Note 629 — Chapter VI · LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS AT SPARTA.

The word περίοικοι is sometimes used to signify simply “surrounding neighbor states,” in its natural geographical sense: see Thucyd. i. 17, and Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 1.

But the more usual employment of it is, to mean, the unprivileged or less privileged members of the same political aggregate living without the city, in contrast with the full-privileged burghers who lived within it. Aristotle uses it to signify, in Krête, the class corresponding to the Lacedæmonian Helots (Pol. ii. 7, 3): there did not exist in Krête any class corresponding to the Lacedæmonian Periœki. In Krête, there were not two stages of inferiority,—there was only one, and that one is marked by the word περίοικοι; while the Lacedæmonian Periœkus had the Helot below him. To an Athenian the word conveyed the idea of undefined degradation.

To understand better the status of the Periœkus, we may contrast him with the Metœkus, or Metic. The latter resides in the city, but he is an alien resident on sufferance, not a native: he pays a special tax, stands excluded from all political functions, and cannot even approach the magistrate except through a friendly citizen, or Prostatês (επὶ προστάτον οἰκεῖν—Lycurgus cont. Leocrat. c. 21-53): he bears arms for the defence of the state. The situation of a Metic was, however, very different in different cities of Greece. At Athens, that class were well-protected in person and property, numerous and domiciliated: at Sparta, there were at first none,—the Xenêlasy excluded them; but this must have been relaxed long before the days of Agis the Third.

The Periœkus differs from the Metic, in being a native of the soil, subject by birth to the city law.

M. Kopstadt (in his Dissertation above cited, on Lacedæmonian affairs, sect. 7, p. 60) expresses much surprise at that which I advance in this note respecting Krête and Lacedæmon,—that in Krête there was no class of men analogous to the Lacedæmonian Periœki, but only two classes,—i. e. free citizens and Helots. He thinks that this position is “prorsus falsum.”

But I advance nothing more here than what is distinctly stated by Aristotle, as Kopstadt himself admits (pp. 60, 71). Aristotle calls the subject class in Krête by the name of Περίοικοι. And in this case, the general presumptions go far to sustain the authority of Aristotle. For Sparta was a dominant or capital city, including in its dependence not only a considerable territory, but a considerable number of inferior, distinct, organized townships. In Krête, on the contrary, each autonomous state included only a town with its circumjacent territory, but without any annexed townships. There was, therefore, no basis for the intermediate class called, in Laconia, Periœki: just as Kopstadt himself remarks (p. 78) about the Dorian city of Megara. There were only the two classes of free Krêtan citizens, and serf-cultivators in various modifications and subdivisions.

Kopstadt (following Hoeck, Krêta, b. iii. vol. iii. p. 23) says that the authority of Aristotle on this point is overborne by that of Dosiadas and Sosikratês,—authors who wrote specially on Krêtan affairs. Now if we were driven to make a choice, I confess that I should prefer the testimony of Aristotle,—considering that we know little or nothing respecting the other two. But in this case I do not think that we are driven to make a choice: Dosiadas (ap. Athenæ. xiv. p. 143) is not cited in terms, so that we cannot affirm him to contradict Aristotle: and Sosikratês (upon whom Hoeck and Kopstadt rely) says something which does not necessarily contradict him, but admits of being explained so as to place the two witnesses in harmony with each other.

Sosikratês says (ap. Athenæ. vi. p. 263), Τὴν μὲν κοινὴν δουλείαν οἱ Κρῆτες καλοῦσι μνοίαν, τὴν δὲ ἰδίαν ἀφαμίωτας, τοὺς δὲ περιοίκους ὑπηκόους. Now the word περιοίκους seems to be here used just as Aristotle would have used it, to comprehend the Krêtan serfs universally: it is not distinguished from μνώιται and ἀφαμιῶται, but comprehends both of them as different species under a generic term. The authority of Aristotle affords a reason for preferring to construe the passage in this manner, and the words appear to me to admit of it fairly.