Dorian population, settled chiefly on the mountain slopes around the Spartan lands, were called Perioikoi. They were free farmers, who had no share in the government, and were not required to perform military service. Lastly, the Helots cultivated the lauds of the Spartans, not as slaves belonging to private masters, but as serfs of the commonwealth ; heuce no Spartan citizen could sell a Helot or remove him from the land. From each farm the Helots had to produce annually a certain quantity of barley, oil, and wine ; if there was a surplus, they could keep it for themselves. The condition of the Helots was thus in some respects better than that of ordinary Greek slaves. But it was such as constantly to remind them that they had once been a free peasantry. It was this, as much per haps as positive ill-usage, which made it so peculiarly galling. The hatred of the Helots was a standing menace Character to the Spartan commonwealth. As Aristotle says, the Spartan kingship meant practically a life-tenure of the chief military command. The government was essentially | an official oligarchy, in which the power of the irresponsible ephors was not importantly modified by the gerousia, while the popular assembly played a part hardly more active than that of the Homeric agora, with its formal privilege of he social simple affirmation or veto. The military training, from lte a childhood upwards, to which the whole social life of Sparta ra^ was ma( ^ e subservient, was at Qrst a necessity; but it soon became thoroughly identified with the ambition and with the pride of an exclusive warrior-caste. Sparta was sharply marked off from the other Greek communities by this systematic treatment of war as the business of life. When the military prestige of Sparta began to decline in the course of the 4th century B.C., it was remarked that this was due to the increased attention which other states had begun to pay to the art of war, whereas in old days the Spartans had been like professional soldiers matched against civilians.
The mountain wall of Taygetus had set a barrier between Laconia and Messenia, which might have seemed to forbid the extension of Spartan power towards the west. If the Dorians in Messenia had fully preserved the warlike character of the race, they would probably have had little to fear. But they seem to have been in some measure enervated by the natural wealth of a country which, at the same time, excited the envy of their neighbours. Myths have grown thickly around the story of the two Messenian wars. This, at least, appears certain : the gradual con quest of Messenia by Sparta occupied not less than a hundred years (about 750-650 B.C.). The legend that, at j a critical time, the stirring war-songs of the Attic Tyrtaeus j raised the sinking spirit of Sparta, agrees with the j tradition of a long and doubtful struggle. Nor was the strife confined to the two chief combatants. Messenia was aided by other Peloponnesian states which dreaded a like fate for themselves, Argos, Sicyon, Arcadia. Sparta was helped by Elis and Corinth. When Messenia had been con quered and the Dorian inhabitants reduced to the state of Helots, Sparta had overcome the most difficult obstacle to her ambition. By conquests, of which the details are obscure, she won from Argolis a strip of territory on the eastern coast of the Peloponnesus, and finally carried her north-eastern border to Thyrea. In southern Arcadia alone the Spartan arms were decisively repulsed by Tegea ; and the Tegeans, accepting the supremacy of Sparta, were enrolled, about 560 B.C., as honoured allies of the power which they had checked.
The repulse warned Sparta that it was better to aim at leading the Peloponnesus than at conquering it ; and an opportunity was found of asserting this leadership in a manner far more effective than any military demonstration. At Olympia, in the valley through which the Alpheus passes to the western coast, there was an ancient sanctuary of the Pelasgian Zeus. An amphictyony, or league of neighbouring towns, held sacrifice and games there once in four years, the management of the festival being shared between Pisa and Elis. A dispute arose between these two states. Sparta confirmed Elis in the religious super intendence of the festival, and at the same time arrogated to herself the political headship of the sacred league. Every effort was now made by the Spartans to extend the popularity and enhance the brilliancy of the Olympic games. Sparta already supreme in Laconia and Mes senia, already the victorious rival of Argos in the east of the land now appears at the Olympian shrine of Zeus in a character peculiarly well adapted to attract the loyalty of the western Achseans. The general recognition of Sparta as the first state in the Peloponnesus may be said to date from the time when, under Spartan auspices, the Olympic festival acquired a new celebrity.
For political reasons Dorian Sparta had always cherished the traditions of the Achaean princes ; but the monarchy of the Achaean age, if it still existed anywhere, was a rare survival. The form of government which had generally succeeded to it was oligarchy, that is, the rule of a group of noble families claiming descent from the heroes, possessing certain religious rites in which no aliens parti cipated, and claiming to be, by a divine authority, the interpreters of the unwritten law. These noble families made up the state. The commons, who lived in or around the city as artisans, labourers, or farmers, were free men, but had no political rights. The Dorian ascendency in the Peloponnesus was peculiarly favourable to oligarchies. Sparta was, in fact, such an oligarchy, though not of the closest kind, the Dorian citizens being the privileged class, while the Periceci answered to the commons else where. It was a fortunate circumstance for the political development of Greece that oligarchy did not, as a rule, pass directly into democracy. A period of transition was needed, during which the people, hitherto debarred from all chance of political education, should learn the meaning of membership in the state.
This was afforded, at least in some measure, by that peculiar phase in the life of the Greek commonwealths which intervenes between oligarchy and democracy, the age of the tyrannies. A turannos meant one whose power is both superior and contrary to the laws. An absolute ruler is not a turannos if the constitution of the state gives him absolute power ; nor is a ruler unauthorized by the laws less a turannos because he rules mildly. The genesis of the tyrant was different in different cases. Most often he is a member of the privileged class, who comes forward as the champion of the people against his peers, overthrows the oligarchy with the help of the people, and establishes his own rule in its stead. Such was Pisistratus at Athens. Sometimes he is himself one of the people ; this was the case with Orthagoras, who (about 676 B.C.) overthrew the Dorian oligarchy at Sicyon. The case of Cypselus at Corinth is intermediate between these two ; for he belonged to a noble Dorian house, though not to the inner circle of those Bacchiadse whose rule he overthrew. Or the tyrant is one who raises himself to absolute power from the stepping-stone of some office with which the oligarchy itself had entrusted him. An example is supplied by Phalaris of Agrigentum, and by the tyrants of some Ionic cities in Asia Minor. Lastly, the tyrant might be a king who had overstepped his constitutional prerogative. Pheidon, king of Argos, is adduced by Aristotle as an instance of this rarer case. In all cases the tyrant properly so-called must be distinguished from a ruler whom a community has voluntarily placed above the law, either temporarily or for his life. Such was properly called an
