DORIS, the name which, in the time of Herodotus and later writers, designated the little territory which lay to the south-west of the Malian Gulf, and between the ranges of (Eta and Parnassus, bounded by the lands of the Phocians on the east, of the Etolians on the west, of the Malians and Epicnemidian Locrians on the north, and of the Ozolian Locrians on the south, the whole being barely thirty miles in length by ten at its greatest width. The inhabitants were divided into the four townships of Boion, Cytinion, Erineus, and Pindus. Of their history down to the time of the invasion of Xerxes we know nothing, and probably they had none; nor is there more to be said than that they then consulted their interests by submitting to the Persian king. This confederacy of four little townships was honoured by the Spartans as their metropolis, or the home from which the Dorians had come who achieved the conquest of the Peloponnesus—a tradition which has been noticed in the article Dorians. The political insignificance of Doris is to be ascribed to the fact that it had no seaboard. The only other Greek communities in like plight were those of Arcadia or the Peloponnesian highlands, and both Doris and Arcadia remained far in the rear of Hellenic development generally.