had become bound by a solemn compact to renounce their enterprise for a hundred years. This period had now expired; and the great-grandsons of Hyllus—Temenus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus—resolved to make a fresh attempt to recover their birthright. They were assisted in the enterprise by the Dorians. This people espoused their cause in consequence of the aid which Hercules himself had rendered to the Dorian king, AEgimius, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest with the Lapithae. The invaders were warned by an oracle not to enter Peloponnesus by the Isthmus of Corinth, but across the mouth of the Corinthian gulf. The inhabitants of the northern coast of the gulf were favourable to their enterprise. Oxylus, king of the AEtolians, became their guide; and from Naupactus they crossed over to Peloponnesus. A single battle decided the contest. Tisamenus, the son of Orestes, was defeated and retired with a portion of his Achaean subjects to the northern coast of Peloponnesus, then occupied by the Ionians. He expelled the Ionians, and took possession of the country, which continued henceforth to be inhabited by the Achaeans, and to be called after them. The Ionians withdrew to Attica, and the greater part of them afterwards emigrated to Asia Minor.

The Heraclidae and the Dorians now divided between them the dominions of Tisamenus and of the other Achaean princes. The kingdom of Elis was given to Oxylus as a recompense for his services as their guide; and it was agreed that Temenus, Cresphontes, and Eurysthenes and Procles, the infant sons of Aristodemus (who had died at Naupactus), should draw lots for Argos, Sparta, and Messenia. Argos fell to Temenus, Sparta to Eurysthenes and Procles, and Messenia to Cresphontes.

Such are the main features of the legend of the Return of the Heraclidae. In order to make the story more striking and impressive, it compresses into a single epoch events which probably occupied several generations. It is in itself improbable that the brave Achaeans quietly submitted to the Dorian invaders after a momentary struggle. We have, moreover, many indications that such was not the fact, and that it was only gradually and after a long protracted contest that the Dorians became undisputed masters of the greater part of Peloponnesus.

Argos was originally the chief Dorian state in Peloponnesus, but at the time of the first Olympiad its power had been supplanted by that of Sparta. The progress of Sparta from the second to the first place among the states in the peninsula was mainly owing to the military discipline and rigorous training of its citizens. The singular constitution of Sparta was unanimously ascribed by the ancients to the legislator Lycurgus, but there were different stories respecting his date, birth, travels, legislation, and death. His most probable date however is B.C. 776, in which year he is said to have assisted Iphitus in restoring the Olympic games. He was the son of Eunomus, one of the two kings who reigned together in Sparta. On the death of his father, his elder brother, Polydectes, succeeded to the crown, but died soon afterwards, leaving his queen with child. The ambitious woman offered to destroy the child, if Lycurgus would share the throne with her. Lycurgus pretended to consent; but as soon as she had given birth to a son, he presented him in the market-place as the future king of Sparta. The young king's mother took revenge upon Lycurgus by accusing him of entertaining designs against his nephew's life. Hereupon he resolved to withdraw from his native country and to visit foreign lands. He was absent many years, and is said to have employed his time in studying the institutions of other nations, in order to devise a system of laws and regulations which might deliver Sparta from the evils under which it had long been suffering. During his absence the young king had grown up, and assumed the reins of government; but the disorders of the state had meantime become worse than ever, and all parties longed for a termination to their present sufferings. Accordingly the return of Lycurgus was hailed with delight, and he found the people both ready and willing to submit to an entire change in their government and institutions. He now set himself to work to carry his long projected reforms into effect; but before he commenced his arduous task he consulted the Delphian oracle, from which he received strong assurances of divine support. Thus encouraged by the god, he suddenly presented himself in the market-place, surrounded by thirty of the most distinguished Spartans in arms. His reforms were not carried into effect without violent opposition, and in one of the tumults which they excited, his eye is said to have been struck out by a passionate youth. But he finally triumphed over all obstacles, and succeeded in obtaining the submission of all classes in the community to his new constitution. His last act was to sacrifice himself for the welfare of his country. Having obtained from the people a solemn oath to make no alterations in his laws before his return, he quitted Sparta for ever. He set out on a journey to Delphi, where he obtained an oracle from the god, approving of all he had done, and promising prosperity to the Spartans as long as they preserved his laws. Whither he went afterwards, and how and where he died, nobody could tell. He vanished from earth like a god, leaving no traces behind him but his spirit: and his grateful countrymen honoured him with a temple, and worshipped him with annual sacrifices down to the latest times.

The population of Laconia was divided into the three classes of Spartans, Perioeci and Helots.

I. The SPARTANS were the descendants of the leading Dorian conquerors. They formed the sovereign power of the state, and they alone were eligible to honours and public offices. They lived in Sparta itself and were all subject to the discipline of Lycurgus. They were divided into three tribes,—the HYLLEIS, the PAMPHILI, and the DYMANES,—which were not, however, peculiar to Sparta, but existed in all the Dorian states.

II. The PERIOECI were personally free, but politically subject to the Spartans. [This word signifies literally DWELLERS AROUND THE CITY, and was generally used to indicate the inhabitants in the country districts, who possessed inferior political privileges to the citizens who lived in the city.] They possessed no share in the government, and were bound to obey the commands of the Spartan magistrates. They appear to have been the descendants of the old Achaean population of the country, and they were distributed into a hundred townships, which were spread through the whole of Laconia.

III. The HELOTS were serfs bound to the soil, which they tilled for the benefit of the Spartan proprietors. 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 appear to have been never sold, and they accompanied the Spartans to the field as light armed troops. But while their condition was in these respects superior to that of the ordinary slaves in other parts of Greece, it was embittered by the fact that they were not strangers like the latter, but were of the same race and spoke the same language as their masters, being probably the descendants of the old inhabitants, who had offered the most obstinate resistance to the Dorians, and had therefore been reduced to slavery. As their numbers increased, they became objects of suspicion to their masters, and were subjected to the most wanton and oppressive cruelty.

The functions of the Spartan government were distributed among two kings, a senate of thirty members, a popular assembly, and an executive directory of five men called the Ephors.

At the head of the state were the two hereditary kings. The existence of a pair of kings was