ABSTRACT
By the time Kleomenes I died, the process of internal construction in Lakonia, including now what Thucydides (4.3.2; 41.2) accurately described as ‘the land that was once Messenia’, had been completed; and Spartan hegemony was recognized generally within the Peloponnese and to some extent outside it. A decade later Sparta was the automatic choice as leader of loyalist Hellas against the invading forces of the Persian Empire. Since this military and political supremacy can only be explained against its Lakonian background, I propose to pull together the threads of the foregoing chapters by discussing systematically the status and functions of first the mainspring and then the essential complement of the Spartan power, respectively the Helots and the Perioikoi. As far as the archaeological and epigraphical evidence goes, 500 will be taken as an approximate terminus. But it will be necessary to draw on literary and environmental evidence from a far wider period than the seventh and sixth centuries.
