Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/388

 372 HISTORY OF GREECE. Aclia^ans, known as such, in Laconia. The Herakleids, th jEgeids, and the Talthybiads, all of whom belong to Sparta, seem to be the only examples of separate races, partially dis- tinguishable from Dorians, known after the beginning of au- thentic history. The Spartans and the Perioeki constitute one political aggregate, and that too so completely melted together in the general opinion (speaking of the times before the battle of Leuktra), that the peace of Antalkidas, which guaranteed au- tonomy to every separate Grecian city, was never so construed as to divorce the Perioekic towns from Sparta. Both are known as Laconians, or Lacedaemonians, and Sparta is regarded by Herodotus only as the first and bravest among the many and brave Lacedaemonian cities. 1 The victors at Olympia are pro- claimed, not as Spartans, but as Laconians, a title alike borne by the Perioeki. And many of the numerous winners, whose names we read in the Olympic lists as Laconians, may proba- bly have belonged to Amyklse or other Pericekic towns. The Perioekic hoplites constituted always a large in later times a preponderant numerical proportion of the Lacedaemo- nian army, and must undoubtedly have been trained, more or less perfectly, in the peculiar military tactics of Sparta ; since they were called upon to obey the same orders as the Spartans in the field, 2 and to perform the same evolutions. Some cases appear, though rare, in which a Pericekus has high command in a foreign expedition. In the time of Aristotle, the larger proportion of Laconia (then meaning only the country eastward of Taygetus, north-west of Peloponnesus which was afterwards called Achh..a, expel- ling from it the lonians. Whatever may be the truth about this legendary statement, and whatever may have been the original proportions of Dorians and Achaeans in Laconia, these two races had (in the fifth century B.C.; become confounded in one undistinguishable ethnical and political aggre- gate called Laconian, or Lacedaemonian, comprising both Spartans and Pe- rioeki, though with very unequal political franchises, and very material differ cnces in individual training and habits. The case was different in Thessaly, where the Thessalians held in dependence Magnetes, Perrhaebi. and Achajons : the separate nationality of these latter was never lost. 1 Herod, vii. 234. discipline ; but they seem to be named oi tic r/}f x&pac Trau^f. as contrasted
 * Thucyd. viii. 6-22. They did not, however, partake in the Lykurgean
 * itb ol IK r;/f aj-uyf/f (Sosibius ap. Athenae. xv. p. 674).