This estimate is not far removed from that of Colonel Leake, towards the beginning of the present century, who considers that there were then in Mani (the same territory) one hundred and thirty towns and villages; and this too in a state of society exceedingly disturbed and insecure,—where private feuds and private towers, or pyrghi, for defence, were universal, and in parts of which, Colonel Leake says, “I see men preparing the ground for cotton, with a dagger and pistols at their girdles. This, it seems, is the ordinary armor of the cultivator when there is no particular suspicion of danger: the shepherd is almost always armed with a musket.” ... “The Maniotes reckon their population at thirty thousand, and their muskets at ten thousand.” (Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. i. ch. vii. pp. 243, 263-266.)
Now, under the dominion of Sparta, all Laconia doubtless enjoyed complete internal security, so that the idea of the cultivator tilling his land in arms would be unheard of. Reasoning upon the basis of what has just been stated about the Maniote population and number of townships, one hundred πόλεις, for all Laconia, is a very moderate computation.
[720] Aristot. Λακων. Πολιτεία, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vii. 18.
I agree with M. Boeckh, that Pindar himself identifies this march of the Ægeids to Amyklæ with the original Herakleid conquest of Peloponnesus. (Notæ Criticæ ad Pindar. Pyth. v. 74, p. 479.)
[721] Pausan. iii. 2, 6; iii. 12, 7.
[722] Pausan. iii. 22, 5.
[723] Pausan. iii. 19, 5.
[724] Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 5, 11.
[725] Pausan. iii. 2, 7; iii. 20, 6. Strabo, viii. p. 363.
If it be true, as Pausanias states, that the Argeians aided Helus to resist, their assistance must probably have been given by sea; perhaps from Epidaurus Limêra, or Prasiæ, when they formed part of the Argeian federation.