CHAPTER VIII.

CONQUESTS OF SPARTA TOWARDS ARCADIA AND ARGOLIS.

I have described in the last two chapters, as far as our imperfect evidence permits, how Sparta came into possession both of the southern portion of Laconia along the coast of the Eurotas down to its mouth, and of the Messenian territory westward. Her progress towards Arcadia and Argolis is now to be sketched, so as to conduct her to that position which she occupied during the reign of Peisistratus at Athens, or about 560-540 B. C.,—a time when she had reached the maximum of her territorial possessions, and when she was confessedly the commanding state in Hellas.

The central region of Peloponnesus, called Arcadia, had never received any emigrants from without. Its indigenous inhabitants,—a strong and hardy race of mountaineers, the most numerous Hellenic tribe in the peninsula, and the constant hive for mercenary troops,[763]—were among the rudest and poorest of Greeks, retaining for the longest period their original subdivision into a number of petty hill-villages, each independent of the other; while the union of all who bore the Arcadian name,—though they had some common sacrifices, such as the festival of the Lykæan Zeus, of Despoina, daughter of Poseidôn and Dêmêtêr, and of Artemis Hymnia,[764]—was more loose and ineffective than that of Greeks generally, either in or out of Peloponnesus. The Arcadian villagers were usually denominated by the names of regions, coincident with certain ethnical subdivisions,—the Azānes, the Parrhasii, the Mænalii (adjoining Mount Mænalus), the Eutrêsii, the Ægytæ, the Skiritæ, etc.[765] Some considerable towns, however, there were,—aggregations of villages or demes which had been once autonomous. Of these, the principal were Tegea and Mantineia, bordering on Laconia and Argolis,—Orchomenus, Pheneus, and Stymphalus, towards the north-east, bordering on Achaia and Phlius,—Kleitôr and Heræa, westward, where the country is divided from Elis and Triphylia by the woody mountains of Pholoê and Erymanthus,—and Phigaleia, on the south-western border near to Messenia. The most powerful of all were Tegea and Mantineia,[766]—conterminous towns, nearly equal in force, dividing between them the cold and high plain of Tripolitza, and separated by one of those capricious torrents which only escapes through katabothra. To regulate the efflux of this water was a difficult task, requiring friendly coöperation of both the towns: and when their frequent jealousies brought on a quarrel, the more aggressive of the two inundated the territory of its neighbor as one means of annoyance. The power of Tegea, which had grown up out of nine constituent townships, originally separate,[767] appears to have been more ancient than that of its rival; as we may judge from its splendid heroic pretensions connected with the name of Echemus, and from the post conceded to its hoplites in joint Peloponnesian armaments, which was second in distinction only to that of the Lacedæmonians.[768] If it be correct, as Strabo asserts,[769] that the incorporation of the town of Mantineia, out of its five separate demes, was brought about by the Argeians, we may conjecture that the latter adopted this proceeding as a means of providing some check upon their powerful neighbors of Tegea. The plain common to Tegea and Mantineia was bounded to the west by the wintry heights of Mænalus,[770] beyond which, as far as the boundaries of Laconia, Messenia, and Triphylia, there was nothing in Arcadia but small and unimportant townships, or villages,—without any considerable town, before the important step taken by Epameinondas in founding Megalopolis, a short time after the battle of Leuktra. The mountaineers of these regions, who joined Epameinondas before the battle of Mantineia, at a time when Mantineia and most of the towns of Arcadia were opposed to him, were so inferior to the other Greeks in equipment, that they still carried as their chief weapon, in place of the spear, nothing better than the ancient club.[771]

[763] Hermippus ap. Athenæ. i. p. 27. Ἀνδράποδ᾽ ἐκ Φρυγίας, απὸ δ᾽ Ἀρκαδίας ἐπικούρους. Also, Xenoph. Hellen. vii. 1, 23. πλεῖστον δὲ φῦλον τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν τὸ Ἀρκαδικὸν εἴη, etc.

[764] Pausan. viii. 6, 7; viii. 37, 6; viii. 38, 2. Xenias, one of the generals of Greek mercenaries in the service of Cyrus the younger, a native of the Parrhasian district in Arcadia, celebrates with great solemnity, during the march upward, the festival and games of the Lykæa (Xenoph. Anabas. i. 2 10; compare Pindar, Olymp. ix. 142).

Many of the forests in Arcadia contained not only wild boars, but bears, in the days of Pausanias (viii. 23, 4).

[765] Pausan. viii. 26, 5; Strabo, viii. p. 388.

Some geographers distributed the Arcadians into three subdivisions, Azanes, Parrhasii, and Trapezuntii. Azan passed for the son of Arcas, and his lot in the division of the paternal inheritance was said to have contained seventeen towns (ἃς ἔλαχεν Ἀζήν). Stephan. Byz. v. Ἀζανία—Παῤῥασία. Kleitôr seems the chief place in Azania, as far as we can infer from genealogy (Pausan. viii. 4, 2, 3). Pæus, or Päos, from whence the Azanian suitor of the daughter of Kleisthenês presented himself, was between Kleitôr and Psôphis (Herod. vi. 127; Paus. viii. 23, 6). A Delphian oracle, however, reckons the inhabitants of Phigaleia, in the south-western corner of Arcadia, among the Azanes (Paus. viii. 42, 3).

The burial-place of Areas was supposed to be on Mount Mænalus (Paus. viii. 9, 2).

[766] Thucyd. v. 65. Compare the description of the ground in Professor Ross (Reisen im Peloponnes. iv. 7).

[767] Strabo. viii. p. 337.

[768] Herodot. ix. 27.

[769] Strabo, 1. c. Mantineia is reckoned among the oldest cities of Arcadia (Polyb. ii. 54). Both Mantineia and Orchomenus had originally occupied very lofty hill-sites, and had been rebuilt on a larger scale, lower down, nearer to the plain (Pausan. viii. 8, 3; 12, 4; 13, 2).

In regard to the relations, during the early historical period, between Sparta, Argos, and Arcadia, there is a new fragment of Diodorus (among those recently published by Didot out of the Excerpta in the Escurial library, Fragment. Historic. Græcor. vol. ii. p. viii.). The Argeians had espoused the cause of the Arcadians against Sparta; and at the expense of considerable loss and suffering, had regained such portions of Arcadia as she had conquered. The king of Argos restored this recovered territory to the Arcadians: but the Argeians generally were angry that he did not retain it and distribute it among them as a reward for their losses in the contest. They rose in insurrection against the king, who was forced to flee, and take refuge at Tegea.

We have nothing to illustrate this fragment, nor do we know to what king, date, or events, it relates.

[770] Μαιναλίη δυσχείμερος (Delphian Oracle, ap. Paus. viii. 9, 2).

[771] Xenophon, in describing the ardor with which Epameinondas inspired his soldiers before this final battle, says (vii. 5, 20), προθύμως μὲν ἐλευκοῦντο οἱ ἱππεῖς τὰ κράνη, κελεύοντος ἐκείνου· ~ἐπεγράφοντο~ δὲ καὶ τῶν Ἀρκάδων ὁπλῖται, ~ῥόπαλα ἔχοντες~, ὡς ~Θηβαῖοι ὄντες~· πάντες δὲ ἠκονῶντο καὶ λόγχας καὶ μαχαίρας, καὶ ἐλαμπρύνοντο τὰς ἀσπίδας.

It is hardly conceivable that these Arcadian clubmen should have possessed a shield and a full panoply. The language of Xenophon in calling them hoplites, and the term ἐπεγράφοντο, properly referring to the inscription on the shield, appear to be conceived in a spirit of contemptuous sneering, proceeding from Xenophon’s miso-Theban tendencies: “The Arcadian hoplites, with their clubs, put themselves forward to be as good as the Thebans.” That these tendencies of Xenophon show themselves in expressions very unbecoming to the dignity of history (though curious as evidences of the time), may be seen by vii. 5, 12, where he says of the Thebans,—ἐνταῦθα δὴ ~οἱ πῦρ πνέοντες~, οἱ νενικηκότες τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, οἱ τῷ παντὶ πλέονες, etc.

Both Tegea and Mantineia held several of these smaller Arcadian townships near them in a sort of dependence, and were anxious to extend this empire over others: during the Peloponnesian war, we find the Mantineians establishing and garrisoning a fortress at Kypsela among the Parrhasii, near the site in which Megalopolis was afterwards built.[772] But at this period, Sparta, as the political chief of Hellas,—having a strong interest in keeping all the Grecian towns, small and great, as much isolated from each other as possible, and in checking all schemes for the formation of local confederacies,—stood forward as the protectress of the autonomy of these smaller Arcadians, and drove back the Mantineians within their own limits.[773] At a somewhat later period, during the acmé of her power, a few years before the battle of Leuktra, she even proceeded to the extreme length of breaking up the unity of Mantineia itself, causing the walls to be razed, and the inhabitants to be again parcelled into their five original demes,—a violent arrangement, which the turn of political events very soon reversed.[774] It was not until after the battle of Leuktra and the depression of Sparta that any measures were taken for the formation of an Arcadian political confederacy;[775] and even then, the jealousies of the separate cites rendered it incomplete and short-lived. The great permanent change, the establishment of Megalopolis, was accomplished by the ascendency of Epameinondas. Forty petty Arcadian townships, among those situated to the west of Mount Mænalus, were aggregated into the new city: the jealousies of Tegea, Mantineia, and Kleitôr, were for a while suspended; and œkists came from all of them, as well as from the districts of the Mænalii and Parrhasii, in order to impart to the new establishment a genuine Pan-Arcadian character.[776] It was thus there arose for the first time a powerful city on the borders of Laconia and Messenia, rescuing the Arcadian townships from their dependence on Sparta, and imparting to them political interests of their own, which rendered them, both a check upon their former chief and a support to the reëstablished Messenians.

[772] Thucyd. v. 33, 47, 81.

[773] Thucyd. 1. c. Compare the instructive speech of Kleigenês, the envoy from Akanthus, addressed to the Lacedæmonians, B. C. 382 (Xen. Hellen. v. 2, 15-16).

[774] Xenoph. Hellen. v. 2, 1-6; Diodor. xv. 19.

[775] Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5, 10-11; vii. 1, 23-25.

[776] Pausan. viii. 27, 5. No œkist is mentioned from Orchomenus, though three of the petty townships _contributing_ (συντελοῦντα) to Orchomenus were embodied in the new city. The feud between the neighboring cities of Orchomenus and Mantineia was bitter (Xen. Hellen. vi. 5, 11-22). Orchomenus and Hêræa both opposed the political confederation of Arcadia.

The oration of Demosthenês, ὑπὲρ Μεγαλοπολιτῶν, strongly attests the importance of this city, especially c. 10,—ἐὰν μὲν ἀναιρεθῶσι καὶ διοικισθῶσιν, ἰσχυροῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις ~εὐθύς~ ἐστιν εἶναι, etc.

It has been necessary thus to bring the attention of the reader for one moment to events long posterior in the order of time (Megalopolis was founded in 370 B. C.), in order that he may understand, by contrast, the general course of those incidents of the earlier time, where direct accounts are wanting. The northern boundary of the Spartan territory was formed by some of the many small Arcadian townships or districts, several of which were successively conquered by the Spartans and incorporated with their dominion, though at what precise time we are unable to say. We are told that Charilaus, the reputed nephew and ward of Lykurgus, took Ægys, and that he also invaded the territory of Tegea, but with singular ill-success, for he was defeated and taken prisoner:[777] we also hear that the Spartans took Phigaleia by surprise in the 30th Olympiad, but were driven out again by the neighboring Arcadian Oresthasians.[778] During the second Messenian war, the Arcadians are represented as cordially seconding the Messenians: and it may seem perhaps singular that, while neither Mantineia nor Tegea are mentioned in this war, the more distant town of Orchomenus, with its king Aristokratês, takes the lead. But the facts of the contest come before us with so poetical a coloring, that we cannot venture to draw any positive inference as to the times to which they are referred.

[777] Pausan. iii. 2, 6; iii. 7, 3; viii. 48, 3.

[778] Pausan. viii. 39, 2.

Œnus[779] and Karystus seem to have belonged to the Spartans in the days of Alkman: moreover, the district called Skirītis bordering on the territory of Tegea,—as well as Belemina and Maleatis to the westward, and Karyæ to the eastward and south-eastward, of Skirītis,—forming altogether the entire northern frontier of Sparta, and all occupied by Arcadian inhabitants,—had been conquered and made part of the Spartan territory[780] before 600 B. C. And Herodotus tells us, that at this period the Spartan kings Leon and Hegesiklês contemplated nothing less than the conquest of entire Arcadia, and sent to ask from the Delphian oracle a blessing on their enterprise.[781] The priestess dismissed their wishes as extravagant, in reference to the whole of Arcadia, but encouraged them, though with the usual equivocations of language, to try their fortune against Tegea. Flushed with their course of previous success, not less than by the favorable construction which they put upon the words of the oracle, the Lacedæmonians marched against Tegea with such entire confidence of success, as to carry with them chains for the purpose of binding their expected prisoners. But the result was disappointment and defeat. They were repulsed with loss, and the prisoners whom they left behind, bound in the very chains which their own army had brought, were constrained to servile labor on the plain of Tegea,—the words of the oracle being thus literally fulfilled, though in a sense different from that in which the Lacedæmonians had first understood them.[782]

[779] Alkman, Fr. 15, Welcker; Strabo, x. p. 446.

[780] That the Skiritæ were Arcadians is well known (Thuc. v. 47; Steph. Byz. v. Σκίρος); the possession of Belemina was disputed with Sparta, in the days of her comparative humiliation, by the Arcadians: see Plutarch, Kleomenês, 4; Pausan. viii. 35, 4.

Respecting Karyæ (the border town of Sparta, where the διαβατήρια were sacrificed, Thuc. v. 55), see _Photius_ ~Καρυάτεια~—ἑορτὴ Ἀρτέμιδος· τὰς δὲ Καρύας Ἀρκάδων οὔσας ἀπετέμοντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι.

The readiness with which Karyæ and the Maleates revolted against Sparta after the battle of Leuktra, even before the invasion of Laconia by the Thebans, exhibits them apparently as conquered foreign dependencies of Sparta, without any kindred of race (Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5, 24-26; vii. 1, 28). Leuktron, in the Maleatis, seems to have formed a part of the territory of Megalopolis in the days of Kleomenês the Third (Plutarch, Kleomenês, 6); in the Peloponnesian war it was the frontier town of Sparta towards Mount Lykæum (Thuc. v. 53).

[781] Herod. i. 66. καταφρονήσαντες Ἀρκάδων κρέσσονες εἶναι, ἐχρηστηριάζοντο ἐν Δέλφοισι ~ἐπὶ πάσῃ τῇ Ἀρκάδων χωρῇ~.

[782] Herod. i. 67; Pausan. iii. 3, 5; vii. 45, 2.

Herodotus saw the identical chains suspended in the temple of Athênê Alea at Tegea.

For one whole generation, we are told, they were constantly unsuccessful in their campaigns against the Tegeans, and this strenuous resistance probably prevented them from extending their conquests farther among the petty states of Arcadia.

At length, in the reign of Anaxandridês and Aristô, the successors of Leon and Hegesiklês (about 560 B. C.), the Delphian oracle, in reply to a question from the Spartans,—which of the gods they ought to propitiate in order to become victorious,—enjoined them to find and carry to Sparta the bones of Orestês, son of Agamemnôn. After a vain search, since they did not know where the body of Orestês was to be found, they applied to the oracle for more specific directions, and were told that the son of Agamemnôn was buried at Tegea itself, in a place “where two blasts were blowing under powerful constraint,—where there was stroke and counter-stroke, and destruction upon destruction.” These mysterious words were elucidated by a lucky accident. During a truce with Tegea, Lichas, one of the chiefs of the three hundred Spartan chosen youth, who acted as the movable police of the country under the ephors, visited the place, and entered the forge of a blacksmith,—who mentioned to him, in the course of conversation, that, in sinking a well in his outer court, he had recently discovered a coffin containing a body seven cubits long; astounded at the sight, he had left it there undisturbed. It struck Lichas that the gigantic relic of aforetime could be nothing else but the corpse of Orestês, and he felt assured of this, when he reflected how accurately the indications of the oracle were verified; for there were the “two blasts blowing by constraint,” in the two bellows of the blacksmith: there was the “stroke and counter-stroke,” in his hammer and anvil, as well as the “destruction upon destruction,” in the murderous weapons which he was forging. Lichas said nothing, but returned to Sparta with his discovery, which he communicated to the authorities, who, by a concerted scheme, banished him under a pretended criminal accusation. He then returned again to Tegea, under the guise of an exile, prevailed upon the blacksmith to let to him the premises, and when he found himself in possession, dug up and carried off to Sparta the bones of the venerated hero.[783]

[783] Herod. i. 69-70.

From and after this fortunate acquisition, the character of the contest was changed; the Spartans found themselves constantly victorious over the Tegeans. But it does not seem that these victories led to any positive result, though they might perhaps serve to enforce the practical conviction of Spartan superiority; for the territory of Tegea remained unimpaired, and its autonomy noway restrained. During the Persian invasion, Tegea appears as the willing ally of Lacedæmon, and as the second military power in the Peloponnesus;[784] and we may fairly presume that it was chiefly the strenuous resistance of the Tegeans which prevented the Lacedæmonians from extending their empire over the larger portion of the Arcadian communities. These latter always maintained their independence, though acknowledging Sparta as the presiding power in Peloponnesus, and obeying her orders implicitly as to the disposal of their military force. And the influence which Sparta thus possessed over all Arcadia was one main item in her power, never seriously shaken until the battle of Leuktra; which took away her previous means of insuring success and plunder to her minor followers.[785]

[784] Herod. ix. 26.

[785] Xenoph. Hellen. v. 2, 19. Ὥσπερ Ἀρκάδες, ὅταν μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν ἴωσι, τά τε αὑτῶν σώζουσι καὶ τὰ ἀλλότρια ἁρπάζουσι, etc.

This was said to the Lacedæmonians about ten years before the battle of Leuktra.

Having thus related the extension of the power of Sparta on her northern or Arcadian frontier, it remains to mention her acquisitions on the eastern and north-eastern side, towards Argos. Originally, as has been before stated, not merely the province of Kynuria and the Thyreātis but also the whole coast down to the promontory of Malea, had either been part of the territory of Argos or belonged to the Argeian confederacy. We learn from Herodotus,[786] that before the time when the embassy from Crœsus, king of Lydia, came to solicit aid in Greece (about 547 B. C.), the whole of this territory had fallen into the power of Sparta; but how long before, or at what precise epoch, we have no information. A considerable victory is said to have been gained by the Argeians over the Spartans in the 27th Olympiad or 669 B. C., at Hysiæ, on the road between Argos and Tegea.[787] At that time it does not seem probable that Kynuria could have been in the possession of the Spartans,—so that we must refer the acquisition to some period in the following century; though Pausanias places it much earlier, during the reign of Theopompus,[788]—and Eusebius connects it with the first establishment of the festival called Gymnopædia at Sparta, in 678 B. C.

[786] Herod. i. 82.

[787] Pausan. ii. 25, 1.

[788] Pausan. iii. 7, 5.

About the year 547 B. C., the Argeians made an effort to reconquer Thyrea from Sparta, which led to a combat long memorable in the annals of Grecian heroism. It was agreed between the two powers that the possession of this territory should be determined by a combat of three hundred select champions on each side; the armies of both retiring, in order to leave the field clear. So undaunted and so equal was the valor of these two chosen companies, that the battle terminated by leaving only three of them alive,—Alkênôr and Chromius among the Argeians, Othryadês among the Spartans. The two Argeian warriors hastened home to report their victory, but Othryadês remained on the field, carried off the arms of the enemy’s dead into the Spartan camp, and kept his position until he was joined by his countrymen the next morning. Both Argos and Sparta claimed the victory for their respective champions, and the dispute after all was decided by a general conflict, in which the Spartans were the conquerors, though not without much slaughter on both sides. The brave Othryadês, ashamed to return home as the single survivor of the three hundred, fell upon his own sword on the field of battle.[789]

[789] Herod. i. 82; Strabo, viii. p. 376.

This defeat decided the possession of Thyrea, which did not again pass, until a very late period of Grecian history, under the power of Argos. The preliminary duel of three hundred, with its uncertain issue, though well established as to the general fact, was represented by the Argeians in a manner totally different from the above story, which seems to have been current among the Lacedæmonians.[790] But the most remarkable circumstance is, that more than a century afterwards,—when the two powers were negotiating for a renewal of the then expiring truce, the Argeians, still hankering after this their ancient territory, desired the Lacedæmonians to submit the question to arbitration; which being refused, they next stipulated for the privilege of trying the point in dispute by a duel similar to the former, at any time except during the prevalence of war or of epidemic disease. The historian tells us that the Lacedæmonians acquiesced in this proposition, though they thought it absurd,[791] in consequence of their anxiety to keep their relations with Argos at that time smooth and pacific. But there is no reason to imagine that the real duel, in which Othryadês contended, was considered as absurd at the time when it took place, or during the age immediately succeeding. It fell in with a sort of chivalrous pugnacity which is noticed among the attributes of the early Greeks,[792] and also with various legendary exploits, such as the single combat of Echemus and Hyllus, of Melanthus and Xanthus, of Menelaus and Paris, etc. Moreover, the heroism of Othryadês and his countrymen was a popular theme for poets, not only at the Spartan gymnopædia,[793] but also elsewhere, and appears to have been frequently celebrated. The absurdity attached to this proposition, then, during the Peloponnesian war,—in the minds even of the Spartans, the most old-fashioned and unchanging people in Greece,—is to be ascribed to a change in the Grecian political mind, at and after the Persian war. The habit of political calculation had made such decided progress among them, that the leading states especially had become familiarized with something like a statesmanlike view of their resources, their dangers, and their obligations. How lamentably deficient this sort of sagacity was during the Persian invasion, will appear when we come to describe that imminent crisis of Grecian independence: but the events of those days were well calculated to sharpen it for the future, and the Greeks of the Peloponnesian war had become far more refined political schemers than their forefathers. And thus it happened that the proposition to settle a territorial dispute by a duel of chosen champions, admissible and even becoming a century before, came afterwards to be derided as childish.

[790] The Argeians showed at Argos a statue of Perilaus, son of Alkênôr, killing Othryadês (Pausan. ii. 20, 6; ii. 38, 5: compare x. 9, 6, and the references in Larcher ad Herodot. i. 82). The narrative of Chrysermus, ἐν τρίτῳ Πελοποννησιακῶν (as given in Plutarch, Parallel. Hellenic. p. 306), is different in many respects.

Pausanias found the Thyreatis in possession of the Argeians (ii. 38, 5). They told him that they had recovered it by adjudication; when or by whom we do not know: it seems to have passed back to Argos before the close of the reign of Kleomenês the Third, at Sparta (220 B. C.), Polyb. iv. 36.

Strabo even reckons Prasiæ as Argeian, to the south of Kynuria (viii. p. 368), though in his other passage (p. 374) seemingly cited from Ephorus, it is treated as Lacedæmonian. Compare Manso, Sparta, vol. ii. Beilage i. p. 48.

Eusebius, placing this duel at a much earlier period (Ol. 27, 3, 678 B. C.), ascribes the first foundation of the Gymnopædia at Sparta to the desire of commemorating the event. Pausanias (iii. 7, 3) places it still farther back in the reign of Theopompus.

[791] Thucyd. v. 41. Τοῖς δὲ Λακεδαιμονίοις τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐδόκει μωρία εἶναι ταῦτα, ἔπειτα (ἐπεθύμουν γὰρ πάντως τὸ Ἄργος φίλιον ἔχειν) ξυνεχώρησαν ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἠξίουν, καὶ ξυνεγράψαντο.

[792] Herodot. vii. 9. Compare the challenge which Herodotus alleges to have been proclaimed to the Spartans by Mardonius, through a herald, just before the battle of Platæa (ix. 48).

[793] Athenæ. xv. p. 678.

The inhabitants of Kynuria are stated by Herodotus to have been Ionians, but completely Dorized through their long subjection to Argos, by whom they were governed as Periœki. Pausanias gives a different account of their race, which he traces to the eponymous hero Kynūrus, son of Perseus: but he does not connect them with the Kynurians whom he mentions in another place as a portion of the inhabitants of Arcadia.[794] It is evident that, even in the time of Herodotus, the traces of their primitive descent were nearly effaced. He says they were “Orneates and Periœki” to Argos; and it appears that the inhabitants of Orneæ also, whom Argos had reduced to the same dependent condition, traced their eponymous hero to an Ionic stock,—Orneus was the son of the Attic Erechtheus.[795] Strabo seems to have conceived the Kynurians as occupying originally, not only the frontier district of Argolis and Laconia, wherein Thyrea is situated, but also the north-western portion of Argolis, under the ridge called Lyrkeium, which separates the latter from the Arcadian territory of Stimphalus.[796] This ridge was near the town of Orneæ, which lay on the border of Argolis near the confines of Phlius; so that Strabo thus helps to confirm the statement of Herodotus, that the Orneates were a portion of Kynurians, held by Argos along with the other Kynurians in the condition of dependent allies and Periœki, and very probably also of Ionian origin.

[794] Herod. viii. 73; Pausan. iii. 2, 2; viii. 27, 3.

[795] Pausan. ii. 25, 5. Mannert (Geographie der Griechen und Römer Griechenland, book ii. ch. xix. p. 618) connects the Kynurians of Arcadia and Argolis, though Herodotus tells us that the latter were Ionians: he gives to this name much greater importance and extension than the evidence bears out.

[796] Strabo, viii. p. 370—ὁ Ἴναχος ἔχων τὰς πηγὰς ἐκ Λυρκείου τοῦ κατὰ Κυνουρίαν ὄρους τῆς Ἀρκαδίας. Coray and Grosskurd gain nothing here by the conjectural reading of Ἀργείας in place of Ἀρκαδίας, for the ridge of Lyrkeium ran between the two, and might, therefore be connected with either without impropriety.

The conquest of Thyrea (a district valuable to the Lacedæmonians, as we may presume from the large booty which the Argeians got from it during the Peloponnesian war)[797] was the last territorial acquisition made by Sparta. She was now possessed of a continuous dominion, comprising the whole southern portion of the Peloponnesus, from the southern bank of the river Nedon on the western coast, to the northern boundary of Thyreatis on the eastern coast. The area of her territory, including as it did both Laconia and Messenia, was equal to two-fifths of the entire peninsula, all governed from the single city, and for the exclusive purpose and benefit of the citizens of Sparta. Within all this wide area there was not a single community pretending to independent agency. The townships of the Periœki, and the villages of the Helots, were each individually unimportant; nor do we hear of any one of them presuming to treat with a foreign state: both consider themselves as nothing else but subjects of the Spartan ephors and their subordinate officers. They are indeed discontented subjects, hating as well as fearing their masters, and not to be trusted if a favorable opportunity for secure revolt presents itself. But no individual township or district is strong enough to stand up for itself, while combinations among them are prevented by the habitual watchfulness and unscrupulous precautions of the ephors, especially by that jealous secret police called the Krypteia, to which allusion has already been made.

[797] Thucyd. vi. 95.

Not only, therefore, was the Spartan territory larger and its population more numerous than that of any other state in Hellas, but its government was also more completely centralized and more strictly obeyed. Its source of weakness was the discontent of its Periœki and Helots, the latter of whom were not—like the slaves of other states—imported barbarians from different countries, and speaking a broken Greek, but genuine Hellens,—of one dialect and lineage, sympathizing with each other, and as much entitled to the protection of Zeus Hellanius as their masters,—from whom, indeed, they stood distinguished by no other line except the perfect training, individual and collective, which was peculiar to the Spartans. During the period on which we are at present dwelling, it does not seem that this discontent comes sensibly into operation; but we shall observe its manifestations very unequivocally after the Persian and during the Peloponnesian war.

To such auxiliary causes of Spartan predominance we must add another,—the excellent military position of Sparta, and the unassailable character of Laconia generally. On three sides that territory is washed by the sea,[798] with a coast remarkably dangerous and destitute of harbors; hence Sparta had nothing to apprehend from this quarter until the Persian invasion and its consequences,—one of the most remarkable of which was, the astonishing development of the Athenian naval force. The city of Sparta, far removed from the sea, was admirably defended by an almost impassable northern frontier, composed of those districts which we have observed above to have been conquered from Arcadia,—Karyātis, Skirītis, Maleātis, and Beleminātis. The difficulty as well as danger of marching into Laconia by these mountain passes, noticed by Euripides, was keenly felt by every enemy of the Lacedæmonians, and has been powerfully stated by a first-rate modern observer, Colonel Leake.[799] No site could be better chosen for holding the key of all the penetrable passes than that of Sparta. This well-protected frontier was a substitute more than sufficient for fortifications to Sparta itself, which always maintained, down to the times of the despot Nabis, its primitive aspect of a group of adjacent hill-villages rather than a regular city.

[798] Xenophon, Hellen. iv. 8, 7: φοβούμενος τὴν ἀλιμενότητα τῆς χώρας.

[799] Xenoph. Hellen. v. 5. 10; Eurip. ap. Strabo, viii. p. 366; Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. iii. c. xxii. p. 25.

“It is to the strength of the frontiers, and the comparatively large extent of country inclosed within them, that we must trace the primary cause of the Lacedæmonian power. These enabled the people, when strengthened by a rigid military discipline, and put in motion by an ambitious spirit, first to triumph over their weaker neighbors of Messenia, by this additional strength to overawe the disunited republics of Arcadia, and at length for centuries to hold an acknowledged military superiority over every other state in Greece.

“It is remarkable that all the principal passes into Laconia lead to one point: this point is Sparta; a fact which shows at once how well the position of that city was chosen for the defence of the province, and how well it was adapted, especially as long as it continued to be unwalled, to maintain a perpetual vigilance and readiness for defence, which are the surest means of offensive success.

“The natural openings into the plain of Sparta are only two; one by the upper Eurotas, as the course of that river above Sparta may be termed; the other by its only large branch Œnus, now the Kelefina, which, as I have already stated, joins the Eurotas opposite to the north-eastern extremity of Sparta. All the natural approaches to Sparta from the northward lead to one or the other of these two valleys. On the side of Messenia, the northerly prolongation of Mount Taygetum, which joins Mount Lyceum at the pass of Andania, now the pass of Makryplái, furnishes a continued barrier of the loftiest kind, admitting only of routes easily defensible; and which,—whether from the Cromitis of Arcadia to the south-westward of the modern Londári, from the Stenykleric plain, from the plain of the Pamisus, or from Pheræ, now Kalamáta,—all descend into the valley of the upper Eurotas, and conduct to Sparta by Pellana. There was, indeed, a branch of the last-mentioned route, which descended into the Spartan plain at the modern Mistra, and which must have been a very frequent communication between Sparta and the lower part of Messenia; but, like the other direct passes over Taygetum, it was much more difficult and defensible than those which I have called the natural entrances of the province.”

When, along with such territorial advantages, we contemplate the personal training peculiar to the Spartan citizens, as yet undiminished in their numbers,—combined with the effect of that training upon Grecian sentiment, in inspiring awe and admiration,—we shall not be surprised to find that, during the half-century which elapsed between the year 600 B. C. and the final conquest of Thyreātis from Argos, Sparta had acquired and begun to exercise a recognized ascendency over all the Grecian states. Her military force was at that time superior to that of any of the rest, in a degree much greater than it afterwards came to be; for other states had not yet attained their maximum, and Athens in particular was far short of the height which she afterwards reached. In respect to discipline as well as number, the Spartan military force had even at this early period reached a point which it did not subsequently surpass; while in Athens, Thebes, Argos, Arcadia, and even Elis (as will be hereafter shown), the military training in later days received greater attention, and improved considerably. The Spartans (observes Aristotle)[800] brought to perfection their gymnastic training and their military discipline, at a time when other Greeks neglected both the one and the other: their early superiority was that of the trained men over the untrained, and ceased in after-days, when other states came to subject their citizens to systematic exercises of analogous character or tendency. This fact,—the early period at which Sparta attained her maximum of discipline, power, and territory,—is important to bear in mind, when we are explaining the general acquiescence which her ascendency met with in Greece, and which her subsequent acts would certainly not have enabled her to earn. That acquiescence first began, and became a habit of the Grecian mind, at a time when Sparta had no rival to come near her,—when she had completely shot ahead of Argos,—and when the vigor of the Lykurgean discipline had been manifested in a long series of conquests, made during the stationary period of other states, and ending only, to use the somewhat exaggerated phrase of Herodotus, when she had subdued the greater part of Peloponnesus.[801]

[800] Aristot. Polit. viii. 3, 4. Ἔτι δ᾽ αὐτοὺς τοὺς Λάκωνας ἴσμεν, ἕως μὲν αὐτοὶ προσήδρευον ταῖς φιλοπονίαις, ὑπερέχοντας τῶν ἄλλων· νῦν δὲ, καὶ τοῖς γυμνασίοις καὶ τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ἀγῶσι, λειπομένους ἑτέρων: οὐ γὰρ τῷ τοὺς νέους γυμνάζειν τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον διέφερον, ἀλλὰ τῷ μόνον μὴ πρὸς ἀσκοῦντας ἀσκεῖν.... Ἀνταγωνιστὰς γὰρ τῆς παιδείας νῦν ἔχουσι· πρότερον δὲ οὐκ εἶχον.

[801] Herodot. i. 68. ἤδη δέ σφι καὶ ἡ πολλὴ τῆς Πελοποννήσου ἦν κατεστραμμένη.

Our accounts of the memorable military organization of Sparta are scanty, and insufficient to place the details of it clearly before us. The arms of the Spartans, as to all material points, were not different from those of other Greek hoplites. But one grand peculiarity is observable from the beginning, as an item in the Lykurgean institutions. That lawgiver established military divisions quite distinct from the civil divisions, whereas in the other states of Greece, until a period much later than that which we have now reached, the two were confounded,—the hoplites or horsemen of the same tribe or ward being marshalled together on the field of battle. Every Lacedæmonian was bound to military service from the age of twenty to sixty, and the ephors, when they sent forth an expedition, called to arms all the men within some given limit of age. Herodotus tells us that Lykurgus established both the syssitia, or public mess, and the enômoties and triākads, or the military subdivisions peculiar to Sparta.[802] The triākads are not mentioned elsewhere, nor can we distinctly make out what they were; but the enômoty was the special characteristic of the system, and the pivot upon which all its arrangements turned. It was a small company of men, the number of whom was variable, being given differently at twenty-five, thirty-two, or thirty-six men,—drilled and practised together in military evolutions, and bound to each other by a common oath.[803] Each enômoty had a separate captain, or enomotarch, the strongest and ablest soldier of the company, who always occupied the front rank, and led the enômoty when it marched in single file, giving the order of march, as well as setting the example. If the enômoty was drawn up in three, or four, or six files, the enomotarch usually occupied the front post on the left, and care was taken that both the front-rank men and the rear-rank men, of each file, should be soldiers of particular merit.[804]

[802] Herodot. i. 67; compare Larcher’s note.

Concerning the obscure and difficult subject of the military arrangements of Sparta, see Cragius, Repub. Laced. iv. 4; Manso, Sparta, ii. Beilage 18, p. 224; O. Müller, Hist. Dorians, iii. 12; Dr. Arnold’s note on Thucydidês, v. 68; and Dr. Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. i. Appendix 3, p. 520.

[803] Pollux, i. 10, 129. Ἰδίως μέντοι τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων, ἐνωμοτία, καὶ μόρα: compare Suidas and Hesych. v. Ἐνωμοτία; Xenoph. Rep. Lacon. c. 11; Thucyd. v. 67-68; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 12.

Suidas states the enômoty at twenty-five men: in the Lacedæmonian army which fought at the first battle of Mantineia (418 B. C.), it seems to have consisted of about thirty-two men (Thuc. _l. c._): at the battle of Leuktra of thirty-six men (Xen. Hellen. _l. c._). But the language of Xenophon and Thucydidês does not imply that the number of each enômoty was equal.

[804] O. Müller states that the enomotarch, after a παραγωγὴ, or deployment into phalanx, stood on the _right_ hand, which is contrary to Xenoph. Rep. Lac. 11, 9.—Ὅτε δὲ ὁ ἄρχων ~εὐώνυμος~ γίγνεται, οὐδ᾽ ἐν τούτῳ μειονεκτεῖν ἡγοῦνται, ἀλλ᾽ ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ πλεονεκτεῖν,—the ἄρχων was the first enomotarch of the lochus, the πρωτοστάτης (as appears from 11, 5), when the enômoty marched in single file. To put the ἡγεμὼν on the right flank, was done _occasionally_ for special reason,—ἢν δὲ ~ποτε ἕνεκά τινος~ δοκῇ ξυμφέρειν, τον ἡγεμόνα ~δέξιον~ κέρας ἔχειν, etc. I understand Xenophon’s description of the παραγωγὴ, or deployment, differently from Müller,—it rather seems that the enômoties which stood first made a side-movement to the left, so that the first enomotarch still maintained his place on the left, at the same time that the opportunity was created for the enômoties in the rear to come up and form equal front, τῷ ἐνωμοτάρχῃ παρεγγυᾶται εἰς μέτωπον παρ᾽ ἀσπίδα καθίστασθαι,—the words ~παρ᾽ ἀσπίδα~ have reference, as I imagine, to the proceeding of the first enomotarch, who set the example of side-movement to the left-hand, as it is shown by the words which follow,—καὶ ~διὰ παντὸς οὖτος~ ἔστ᾽ ἂν ἡ φάλαγξ ἐναντία καταστῇ. The phalanx was constituted when all the _lochi_ formed an equal and continuous front, whether the sixteen enômoties, of which each lochus was composed, might be each in one file, in three files, or in six files.

It was upon these small companies that the constant and severe Lacedæmonian drilling was brought to act. They were taught to march in concert, to change rapidly from line to file, to wheel right or left in such manner as that the enomotarch and the other protostates, or front-rank men, should always be the persons immediately opposed to the enemy.[805] Their step was regulated by the fife, which played in martial measures peculiar to Sparta, and was employed in actual battle as well as in military practice; and so perfectly were they habituated to the movements of the enômoty, that, if their order was deranged by any adverse accident, scattered soldiers could spontaneously form themselves into the same order, each man knowing perfectly the duties belonging to the place into which chance had thrown him.[806] Above the enômoty were several larger divisions,—the pentekostys, the lochus, and the mora,[807] of which latter there seem to have been _six_ in all. Respecting the number of each division, and the proportion of the larger to the smaller, we find statements altogether different, yet each resting upon good authority,—so that we are driven to suppose that there was no peremptory standard, and that the enômoty comprised twenty-five, thirty-two, or thirty-six men; the pentekostys, two or four enômoties; the lochus, two or four pentekosties, and the mora, four hundred, five hundred, six hundred, or nine hundred men,—at different times, or according to the limits of age which the ephors might prescribe for the men whom they called into the field.[808]

[805] See Xenoph. Anab. iv. 8, 10, upon the advantage of attacking the enemy with ὄρθιοι λόχοι, in which case the strongest and best soldiers all came first into conflict. It is to be recollected, however, that the practice of the Cyreian troops cannot be safely quoted as authority for the practice at Sparta. Xenophon and his colleagues established lochi, pentekosties, and enômoties in the Cyreian army: the lochus consisted of one hundred men, but the numbers of the other two divisions are not stated (Anab. iii. 4, 21; iv. 3, 26: compare Arrian, Tactic. cap. 6).

[806] The words of Thucydides indicate the peculiar marshalling of the Lacedæmonians, as distinguished both from their enemies and from their allies at the battle of Mantineia,—καὶ εὐθὺς ὑπὸ σπουδῆς καθίσταντο ἐς ~κόσμον τὸν ἑαυτῶν~, Ἄγιδος τοῦ βασιλέως ἕκαστα ἐξηγουμένου κατὰ νόμον: again, c. 68.

About the music of the flute or fife, Thucyd. v. 69; Xen. Rep. Lac. 13, 9; Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 22.

[807] Meursius, Dr. Arnold, and Rachetti (Della Milizia dei Grechi Antichi, Milan, 1807, p. 166) all think that lochus and mora were different names for the same division; but if this is to be reconciled with the statement of Xenophon in Repub. Lac. c. 11, we must suppose an actual change of nomenclature after the Peloponnesian war, which appears to be Dr. Arnold’s opinion,—yet it is not easy to account for.

There is one point in Dr. Thirlwall’s Appendix which is of some importance, and in which I cannot but dissent from his opinion. He says, after stating the nomenclature and classification of the Spartan military force as given by Xenophon, “Xenophon speaks only of Spartans, as appears by the epithet πολιτικῶν,” p. 521: the words of Xenophon are, Ἑκάστη δὲ τῶν πολιτικῶν μορῶν ἔχει πολέμαρχον ἕνα, etc. (Rep. Lac. 11.)

It appears to me that Xenophon is here speaking of the aggregate Lacedæmonian heavy-armed force, including both Spartans and Periœki,—not of Spartans alone. The word πολιτικῶν does not mean Spartans as distinguished from Periœki, but Lacedæmonians as distinguished from allies. Thus, when Agesilaus returns home from the blockade of Phlius, Xenophon tells us that ταῦτα ποιήσας τοὺς μὲν συμμάχους ἀφῆκε, τὸ δὲ πολιτικὸν οἴκαδε ἀπήγαγε (Hellen. v. 3, 25).

O. Müller, also, thinks that the whole number of five thousand seven hundred and forty men, who fought at the first battle of Mantineia, in the thirteenth year of the Peloponnesian war, were furnished by the city of Sparta itself (Hist. of Dorians,