Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/472

 456 HISTORY OF GKEECE. ly shot ahead of Argos, and when the vigor of the Lykurgeat discipline had been manifested in a long series of conquests, made during the stationary period of other states, and ending only, to use the somewhat exaggerated phrase of Herodotus, when she had subdued the greater part of Peloponnesus. 1 Our accounts of the memorable military organization of Sparta are scanty, and insufficient to place the details of it clearly before us. The arms of the Spartans, as to all material points, were not different from those of other Greek hoplites. But one grand peculiarity is observable from the beginning, as an item in the Lykurgean institutions. That lawgiver established military divi- sions quite distinct from the civil divisions, whereas in the other states of Greece, until a period much later than that which we have now reached, the two were confounded, the hoplites or horsemen of the same tribe or ward being marshalled together on the field of battle. Every Lacedaemonian was bound to mili- tary service from the age of twenty to sixty, and the ephors, when they sent forth an expedition, called to arms all the men within some given limit of age. Herodotus tells us that Lykur- gus established both the syssitia, or public mess, and the enomo- ties and triakads, or the military subdivisions peculiar to Sparta. 2 The triakads are not mentioned elsewhere, nor can we distinctly make out what they were; but the enomoty was the special characteristic of the system, and the pivot upon which all its arrangements turned. It was a small company of men, the num- ber of whom was variable, being given differently at twenty-five, thirty-two, or thirty-six men, drilled and practised together in military evolutions, and bound to each other by a common oath.s 1 Herodot. i. 68. f/fiij 6e ci KO.I i) iro'Ah/) r^f HehoTrovvr/aov qv /c Concerning the obscure and difficult subject of the military arrangements of Sparta, see Cragius, Eepub. Laced, iv. 4 ; Manso, Sparta, ii. Beilage 1 8, p. 224; 0. Miiller, Hist. Dorians, iii. 12, Dr. Arnold's note on Thucydides, v. 68 ; and Dr. Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. i. Appendix 3, p. 520. 3 Pollux, i. 10, 129. 'Idt'wf fiivroi. TUV aKE(Saifj.oviuv, ivufioria, xai ftopa : compare Suidas and Hesych. v. 'Evw//ort'a; Xenoph. Rep. Lacon. c. 11; Thucyd. v. 67-68 ; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 1 2. Suidas states the enomoty at twenty-five men : in the Lacedasmonian mrmy which fought nt the first battle cf Mantincia (418 u. c ), it seemi to
 * Herodot. i. 67 : compare Larcher's note.