terest in the
temple is seen from the fact that when the Argians took Nauplia, they
adopted and fulfilled these religious obligations on behalf of the prior
inhabitants: so also did the Lacedaemonians when they had captured
Prasiae. Again, in Triphylia, situated between the Pisatid and Messenia
in the western part of Peloponnesus, there was a similar religious
meeting and partnership of the Triphylians on Cape Samicon, at the
temple of the Samian Poseidon. Here the inhabitants of Maciston were
intrusted with the details of superintendence, as well as with the duty
of notifying beforehand the exact time of meeting (a precaution
essential amidst the diversities and irregularities of the Greek
calendar) and also of proclaiming what was called the Samian truce--a
temporary abstinence from hostilities which bound all Triphylians during
the holy period. This latter custom discloses the salutary influence of
such institutions in presenting to men's minds a common object of
reverence, common duties, and common enjoyments; thus generating
sympathies and feelings of mutual obligation amid petty communities not
less fierce than suspicious. So, too, the twelve chief Ionic cities in
and near Asia Minor had their pan-Ionic Amphictyony peculiar to
themselves: the six Doric cities, in and near the southern corner of
that peninsula, combined for the like purpose at the temple of the
Triopian Apollo, and the feeling of special partnership is here
particularly illustrated by the fact that Halicarnassus, one of the
six, was formally extruded by the remaining five in consequence of a
violation of the rules. There was also an Amphictyonic union at
Onchestus in Boeotia, in the venerated grove and temple at Poseidon: of
whom it consisted we are not informed. There are some specimens of the
sort of special religious conventions and assemblies which seem to have
been frequent throughout Greece. Nor ought we to omit those religious
meetings and sacrifices which were common to all the members of one
Hellenic subdivision, such as the pan-Boeotia to all the Boeotians,
celebrated at the temple of the Ionian Athene near Coroneia; the common
observances, rendered to the temple of Apollo Pythaeus at Argos, by all
those neighboring towns which had once been attached by this religious
thread to the Argian; the similar periodical ceremonies, frequented by
all who bore the Achaean or AEtolian name; and the splendid and
exhilarating festivals, so favorable to