It is not difficult to prolong the associations with Homeric Laconia by following Helen on her guilty flight southward; lingering to see Amyclæ, a rich city in Homeric times, and the beehive tomb of Vaphio, which in 1889 yielded up two incomparable vessels of gold now in the Museum at Athens; and going on to the busy seaport town of Gytheion, from whose docks Paris took his stolen bride to the little island of Cranaë, now Marathonisi, before spreading his defiant sails for the longer voyage. But sooner or later the fact of the Dorian invasion must be reckoned with, and the resultant birth at Sparta of a civilization totally at odds with that which it displaced.
In Laconia the invasion was one of conquest and subjection, and the victors prided themselves on keeping their blood pure, much as the Laconian Maniotes of modern times have clung fiercely to their Spartan descent. Sparta became the Dorian city par excellence, the protagonist of Dorian ideals, the natural leader of the forces which both in war and peace were in opposition to the Ionic elements in Greek life. The historical events in this development are so interwoven with the history of the other states of Greece, especially with that of Athens, that they will already have become familiar to travellers who visit Sparta last. The conquest of Messenia first increased her resources. By the middle of the sixth century she won signal victories over Tegea and Argos and became the head of the Peloponnesian Confederacy, which included every state in the Peloponnesus except Achæa and Argos. Before the end of the century she was the leading state of Greece, for Thessaly was losing ground and Athens had not yet risen. In the first part of the fifth century Sparta was the natural leader of the Greek allies against Persia, and in the autumn of 481 B. C. was the head of the congress at the Isthmus. To her generals was given the command of both the army and the navy. But her conduct of the wars at best did not increase her prestige, nor did she afterwards exhibit any skill in using new conditions. This was the opportunity of Ionic Athens to create the greatest period of Greek history. But Sparta was also strong and possessed in Brasidas a general unparalleled among the Laconians for eager enterprise, trustworthiness and personal popularity. A final struggle was inevitable. The Dorians won, and, at the end of the fifth century, once more for a generation held the balance of power in Greece. But Sparta’s despotism within the Peloponnesus and her desire for foreign aggrandizement created new hostilities. Early in the fourth century Persia undermined her maritime power, and Greek friendships as strange as the Æschylean truce between fire and water were formed to her detriment. Athens and Thebes, Corinth and Argos forgot old enmities in hatred of Sparta, but she maintained her supremacy and forced upon Greece the arbitration of the Persian king. For fifteen years Greek politics veered hither and thither, and then at Leuctra Epaminondas conquered Sparta and won the leadership of Greece for Thebes. His death gave one more opportunity to Athens, but before she could use it Macedon arose and at Chæronea united her with Sparta in a common humiliation. Never again did either Dorian or Ionian state have power to alarm the other.
Thucydides described Sparta as a straggling village like the ancient towns of Hellas. Polybius added that it was roughly circular in shape and level, although it inclosed certain uneven and hilly places. It had no real acropolis, but the highest of its several hills received this conventional name; and it was not fortified by walls until long after the greatest days of its history. Four districts or wards, Pitane, apparently the aristocratic quarter, Limnæ, Cynosura, and Mesoa, perhaps represented an early group of villages which later were united in one city.
This city was extraordinarily barren of artistic adornment. The citizens of no other leading state in the whole of Greece were so indifferent to the value of architecture and sculpture, nor is it likely that they were perturbed by the prophecy of Thucydides: “If the community of Lacedæmon should become a desert with only the temples and ground foundations remaining, I think that, after the lapse of much time, men of the future would be very slow to believe that the power of the Lacedæmonians was equal to their fame. And yet they possess two of the five divisions of the Peloponnesus and hold the hegemony of the whole and of many outside allies. But this community is not a city regularly built with costly temples and edifices and would seem rather insignificant.”
Temples and edifices of course there were for the business of life and of religion, but the need for them was not, as in Athens, or even in certain cities of rude Arcadia, identified with the larger need of inspiring or importing the genius of architect, sculptor, and painter. Sparta had an early school of sculpture, influenced by Cretan teachers, specimens of whose work may be seen in the Museum. But the impulse shrivelled and died in an uncongenial atmosphere. Nor do we find the Spartans in the great artistic centuries clamouring for the work of foreign artists as did the towns of “stupid” Bœotia. The British School of Archæology is successfully engaged in the exploration of Sparta, but we cannot anticipate the discovery of statues like the Hermes of Olympia or the restoration of buildings like the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi.
With this chastening of his imagination the traveller may turn his attention to the few discoveries which up to this time have been made. By far the most significant of these are fragmentary remains of the temple of Athena Chalkiœkos and of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. Athena’s Brazen House, existing in some form from a very early epoch, was so associated with the public life of the city that it became known to foreigners as an object of peculiar national sentiment. Euripides makes the Trojan women attribute to Helen a desire to see it once more when, praying to die at sea before the consummation of their captivity, they seek to involve her in their own fate:—
“And, God, may Helen be there,
With mirrors of gold,
Decking her face so fair,
Girl-like; and hear and stare