450 HISTORY 01 GREECE. agaii pass, until a very late period of Grecian history, under (he power of Argos. The preliminary duel of three hundred, with its uncertain issue, though well established as to the general fact, was represented by the Argeians in a manner totally different from the above story, which seems to have been current among the Lacedaemonians. 1 But the most remarkable circumstance is, that more than a century afterwards, when the two powers were negotiating for a renewal of the then expiring truce, the Argeians, still hankering after this their ancient territory, de- sired the Lacedemonians to submit the question to arbitration ; which being refused, they next stipulated for the privilege of trying the point in dispute by a duel similar to the former, at any time except during the prevalence of war or of epidemic disease. The historian tells us that the Lacedaemonians ac- quiesced in this proposition, though they thought it absurd, 2 in consequence of their anxiety to keep their relations with Argos at that time smooth and pacific. But there is no reason to imagine that the real duel, in which Othryades contended, was considered as absurd at the time when it took place, or during the age immediately succeeding. It fell in with a sort of chival- 1 The Argeians showed at Argos a statue of Pcrilans, son of Alkendr, killing Othryades (Pansan. ii. 20, 6 ; ii. 38, 5 : compare x. 9, G, and the references in Larcher ad Herodot. i. 82). The narrative of Chrysermns, lv rpiT(f> HeTionovvrjaiaKuv (as given in Plutarch, Parallel, -lellenic. p. 306), is different in many respects. Pausanias found the Thyreatis in possession of tbr Argeians (ii. 38, 5). They told him that they had recovered it by adjudication ; when or by whom we do not know : it seems to have passed hack to Argos before the close of the reign of Kleomenes the Third, at Sparta (220 B. c.), Polyb. iv. 36. Strabo even reckons Prasise as Argeian, to the south of Kynuria (viii. p. S68), though in his other passage (p. 3741 .oemingly cited from Ephorns, it is treated as Lacedaemonian. Compare jlanso, Sparta, vol. ii. Beilage i. p. 48. Eusebius, placing this duel at a much earlier period (Ol. 27, 3, 878 B. c.), ascribes the first foundation of the Gymnopaedia at Sparta to the desire of commemorating the event. Pausanias (iii. 7, 3) places it still farther back in the reign of Thoopompus.
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