Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/382

 366 HISTORY OF GREECE. full-privileged burghers who lived in the city, but it did not mark any precise or uniform degree of inferiority. It is sometimes so used by Aristotle as to imply a condition no better than that of the Helots, so that, in a large sense, all the inhabitants of Laconia (Helots as well as the rest) might have been included in it. But when used in reference to Laconia, it bears a technical sense, whereby it is placed in contraposition with the Spartan on one side, and with the Helot on the other : it means, native free- men and proprietors, grouped in subordinate communities l with more or less power of local management, but (like the subject towns belonging to Bern, Zurich, and most of the old thirteen cantons of Switzerland) embodied in the Lacedaemonian aggre- gate, which was governed exclusively by the kings, senate, and citizens of Sparta. When we come to describe the democracy of Athens after the revolution of Kleisthenes, we shall find the demes, or local town- ships and villages of Attica, incorporated as equal and constituent fractions of the integer called The Deme (or The City) of Athens, so that a demot of Acharnae or Sphettus is at the same time a full Athenian citizen. But the relation of the Perkekic townships to Sparta is one of inequality and obedience, though both belong to the same political aggregate, and make up together the free Lacedaemonian community. In like manner, Orneas and other places were townships of men personally free, but politically dependent on Argos, Akraephias on Thebes, Chaeroneia on Orchomenus, and various Thessalian towns on Pharsalus and Larissa. 2 Such, moreover, was, in the main, the state into which but admits of being explained so as to place the two witnesses in harmony with each other. Sosikrates says (ap. Athenae. vi. p. 263), Ti)v pev KOIVTJV fiovhetav ol Kpf/r Kokovci jivo'iav. TT/V <5e idiav uQafiiuTaf, rotif 6e Trepiotnove inrriiioovf. Now the word Trepioiitavc seems to be here used just as Aristotle would have used 't, to comprehend the Kretan serfs universally : it is not distinguished from rivuirai and u^a^iiurai, but comprehends both of them as different species under a generic term The authority of Aristotle affords a" reason for pre- ferring to construe the passage in this manner, and the words appear to ma to admit of it fairly. 1 The To?.e*f of the Lacedaemonian Perioeki are often noticed : see Xeno phon (Agesilaus, ii. 24 ; Laced. Repub. xv. 3 ; Hellenic, vi 5, 21 ). 2 Herod, viii. 73-135 ; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 1,8; Thucyd. iv. 76-94.