major city, Argos, and a number of lesser cities, settlements, or tribal agglomerations. Against Argos they won, though in no decisive fashion; against the rest they failed. But failure taught them the lesson that
expansion by annexation and enslavement could not work, that to subdue an immediate circle of hostile neighbours would only create a more distant circle of hostile neighbours. A wise Spartan (some Spartans
were wise) saw that expansion by diplomacy could be cheaper and more effective.
This sage was Chilon who, in 556 B.C., held the office of ephor, an office which had been created in the turmoil of the Lycurgan period for purposes which we cannot now descry, but basically to give the
Spartan 'Equals' a chance through an annual election to have their immediate favourites in a position to assert themselves against kings or Gerousia, or to side with one against the other. Chilon is the earliest
ephor upon whom we can focus and it is clear that, with the 'Equals' behind him, he transformed Spartan thinking.
The problem was racial as well as military. Out of the confusion of the post-Mycenaean world came a Greece divided between Dorians, Ionians, and others. All were Greeks, all spoke Greek, but very different
forms of Greek, all accepted that the Dorians were intruders, though perhaps a rather superior kind of intruder. It is hard to judge what these distinctions meant in day-to-day practice, but they did mean
something, and it was Chilon's genius to see that playing down Sparta's Dorianism could cajole hostile non-Dorian neighbours into alliance, with no less profit in the end for Sparta.
So treaties were made city by city, with Corinth, with Sicyon, with the communities of Arcadia, indeed with almost all except the old rival for Dorian hegemony, Argos. In some cases, to fix the alliance, Sparta
had to take a hand in the internal affairs of the future ally, and in some cases, in Sicyon for example, this interference led to the expulsion of a tyrant, thus giving a start to Sparta's later reputation as an opponent
of tyranny as such. Spartans were not opposed to tyranny as such, except in Sparta, but her expansionism in the next half-century or so (Chilon had changed Spartan methods but had not quenched Spartan
ambition) brought her up against various powers which were under tyrants and for differing reasons these had to be removed, chief among them being the sons of Pisistratus in Athens whom, in 510, Sparta
successfully attacked with the encouragement and support of Athenian aristocrats in exile.
Corinth. The city site is in the foreground, dominated by the remains of the sixth-century B.C. Temple of Apollo. In the distance to the south rises the citadel, Acrocorinth, linked by long walls to the city in the
fourth century B.C. It is the most impressive of the acropoleis of mainland Greece.
Differing reasons. Some tyrants (the Athenian among them) had been friends of Argos, some had established links with a new factor in Aegean politics, the expanding Persian Empire. About 546 the Persians,
having absorbed the greater part of the Middle East and Asia Minor, appeared among the Greeks of the Aegean's eastern coastline, who had previously enjoyed a comparatively unoppressive dependence on the
non-Greek powers of the hinterland, especially Lydia, under its amiable King Croesus (c. 5 60- 5 46). The Persians believed in tighter control, and compliant tyrants were installed or supported in the Greek
cities. In 525 the Persians took over Egypt and then moved along the coast of north Africa; in 514 they crossed into Europe and, in spite of a disastrous foray into southern Russia, maintained a presence in
Thrace and influence as far as Macedon. Thus the Greek mainland and the islands were beset to north, south, and east, while even in the west another alien power, Carthage, was pressing on the opulent outposts
of Hellenism, the cities of Sicily and southern Italy, which from their poor colonial beginnings were now often as rich and as sophisticated as any in the homeland. The Persians may not have had any immediate