Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/387

 DISTINCTIONS OF RA'JE IN LACONIA. 37] the Perioeki were always considered as Achaeans," I find nc proof, and I believe it to be erroneous. Respecting Pharis, Gercnthrse, and Amykloe, three Perioekic towns, Pausanias gives us to understand that the preexisting inhabitants either retired or were expelled on the Dorian conquest, and that a Dorian pop- ulation replaced them. 1 Without placing great faith in this statement, for which Pausanias could hardly have any good authority, we may yet accept it as representing the probabilities of the case, and as counterbalancing the unsupported hypothesis of Miiller. The Perkekic townships were probably composed either of Dorians entirely, or of Dorians incorporated in greater or less proportion with the preexisting inhabitants. But what- ever difference of race there may once have been, it was effaced before the historical times, 2 during which we find no proof of 1 Pausan. iii. 2, 6 ; iii. 22, 5. The statement of Miiller is to be found (History of the Dorians, iii. 2, 1) : he quotes a passage of Ptiusanias, which is noway to the point. Mr. G. C. Lewis (Plulolog. Mus. ut. sup. p. 41) is of the same opinion as Miiller. 2 M. Kopstadt (in the learned Dissertation which I have before alluded to, De Rcram Laconicarum Constitutionis Lycurgese Origine ct Indole, cap. ii p. 31) controverts this position respecting the Perioeki. He appears to un- derstand it in a sense which my words hardly present, at least, a sense which I did not intend them to present : as if the majority of inhabitants in each of the hundred Perioekic towns were Dorians, " ut per centum Lacoiiias oppida distributi ubique majorem incolarum numerum efficerent," (p 32.) I meant only to affirm that some of the Perioekic towns, such as Amyk- lae, were wholly, or almost wholly, Dorian ; many others of them partially Dorian. But what may have been the comparative numbers (probably dif- ferent in each town ) of Dorian and non-Dorian inhabitants, there are no means of determining. M. Kopstadt (p. 35) admits that Amyklse, Pharis, and Geronthrse, were Pericekic towns peopled by Dorians ; and if this be true, it negatives the general maxim on the faith of which he contradicts what I affirm : his maxim is '' nunquam Dorienses a Doriensibus nisi bello victi erant, civitate sequoque jure pvivati sunt," (p. 31.) It is very un- safe to lay down such large positions respecting a supposed uniformity of Dorian rules and practice. The high authority of 0. Miiller has been ex- tremely misleading in this respect. It is plain that Herodotus (compare his expression, viii. 73 and i. 145) conceived all the free inhabitants of Laconia not as Achaean?, but as Dorians. He believes in the story of the legend, that the Achseans, driven out of Laco aia by the invading Dorians and Herakleidse, occupied the territory in the