Spartan Constitution. 43 princes of Greece^. It is also highly improbable that the chiefs of a conquering aristocracy should have succeeded so soon in obtaining a despotic power over those by whose efforts the country had just been subdued. The account of Ephorus seems to be no further true, than that in early times the Spartans, by reason either of their small numbers, or their unsettled dominion, were more liberal in admitting strangers to the rights of citizenship, a tradition alluded to by Aristotle^; and that the kings had at one time arrogated a greater power than belonged to their successors after the Lycurgean legislation^ ; but the other circumstances of his narrative bear strong marks of the rationalizing and mo- dernizing spirit which pervades all his accounts of early times. After making the statement concerning Philonomuss re- ward, Ephorus proceeds to say that the Perioeci were obedient indeed to the Spartans, but nevertheless enjoyed an equality of rights, sharing both in the rights of citizenship and in public offices : but that Agis the son of Eurysthenes took away their equality, and made them tributary to Sparta : that the in- habitants of Helos resisted and were made slaves, whence arose the class of Helots. Now in the first place it is difficult to conceive how the Perioeci could have been obedient to the Spartans, or at least how the Spartans could have ensured their obedience, if they had possessed all the rights and advantages of Spartan citizen- '^ ' AKpo-TroXi^ oXLyapxt^Kov Kal piOvapyiKoVy SijfxoKpaTLKov 3' 6/xaoTt;§, dpLarTOKpari- Kov c ovSeTepov, dxXd fidWov iax^P^'- "tottol nrXelovs. AristOt. Pol. Vii. 11. ^ Aeyouct 3' cJs eirl fxev twv wpoTepwv ^aaCKetav fieTedlSoaav ttJ's TroXiTeia^, Pol. IT. 9. Herodotus however says that in early times they were l^eivoLtriv dirpoa-pLLKTOL^ I. Qb, ^ Herodotus i. 65. and Thucydides i. 18. merely state that before Lycurgus the Spartans were ill governed and torn by seditions : but when Thucydides says that Sparta del di-vpavvevTo^ rjv^ he appears only to refer to the times after Lycurgus. Aristotle Pol. v. 12. cites the reign of Charilaus as an example of a change from Tupavuk to aristocracy. Comp. Heraclid. Pont. Pol. 2. Kal t6v XdpLWov TvpawLKoo^ dpxouTa fieTeiTTTifTe (Lycurgus.) The passage of Isocrates de Pace p. 178. C. which appears to contradict Panath. p. 270. A. is satisfactorily explained by JMr Clinton, F. H. Introd. p. v. n. z. Miiller, Dor. Vol. ii. p. 12. n. h. misinterprets Strabo VIII. p. 365. ol oe K'aTao-xoVTes t)]v AaKiaviK^v Kal KaT dpxd's p-^v €(T(t)(pp6vovv^ by referring these words to internal quiet; Strabo means that at first they made no foreign conquests, and did not aim at external ascendency.
