[625] One half was paid by the enslaved Messenians (Tyrtæus, Frag. 4, Bergk): ἥμισυ πᾶν, ὅσσον κάρπον ἄρουσα φέρει.
[626] Strabo, viii. p. 362. Stephanus Byz. alludes to this total of one hundred townships in his notice of several different items among them,—Ἀνθάνα—πόλις Λακωνικὴ μία τῶν ἑκατον; also, v. Ἀφροδισιὰς, Βοῖαι, Δυῤῥάχιον, etc: but he probably copied Strabo, and, therefore, cannot pass for a distinct authority. The total of one hundred townships belongs to the maximum of Spartan power, after the conquest and before the severance of Messenia; for Aulôn, Boiæ, and Methônê (the extreme places) are included among them.
Mr. Clinton (Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 401) has collected the names of above sixty out of the one hundred.
[627] Thucyd. iv. 53.
[628] Xenophon, Hellen. iv. 5, 11; Herod. ix. 7; Thucyd. v. 18-23. The Amyklæan festival of the Hyacinthia, and the Amyklæan temple of Apollo, seem to stand foremost in the mind of the Spartan authorities. Αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ ἐγγύτατα τῶν περιοίκων (Thucyd. iv. 8), who are ready before the rest, and march against the Athenians at Pylus, probably include the Amyklæans.
Laconia generally is called by Thucydidês (iii. 16) as the περιοικὶς of Sparta.
[629] The word περίοικοι is sometimes used to signify simply “surrounding neighbor states,” in its natural geographical sense: see Thucyd. i. 17, and Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 1.
But the more usual employment of it is, to mean, the unprivileged or less privileged members of the same political aggregate living without the city, in contrast with the full-privileged burghers who lived within it. Aristotle uses it to signify, in Krête, the class corresponding to the Lacedæmonian Helots (Pol. ii. 7, 3): there did not exist in Krête any class corresponding to the Lacedæmonian Periœki. In Krête, there were not two stages of inferiority,—there was only one, and that one is marked by the word περίοικοι; while the Lacedæmonian Periœkus had the Helot below him. To an Athenian the word conveyed the idea of undefined degradation.
To understand better the status of the Periœkus, we may contrast him with the Metœkus, or Metic. The latter resides in the city, but he is an alien resident on sufferance, not a native: he pays a special tax, stands excluded from all political functions, and cannot even approach the magistrate except through a friendly citizen, or Prostatês (επὶ προστάτον οἰκεῖν—Lycurgus cont. Leocrat. c. 21-53): he bears arms for the defence of the state. The situation of a Metic was, however, very different in different cities of Greece. At Athens, that class were well-protected in person and property, numerous and domiciliated: at Sparta, there were at first none,—the Xenêlasy excluded them; but this must have been relaxed long before the days of Agis the Third.
The Periœkus differs from the Metic, in being a native of the soil, subject by birth to the city law.