The grounds for holding that choral poetry flourished pre-eminently at Sparta (see K.O. Müller, _History of the Dorians_, Eng. tr. ii, 383) are not very strong. See Busolt, _Griechische Geschichte_, 1885, i, 158, 159, for what can be finally said on this head. Ernst Curtius (_Griechische Geschichte_, 1858, i, 240) writes on this subject as a romantic enthusiast. Burckhardt (_Griechische Culturgeschichte_, i, 116-19) examines the subject with his usual care, but decides only that the Spartans employed music with a special eye to military education. And Müller acknowledges that though many Spartan lyrists are named, "there has not been preserved a single fragment of Spartan lyric poetry, with the exception of Alkman's," the probable reason being "a certain uniformity and monotony in their productions, such as is perceived in the early works of art." On the whole question cp. K.J. Freeman's _Schools of Hellas_, chs. i and xi. In the story of Hellas, Sparta stands almost alone among the peoples as yielding no foothold to the life of the mind, bare of nearly all memory of beauty,[335] indigent in all that belongs to the spirit, morally sterile as steel. Yet "the Dorians of Laconia are perhaps the only people in Greece who can be said to have preserved in any measure the purity of their Greek blood."[336] Before such a phenomenon the dogma of race-character instantly collapses, whereas in terms of the reaction of conditions the explanation is entirely adequate. As thus:-- 1. Sparta was by situation one of the most secluded of the Greek States. In the words of Euripides, it was "hollow, surrounded by mountains, rugged, and difficult of access to an enemy."[337] Compared in particular with Athens, it was not only landward and mountain-walled, but out of the way of all traffic.[338] 2. From the first the Spartans were balanced in a peculiar degree by the strength of the Achaians, who were in the Peloponnesus before them, the hostilities between the invaders and the older inhabitants lasting longer in the valley of the Eurotas than anywhere else.[339] The Spartan militarism was thus a special product of circumstances, not a result of Doric "character," since other Dorian communities did not develop it. 3. Being thus so little open to commercial influence, and so committed to a life of militarism, Sparta was susceptible of a rigidity of military constitution that was impossible elsewhere in the Hellenic world, save to some extent in the similarly aristocratic and undeveloped communities of Thessaly and Crete, each similarly noted for unintellectuality. Whatever be the political origins of these societies, it is clear that that of Sparta could not have been built up or maintained save under conditions of comparative isolation.