The population of a city must have consisted of the wealthy families who had slaves to till their lands and tend their flocks and of those few artificers or professional men whose business brought them to live near the houses of the rich. Among the handicraftsmen were the carpenter, the copper-smith, the leather-dresser, the worker in gold: the professions were those of the leech, the prophet and the bard[45]. Thus it may be that in an assembly the people outside the sacred circle did not greatly surpass in number the elders who sat within it: for there were no classes to constitute a people except the younger members of the families of the elders and the few men who were induced to live in the city to find employment for their knowledge or skill. [45] Grote, _Greece_, octavo edition vol. I. p. 486, cabinet edition vol. II. p. 97. For the worker in gold see _Odyssey_ III. 425. 2. _The Dorians and the Ionians in the heroic age._ Before the beginning of Greek History, properly so called, the Achæan peoples, so important in the eyes of Homer, had sunk into comparative insignificance, and the first places in the Hellenic world had been filled by Dorians and Ionians. The original abode of the Dorians was a small mountainous country called Doris not far from Thermopylæ[46]. From hence bands of adventurers had gone forth and, invading Peloponnesus, had expelled the Achæans from Sparta, Messenia, Argos and Corinth, had occupied their territories and had copied their institutions. The Ionians in Attica had grown in prosperity and power, and, like the Dorian tribes, had adopted that form of government which I have called heroic monarchy. [46] Herodotus VIII. 31 in speaking of the position of Doris remarks, "This country is the mother country of the Dorians in Peloponnesus." Of the Dorian kingly government at Corinth we know nothing but its existence[47]: of the Messenian kings we have many stories told by Myron of Priene, but, on reading them side by side with the stories told by Geoffrey of Monmouth about King Arthur, I thought that for complete untrustworthiness there was nothing to choose between the two authors[48]: concerning the early kings of Argos Athens and Sparta, a few facts are established on good authority, and these I shall now proceed to state. [47] Diodorus Siculus VII. fragment 9. Diodorus wrote about 20-10 B.C. [48] Myron wrote about 220 B.C. His stories about the early Messenian kings are preserved by Pausanias in his fourth book.