Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/383

 SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF THE PKRKEKI. 3G? Athens would have brought her allies, and Thebes the free Boeo tian communities, 1 if the policy of either of these cities had permanently prospered. This condition carried with it a sentiment of degradation, and a painful negation of that autonomy for which every Grecian community thirsted ; while being maintained through superior force, it had a natural tendency, perhaps without the deliberate wish of the reigning city, to degenerate into prac- tical oppression. But in addition to this general tendency, the peculiar education of a Spartan, while it imparted force, fortitude, and regimental precision, was at the same time so rigorously peculiar, that it rendered him harsh, unaccommodating, and incapable of sympathizing with the ordinary march of Grecian feeling, not to mention the rapacity and love of money, whicL is attested, by good evidence, as belonging to the Spartan charac- ter, 2 and which we should hardly have expected to find in the pupils of Lykurgus. As Harmosts out of their native city, 3 and in relations with inferiors, the Spartans seem to have been more unpopular than other Greeks, and we may presume that a similar haughty roughness pervaded their dealings with their own Periceki ; who were bound to them certainly by no tie of affection, and who for the most part revolted after the battle of Leuktra, as soon as the invasion of Laconia by Epameinondas enabled them to do so with safety. Isokrates, taking his point of departure from the old Herakleitl legend, with its instantaneous conquest and triple partition of all Dorian Peloponnesus, among the three Herakleid brethren, deduces the first origin of the Perirekic townships from internal seditions among the conquerors of Sparta. According to him, the period immediately succeeding the conquest was one of fierce 1 Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 3, 5, 9, 19. Isokrates, writing in the days of Th&- ban power, after the battle of Leuktra, characterizes the Boeotian towns as rrepioiKoi of Thebes (Or. viii. De Pace, p. 182) ; compare Orat. xiv. Plataic. pp. 299-303. Xenophon holds the same language, Hellen. v. 4,46: com pare Plutarch, Agesilans, 28. 2 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 23. 3 Thucyi. i. 77-95 ; vi. 105. Isokrates (Panathenaic. Or. xii. p. 283), Zjraprwra? de vTrepOKTiKotis /cat Ttofa/UKOvf Kai Tr^eovf/trac, oiovf nsp aiiTotJf elvai Travrff vneiA^(j>afft. Compare his ratio de Pace (Or. viii. pp. ISO* 181) ; Oratio Pancgyr. (Or. iv. pp. 64-67).