Nevertheless the Lacedaemonian was the ideal of a primitive Greek state. According to Thucydides it was the first which emerged out of confusion and became a regular government. It was also an army devoted to military exercises, but organized with a view to self-defence and not to conquest. It was not quick to move or easily excited; but stolid, cautious, unambitious, procrastinating. For many centuries it retained the same character which was impressed upon it by the hand of the legislator. This singular fabric was partly the result of circumstances, partly the invention of some unknown individual in prehistoric times, whose ideal of education was military discipline, and who, by the ascendency of his genius, made a small tribe into a nation which became famous in the world's history. The other Hellenes wondered at the strength and stability of his work. The rest of Hellas, says Thucydides, undertook the colonisation of Heraclea the more readily, having a feeling of security now that they saw the Lacedaemonians taking part in it. The Spartan state appears to us in the dawn of history as a vision of armed men, irresistible by any other power then existing in the world. It can hardly be said to have understood at all the rights or duties of nations to one another, or indeed to have had any moral principle except patriotism and obedience to commanders. Men were so trained to act together that they lost the freedom and spontaneity of human life in cultivating the qualities of the soldier and ruler. The Spartan state was a composite body in which kings, nobles, citizens, perioeci, artisans, slaves, had to find a 'modus vivendi' with one another. All of them were taught some use of arms. The strength of the family tie was diminished among them by an enforced absence from home and by common meals. Sparta had no life or growth; no poetry or tradition of the past; no art, no thought. The Athenians started on their great career some centuries later, but the Spartans would have been easily conquered by them, if Athens had not been deficient in the qualities which constituted the strength (and also the weakness) of her rival.