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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt:...for the city sustained itself through long and pressing dangers. us nothing of interest1 till we reach the far later days of Plutarch. Sicyon, on the contrary, was one of the most important of these re-foundations, and a very characteristic example of the class. It had been very handsomely refounded on a higher level, that of its old acropolis, by Demetrius Poliorketes, who desired to call it Demetrias, but without success. This change of site was here possible because a higher and yet isolated plateau 2 succeeds to the shore-level (where the old town stood), with ample room for streets and walls, and with the command of a beautiful view up and down the Gulf of Corinth, and across to the mountains of Boeotia and-Phocis. The older Sicyon had been a celebrated art-centre. Pausanias, in his account of the place, mentions old works of Calamis and of Scopas, as well as of Lysippus and the newer school, and after its restoration it became one of the chief schools for sculpture and painting in the world--a sort of Hellenistic Florence. In an age of art-collecting, when rich kings and satraps liked to obtain the c/refs-d'aeuvre of renowned artists, and paid large prices for them, such a reputation meant power and wealth for Sicyon, and we hear, specially in Plutarch's Lzfe of Aratus, that it was by collecting and sending to Ptolemy these objects that he conciliated and maintained the king's favour. It was now, 1 The sketch of Boeotian life, with its luxury, sloth and feasting, together with complete idleness and neglect of all public business, given by Polybius (xx. 14), is to me perfectly incredible. How could a people that lived in perpetual idleness, and also extravagance, remain rich and keep the means of luxury? Cf. Mz'tth....