It is not difficult to prolong the associations with Homeric Laconia by following Helen on her guilty flight southward; lingering to see Amyclæ, a rich city in Homeric times, and the beehive tomb of Vaphio, which in 1889 yielded up two incomparable vessels of gold now in the Museum at Athens; and going on to the busy seaport town of Gytheion, from whose docks Paris took his stolen bride to the little island of Cranaë, now Marathonisi, before spreading his defiant sails for the longer voyage. But sooner or later the fact of the Dorian invasion must be reckoned with, and the resultant birth at Sparta of a civilization totally at odds with that which it displaced. In Laconia the invasion was one of conquest and subjection, and the victors prided themselves on keeping their blood pure, much as the Laconian Maniotes of modern times have clung fiercely to their Spartan descent. Sparta became the Dorian city _par excellence_, the protagonist of Dorian ideals, the natural leader of the forces which both in war and peace were in opposition to the Ionic elements in Greek life. The historical events in this development are so interwoven with the history of the other states of Greece, especially with that of Athens, that they will already have become familiar to travellers who visit Sparta last. The conquest of Messenia first increased her resources. By the middle of the sixth century she won signal victories over Tegea and Argos and became the head of the Peloponnesian Confederacy, which included every state in the Peloponnesus except Achæa and Argos. Before the end of the century she was the leading state of Greece, for Thessaly was losing ground and Athens had not yet risen. In the first part of the fifth century Sparta was the natural leader of the Greek allies against Persia, and in the autumn of 481 B. C. was the head of the congress at the Isthmus. To her generals was given the command of both the army and the navy. But her conduct of the wars at best did not increase her prestige, nor did she afterwards exhibit any skill in using new conditions. This was the opportunity of Ionic Athens to create the greatest period of Greek history. But Sparta was also strong and possessed in Brasidas a general unparalleled among the Laconians for eager enterprise, trustworthiness and personal popularity. A final struggle was inevitable. The Dorians won, and, at the end of the fifth century, once more for a generation held the balance of power in Greece. But Sparta’s despotism within the Peloponnesus and her desire for foreign aggrandizement created new hostilities. Early in the fourth century Persia undermined her maritime power, and Greek friendships as strange as the Æschylean truce between fire and water were formed to her detriment. Athens and Thebes, Corinth and Argos forgot old enmities in hatred of Sparta, but she maintained her supremacy and forced upon Greece the arbitration of the Persian king. For fifteen years Greek