The Spartan State may therefore be regarded as standing outside the development of Greece, even in the political sense[78:3]. In one respect only was its policy an aggressive one,--in interfering on the side of the aristocracies against the despots who took up the cause of the common people against their noble oppressors. It is one of those brilliant general views which make Curtius' history so attractive, that he interprets this great conflict as partly one of race, so far as Ionic and Doric can severally be called such. The Doric aristocracies of the Peloponnesus were opposed by their Ionic subjects, or by Ionic States rising in importance with the growing commerce and wealth of the Asiatic cities. The tyrants generally carried out an anti-Dorian policy, even though they were often Dorian nobles themselves. There was no more successful aspirant to a tyranny than a renegade nobleman who adopted the cause of the people. [Sidenote: Grote's view.] § 35. I have already alluded to the chapter in Grote's history[79:1]--indeed there is such a chapter in most histories--entitled the 'Age of the Despots.' The mistake which such a title is likely to engender must be carefully noticed. If we mean the age when this kind of monarch first arose, no objection need be urged; but if it be implied that such an age ceased at any definite moment, nothing can be further from the truth. For this form of government was a permanent feature in the Greek world. When the tyrants were expelled from Athens and from the Peloponnesus, they still flourished in Sicily, Italy, the Black Sea coasts, and Cyprus, till they reappeared again in Greece[80:1]. There was no moment in old Greek history when there were not scores of such despots. The closing period, after the death of Alexander, shows us most of the Greek States under their control. It was the great boast of Aratus that he freed his neighbours from them, and brought their cities under the more constitutional Achæan League. But at this period a despot, if he ruled over a large dominion, called himself a king; and we may therefore add to the list most of the so-called kings, who close the history of independent Greece, as they commenced it in the legends. [Sidenote: Greek hatred of the despot,] [Sidenote: how far universal in early days.]