Note 719 — Chapter VI · LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS AT SPARTA. (continued 2)

Strabo, viii. p. 362; Steph. Byz. Αἴθεια.

Construing the word πόλεις extensively, so as to include townships small as well as considerable, this estimate is probably inferior to the truth; since, even during the depressed times of modern Greece, a fraction of the ancient Laconia (including in that term Messenia) exhibited much more than one hundred bourgs.

In reference merely to the territory called La Magne, between Calamata in the Messenian gulf and Capo di Magna, the lower part of the peninsula of Tænarus, see a curious letter, addressed to the Duc de Nevers, in 1618, (on occasion of a projected movement to liberate the Morea from the Turks, and to insure to him the sovereignty of it, as descendant of the Palæologi,) by a confidential agent whom he despatched thither,—M. Chateaurenaud,—who sends to him “une sorte de tableau statistique du Magne, ou sont énumerés 125 bourgs ou villages renfermans 4,913 feux, et pouvans fournir 10,000 combattans, dont 4,000 armés, et 6,000 sans armes (between Calamata and Capo di Magna).” (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. 1842, p. 329. Mémoire de M. Berger Xivrey.)

This estimate is not far removed from that of Colonel Leake, towards the beginning of the present century, who considers that there were then in Mani (the same territory) one hundred and thirty towns and villages; and this too in a state of society exceedingly disturbed and insecure,—where private feuds and private towers, or pyrghi, for defence, were universal, and in parts of which, Colonel Leake says, “I see men preparing the ground for cotton, with a dagger and pistols at their girdles. This, it seems, is the ordinary armor of the cultivator when there is no particular suspicion of danger: the shepherd is almost always armed with a musket.” ... “The Maniotes reckon their population at thirty thousand, and their muskets at ten thousand.” (Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. i. ch. vii. pp. 243, 263-266.)

Now, under the dominion of Sparta, all Laconia doubtless enjoyed complete internal security, so that the idea of the cultivator tilling his land in arms would be unheard of. Reasoning upon the basis of what has just been stated about the Maniote population and number of townships, one hundred πόλεις, for all Laconia, is a very moderate computation.