cities, whose territory stretched across the Isthmus from sea to sea.

But if we go back to the first Olympiad, we shall find Sparta in possession of only a very small territory, instead of the extensive dominion described above. Its territory at that time appears to have comprehended little more than the valley of the river Eurotas. Westward of this valley, and separated from it by Mount Taygetus, were the Messenian Dorians, while eastward of it the whole of the mountainous district along the coast, from the head of the Argolic gulf down to Cape Malea, was also independent of Sparta, belonging to Argos. In the earliest historical times Argos appears as the first power in the Peloponnesus, a fact which the legend of the Heraclids seems to recognise by making Temenus the eldest brother of the three. Next came Sparta, and last the Messēnē. The importance of Argos appears to have arisen not so much from her own territory as from her being the head of a powerful confederacy of Dorian states. Most of these states are said to have been founded by colonies from Argos, such as Cleōnæ, Phliūs, Sicyon, Epidaurus, Trozen, and Ægina. They formed a league, the patron god of which was Apollo Pythaëus, whose common worship was a means of uniting them together. There was a temple to this god in each of the confederated cities, while his most holy and central sanctuary was on the acropolis of Argos. But the power of Argos rested on an insecure basis; the ties which held the confederacy together became gradually weakened; and Sparta was able to wrest from her a large portion of her territory and eventually to succeed to her place as the first Dorian state in the peninsula.

$ 3. The importance of the privileges possessed by Argos before the rise of the Spartan power is shown by the history of Phidon. This remarkable man may be placed about the 8th Olympiad, or 747 B.C., and claims our attention the more as one of the first really historical personages hitherto presented to us. He was king of Argos, and is represented as a descendant of the Heraclid Temenus. Having broken through the limits which had been imposed on the authority of his predecessors, he changed the government of Argos into a despotism. He then restored her supremacy over all the cities of her confederacy, which had become nearly dissolved. He appears next to have attacked Corinth, and to have succeeded in reducing it under his dominion. He is further reported to have aimed at extending his sway over the greater part of Peloponnesus,—laying claim, as the descendant of Hercules, to all the cities which that hero had ever taken. His power and his influence became so great in the Peloponnesus that the Pisātans, who had been accustomed

to preside at the Olympic games, but who had been deprived of this privilege by the Eleans, invited him, in the 8th Olympiad, to restore them to their original rights and expel the intruders. This invitation fell in with the ambitious projects of Phidon, who claimed for himself the right of presiding at these games, which had been instituted by his great ancestor Hercules. He accordingly marched to Olympia, expelled the Eleans from the sacred spot, and celebrated the games in conjunction with the Pisatans. But his triumph did not last long; the Spartans took the part of the Eleans, and the contest ended in the defeat of Phidon. In the following Olympiad the Eleans again obtained the management of the festival.

It would appear that the power of Phidon was destroyed in this struggle, but of the details of his fall we have no information. He did not however fall without leaving a very striking and permanent trace of his influence upon Greece. He was the first person who introduced a copper and a silver coinage and a scale of weights and measures into Greece. Through his influence they became adopted throughout Peloponnesus and the greater part of the north of Greece, under the name of the Æginetan scale. There arose subsequently another scale in Greece called the Euboic, which was employed at Athens and in the Ionic cities generally, as well as in Euboea. It is usually stated that the coinage of Phidon was struck in the island of Ægina, but it appears more probable that it was done in Argos, and that the name of Æginetan was given to the coinage and scale, not from the place where they first originated, but from the people whose commercial activity tended to make them more generally known. § 4. The progress of Sparta from the second to the first place among the states in Peloponnesus was mainly owing to the peculiar institutions of the state, and more particularly to the military discipline and rigorous training of its citizens. The singular constitution of Sparta was unanimously ascribed by the ancients to the legislator Lycurgus, but there were different stories respecting his date, birth, travels, legislation, and death. Some modern writers on the other hand have maintained that the Spartan institutions were common to the whole Doric race, and therefore cannot be regarded as the work of a Spartan legislator. In their view Sparta is the full type of Doric principles, tendencies, and sentiments. This, however, appears to be an erroneous view; it can be shown that the institutions of Sparta were peculiar to herself, distinguishing her as much from the Doric cities of Argos and Corinth, as from Athens and Thebes. The Cretan institutions bore, it is true, some analogy to those of Sparta, but the resemblance has been greatly exaggerated, and

The

was chiefly confined to the syssitia or public messes. Spartans, doubtless, had original tendencies common to them with the other Dorians; but the constitution of Lycurgus impressed upon them their peculiar character, which separates them so strikingly from the rest of Greece. Whether the system of Spartan laws is to be attributed to Lycurgus, cannot now be determined. He lived in an age when writing was never employed for literary purposes, and consequently no account of him from a contemporary has come down to us. None of the details of his life can be proved to be historically true; and we are obliged to choose out of several accounts the one which appears the most probable.

§ 5. There are very great discrepancies respecting the date of Lycurgus; but all accounts agree in supposing him to have lived at a very remote period. His most probable date is B. C. 776, in which year he is said to have assisted Iphitus in restoring the Olympic games. He belonged to the royal family of Sparta. According to the common account he was the son of Eunomus, one of the two kings who reigned together in Sparta. His father was killed in the civil dissensions which afflicted Sparta at that time. His elder brother, Polydectes, succeeded to the crown, but died soon afterwards, leaving his queen with child. The ambitious woman offered to destroy the child, if Lycurgus would share the throne with her. Lycurgus pretended to consent; but as soon as she had given birth to a son, he presented him in the market-place as the future king of Sparta; and, to testify the people's joy, gave him the name of Charilaus. The young king's mother took revenge upon Lycurgus by accusing him of entertaining designs against his nephew's life. Hereupon he resolved to withdraw from his native country, and to visit foreign lands. He was absent many years, and is said to have employed his time in studying the institutions of other nations, and in conversing with their sages, in order to devise a system of laws and regulations which might deliver Sparta from the evils under which it had long been suffering. He first visited Crete and Ionia; and not content with the Grecian world, passed from Ionia into Egypt; and according to some accounts is reported to have visited Iberia, Libya, and even India.

During his absence the young king had grown up, and assumed the reins of government; but the disorders of the state had meantime become worse than ever, and all parties longed for a termination to their present sufferings. Accordingly the return of Lycurgus was hailed with delight, and he found the people both ready and willing to submit to an entire change in their government and institutions. He now set himself to work to

carry his long projected reforms into effect; but before he commenced his arduous task, he consulted the Delphian oracle, from which he received strong assurances of divine support. Thus encouraged by the god, he suddenly presented himself in the market-place, surrounded by thirty of the most distinguished Spartans in arms. The king, Charilaus, was at first disposed to resist the revolution, but afterwards supported the schemes of his uncle. Lycurgus now issued a set of ordinances, called Rhetra, by which he effected a total revolution in the political and military organization of the people, and in their social and domestic life. His reforms were not carried into effect without violent opposition, and in one of the tumults which they excited, his eye is said to have been struck out by a youth of the name of Alcander. But he finally triumphed over all obstacles, and succeeded in obtaining the submission of all classes in the community to his new constitution. His last act was to sacrifice himself for the welfare of his country. Having obtained from the people a solemn oath to make no alterations in his laws before his return, he quitted Sparta for ever. He set out on a journey to Delphi, where he obtained an oracle from the god, approving of all he had done, and promising everlasting prosperity to the Spartans as long as they preserved his laws. Whither he went afterwards, and how and where he died, nobody could tell. He vanished from earth like a god, leaving no traces behind him but his spirit and his grateful countrymen honoured him with a temple, and worshipped him with annual sacrifices down to the latest times.

§ 6. In order to understand the constitution of Lycurgus, it is necessary to recollect the peculiar circumstances in which the Spartans were placed. They were a handful of men in possession of a country which they had conquered by the sword, and which they could only maintain by the same means. They probably did not exceed 9000 men; and the great object of the legislator was to unite this small body together by the closest ties, and to train them in such habits of hardihood, bravery, and military subordination that they might maintain their ascendency over their subjects. The means which he adopted to attain this object were exceedingly severe, but eminently successful. He subjected the Spartans to a discipline at once monastic and warlike, unparalleled either in ancient or in modern times. His system combined the ascetic rigours of a monastery with the stern discipline of a garrison. But before we proceed to relate the details of this extraordinary system, it will be necessary to give an account of the different classes of the population of the country, and also of the nature of the government.

§ 7. The population of Laconia was divided into the three classes of Spartans, Perioci, and Helots.

The Spartans were the descendants of the leading Dorian conquerors. They formed the sovereign power of the state, and they alone were eligible to honours and public offices. They lived in Sparta itself, and were all subject to the discipline of Lycurgus. They were maintained from their estates in different parts of Laconia, which were cultivated for them by the Helots, who paid them a fixed amount of the produce. Originally all Spartans were on a footing of perfect equality. They were divided into three tribes,—the Hylleis, the Pamphyli, and the Dymanes, which were not, however, peculiar to Sparta, but existed in all the Dorian states. They retained their full rights as citizens, and transmitted them to their children, on two conditions, first, of submitting to the discipline of Lycurgus; and secondly, of paying a certain amount to the public mess, which was maintained solely by these contributions. In course of time many Spartans forfeited their full citizenship from being unable to comply with the latter of these conditions, either through losing their lands or through the increase of children in the poorer families. Thus there arose a distinction among the Spartans themselves, unknown at an earlier period-the reduced number of qualified citizens being called the Equals or Peers,* the disfranchised poor the Inferiors.† The latter, however, did not become Periœci, but might recover their original rank if they again acquired the means of contributing their portion to the public mess.

§ 8. The Periocit were personally free, but politically subject to the Spartans. They possessed no share in the government, and were bound to obey the commands of the Spartan magistrates. They appear to have been partly the descendants of the old Achæan population of the country, and partly of Dorians who had not been admitted to the full privileges of the ruling class. They were distributed into a hundred townships, which were spread through the whole of Laconia. They fought in the Spartan armies as heavy-armed soldiers, and therefore must have been trained to some extent in the Spartan tactics; but they were certainly exempt from the peculiar discipline to which the ruling class was subject, and possessed more individual freedom of action. The larger proportion of the land of Laconia belonged to Spartan citizens, but the smaller half was the pro* Οἱ Ὅμοιοι. † Οἱ Ὑπομείονες.

The name Teploikoi signifies literally "dwellers around the city," and is used generally by the Greeks to signify the inhabitants in the country districts, who possessed inferior political privileges to the citizens who lived in the city.