These are detailed attempts to explain the policy of Sparta in regard to the neighbouring states and Athens down to the time of Archidamus and Agis. In consequence of the paucity of existing historic records, the sketch is necessarily of a somewhat speculative character, the more so as a chief object of inquiry is unavoidably the motives which dominated the statesmen and the parties at Sparta. There is good ground for the contention that down to 550 B.C. Sparta underwent a political development, and even an artistic growth, parallel to that in other Greek cities; but that after that time the city developed on lines of its own, as a purely military state. This is, as we shall see, the most interesting result established by the recent excavations on the site. Looking for a personality to associate with the change, Dickins finds one in Chilon, a name not prominent in history, but suggestively mentioned by Herodotus and Diogenes Laertius. He seems to have succeeded in raising the Ephors to equal power with the Kings, and thenceforward, according to Dickins, the clue to Spartan policy is to be found in the clashings of the two powers. Until 468 the struggle was acute; and it was not until the end of the fifth century that the supremacy of the Ephors was established. The question of dominance over the helots, which has by some writers been regarded as the mainspring of Spartan policy, was less important in the fifth century than it became in the fourth. In the paper in the _Classical Quarterly_ it is maintained, in opposition to some recent historians of Greece, that Thucydides is right in saying that it was jealousy of the rising power of Athens which brought on the Peloponnesian War. Dickins is well versed in both ancient and modern historians, and he writes with clearness and force; but the motives of statesmen and the underlying causes of events are so intricate that the discussion of them seldom leads to a really objective addition to our knowledge of ancient history.