cosmi. Chapter VII.