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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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]
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]
What remains fixed in the system is, first, the small number, though varying within certain limits, of the elementary company called enômoty, trained to act together, and composed of men nearly of the same age,[809] in which every man knew his place; secondly, the scale of divisions and the hierarchy of officers, each rising above the other,—the enômotarch, the pentekontêr, the lochage, and the polemarch, or commander of the mora,—each having the charge of their respective divisions. Orders were transmitted from the king, as commander-in-chief, through the polemarchs to the lochages,—from the lochages to the pentekonters, and then from the latter to the enômotarchs, each of whom caused them to be executed by his enômoty. As all these men had been previously trained to the duties of their respective stations, the Spartan infantry possessed the arrangements and aptitudes of a standing army. Originally, they seem to have had no cavalry at all,[810] and when cavalry was at length introduced into their system, it was of a very inferior character, no provision having been made for it in the Lykurgean training. But the military force of the other cities of Greece, even down to the close of the Peloponnesian war, enjoyed little or no special training, having neither any small company like the enômoty, consisting of particular men drilled to act together,—no fixed and disciplined officers,—nor triple scale of subordination and subdivision. Gymnastics, and the use of arms, made a part of education everywhere, and it is to be presumed that no Grecian hoplite was entirely without some practice of marching in line and military evolutions, inasmuch as the obligation to serve was universal and often enforced. But such practice was casual and unequal, nor had any individual of Argos or Athens a fixed military place and duty. The citizen took arms among his tribe, under a taxiarch, chosen from it for the occasion, and was placed in a rank or line wherein neither his place nor his immediate neighbors were predetermined. The tribe appears to have been the only military classification known to Athens,[811] and the taxiarch the only tribe officer for infantry, as the phylarch was for cavalry, under the general-in-chief. Moreover, orders from the general were proclaimed to the line collectively by a herald of loud voice, not communicated to the taxiarch so as to make him responsible for the proper execution of them by his division. With an arrangement thus perfunctory and unsystematized, we shall be surprised to find how well the military duties were often performed: but every Greek who contrasted it with the symmetrical structure of the Lacedæmonian armed force, and with the laborious preparation of every Spartan for his appropriate duty, felt an internal sentiment of inferiority, which made him willingly accept the headship of “these professional artists in the business of war,”[812] as they are often denominated.
It was through the concurrence of these various circumstances that the willing acknowledgment of Sparta as the leading state of Hellas became a part of Grecian habitual sentiment, during the interval between about 600 B. C. and 547 B. C. During this period too, chiefly, Greece and her colonies were ripening into a sort of recognized and active partnership. The common religious assemblies, which bound the parts together, not only acquired greater formality and more extended development, but also became more numerous and frequent,—while the Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean games were exalted into a national importance, approaching to that of the Olympic. The recognized superiority of Sparta thus formed part and parcel of the first historical aggregation of the Grecian states. It was about the year 547 B. C., that Crœsus of Lydia, when pressed by Cyrus and the Persians, solicited aid from Greece, addressing himself to the Spartans as confessed presidents of the whole Hellenic body.[813] And the tendencies then at work, towards a certain degree of increased intercourse and coöperation among the dispersed members of the Hellenic name, were doubtless assisted by the existence of a state recognized by all as the first,—a state whose superiority was the more readily acquiesced in, because it was earned by a painful and laborious discipline, which all admired, but none chose to copy.[814]