Parthĕniæ

and Parthĕnii , a certain number of desperate citizens of Sparta. During the Me enian war, the Spartans were absent from their city for the space of 10 years, and it was unlawful for them to return, as they had bound themselves by a solemn oath not to revisit Sparta before they had totally subdued Me enia. This long absence alarmed the Lacedæmonian women, as well as the magistrates. The Spartans were reminded by their wives, that if they continued in their resolution, the state must at last decay for want of citizens, and when they had duly considered this emba y, they empowered all the young men in the army, who had come to the war while yet under age, and who therefore were not bound by the oath, to return to Sparta, and, by a familiar and promiscuous intercourse with all the unmarried women of the state, to raise a future generation. It was carried into execution, and the children that sprang from this union were called Par then iæ, or sons of virgins ( παρθενος ). The war with Me enia was some time after ended, and the Spartans returned victorious; but the cold indifference with which they looked upon the Par then iæ was attended with serious consequences. The Par then iæ knew they had no legitimate fathers, and no inheritance, and that therefore their life depended upon their own exertions. This drove them almost to despair. They joined with the Helots, whose maintenance was as precarious as their own, and it was mutually agreed to murder all the citizens of Sparta, and to seize their po e ions. This ma acre was to be done at a general a embly, and the signal was the throwing of a cap in the air. The whole, however, was discovered through the diffidence and apprehensions of the Helots; and when the people had a embled, the Par then iæ discovered that all was known, by the voice of a crier, who proclaimed that no man should throw up his cap. The Par then iæ, though apprehensive of punishment, were not visibly treated with greater severity; their calamitous condition was attentively examined, and the Spartans, afraid of another conspiracy, and awed by their numbers, permitted them to sail for Italy, with Phalantus their ringleader at their head. They settled in Magna Græcia, and built Tarentum, about 707 years before Christ. Justin , bk. 3 , ch. 5 .— Strabo , bk. 6 .— Pausanias , on Laconia , . — Plutarch , Apophthegm at a Laconic a .