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The perioeci, or perioikoi, were the members of an autonomous
Self-governance

Self-governance is an abstract concept that refers to several scales of organization. It may refer to personal conduct or family units but more commonly refers to larger scale activities, i.e., professions, industry bodies, religions and political units, up to and including autonomous regions and aboriginal peoples ....
 group of free but non-citizen inhabitants of Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
. Concentrated in the beach and highland areas of Laconia
Laconia

Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is a prefecture in Greece. Laconia has the legal status of a Prefectures of Greece, with Sparti its administrative capital....
, the name derives from pe?? / perí, "around," and / oikos, "dwelling, house." They were the only people allowed to travel to other cities, which the Spartans were not, unless given permission.

Origin
There was a tradition in ancient Greece which held that the perioeci were former Achaeans
Achaeans

The Achaeans is one of the collective names used for the Greeks in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The other names are the Danaans and Argives ....
 who had been invaded by the Dorians - where the Achaeans of the plains became helots, Acheans of the mountains became perioeci.






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The perioeci, or perioikoi, were the members of an autonomous
Self-governance

Self-governance is an abstract concept that refers to several scales of organization. It may refer to personal conduct or family units but more commonly refers to larger scale activities, i.e., professions, industry bodies, religions and political units, up to and including autonomous regions and aboriginal peoples ....
 group of free but non-citizen inhabitants of Sparta
Sparta

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
. Concentrated in the beach and highland areas of Laconia
Laconia

Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is a prefecture in Greece. Laconia has the legal status of a Prefectures of Greece, with Sparti its administrative capital....
, the name derives from pe?? / perí, "around," and / oikos, "dwelling, house." They were the only people allowed to travel to other cities, which the Spartans were not, unless given permission.

Origin


There was a tradition in ancient Greece which held that the perioeci were former Achaeans
Achaeans

The Achaeans is one of the collective names used for the Greeks in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The other names are the Danaans and Argives ....
 who had been invaded by the Dorians - where the Achaeans of the plains became helots, Acheans of the mountains became perioeci. There was another theory that they were settled from Lacedaemon, thus being analogous to the Roman colonies
Colony

In politics and in history, a colony is a Territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies....
. However, Messenia
Messenia

Messenia or Messinia is a prefectures of Greece in the Peloponnese, a region of Greece. Messenia is bounded on the east by Mount Taygetus, on the north by the Neda and the Arcadian Mountains, and on the west and south by the Mediterranean Sea, more specifically on the west by the Ionian Sea, and on the south by the Gulf of Messenia....
 was one exception to this theory, and it became difficult over time to believe that Sparta could found hundreds of perioecid villages.

Status


Under the rule of Sparta, the perioeci belonged to the Lacedaemonian State, subject to the suzerainty of Sparta but not Spartan citizens. If their free status was not the object of controversy, the situation was unclear concerning the precise nature of their subject status within Sparta versus the status of allied cities and the strangers. In the same way, their political and social organization was quite poor.

Their territory, the Perioikis (?e???????), formed part of their territory within Sparta itself. Their villages were described as poleis by Herodotus
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
 (VII, 234), Xenophon
Xenophon

Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates....
 (Hellenica, VI, 5, 21) and Thucydides
Thucydides

Thucydides was a Greeks history and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C....
 (V, 54, 1). It can be noted that their poleis acted as a sort of buffer around Sparta, shielding it from outside influence and to some extent to present a form wall to the helots; preventing escape and enforcing discipline out of Sparta's area of immediate control and watch. They were permitted to have some contact with outsiders and to trade.

The perioeci had the rights to own lands, and belonged to the civic army the same title as equals: they were hoplite
Hoplite

The word hoplite derives from hoplon , meaning an item of armour or equipment, thus 'hoplite' may approximate to 'armoured man'. Hoplites were the citizen-soldiers of the Ancient Greece City-states....
s in the army and epibastes in the navy. They could not participate in any political decisions and could not marry Spartan men or women.

External links




See also


  • Helots
    Helots

    The helots were an unfree population group that formed the main population of Laconia and the whole of Messenia . Their exact status was already disputed in Antiquity: according to Critias, they were "especially Slavery in ancient Greece" whereas to Pollux, they occupied a status "between free men and slaves"....
    , serfs of Sparta
  • Sciritae
    Sciritae

    The Sciritae or Skiritai were a people subject to Sparta, whose status is comparable to that of the Perioeci. They lived in Skiritis, a mountainous region located in northern Laconia on the border with Arcadia, between the Oenus and the Eurotas River rivers....
    , a category similar to the Perioeci