DORIANS AND KON-DOPJANS OF SIKA'ON. 35 L.>th Mekisteus the brother, and Tydeus the son-in-law, of Adrastus; and he was therefore preeminently odious to the latter. Kleisthenes brought this anti-national hero into Sikyon, assigning to him consecrated ground in the prytaneium, or government-house, and even in that part which was most strongly fortified l (for it seems that Adrastus was conceived as likely to assail and do battle with the intruder) ; moreover, he took away both the tragic choruses and the sacrifice from Adrastus, assigning the former to the god Dionysus, and the latter to Melanippus. The religious manifestations of Sikyon being thus transferred from Adrastus to his mortal foe, and from the cause of the Argei- aus in the siege of Thebes to that of the Thebans, Adrastus was presumed to have voluntarily retired from the place, and the pur- pose which Kleisthenes contemplated, of breaking the community of feeling between Sikyon and Argos, was in part accomplished. A ruler who could do such violence to the religious and legend- ary sentiment of his community may well be supposed capable of inflicting that deliberate insult upon the Dorian tribes which is implied in their new appellations. As we are uninformed, how- ever, of the state of things which preceded, we know not how far it might have been a retaliation for previous insult in the op- posite direction. It is plain that the Dorians of Sikyon main- tained themselves and their ancient tribes quite apart from the remaining community, though what the other constituent portions of the population were, or in what relation they stood to these Dorians, we are not enabled to make out. We hear, indeed, of a dependent rural population in the territory of Sikyon, as well as in that of Argos and Epidaurus, analogous to the Helots in Laconia. In Sikyon, this class was termed the Korynephori (club men), or the Katonakophori, from the thick woollen mantle which they wore, with a sheepskin sewn on to the skirt : in Argos, they Avere called Gymnesii, from their not possessing the military panoply or the use of regular arms : in Epidaurus, Konipodes, or the dusty- footed. 2 We may conclude that a similar class existed in Cor- TOV 'M.e'XM'nrirov, re/trvof ol ui'>7Cj T(J irpvTavrjiu, nai piv v&ai>Ta Idpvat h> TGJ iaxvpOTaru. (Herod, ifr.)
- Julius Pollux, iii, 83 ; Plutarch, Quaest. Grsec. c. 1, p. 291 ; Theopomp-M
