Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/127

 LACONIA. the daughter of his predecessor. Lacedaemon gave to the people and the country his own name, and to the city which he founded the name of his wife. Arayclas, the son of Lacedaemon, founded the city called after him Amyclae. (Paus. iii. 1.) Subse- quently Lacedaemon was ruled by Achaean princes, and Sparta was the residence of Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon. Menelaus was succeeded by Orestes, who married his daughter Hermione, and Orestes by his son Tisamenus, who was reign- ing when the Dorians invaded the country under the guidance of the Heracleidae. In the threefold divi- sion of Peloponnesus among the descendants of Her- cules, Lacedaemon fell to the share of Eurysthenes and Procles, the twin sons of Aristodemus. Accord- ing to the common legend, the Dorians conquered the Peloponnesus at once; but there is sufficient evidence that they only slowly became masters of the countries in which we afterwards find them settled; and in Laconia it was sometime before they obtained possession even of all the places in the plain of Sparta. According to a statement in Ephorus, the Dorian conquerors divided Laconia into six districts ; Sparta they kept for themselves ; Amyclae was given to the Achaean Philonomus, who betrayed the country to them ; while Las, Pharis, Aegys, and a sixth town the name of which is lost, were governed by viceroys, and were allowed to receive new citizens. (Ephor. aj). Strab. viii. p. 364 ; on this corrupt passage, which has been hap- pily restored, see Miiller, Dorians, vol. i. p. 110, transl. ; Niebuhr, Ethnograph. vol. i. p. 56, transl. ; Kramer, ad Strab. I. c.) It is probable that this ilivision of Laconia into six provinces was not ac- tually made till a much later period ; but we have sufficient evidence to show that, for a long time after the Dorian conquest, the Dorians possessed only a saiall portion of Laconia. Of this the most striking proof is that the Achaean city of Amyclae, distant only 2^ miles from Sparta, maintained its indepen- dence for nearly three centuries after the Dorian conquest, for it was only subdued shortly before the First Messenian War by the Spartan king Teleclus. The same king took Pharis and Geronthrae, both Achaean cities ; and his son and successor, Alca- nienes, conquered the town of Helos, upon the coast near the mouth of the Eurotas. (Paus. iii. 2. §§ 6, 7.) Of the subjugation of the other Achaean towns we have no accounts ; but there can be little doubt that they were mainly owing to the military organi- sation and martial spirit which the Spartans had acquired by the institutions of Lycurgus. By the middle of the eighth century the Dorians of Sparta had become undisputed masters of the whole of Laconia. They now began to extend their dominions at the expense of their neighbours. Ori- ginally Argos was the chief Dorian power in the Peloponnesus, and Sparta only the second. In ancient times the Argives possessed the whole eastern coast of Laconia down to Cape Malea, and also the island of Cythera (Herod, i. 82) ; and although we have no record of the time at which this part of Laconia was conquered by the Spartans, we may safely conclude that it was before the Messenian wars. The Dorians in Messenia possessed a much more fertile territory than the Spartans in Laconia, and the latter now began to cast longing eyes upon the richer fields of their neighbours. A pretext for war soon arose ; and, by two long protracted and obstinate contests, usually called the First and Second Jlessenian wars (the first from c. c. 743 to LACONIA. Ill 724, and the second from b. c. 685 to 668), the Spartans conquered the whole of Messenia, expelled or reduced to the condition of Helots the inhabit- ants, and annexed their country to Laconia. The name of Messenia now disappears from history ; and, for a period of three centuries, from the close of the Second Messenian War to the restoration of the independence of Messenia by I]paminondas, the whole of the southern part of Peloponnesus, from the western to the eastern sea, bore the appellation of Laconia. The upper parts of the valleys of the Eurotas and the Oenus, the districts of Sciritis, Beleminatis, Maleatis, and Caryatis, originally belonged to the Arcadians, but they were all conquered by the Spartans and annexed to their territory before b. c. 600. (Grote, Eist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 588.) They thus extended their territories on the north to what may be regarded as the natural boundaries of Laco- nia, the mountains forming the watershed between the Eurotas and the Alpheius ; but when they crossed these limits, and attempted to obtain pos- session of the plain of Tegea, they met with the most determined opposition, and were at last obliged to be content with the recognition of their supre- macy by the Tegeatans, and to leave the latter in the independent enjoyment of their territory. The history of the early struggles between the Spartans and Argives is unknown. The district on the coast between the territories of the two states, and of which the plain of Thyreatis was the most important part, inhabited by the Cynurians, a Pe- lasgic people, was a frequent object of contention between them, and was in possession, sometimes of the one, and sometimes of the other power. At length, hi b. c. 547, the Spartans obtained perma- nent possession of it by the celebrated battle fought by the 300 champions from either nation. [Cy- NUEiA.] The dominions of the Spartans now extended on the other side of Mount Pamon, as far as the pass of Anigraea. The population of Sparta was divided into the three classes of Spartans, Perioeci, and Helots. Of the condition of these classes a more particular account is given in the Dictionary of Antiqui- ties; and it is only necessary to remark here that the Spartans lived in Sparta itself, and were the ruling Dorian class ; that the Perioeci lived in the different townships in Laconia, and, though freemen, had no share in the government, but received all their orders from the ruling class at Sparta ; and that the Helots were serfs bound to the soil, who cultivated it for the benefit of the Spartan proprie- tors, and perhaps of the Perioeci also. After the extension of the Spartan dominions by the conquest of Messenia and Cynuria, Laconia was said to possess 100 townships (Strab. viii. p. 362), among which we find mentioned Anthana in the Cynurian Thyreatis, and Aulon in Jlessenia, near the frontiers of Elis. (Steph. B. s. vv. 'AvOdva, AvAwv.^ According to the common story, Lycurgus divided the territory of Laconia into a number of equal lots, of which 9000 were assigned to the Spartans, and 30,000 to the Perioeci. (Plut. Lye. 8.) Some ancient critics, however, while believing that Lycur- gus made an equal division of the Laconian lands, supposed that the above numbers referred to the distribution of the Lacedaemonian territory after the incorporation of Messenia. And even with respect to the latter opinion, there were two different state- ments ; some maintained that 6000 lots had been