Perioeci
（περίοικοι, “those dwelling about,” from περιοικέω). A name used by Greek writers of a subject population dwelling in the vicinity of some particular dominant city, or in the rural provinces under its control, personally free but devoid of political rights. The name is more properly applied to a class found in Laconia who were probably in their origin partly representatives of the original Achaian stock conquered by the Dorian invaders and partly a mixed race resulting from the marriage of the Dorians with the Achaians. (See E. Curtius, History of Greece, Eng. trans. ii. ch. i.) They possessed lands, and are stated to have been settled in a hundred towns (Strabo, viii. p. 557), among which were Gythium on the coast, Thyrca, and Amyelae. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, App. ch. xxii.) estimates roughly their number at the time of the Persian Wars as between 60,000 and 70,000 souls.The perioeci were engaged partly in farming, partly in manufacturing and in trade. They paid taxes to the State, and were bound to perform military service either as hoplites or as light-armed troops. The perioecic inhabitants of Sciritis formed a special body of light infantry. After the Peloponnesian War the perioeci constituted the bulk of the Spartan army, and they were eligible to the inferior commands. Having no civil rights, they were completely subject to the Spartans proper, and in case of insubordination they could be put to death by the ephors without trial. On rare occasions a perioecus is found in a high office, as in the case mentioned by Thucydides (viii. 22), where one of them was admiral of an allied Chian fleet; but they seem never to have been put over Spartans. The name περίοικοι is also used of other subject populations as a convenient term (cf. Herod.iv. 159), but these were not perioeci in the Laconian sense of the word.
See Arnold's Thucydides, i. App. ii.; Müller, Dorier, bk. iii.; Grote, History of Greece, pt. ii. ch. vi.; and Gilbert, Constitutional Antiquities of Greece, Eng. trans. (1895).