Conquest 79
arrive from Lemnos and Imbros, are allowed to settle at Amyclae, and subse-
quently revolt; then, they are made to join a Spartan colony destined for Crete
and led by Lacedaemonians named Pollis and Delphos; and, en route, this
expedition pauses to found a settlement on the island of Melos. Conon puts
their arrival in Laconia shortly after the Return of the Heraclids, emphasizes
the exclusion of these immigrants from the magistracies and the council, and
has them end up on Crete at Lyktos. Plutarch has them arrive at a time of
Spartan-Messenian conflict, marry Spartan wives, stir up trouble with the
helots, and end up also on Crete but at Gortyn.^39
The third story, told in variant forms by Aristotle, Antiochus of Syracuse,
Ephorus of Cumae, Diodorus the Sicilian, Pausanias, and Polyaenus, concerns
the Partheníaı—the so-called “sons of the virgins”—who were somehow con-
ceived, so we are told, during the first Messenian war when most of the Spar-
tans were away on campaign. When they came of age after that long struggle,
they were denied land allotments in the newly conquered territory; and when,
in response, they caused a disturbance, they were dispatched in 706 to found
a colony at Taras on the boot of Italy.^40
Not one of these stories, as told, makes full sense. But it does seem clear
that there was considerable turmoil in early Lacedaemon, as Thucydides con-
tends; and it is reasonable to suppose that these disturbances had something
to do with the city’s absorption of Amyclae, with her assimilation of a part of
Laconia’s pre-Dorian population and of refugees from elsewhere in Myce-
naean Greece, and with her subjugation of the remainder of Laconia and of the
Stenyklaros plain in Messenia. Thera, Melos, Lyktos, Gortyn, and Taras all had
institutions similar to those of the Spartans, and they all traced their origins
to Lacedaemon. Their foundation legends are in large part plausible, and the
archaeological record suggests a timing for events. As the ancient reports as-
sert, there may well have been a settlement on Thera prior to the putative ar-
rival of the colonists from Sparta near the middle of the eighth century. Melos,
Lyktos, and Gortyn appear to have been established some time not long before
this expedition; and Taras in Italy, at that century’s end.^41
The differences in the three stories are also telling. Before they began
acquiring territory—under the very early kings, as Ephorus and Aristotle
report—the Spartans were generous in incorporating strangers into their
community.^42 Later, however, when their domain had increased, they were
inclined to guard their privileges as Spartiates jealously; and after they had