Ægina belonged to Attica only by conquest; but as when subdued its subjection was complete and lasting, it must not be altogether omitted in this glance over the home territories of the Great Demos. Like Attica itself, the island lying in the Saronic Gulf is of a triangular shape. By proximity it belongs to the Peloponnesos, being within thirty stadia of the Methanæan Chersonesos, while to Salamis is a voyage of ninety stadia, and to the Peiræeus one hundred and twenty. But the sea itself having been considered a part of Attica, whose flag, like that of England, streamed for ages triumphantly over its billows, the islands also which it surrounded fell one by one into the hands of the people, and this small Doric isle among the rest. A number of diminutive islets, or rather rocks, cluster round the shores of Ægina, some barren and treeless, others indued with a certain degree of fertility and verdant with pine woods. The most remarkable objects in Ægina were placed at the angles of the island. The city and harbour towards the west, on the east looking towards Attica the temple of Athena, and, near its southern extremity, “a magnificent conical mountain, which from its grandeur, its form, and its historical recollections, is the most remarkable among the natural features of Ægina.”[209] An eminence so lofty and in shape so beautiful would naturally be an object of much interest in so small an island. The local superstitions would necessarily cluster round it, as around Ida in Crete and Olympos in Thessaly. Accordingly on the summit of this mountain the fables of Ægina represent King Æacos praying, in the name of the whole Hellenic nation, to Zeus for rain, as the prophet prayed for the Israelites, and with equal success. Here, therefore, a recent traveller has with great judgment fixed the site of the Panhellenion, near the spot where a chapel, dedicated to the prophet Elias, now stands. In dimensions Ægina, according to Scylax, ranked twelfth among the isles of Hellas. Strabo attributes to it a circumference of one hundred and eighty stadia; but Sir William Gell, in his Argolis,[210] considers its perimeter, not including the fluctuations of the bays and creeks, to be not less than two hundred and ten stadia, and its square contents three thousand one hundred and sixty-four stadia, or forty-one square miles.[211] The interior is rocky, rough, and perforated with caverns, in which, according to fabulous legends, the Myrmidons resided, and Chabrias afterwards lay in ambush for the Spartan Gorgopos and his Æginetan allies.[212] A light thin soil nourishes but sparing vegetation on the mountains, but several of the small valleys, filled with earth washed down by rains from the uplands, are rich and fertile, watered by springs and rivulets, and beautified with groves of imperishable verdure.[213] Footnote 209: Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 262. Footnote 210: Ib. 28. ap. Müll. Æginet. p. 8. Footnote 211: