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With the poets Arcadia was a land of peace, of simple pleasures, and untroubled quiet; and it was natural that the pipe-playing Pan should first appear here, where musical shepherds led their flocks along the woody vales of impetuous streams. Ar'golis, east of Arcadia, was mostly a rocky peninsula lying between the Saron'ic and Argol'ic gulfs.

The sacred precincts were not to be profaned by those who were polluted with unexpiated crime, nor by blood, nor by the presence of the dead: Hence the temples of Greece were places of refuge for those who would escape from private or judicial vengeance. The more famous oracles of Greece were at Dodo'na, at Delphi, at Lebade'a in Boeotia, and at Epidaurus in Ar'golis.

The chief political divisions of Peloponnesus were Corinth and Acha'ia on the north, Ar'golis on the east, Laco'nia and Messe'nia at the southern extremity of the peninsula, E'lis on the west, and the central region of Arca'dia.

Argos, the capital of Ar'golis, is generally considered the most ancient city of Greece; and its reputed founding by In'achus, a son of the god O-ce'anus, 1856 years before the Christian era, is usually assigned as the period of the commencement of Grecian history.

In the Saron'ic Gulf, between Attica and Ar'golis, were the islands of Sal'amis and AEgi'na, the former the scene of the great naval conflict between the Greeks on the one side and the Persians, under Xerxes, on the other, and the latter long the maritime rival of Athens.