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The difference between the meanest Spartan and his king was not so great as that between a Spartan and a Perioecus. Not only the servitude of the Helots, but the subjection of the Perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race; and to be born a Spartan was to be born to power.
"It was the common opinion," says Aelian, "that the earthquake in Sparta was a judgment from the gods upon the Spartan inhumanity to the Helots." XIII. Besides the Helots, the Spartans exercised an authority over the intermediate class called the Perioeci. These were indubitably the old Achaean race, who had been reduced, not to slavery, but to dependance.
The astonished deputies hastened to overtake the Spartan force, and the ephors, as if fully to atone for their past procrastination, gave them the escort and additional re-enforcement of five thousand heavy-armed Laconians or Perioeci. Hitherto he had refrained from any outrage on the Athenian lands and city, in the hope that Athens might yet make peace with him.
Cythera is an island lying off Laconia, opposite Malea; the inhabitants are Lacedaemonians of the class of the Perioeci; and an officer called the judge of Cythera went over to the place annually from Sparta.
As for commerce, manufactures, agriculture, the manual arts such peaceful occupations were beneath the dignity of a Spartan they were strictly prohibited by law as by pride, and were left to the Perioeci or the Helots. VIII. It was evidently necessary to this little colony to be united. Nothing unites men more than living together in common.
At first the ephoralty was a tribunal for civil, as the gerusia was for criminal, causes; it exercised a jurisdiction over the Helots and Perioeci, over the public market, and the public revenue. But its character consisted in this: it was strictly a popular body, chosen by the people for the maintenance of their interests.
On the return of the Peloponnesians from Attica, the Spartans themselves and the nearest of the Perioeci at once set out for Pylos, the other Lacedaemonians following more slowly, as they had just come in from another campaign.
Their condition was very different from that of the ordinary slaves in antiquity, and more similar to the villanage of the middle ages. They lived in the rural villages, as the Perioeci did in the towns, cultivating the lands and paying over the rent to their masters in Sparta, but enjoying their homes, wives, and families, apart from their master's personal superintendence.
They served in the army, sometimes as heavy-armed, sometimes as light-armed soldiery, according to their rank or callings; and one of the Perioeci obtained the command at sea. They appear, indeed, to have been universally acknowledged throughout Greece as free citizens, yet dependant subjects.
Nevertheless the Lacedaemonians first sent to Chios Phrynis, one of the Perioeci, to see whether they had as many ships as they said, and whether their city generally was as great as was reported; and upon his bringing word that they had been told the truth, immediately entered into alliance with the Chians and Erythraeans, and voted to send them forty ships, there being already, according to the statement of the Chians, not less than sixty in the island.
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