I. The Spartans or Spartiatæ were the strongest and most warlike of those Dorian tribes who at some time after the time of Homer and yet long before the beginning of history migrated from the rocky valley of Doris in northern Greece and invaded the Peloponnesus. They subsequently lived in the unwalled city of Sparta as a small nation of conquerors surrounded by the two subject populations of the Periœci and the Helots, who peopled the country of Laconia. In 480 B.C., when the Spartans were at the height of their power, just after their king Leonidas and his three hundred had made their heroic defence at Thermopylæ, Xerxes asked Demaratus, who had once been king of Sparta but had been deposed, to tell him how many warriors remained to the Lacedæmonians and how many of them were as brave as the three hundred; Demaratus replied: "O king, the number of the Lacedæmonians is great and their cities are many: thou shalt know what thou desirest to learn. There is in Lacedæmon a city Sparta, of about eight thousand fighting men, and all these are like to those that fought at Thermopylæ: the other Lacedæmonians are not indeed equal to these, but yet they are brave[58]." As the Spartans of military age numbered eight thousand we may reckon that forty thousand was about the number of persons, including women and children, who belonged to Spartan families and formed the Spartan nation. [58] Herodotus VII. 234. The Periœci were "the other Lacedæmonians, not indeed equal to the Spartiatæ, but yet brave men," and by them the cities of Lacedæmon except Sparta were inhabited. It seems that the Periœci were decidedly more numerous than the Spartiatæ: in the year after the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus the force, which was sent out to fight the Persian general Mardonius and which took part in the great battle of Platæa, consisted of five thousand Spartans, of thirty-five thousand light armed Helots, seven Helots being allotted as attendants to each Spartan, and of five thousand picked hoplites or heavy armed warriors from the Periœci[59]. As these Periœci were picked men, there were more to pick from: of the force of Spartiatæ Grote remarks that "throughout the whole course of Grecian history we never hear of any number of Spartan citizens at all approaching to five thousand being put on foreign service at the same time[60]." [59] Herodotus IX. 10, IX. 28, and IX. 11. [60] Grote, _Greece_, octavo edition vol. III. p. 494, cabinet edition vol. V. p. 11.