The lower ranges of Taÿgetus above Sparta, strangely suggesting both in form and colour the front view of a line of gigantic elephants, afford a fine contrast to the sharp angles of the snowy heights above. The point of view is immediately in front of the new museum; and the houses at the foot of the mountain belong to the east end of new Sparta. A Græco-Roman sarcophagus of marble and architectural fragments are lying in the foreground.
freedom but no political rights. In general, their relations with these people were friendly enough. It was owing to the need of providing an outlet for the surplus rural population and meeting their aspirations that the colony of Tarentum was founded in 707 B.C. The colonising of Thera (Santorin—which became in turn the mother of the Greek colony of Cyrene in North Africa), and the Dorian settlements in the south-west of Asia Minor, took place much earlier.
The number of fully qualified Spartan citizens was never very great, some 8000 or 9000, with a tendency to decrease owing to the subdivision of family property rendering them unable to contribute their quota to the public mess, debarred as they were from engaging in agriculture or other industry. They had constantly to guard against a revolt on the part of the helots or slave population, who were bound to the soil and cultivated the lands of their Spartan masters. They availed themselves of their services as light-armed troops, but so suspicious were they of them that they never hung up their shields without detaching their holding-rings from them, for fear they might be snatched up and used against them. Their treatment of the helots was frequently cruel and oppressive. They had a system of secret police, under which three hundred of their strongest young men were charged with the duty of detecting any signs of disloyalty among the serfs, and putting the suspected to death without a trial. At the time of the Peloponnesian war they were believed to have been guilty of an atrocity of this kind of a peculiarly revolting character, when they were in great dread of a native insurrection. They announced that liberty was to be conferred on those who had distinguished themselves in the recent war, and invited all such to apply for their reward. A great many did so, and about two thousand of them were formally emancipated, and led in procession to the temples with wreaths upon their heads. But immediately afterwards they all disappeared, put to death in some mysterious way, which was never made public. This we have from Thucydides, a contemporary historian.
Such things were little fitted to make Sparta a “Liberator of the Greeks,” as she professed to be when seeking to crush the imperial power of Athens; and, as soon as her military power began to decline, she gradually lost her influence. Yet it should not be forgotten that after the battle of Ægospotami (404 B.C.), when the Athenian empire was shattered and its capital lay at the mercy of the Peloponnesian allies, the Spartans refused to assent to the proposal of Corinth and Thebes that Athens should be destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery—declaring that they could never be a party to such treatment of a city which had laid all Greece under obligations by its conduct at the time of the Persian invasion. It is also to the credit of Sparta that as late as 338 B.C. she, alone of all the Greek states, refused to submit to Philip, who ravaged her territory, but failed to take the city, as Epaminondas had also failed to do, when he occupied the country a generation before. A hundred years later an earnest attempt was made by two Spartan kings, Agis IV. and Cleomenes III., to revive the ancient discipline and government; and some measure of immediate success was attained. But it was only the last flicker of the expiring flame. The battle of Sellasia in 221 B.C. put an end for ever to the Heracleid kingdom, and in the next generation Philopœmen abolished what was still left of the Lycurgean constitution. Thenceforth the greatness of Sparta was a thing of the past.
“These are the walls of Lacedæmon,” said Agesilaus on one occasion, as he pointed to the citizens in arms. The truth of his words was proved more than once, as we have just seen. But he might also have pointed to the mountain barriers by which the country was hemmed in on every side except towards the sea, where invaders were confronted by a dangerous and inhospitable coast. The city described by Thucydides lay on the western side of the river Eurotas, in a plain four or five miles in breadth and about eighteen miles in length. It presented the appearance of a number of adjoining villages, built on low hills; and in this respect it has been compared to ancient Rome. The situation is beautiful, especially as one looks west upon the grand range of Taÿgetus, its lower slopes and valleys clothed with the richest vegetation, while its serried peaks, extending for miles towards Cape Matapan on the south, rise into the region of perpetual snow. The site of the ancient city is for the most part covered over with olive-groves and corn-fields and other vegetation. Traces of a large theatre have been found, and there is a massive stone structure which goes by the name of Leonidas’ tomb. There are a few other remains, but none of any great interest.