Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/277

 AlTTt-HELLEXIC INHABITANTS. 2C1 i e m his mind, and in his language, one and the same. While no organization less than the city can satisfy the exigencies 1 of an intelligent freeman, the city is itself a perfect and self-sufficient whole, admitting no incorporation into any higher political unity. It deserves notice that Sparta, even in the days of her greatest power, was not (properly speaking) a city, but a mere aggluti- nation of five adjacent villages, retaining unchanged its old- fashioned trim : for the extreme defensibility of its frontier and the military prowess of its inhabitants, supplied the absence of walls, while the discipline imposed upon the Spartan, exceeded in rigov and minuteness anything known in Greece. And thus Sparta, though less than a city in respect to external appearance, was more than a city in respect to perfection of drilling and fixity of political routine. The contrast between the humble appear- ance and the mighty reality, is pointed out by Thucydides. 2 The inhabitants of the small territory of Pisa, wherein Olympia is situated, had once enjoyed the honorable privilege of adminis- tering the Olympic festival. Having been robbed of it, and subjected by the more powerful Eleians, they took advantage ot various movements and tendencies among the larger Grecian powers to try and regain it ; and on one of these occasions, we find their claim repudiated because they were villagers, and unworthy of so great a distinction. 3 There was nothing to be called a city in the Pisatid territory. In going through historical Greece, we are compelled to accept the Hellenic aggregate with its constituent elements as a primary fact to start from, because the state of our information does not enable us to ascend any higher. By what circumstances, or out of what preexisting elements, this aggregate was brought together and modified, we find no evidence entitled to credit. There are, indeed, various names which are affirmed to designate ante-Hellenic inhabitants of many parts of Greece, the Pelasgi, 1 Aristot. Polit. i. 1, 8. q 6' EK ^etovuv Ki.fj.uv noivuvia reAetof Kol.i /ra O'IKIO tie'iar)?, Qaivoir' av imodeeaTEpa. ' Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 2, 31.