The lower ranges of Taÿgetus above Sparta, strangely suggesting both in form and colour the front view of a line of gigantic elephants, afford a fine contrast to the sharp angles of the snowy heights above. The point of view is immediately in front of the new museum; and the houses at the foot of the mountain belong to the east end of new Sparta. A Græco-Roman sarcophagus of marble and architectural fragments are lying in the foreground.] freedom but no political rights. In general, their relations with these people were friendly enough. It was owing to the need of providing an outlet for the surplus rural population and meeting their aspirations that the colony of Tarentum was founded in 707 B.C. The colonising of Thera (Santorin--which became in turn the mother of the Greek colony of Cyrene in North Africa), and the Dorian settlements in the south-west of Asia Minor, took place much earlier. The number of fully qualified Spartan citizens was never very great, some 8000 or 9000, with a tendency to decrease owing to the subdivision of family property rendering them unable to contribute their quota to the public mess, debarred as they were from engaging in agriculture or other industry. They had constantly to guard against a revolt on the part of the helots or slave population, who were bound to the soil and cultivated the lands of their Spartan masters. They availed themselves of their services as light-armed troops, but so suspicious were they of them that they never hung up their shields without detaching their holding-rings from them, for fear they might be snatched up and used against them. Their treatment of the helots was frequently cruel and oppressive. They had a system of secret police, under which three hundred of their strongest young men were charged with the duty of detecting any signs of disloyalty among the serfs, and putting the suspected to death without a trial. At the time of the Peloponnesian war they were believed to have been guilty of an atrocity of this kind of a peculiarly revolting character, when they were in great dread of a native insurrection. They announced that liberty was to be conferred on those who had distinguished themselves in the recent war, and invited all such to apply for their reward. A great many did so, and about two thousand of them were formally emancipated, and led in procession to the temples with wreaths upon their heads. But immediately afterwards they all disappeared, put to death in some mysterious way, which was never made public. This we have from Thucydides, a contemporary historian.