While foreigners were allowed in for religious festivals and missions of state, they were generally not permitted to live in the environs, though special exceptions might be given to friends and allies, (laconophiles) like Xenophon.
We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts (ξενηλασίαις; xenelasiais) exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens...[6]Concerning xenelasia in Lacedæmonia, Plutarch wrote: And this was the reason why he (Lycurgus) forbade them to travel abroad, and go about acquainting themselves with foreign rules of morality, the habits of ill-educated people, and different views of government.
[1] However, Müller wrote in the context of a racial, mythographic view of history - they were the invading and occupying force in Lacedæmonia, holding down a population of servile peasants, called Helots, by iron military rule, and so, themselves, in the strict sense, xenoi.
"At a subsequent period, however, as there was no longer men of this stamp (noble character) to carry on the government, and the corruption of manners, caused by the natural fruitfulness of the country, and restrained by no strict laws, was continually on the increase, the state of Tarentum was so entirely changed, that every trace of the ancient Doric character, and particularly of the mother-country, disappeared; hence, although externally powerful and wealthy, it was from its real internal debility, in the end, necessarily overthrown, particularly when the insolent violence of the people became a fresh source of weakness.
"[12] The brief admiration the Athenians and their allies may have had for Spartan Doric discipline and virtue born of cultural isolation, must be viewed in the context of their early alliance against the Persians, later to be turned to hatred and rebellion in the outcome of the Pelopennesian War and their loss of democracy and autonomy.