3. Now, if it is acknowledged that the distant situation and state of the Periœci presented almost insuperable objections to their possessing a share in the general government, their political inferiority to the Spartans will not appear very oppressive. They were admitted equally with the Spartans to the honourable occupation of war, and indeed sometimes served as heavy-armed soldiers, or as troops of the line.(66) There were at Platæa 5000 Dorian hoplitæ, and the same number of Periœci; at Sphacteria 292 prisoners were taken, of whom only 120 were Spartans.(67) How, if the Periœci had been an oppressed people, could Sparta have ventured to collect so large a number into her armies; and for what reason should the Periœci have taken part in the heroic devotion of that small band, if they had not the victory and honour of Sparta as much at heart as their own? “Sparta,” said the Spartan king Demaratus, to Xerxes,(68) “contains 8000 Spartans, all of equal bravery; the other Lacedæmonians, in many surrounding cities, are indeed inferior to them, but yet not deficient in courage.” Nor do we hear of any insurrection of Periœci (if we except the revolt of two Messenian towns in Olymp. 78. 468 B.C.) until the downfall of the constitution.(69) Again, would it be possible, on the assumption of an oppressive subjection, to explain how the Asinæans and Nauplians, when deprived of their independence by Argos, fled to Laconia, that they might occupy the maritime towns of Mothone and Asine, manifestly as Periœci? Nor is it consistent with a general contempt of the Periœci that καλοὶ καγαθοὶ—“gentlemen”—are mentioned in their number.(70) All trade and commerce, of indispensable need to Laconia, were in the hands of the maritime towns. Merchants from Libya and Egypt brought their cargoes to the Periœci of Cythera,(71) who, among other branches of trade, followed the lucrative employment of the purple fishery.(72) All manual labour in Sparta, not performed by slaves, was in the hands of this class, since no Spartan, before the introduction of the Achæan constitution, was allowed to follow any trade.(73) The low estimation in which trade was held was founded on the ancient Grecian customs and opinions, in departing from which the Corinthians were nearly singular among the Doric states, the productiveness of trade having taught them to set a higher value upon it.(74) And yet in their colony of Epidamnus public slaves were the only manual labourers;(75) Diophantus wished to introduce the converse of this system at Athens, and to make all the manual labourers slaves. The Spartans, moreover, appear to have admitted those alone of the Periœci who were engaged in agriculture to serve among the heavy-armed, while artisans were admitted only to the light-armed infantry.(76) This had been once the case at Athens, where the Thetes (to which class the artificers belonged) served only in that inferior rank. According to this, then, the 5000