44 Dr Arnold on the ship. The distinction between Spartans and Perioeci would have been a distinction without a difference, a mere variety of name^ if a Perioecus could be elected to the chief magis- tracies and vote in the supreme legislative assembly of the state. Nor is it more probable of early than of later times that the inhabitants of remote towns should have be- longed to the Spartan community, and been admitted to the Spartan ecclesia. (See Miiller, b. in. c. 2 ^ 2). Again, it must be allowed that the Dorians formed an aristocratic order from their very first settlement in Sparta, and that their polity was always founded on subject and inferior classes. Now Ephorus says that the Perioeci were nearly their equals, and were not tributary, and that the order of Helots was not instituted by the disfranchisement of some of the Perioeci till the first generation after the conquest. Who then were the slaves in the reigns of Eurysthenes and Procles? Who in those early times enabled the Spartans to enjoy an ex- emption from trade and agriculture, by tilling the lands of which the Achaean Perioeci had just been dispossessed.? It is so hard to believe that a conquering aristocracy should have willingly admitted the natives to such privileges as Ephorus describes, or that, if they were admitted, as in Argos just before the Persian war, their admission should have been followed by no dangerous consequences to the Spartans, that it seems much safer to reject the statements of Ephorus, so far as to suppose that the Achaeans never were laovojuoi with the Spartans, nor enjoyed the rights of Spartan citizen- ship, that is, that they were not, like the Aegidae, admitted into the tribes ' The mistake of Ephorus (if mistake it be) perhaps arose from the Perioeci being above the condition of bondsmen, and their being eligible to some petty municipal 5 Ephorus ap. Strab. viii. p. 361. (emended by Miiller Vol. i. p. 111.) states with equal improbability that Cresphontes had originally intended to make all the Messe- nians equal with the Dorians, but was prevented by the Dorians from fulfilling his project. Pausanias iv. 3. 6 — 8. confirms Ephorus as to the popular rule of Cres- phontes, but he says that the Messenians agreed without a battle to divide their lands with the Dorians, nor does he mention equal rights. Let any body consider the leeal relations introduced by the Norman conquest of England, by the Lombard conquest of Italy, by the Franks, Burgundians Slc. in France, of which we have contemporary accounts, and then let him judge how far these statements of Ephorus are likely to have any truth.
