This is, I think, wrong: it was not eugenics that shrank ...

This is, I think, wrong: it was not eugenics that shrank the number of full Spartiates���it was assortative mating that increased land-wealth inequality and so pushed many children of Spartiates below the required property-ownership bar. This means, among other things, that the right strategy for Athens in the second half of the 400s BC was the appeasement of Sparta by every means possible. It was weakening itself generation by generation: Sarah Bond: This Is Not Sparta: "In a recent article within the ancient history journal Historia, historian Timothy Doran addresses the evidence for the use of eugenics in ancient Sparta. In the fourth century BCE the number of elite Spartan citizens had declined sharply, from about 8,000 adult males around 480 BCE to around 1,000 in the mid-fourth century. Doran attributes the dwindling of the Spartan population to their 'cultural, eugenic, and racial exclusivity' that kept marginalized groups from becoming part of Sparta as its numbers decreased. Citizenship was notoriously hard to achieve and was predicated on ideas of purity and lineage...

#noted