sufficient evidence of the early commercial importance of the island. The Aeginetic weight standard of about 12.2 grams was widely adopted in the Greek world during the 7th century BC. The Aeginetic stater was divided into two drachmae of 6.1 grams of silver. Staters depicting a sea-turtle were struck up to the end of the 5th century BC. During the First Peloponnesian War, by 456 BC, it was replaced by the land tortoise. During the naval expansion of Aegina during the Archaic Period, Kydonia was an ideal maritime stop for Aegina's fleet on its way to other Mediterranean ports controlled by the emerging sea-power Aegina. During the next century Aegina was one of the three principal states trading at the emporium of Naucratis in Egypt, and it was the only Greek state near Europe that had a share in this factory. At the beginning of the 5th century BC it seems to have been an entrepôt of the Pontic grain trade, which, at a later date, became an Athenian monopoly. Unlike the other commercial states of the 7th and 6th centuries BC, such as Corinth, Chalcis, Eretria and Miletus, Aegina did not found any colonies. The settlements to which Strabo refers (viii. 376) cannot be regarded as any real exceptions to this statement. Rivalry with Athens (5th century BC) The known history of Aegina is almost exclusively a history of its relations with the neighbouring state of Athens, which began to compete with the thalassocracy (sea power) of Aegina about the beginning of the 6th century BC. Solon passed laws limiting Aeginetan commerce in Attica. The legendary history of these relations, as recorded by Herodotus (v. 79–89; vi. 49–51, 73, 85–94), involves critical problems of some difficulty and interest. He traces the hostility of the two states back to a dispute about the images of the goddesses Damia and Auxesia, which the Aeginetes had carried off from Epidauros, their parent state. The Epidaurians had been accustomed to make annual offerings to the Athenian deities Athena and Erechtheus in payment for the Athenian olive-wood of which the statues were made. Upon the refusal of the Aeginetes to continue these offerings, the Athenians endeavoured to carry away the images. Their design was frustrated miraculously – according to the Aeginetan version, the statues fell upon their knees – and only a single survivor returned to Athens. There he became victim to the fury