Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/469

 STRONG POSITION OF SPARTA. 453 (ate : both consider themselves as nothing else but subjects of the Spartan ephors and their subordinate officers. They are indeed discontented subjects, hating as well as fearing their mas- ters, and not to be trusted if a favorable opportunity for secure revolt presents itself. But no individual township or district is strong enough to stand up for itself, while combinations among them are prevented by the habitual watchfulness and unscrupu- lous precautions of the ephors, especially by that jealous secret police called the Krypteia, to which allusion has already been made. Not only, therefore, was the Spartan territory larger and its population more numerous than that of any other state in Hellas, but its government was also more completely centralized and more strictly obeyed. Its source of weakness was the discontent of its Perioeki and Helots, the latter of whom were not like the slaves of other states imported barbarians from different countries, and speaking a broken Greek, but genuine Hellens, of one dialect and lineage, sympathizing with each other, and aa much entitled to the protection of Zeus Hellanius as their mas- ters, from whom, indeed, they stood distinguished by no other line except the perfect training, individual and collective, which was peculiar to the Spartans. During the period on which we are at present dwelling, it does not seem that this discontent comes sensibly into operation ; but we shall observe its manifes- tations very unequivocally after the Persian and during the Pelo- ponnesian war. To such auxiliary causes of Spartan predominance we must add another, the excellent military position of Sparta, and the unassailable character of Laconia generally. On three sides that territory is washed by the sea, 1 with a coast remarkably danger- ous and destitute of harbors ; hence Sparta had nothing to ap- prehend from this quarter until the Persian invasion and its consequences, one of the most remarkable of which was, the astonishing development of the Athenian naval force. The city of Sparta, far removed from the sea, was admirably defended by an almost impassable northern frontier, composed of those districts

hich we have observed above to have been conquered from 1 Xenrphon, Hellen. iv. 8, 7 : fofiovuevor TTJV ci