The Historians' History of the World 03

Patrician houses whose rights had come down to them from the royal period, remained in possession of the government. Now as formerly it was from them that the ten chief rulers of the state, “the Kosmoi,” were taken in the different towns; from them that the senate was chosen, whose members retained their dignity for life and were answerable to none. These families held rule in the towns when the Dorians invaded them. They concluded treaties with them, which took account of the interests of both sides, they made themselves subservient to the foreign power, by assigning the immigrants a sufficient share of the land which the state had to dispose of, not without the accompanying obligation of military service and the right, as the fighting portion of the community, to a voice in all important decisions but especially when it was a question of war and peace.

The Dorians took their place as the fighting element in the state. For this reason, the boys as they grew up, were placed under state discipline; united in troops; trained according to regulation, in the public gymnasia, and schooled in the use of weapons; they were inured to hard living and prepared by warlike games for real combats. Thus, remote from all effeminate influences, the military qualities peculiar to the Dorian race were to be imparted; there was also, however, some intermixture of Cretan customs, as for instance, the use of the bow, which was previously unknown to the Dorian. The grown youths and men, even if they possessed households of their own, were expected to be sensible first of all of the fact that they were comrades in arms, and prepared to march at any moment as though in a camp. Accordingly at the men’s daily meal they sat together by troops, as they served in the army, and in the same way they slept in common dormitories. The costs were met through the state from a common chest, but this chest was supplied by each delivering the tenth part of the fruit of his possession to the fraternity to which he belonged, and this tithe was then handed over to the state chest. In return, the state undertook to support the warriors, as well as the women who had charge of the house with the children and servants, in times both of peace and war. I believe it is plain that we have here an arrangement agreed on by treaty between the older and newer members of the state.

In order, however, that the Dorian fighting element might be able to devote itself wholly to its calling, its members had to be entirely exempt from the necessity of personally cultivating their share of the soil; otherwise they would not only have been impoverished by its neglect in war-time, but in peace they would have been detained from military exercises, and the equally valuable hunting excursions after the plentiful game of the Ida Mountains. Consequently the work of agriculture was imposed on a special class of men, who, by the chance of war, had fallen into the condition of servitude and were deprived of civil rights. When and how this element of serfdom was formed, is not indicated; but there were two classes of them. The one tilled those fields which had been preserved by the state as public property; these were the so-called Mnoetæ; the others, the Clarotæ dwelt on the lands which had passed by donation into the hereditary possession of the immigrants. The Dorian landowners were their masters and had the right to demand of them the fruit of the field at a fixed date, while it was their duty to see that the soil was properly improved, so that nothing might be lost to the state. Otherwise the military class lived without care, unconcerned for the maintenance of existence, and could say, as the proverbial lines of the Cretan Hybrias have it, “Here are my sword, spear and shield; my whole treasure; herewith I plough and gather the harvest.”

What they learned was the use of weapons and self-command; their art, discipline, and obedience, obedience of the younger to the older, of the soldier to his superior, of all to the state. Higher and more liberal culture appeared unnecessary and even dangerous, and we may suppose that the ruling families of Crete had intentionally laid down a one-sided and narrow education for the Dorian community, in order that they might not feel tempted to outstep their soldierly calling, and contest the guidance of the state with the native races.

Beside these however there remained on the peninsula a considerable part of the older population, whose position was entirely unaffected by the Dorian immigration; the people on the mountains and in the rural towns, who were dependent on the larger cities of the island and paid according to an ancient usage a yearly tax to their governments; and rural peasants and cattle-breeders, tradesmen, fishers, and sailors who had nothing to do with the State except willingly to submit to its ordinances, and to pursue their occupations in a peaceful fashion.