Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/470

 454 HISTORY OF GREECE. Arcadia, Karyatis, Skirltis, Maleatis, and Belerainatis. The difficulty as well as danger of marching into Laconia by ihese mountain passes, noticed by Euripides, was keenly felt by every enemy of the Lacedaemonians, and has been powerfully stated by a first-rate modern observer, Colonel Leake. 1 No site could be better chosen for holding the key of all the penetrable passes than that of Sparta. This well-protected frontier was a substi- tute more than sufficient for fortifications to Sparta itself, which always maintained, down to the times of the despot Nabis, its 1 Xcnoph. Hellen. v. 5, 10 ; Eurip. ap. Strabo, viii. p. 366 ; Lcake, Travels in Morea, vol. iii. c. xxii. p. 25. " It is to the strength of the frontiers, and the comparatively large extent of country inclosed within them, that we must trace the primary cause of the Lacedaemonian power. These enabled the people, when strengthened by a rigid military discipline, and put in motion by an ambitious spirit, first to triumph over their weaker neighbors of Messenia, by this additional strength to overawe the disunited republics of Arcadia, and at length for centuries to hold an acknowledged military superiority over every other state in Greece. " It is remarkable that all the principal passes into Laconia lead to one point : this point is Sparta ; a fact which shows at once how well the posi- tion of that city was chosen for the defence of the province, and how well it was adapted, especially as long as it continued to be unwalled, to maintain n, perpetual vigilance and readiness for defence, which are the surest means of offensive success. " The natural openings into the plain of Sparta arc only two ; one by the upper Eurotas, as the course of that river above Sparta may be termed ; the other by its only large branch CEnus, now the Kelefina, which, as I have already stated, joins the Eurotas opposite to the north-eastern extremity of Sparta. All the natural approaches to Sparta from the northward lead to one or the other of these two valleys. On the side of Messenia, the northerly prolongation of Mount Taygetum, which joins Mount Lyceum at the pass of Andania, now the pass of Makryplai, furnishes a continued barrier of the loftiest kind, admitting only of routes easily defensible ; and which, whether from the Cromitis of Arcadia to the south-westward of the modern Londari, from the Stenykleric plain, from the plain of the Pamisus, or from Pherae, now Kalamata, all descend into the valley of the upper Eurotas. and conduct to Sparta by Pellana. There was, indeed, a branch of the last- mentioned route, which descended into the Spartan plain at the modern Mistra, and which must have been a very frequent communication between Sparta and the lower part of Messenia ; but, like the other direct passes over Taygetum, it was much more difficult and defensible than those I have called the natural entrances of the province."