] "There are," says Hesiod, "30,000 gods on the fruitful earth."

[53] Greek scholars formed a select society of twelve gods and
goddesses, but their choice was arbitrary, and all did not agree on the
same series. The Greeks of different countries and of different epochs
often represented the same god under different forms. Further, the
majority of the gods seem to us to have vague and undetermined
attributes; this is because they were not the same everywhere.

[54] Iliad, viii., 18.

[55] In the dialogue "Eutyphron."

[56] Taine, "Philosophy of Art."

[57] Herodotus, vi., 27

[58] Xenophon, "Anabasis," iii, 2.

[59] This idea gained currency only in the later periods of Grecian
history.--ED.

[60] There were similar amphictyonies at Delos, Calauria, and Onchestus.

[61] The special charge against Cirrha was the levying of toll on
pilgrims coming to Delphi.--ED.

CHAPTER XI

SPARTA

THE PEOPLE

=Laconia.=--When the Dorian mountaineers invaded the Peloponnesus, the
main body of them settled at Sparta in Laconia. Laconia is a narrow
valley traversed by a considerable stream (the Eurotas) flowing
between two massive mountain ranges with snowy summits. A poet
describes the country as follows: "A land rich in tillable soil, but
hard to cultivate, deep set among perpendicular mountains, rough in
aspect, inaccessible to invasion." In this enclosed country lived the
Dorians of Sparta in the midst of the ancient inhabitants who had
become, some their subjects, others their serfs. There were, then, in
Laconia three classes: Helots, Perioeci, Spartiates.

=The Helots.=--The Helots dwelt in the cottages scattered in the plain
and cultivated the soil. But the land did not belong to them--indeed,
they were not even free to leave it. They were, like the serfs of the
Middle Ages, peasants attached to the soil, from father to son. They
labored for a Spartiate proprietor who took from them the greater part
of the harvest. The Spartiates instructed them, feared them, and ill
treated them. They compelled them to wear rude garments, beat them
unreasonably to remind them of their servile condition, and sometimes
made them intoxicated to disgust their children with the sight of
drunkenness. A Spartiate poet compares the Helots to "loaded asses
stumbling under their burdens and the blows inflicted."

=The Perioeci.=--The Perioeci (those who live around) inhabited a
hundred villages in the mountains or on the coast.