politics veered hither and thither, and then at Leuctra Epaminondas conquered Sparta and won the leadership of Greece for Thebes. His death gave one more opportunity to Athens, but before she could use it Macedon arose and at Chæronea united her with Sparta in a common humiliation. Never again did either Dorian or Ionian state have power to alarm the other. Thucydides described Sparta as a straggling village like the ancient towns of Hellas. Polybius added that it was roughly circular in shape and level, although it inclosed certain uneven and hilly places. It had no real acropolis, but the highest of its several hills received this conventional name; and it was not fortified by walls until long after the greatest days of its history. Four districts or wards, Pitane, apparently the aristocratic quarter, Limnæ, Cynosura, and Mesoa, perhaps represented an early group of villages which later were united in one city. This city was extraordinarily barren of artistic adornment. The citizens of no other leading state in the whole of Greece were so indifferent to the value of architecture and sculpture, nor is it likely that they were perturbed by the prophecy of Thucydides: “If the community of Lacedæmon should become a desert with only the temples and ground foundations remaining, I think that, after the lapse of much time, men of the future would be very slow to believe that the power of the Lacedæmonians was equal to their fame. And yet they possess two of the five divisions of the Peloponnesus and hold the hegemony of the whole and of many outside allies. But this community is not a city regularly built with costly temples and edifices and would seem rather insignificant.” Temples and edifices of course there were for the business of life and of religion, but the need for them was not, as in Athens, or even in certain cities of rude Arcadia, identified with the larger need of inspiring or importing the genius of architect, sculptor, and painter. Sparta had an early school of sculpture, influenced by Cretan teachers, specimens of whose work may be seen in the Museum. But the impulse shrivelled and died in an uncongenial atmosphere. Nor do we find the Spartans in the great artistic centuries clamouring for the work of foreign artists as did the towns of “stupid” Bœotia. The British School of Archæology is successfully engaged in the exploration of Sparta, but we cannot anticipate the discovery of statues like the Hermes of Olympia or the restoration of buildings like the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi.