Our earliest account of the one tyrant of Argos is found in Herodotus and runs as follows: “and from the Peloponnesus came Leokedes the son of Pheidon the tyrant of the Argives, that Pheidon who created for the Peloponnesians their measures and behaved quite the most outrageously of all the Greeks, who having removed the Eleian directors of the games himself directed the games at Olympia[792].” Pheidon belonged to the royal house of Temenos[793], and appears to have succeeded to a hereditary throne in the ordinary way. Nevertheless he is deliberately classed by Aristotle as a typical tyrant[794]. Some years ago I suggested that it was Pheidon’s “invention” of measures rather than his outrageous behaviour or his warlike achievements that caused him to be regarded as a different kind of ruler from his forefathers—as a tyrant instead of a king[795]. [Sidenote: and also, according to Ephorus, struck in Aegina the first silver coins.] Herodotus speaks of him simply as the man who made their measures for the Peloponnesians. But Ephorus and later writers declare that Pheidon invented a system of weights as well as measures, and, most important of all, that silver was first coined by him in Aegina[796]. The reign of Pheidon probably covered the first third of the seventh century. Thus in Greece Proper as in Asia Minor there is evidence for ascribing the earliest coins to the earliest tyrant. [Sidenote: Pheidon the European counterpart of Gyges.] If there is any weight in the Argive evidence, then the accounts mutually confirm one another, and it becomes distinctly improbable that the association of coinage and tyranny was a mere accident. [Sidenote: The evidence for Pheidon is disputed. This chapter is devoted to maintaining its credibility.] Unfortunately the evidence as regards Pheidon is all very much disputed. The greater part of this chapter will therefore be devoted to examining its credibility and endeavouring to show that the doubts that have been cast upon it are not well founded, that on the most probable showing the reign of Pheidon opened the epoch known as the age of the tyrants, that Pheidon lived just about the time when the first coins were struck in Aegina, and that the institution of the Aeginetan weight system was the direct result of an Argive occupation of the island. [Sidenote: Date of earliest Aeginetan coins.] One or two points may be assumed to start with as generally admitted. The Aeginetan “tortoises” (fig. 20) were the first coins struck in European Greece[797], and they were first struck fairly early in the seventh century[798]. The points that have been most disputed are the date of Pheidon and his connexion with Aegina and the Aeginetan coinage. [Sidenote: Evidence for the date of Pheidon:] It is the date that is the real centre of the controversy, and it will be best to deal with it first and to begin by briefly recalling the evidence and arguments. [Sidenote: (1) from genealogies:]