Among the names of Greek sculptors only three belong to Sparta, and these are all of the sixth century B.C., the beginning of the historic period. After that, nothing. See Radford's _Ancient Sculpture_, Chron. List at end. Thus Sparta positively retrogressed into militarism. "There is evidence in the character of Alkman's poetry that he did not sing to a Sparta at all resembling the so-called Sparta of Lycurgus" (Mahaffy, _Problems in Greek History_, p. 77; cp. Burckhardt, _Griechische Culturgeschichte_, i, 117). 5. Not only does military specialism preclude, so far as it goes, more intellectual forms of activity: it develops in the highest degree the conservative spirit[342] when thoroughly rooted in law and custom. Nor is it any more favourable to moral feeling in general.[343] As offset to all this it may be urged that the middle unenfranchised class (the _Perioikoi_) in Sparta, the _Penestai_ in Thessaly, and the ordinary citizens in Crete, were in some ways superior types to part of the similar classes of Attica; while the slaves, as having some military life, were, despite the flavour of the name "Helot," above the average.[344] But even if that were so, it would not affect the problem as to culture development, and its solution in terms of the primary and secondary conditions of life for the given communities. It is to be noted that in Crete, less isolated by nature and way of life than either Sparta or Thessaly, less rigidly militarised than they and more democratic in constitution, there were more stirrings of mind. Epimenides, the author of the famous saying that the Cretans were always "liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons," was himself a distinguished Cretan. But Crete on the whole counts for very little in Greek culture-history. Cp. K.J. Freeman, _Schools of Hellas_, p. 38. § 3