i. 145) conceived all the free inhabitants of Laconia not as

Achæans, but as Dorians. He believes in the story of the legend, that the Achæans, driven out of Laconia by the invading Dorians and Herakleidæ, occupied the territory in the north-west of Peloponnesus which was afterwards called Achæa,—expelling from it the Ionians. Whatever may be the truth about this legendary statement,—and whatever may have been the original proportions of Dorians and Achæans in Laconia,—these two races had (in the fifth century B. C.) become confounded in one undistinguishable ethnical and political aggregate called Laconian, or Lacedæmonian,—comprising both Spartans and Periœki, though with very unequal political franchises, and very material differences in individual training and habits. The case was different in Thessaly, where the Thessalians held in dependence Magnêtes, Perrhæbi, and Achæans: the separate nationality of these latter was never lost.

[642] Herod. vii. 234.

The Periœkic hoplites constituted always a large—in later times a preponderant—numerical proportion of the Lacedæmonian army, and must undoubtedly have been trained, more or less perfectly, in the peculiar military tactics of Sparta; since they were called upon to obey the same orders as the Spartans in the field,[643] and to perform the same evolutions. Some cases appear, though rare, in which a Periœkus has high command in a foreign expedition. In the time of Aristotle, the larger proportion of Laconia (then meaning only the country eastward of Taygetus, since the foundation of Messênê by Epameinondas had been consummated) belonged to Spartan citizens,[644] but the remaining smaller half must have been the property of the Periœki, who must besides have carried on most of the commerce of export and import,—the metallurgic enterprise, and the distribution of internal produce,—which the territory exhibited; since no Spartan ever meddled in such occupations. And thus the peculiar training of Lykurgus, by throwing all these employments into the hands of the Periœki, opened to them a new source of importance, which the dependent townships of Argos, of Thebes, or of Orchomenus, would not enjoy.

[643] Thucyd. viii. 6-22. They did not, however, partake in the Lykurgean discipline; but they seem to be named οἱ ἐκ τῆς χώρας παῖδες, as contrasted with οἱ ἐκ τῆς ἀγωγῆς (Sosibius ap. Athenæ. xv. p. 674).

[644] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 23. διὰ γὰρ τὸ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν εἶναι τὴν πλείστην γῆν, οὐκ ἐξετάζουσιν ἀλλήλων τὰς εἰσφοράς.

Mr. G. C. Lewis, in the article above alluded to (Philolog. Mus. ii. p. 54), says, about the Periœki: “They lived in the country or in small towns of the Laconian territory, and cultivated the land, which they did not hold of any individual citizen, but paid for it a tribute or rent to the state; being exactly in the same condition as the _possessores_ of the Roman domain, or the Ryots, in Hindostan, before the introduction of the Permanent Settlement.” It may be doubted, I think, whether the Periœki paid any such rent or tribute as that which Mr. Lewis here supposes. The passage just cited from Aristotle seems to show that they paid direct taxation individually, and just upon the same principle as the Spartan citizens, who are distinguished only by being larger landed-proprietors. But though the principle of taxation be the same, there was practical injustice (according to Aristotle) in the mode of assessing it. “The Spartan citizens (he observes) being the largest landed-proprietors, take care not to canvass strictly _each other’s payment of property-tax_”—_i. e._ they wink mutually at each other’s evasions. If the Spartans had been the _only_ persons who paid εἰσφορὰ, or property-tax, this observation of Aristotle would have had no meaning. In principle, the tax was assessed, both on their larger properties and on the smaller properties of the Periœki: in practice, the Spartans helped each other to evade the due proportion.

The Helots of Laconia were Coloni, or serfs, bound to the soil, who tilled it for the benefit of the Spartan proprietors certainly,—probably, of Periœkic proprietors also. They were the rustic population of the country, who dwelt, not in towns, but either in small villages[645] or in detached farms, both in the district immediately surrounding Sparta, and round the Periœkic Laconian towns also. Of course, there were also Helots who lived in Sparta and other towns, and did the work of domestic slaves,—but such was not the general character of the class. We cannot doubt that the Dorian conquest from Sparta found this class in the condition of villagers and detached rustics; but whether they were dependent upon preëxisting Achæan proprietors, or independent, like much of the Arcadian village population, is a question which we cannot answer. In either case, however, it is easy to conceive that the village lands (with the cultivators upon them) were the most easy to appropriate for the benefit of masters resident at Sparta; while the towns, with the district immediately around them, furnished both dwelling and maintenance to the outgoing detachments of Dorians. If the Spartans had succeeded in their attempt to enlarge their territory by the conquest of Arcadia,[646] they might very probably have converted Tegea and Mantineia into Periœkic towns, with a diminished territory inhabited (either wholly or in part) by Dorian settlers,—while they would have made over to proprietors in Sparta much of the village lands of the Mænalii, Azanes, and Parrhasii, helotizing the inhabitants. The distinction between a town and a village population seems the main ground of the different treatment of Helots and Periœki in Laconia. A considerable proportion of the Helots were of genuine Dorian race, being the Dorian Messenians west of Mount Taygetus, subsequently conquered and aggregated to this class of dependent cultivators, who, as a class, must have begun to exist from the very first establishment of the invading Dorians in the district round Sparta. From whence the name of Helots arose, we do not clearly make out: Ephorus deduced it from the town of Helus, on the southern coast, which the Spartans are said to have taken after a resistance so obstinate as to provoke them to deal very rigorously with the captives. There are many reasons for rejecting this story, and another etymology has been proposed, according to which Helot is synonymous with _captive_: this is more plausible, yet still not convincing.[647] The Helots lived in the rural villages, as _adscripti glebæ_, cultivating their lands and paying over their rent to the master at Sparta, but enjoying their homes, wives, families, and mutual neighborly feelings, apart from the master’s view. They were never sold out of the country, and probably never sold at all; belonging, not so much to the master as to the state, which constantly called upon them for military service, and recompensed their bravery or activity with a grant of freedom. Meno, the Thessalian of Pharsalus, took out three hundred Penestæ of his own, to aid the Athenians against Amphipolis: these Thessalian Penestæ were in many points analogous to the Helots, but no individual Spartan possessed the like power over the latter. The Helots were thus a part of the state, having their domestic and social sympathies developed, a certain power of acquiring property,[648] and the consciousness of Grecian lineage and dialect,—points of marked superiority over the foreigners who formed the slave population of Athens or Chios. They seem to have been noway inferior to any village population of Greece; while the Grecian observer sympathized with them more strongly than with the bought slaves of other states,—not to mention that their homogeneous aspect, their numbers, and their employment in military service, rendered them more conspicuous to the eye.

[645] The village-character of the Helots is distinctly marked by Livy, xxxiv. 27, in describing the inflictions of the despot Nabis: “Ilotarum quidam (hi sunt jam inde antiquitus _castellani_, agreste genus) transfugere voluisse insimulati, per omnes _vicos_ sub verberibus acti necantur.”

[646] Herodot. i. 66. ἐχρηστηριάζοντο ἐν Δέλφοισι ἐπὶ πάσῃ τῇ Ἀρκάδων χώρῃ.

[647] See O. Müller, Dorians, iii. 3, 1; Ephorus ap. Strabo, viii. p. 365: Harpocration, v. Εἵλωτες.

[648] Kleomenes the Third, offered manumission to every Helot, who could pay down five Attic minæ: he was in great immediate want of money, and he raised, by this means, five hundred talents. Six thousand Helots must thus have been in a condition to find five minæ each, which was a very considerable sum (Plutarch, Kleomenes, c. 23).

The service in the Spartan house was all performed by members of the Helot class; for there seem to have been few, if any, other slaves in the country. The various anecdotes which are told respecting their treatment at Sparta, betoken less of cruelty than of ostentatious scorn,[649]—a sentiment which we are noway surprised to discover among the citizens at the mess-table. But the great mass of the Helots, who dwelt in the country, were objects of a very different sentiment on the part of the Spartan ephors, who knew their bravery, energy, and standing discontent, and yet were forced to employ them as an essential portion of the state army. The Helots commonly served as light-armed, in which capacity the Spartan hoplites could not dispense with their attendance. At the battle of Platæa, every Spartan hoplite had seven Helots,[650] and every Periœkic hoplite one Helot, to attend him:[651] but, even in camp, the Spartan arrangements were framed to guard against any sudden mutiny of these light-armed companions, while, at home, the citizen habitually kept his shield disjoined from its holding-ring, to prevent the possibility of its being snatched for the like purpose. Sometimes, select Helots were clothed in heavy armor, and thus served in the ranks, receiving manumission from the state as the reward of distinguished bravery.[652]

[649] Such is the statement, that Helots were compelled to appear in a state of drunkenness, in order to excite in the youths a sentiment of repugnance against intoxication (Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 28; also, Adversus Stoicos de Commun. Notit. c. 19, p. 1067).

[650] Herod. ix. 29. The Spartans, at Thermopylæ, seem to have been attended each by only one Helot (vii. 229).

O. Müller seems to consider that the light-armed, who attended the Periœkic hoplites at Platæa, were _not_ Helots (Dor. iii. 3, 6). Herodotus does not distinctly say that they were so, but I see no reason for admitting two different classes of light-armed in the Spartan military force.

The calculation which Müller gives of the number of Periœki and Helots altogether, proceeds upon very untrustworthy data. Among them is to be noticed his supposition that πολιτικὴ χώρα means the district of Sparta as distinguished from Laconia, which is contrary to the passage in Polybius (vi. 45): πολιτικὴ χώρα, in Polybius, means the territory of the state generally.

[651] Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. 12, 4; Kritias, De Lacedæm. Repub. ap. Libanium, Orat. de Servitute, t. ii. p. 85, Reisk. ὡς ἀπιστίας εἵνεκα τῆς πρὸς τοὺς Εἵλωτας ἐξαιρεῖ μὲν Σπαρτιατὴς οἴκοι τῆς ἄσπιδος τὴν πόρπακα, etc.

[652] Thucyd. i. 101; iv. 80; v. 14-23.

But Sparta, even at the maximum of her power, was more than once endangered by the reality, and always beset with the apprehension, of Helotic revolt. To prevent or suppress it, the ephors submitted to insert express stipulations for aid in their treaties with Athens,—to invite Athenian troops into the heart of Laconia,—and to practice combinations of cunning and atrocity which even yet stand without parallel in the long list of precautions for fortifying unjust dominion. It was in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war, after the Helots had been called upon for signal military efforts in various ways, and when the Athenians and Messenians were in possession of Pylus, that the ephors felt especially apprehensive of an outbreak. Anxious to single out the most forward and daring Helots, as the men from whom they had most to dread, they issued proclamation that every member of that class who had rendered distinguished services should make his claims known at Sparta, promising liberty to the most deserving. A large number of Helots came forward to claim the boon: not less than two thousand of them were approved, formally manumitted, and led in solemn procession round the temples, with garlands on their heads, as an inauguration to their coming life of freedom. But the treacherous garland only marked them out as victims for the sacrifice: every man of them forthwith disappeared,—the manner of their death was an untold mystery.

For this dark and bloody deed, Thucydidês is our witness,[653] and Thucydidês describing a contemporary matter into which he had inquired. Upon any less evidence we should have hesitated to believe the statement; but standing as it thus does above all suspicion, it speaks volumes as to the inhuman character of the Lacedæmonian government, while it lays open to us at the same time the intensity of their fears from the Helots. In the assassination of this fated regiment of brave men, a large number of auxiliaries and instruments must have been concerned: yet Thucydidês, with all his inquiries, could not find out how any of them perished: he tells us, that no man knew. We see here a fact which demonstrates unequivocally the impenetrable mystery in which the proceedings of the Spartan government were wrapped,—the absence not only of public discussion, but of public curiosity,—and the perfection with which the ephors reigned over the will, the hands, and the tongues, of their Spartan subjects. The Venetian Council of Ten, with all the facilities for nocturnal drowning which their city presented, could hardly have accomplished so vast a _coup-d’état_ with such invisible means. And we may judge from hence, even if we had no other evidence, how little the habits of a public assembly could have suited either the temper of mind or the march of government at Sparta.

[653] Thucyd. iv. 80. οἱ δὲ οὐ πολλῷ ὕστερον ἠφάνισάν τε αὐτοὺς, καὶ οὐδεὶς ᾔσθετο ὅτῳ τρόπῳ ἕκαστος διεφθάρη.

Other proceedings, ascribed to the ephors against the Helots, are conceived in the same spirit as the incident just recounted from Thucydidês, though they do not carry with them the same certain attestation. It was a part of the institutions of Lykurgus (according to a statement which Plutarch professes to have borrowed from Aristotle) that the ephors should every year declare war against the Helots, in order that the murder of them might be rendered innocent; and that active young Spartans should be armed with daggers and sent about Laconia, in order that they might, either in solitude or at night, assassinate such of the Helots as were considered formidable.[654] This last measure passes by the name of the Krypteia, yet we find some difficulty in determining to what extent it was ever realized. That the ephors, indeed, would not be restrained by any scruples of justice or humanity, is plainly shown by the murder of the two thousand Helots above noticed; but this latter incident really answered its purpose, while a standing practice, such as that of the Krypteia, and a formal notice of war given beforehand, would provoke the reaction of despair rather than enforce tranquillity. There seems, indeed, good evidence that the Krypteia was a real practice,[655]—that the ephors kept up a system of police or espionage throughout Laconia, by the employment of active young citizens, who lived a hard and solitary life, and suffered their motions to be as little detected as possible. The ephors might naturally enough take this method of keeping watch both over the Periœkic townships and the Helot villages, and the assassination of individual Helots by these police-men, or Krypts, would probably pass unnoticed. But it is impossible to believe in any standing murderous order, or deliberate annual assassination of Helots, for the purpose of intimidation, as Aristotle is alleged to have represented,—for we may well doubt whether he really did make such a representation, when we see that he takes no notice of this measure in his Politics, where he speaks at some length both of the Spartan constitution and of the Helots. The well-known hatred and fear, entertained by the Spartans towards their Helots, has probably colored Plutarch’s description of the Krypteia, so as to exaggerate those unpunished murders which occasionally happened into a constant phenomenon with express design. A similar deduction is to be made from the statement of Myrôn of Priênê,[656] who alleged that they were beaten every year without any special fault, in order to put them in mind of their slavery,—and that those Helots, whose superior beauty or stature placed them above the visible stamp of their condition, were put to death; while such masters as neglected to keep down the spirit of their vigorous Helots were punished. That secrecy, for which the ephors were so remarkable, seems enough of itself to refute the assertion that they publicly proclaimed war against the Helots; though we may well believe that this unhappy class of men may have been noticed as objects for jealous observation in the annual ephoric oath of office. Whatever may have been the treatment of the Helots in later times, it is at all events hardly to be supposed that any regulation hostile to them can have emanated from Lykurgus. For the dangers arising from that source did not become serious until after the Messenian war,—nor, indeed, until after the gradual diminution of the number of Spartan citizens had made itself felt.

[654] Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 28; Heraclides Pontic. p. 504, ed. Crag.

[655] Plato, Legg. i. p. 633: the words of the Lacedæmonian Megillus designate an existing Spartan custom. Compare the same treatise, vi. p. 763, where Ast suspects, without reason, the genuineness of the word κρυπτοί.

[656] Myron, ap. Athenæ. xiv. p. 657. ἐπικόπτειν τοὺς ἁδρουμένους does not strictly mean “to put to death.”

The manumitted Helots did not pass into the class of Periœki,—for this purpose a special grant, of the freedom of some Periœkic township, would probably be required,—but constituted a class apart, known at the time of the Peloponnesian war by the name of Neodamôdes. Being persons who had earned their liberty by signal bravery, they were of course regarded by the ephors with peculiar apprehension, and, if possible, employed on foreign service,[657] or planted on some foreign soil as settlers. In what manner these freedmen employed themselves, we find no distinct information; but we can hardly doubt that they quitted the Helot village and field, together with the rural costume (the leather cap and sheepskin) which the Helot commonly wore, and the change of which exposed him to suspicion, if not to punishment, from his jealous masters. Probably they, as well as the disfranchised Spartan citizens (called Hypomeiones, or Inferiors), became congregated at Sparta, and found employment either in various trades or in the service of the government.

[657] Thucyd. v. 34.

It has been necessary to give this short sketch of the orders of men who inhabited Laconia, in order to enable us to understand the statements given about the legislation of Lykurgus. The arrangements ascribed to that lawgiver, in the way that Plutarch describes them, presuppose, and do not create, the three orders of Spartans, Periœki, and Helots. We are told by Plutarch that the disorders which Lykurgus found existing in the state arose in a great measure from the gross inequality of property, and from the luxurious indulgence and unprincipled rapacity of the rich,—who had drawn to themselves the greater proportion of the lands in the country, leaving a large body of poor, without any lot of land, in hopeless misery and degradation. To this inequality (according to Plutarch) the reforming legislator applied at once a stringent remedy. He redistributed the whole territory belonging to Sparta, as well as the remainder of Laconia; the former, in nine thousand equal lots, one to each Spartan citizen; the latter, in thirty thousand equal lots, one to each Periœkus: of this alleged distribution, I shall speak farther presently. Moreover, he banished the use of gold and silver money, tolerating nothing in the shape of circulating medium but pieces of iron, heavy and scarcely portable; and he forbade[658] to the Spartan citizen every species of industrious or money-seeking occupation, agriculture included. He farther constituted,—though not without strenuous opposition, during the course of which his eye is said to have been knocked out by a violent youth, named Alkander,—the Syssitia, or public mess. A certain number of joint tables were provided, and every citizen was required to belong to some one of them, and habitually to take his meals at it,[659]—no new member being admissible without an unanimous ballot in his favor by the previous occupants. Each provided from his lot of land a specified quota of barley-meal, wine, cheese, and figs, and a small contribution of money for condiments: game was obtained in addition by hunting in the public forests of the state, while every one who sacrificed to the gods,[660] sent to his mess-table a part of the victim killed. From boyhood to old age, every Spartan citizen took his sober meals at this public mess, where all shared alike; nor was distinction of any kind allowed, except on signal occasions of service rendered by an individual to the state.

[658] Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. 7.

[659] Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 15; substantially confirmed by Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. 1, 5.

[660] See the authors quoted in Athenæus, iv. p. 141.

These public Syssitia, under the management of the Polemarchs, were connected with the military distribution, the constant gymnastic training, and the rigorous discipline of detail, enforced by Lykurgus. From the early age of seven years, throughout his whole life, as youth and man no less than as boy, the Spartan citizen lived habitually in public, always either himself under drill, gymnastic and military, or a critic and spectator of others,—always under the fetters and observances of a rule partly military, partly monastic,—estranged from the independence of a separate home,—seeing his wife, during the first years after marriage, only by stealth, and maintaining little peculiar relation with his children. The supervision, not only of his fellow-citizens, but also of authorized censors, or captains nominated by the state, was perpetually acting upon him: his day was passed in public exercises and meals, his nights in the public barrack to which he belonged. Besides the particular military drill, whereby the complicated movements required from a body of Lacedæmonian hoplites in the field, were made familiar to him from his youth,—he also became subject to severe bodily discipline of other kinds, calculated to impart strength, activity, and endurance. To manifest a daring and pugnacious spirit,—to sustain the greatest bodily torture unmoved,—to endure hunger and thirst, heat, cold, and fatigue,—to tread the worst ground barefoot,—to wear the same garment winter and summer,—to suppress external manifestations of feeling, and to exhibit in public, when action was not called for, a bearing shy, silent, and motionless as a statue,—all these were the virtues of the accomplished Spartan youth.[661] Two squadrons were often matched against each other to contend (without arms) in the little insular circumscription called the Platanistûs, and these contests were carried on, under the eye of the authorities, with the utmost extremity of fury. Nor was the competition among them less obstinate, to bear without murmuring the cruel scourgings inflicted before the altar of Artemis Orthia, supposed to be highly acceptable to the goddess, though they sometimes terminated even in the death of the uncomplaining sufferer.[662] Besides the various descriptions of gymnastic contests, the youths were instructed in the choric dances employed in festivals of the gods, which contributed to impart to them methodized and harmonious movements. Hunting in the woods and mountains of Laconia was encouraged, as a means of inuring them to fatigue and privation. The nourishment supplied to the youthful Spartans was purposely kept insufficient, but they were allowed to make up the deficiency not only by hunting, but even by stealing whatever they could lay hands upon, provided they could do so without being detected in the fact; in which latter case they were severely chastised.[663] In reference simply to bodily results,[664] the training at Sparta was excellent, combining strength and agility with universal aptitude and endurance, and steering clear of that mistake by which Thebes and other cities impaired the effect of their gymnastics,—the attempt to create an athletic habit, suited for the games, but suited for nothing else.

[661] Xenoph. Rep. Lac. 2-3, 3-5, 4-6. The extreme pains taken to enforce καρτερία (fortitude and endurance) in the Spartan system is especially dwelt upon by Aristotle (Politica, ii. 6, 5-16); compare Plato, De Legibus, i. p. 633; Xenophon, De Laced. Repub. ii. 9, with the references in Schneider’s note,—likewise Cragius, De Republica Laced. iii. 8, p. 325.

[662] It is remarkable that these violent contentions of the youth, wherein kicking, biting, gouging out each other’s eyes, was resorted to,—as well as the διαμαστίγωσις, or scourging-match, before the altar of Artemis,—lasted down to the closing days of Sparta, and were actually seen by Cicero, Plutarch, and even Pausanias. Plutarch had seen several persons die under the suffering (Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 16, 18-30; and Instituta Laconica, p. 239; Pausan. iii. 14, 9, 16, 7; Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. ii. 15).

The voluntary tortures, undergone by the young men among the Mandan tribe of Indians, at their annual religious festival, in the presence of the elders of the tribe,—afford a striking illustration of the same principles and tendencies as this Spartan διαμαστίγωσις. They are endured partly under the influence of religious feelings, as an acceptable offering to the Great Spirit,—partly as a point of emulation and glory on the part of the young men, to show themselves worthy and unconquerable in the eyes of their seniors. The intensity of these tortures is, indeed, frightful to read, and far surpasses in that respect anything ever witnessed at Sparta. It would be incredible, were it not attested by a trustworthy eye-witness.

See Mr. Catlin’s Letters on the North American Indians, Letter 22, vol. i. p. 157, _seq._

“These religious ceremonies are held, in part, for the purpose of conducting all the young men of the tribe, as they annually arrive at manhood, through an ordeal of privation and torture; which, while it is supposed to harden their muscles and prepare them for extreme endurance,—enables the chiefs who are spectators of the scene, to decide upon their comparative bodily strength and ability, to endure the extreme privations and sufferings that often fall to the lot of Indian warriors; and that they may decide who is the most hardy and best able to lead a war-party in case of emergency.”—Again, p. 173, etc.

The καρτερία or power of endurance (Aristot. Pol. ii. 6, 5-16) which formed one of the prominent objects of the Lycurgean training, dwindles into nothing compared to that of the Mandan Indians.

[663] Xenophon, Anab. iv. 6, 14; and De Repub. Lac. c. 2, 6; Isokratês, Or. xii. (Panath.) p. 277. It is these licensed expeditions for thieving, I presume, to which Isokratês alludes, when he speaks of τῆς παίδων αὐτονομίας at Sparta, which, in its natural sense, would be the reverse of the truth (p. 277).

[664] Aristot. Polit. viii. 3, 3,—the remark is curious,—νῦν μὲν οὖν αἱ μάλιστα δοκοῦσαι τῶν πόλεων ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τῶν παίδων αἱ μὲν ἀθλητικὴν ἕξιν ἐμποιοῦσι, λωβώμεναι τά τ᾽ εἴδη καὶ τὴν αὔξησιν τῶν σωμάτων· οἱ δὲ Λάκωνες ταύτην μὲν οὐχ ἥμαρτον τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, etc. Compare the remark in Plato, Protagor. p. 342.

Of all the attributes of this remarkable community, there is none more difficult to make out clearly than the condition and character of the Spartan women. Aristotle asserts that, in his time, they were imperious and unruly, without being really so brave and useful in moments of danger as other Grecian females;[665] that they possessed great influence over the men, and even exercised much ascendency over the course of public affairs; and that nearly half the landed property of Laconia had come to belong to them. The exemption of the women from all control, formed, in his eye, a pointed contrast with the rigorous discipline imposed upon the men,—and a contrast hardly less pointed with the condition of women in other Grecian cities, where they were habitually confined to the interior of the house, and seldom appeared in public. While the Spartan husband went through the hard details of his ascetic life, and dined on the plainest fare at the Pheidition, or mess, the wife (it appears) maintained an ample and luxurious establishment at home; and the desire to provide for such outlay was one of the causes of that love of money which prevailed among men forbidden to enjoy it in the ordinary ways. To explain this antithesis between the treatment of the two sexes at Sparta, Aristotle was informed that Lykurgus had tried to bring the women no less than the men under a system of discipline, but that they made so obstinate a resistance as to compel him to desist.[666]

[665] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 5; Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 31. Aristotle alludes to the conduct of the Spartan women on the occasion of the invasion of Laconia by the Thebans, as an evidence of his opinion respecting their want of courage. His judgment in this respect seems hard upon them, and he probably had formed to himself exaggerated notions of what their courage under such circumstances ought to have been, as the result of their peculiar training. We may add that their violent demonstrations on that trying occasion may well have arisen quite as much from the agony of wounded honor as from fear, when we consider what an event the appearance of a conquering army in Sparta was.

[666] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 5, 8, 11.

The view here given by the philosopher, and deserving of course careful attention, is not easy to reconcile with that of Xenophon and Plutarch, who look upon the Spartan women from a different side, and represent them as worthy and homogeneous companions to the men. The Lykurgean system (as these authors describe it) considering the women as a part of the state, and not as a part of the house, placed them under training hardly less than the men. Its grand purpose, the maintenance of a vigorous breed of citizens, determined both the treatment of the younger women, and the regulations as to the intercourse of the sexes. “Female slaves are good enough (Lykurgus thought) to sit at home spinning and weaving,—but who can expect a splendid offspring, the appropriate mission and duty of a free Spartan woman towards her country, from mothers brought up in such occupations?”[667] Pursuant to these views, the Spartan damsels underwent a bodily training analogous to that of the Spartan youth,—being formally exercised, and contending with each other in running, wrestling, and boxing, agreeably to the forms of the Grecian agônes. They seem to have worn a light tunic, cut open at the skirts, so as to leave the limbs both free and exposed to view,—hence Plutarch speaks of them as completely uncovered, while other critics, in different quarters of Greece, heaped similar reproach upon the practice, as if it had been perfect nakedness.[668] The presence of the Spartan youths, and even of the kings and the body of citizens, at these exercises, lent animation to the scene. In like manner, the young women marched in the religious processions, sung and danced at particular festivals, and witnessed as spectators the exercises and contentions of the youths; so that the two sexes were perpetually intermingled with each other in public, in a way foreign to the habits, as well as repugnant to the feelings, of other Grecian states. We may well conceive that such an education imparted to the women both a demonstrative character and an eager interest in masculine accomplishments, so that the expression of their praise was the strongest stimulus, and that of their reproach the bitterest humiliation, to the youthful troop who heard it.

[667] Xenoph. Rep. Lac. i. 3-4; Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13-14.

[668] Eurip. Androm. 598; Cicero, Tuscul. Quæst. ii. 15. The epithet φαινομηρίδες, as old as the poet Ibykus, shows that the Spartan women were not uncovered (see Julius Pollux, vii. 55).

It is scarcely worth while to notice the poetical allusions of Ovid and Propertius.

How completely the practice of gymnastic and military training for young women, analogous to that of the other sex, was approved by Plato, may be seen from the injunctions in his Republic.

The age of marriage (which in some of the unrestricted cities of Greece was so early as to deteriorate visibly the breed of citizens)[669] was deferred by the Spartan law, both in women and men, until the period supposed to be most consistent with the perfection of the offspring. And when we read the restriction which Spartan custom imposed upon the intercourse even between married persons, we shall conclude without hesitation that the public intermixture of the sexes, in the way just described, led to no such liberties, between persons not married, as might be likely to arise from it under other circumstances.[670] Marriage was almost universal among the citizens, enforced by general opinion at least, if not by law. The young Spartan carried away his bride by a simulated abduction, but she still seems, for some time at least, to have continued to reside with her family, visiting her husband in his barrack in the disguise of male attire, and on short and stolen occasions.[671] To some married couples, according to Plutarch, it happened, that they had been married long enough to have two or three children, while they had scarcely seen each other apart by daylight. Secret intrigue on the part of married women was unknown at Sparta; but to bring together the finest couples was regarded by the citizens as desirable, and by the lawgiver as a duty. No personal feeling or jealousy on the part of the husband found sympathy from any one,—and he permitted without difficulty, sometimes actively encouraged, compliances on the part of his wife, consistent with this generally acknowledged object. So far was such toleration carried, that there were some married women who were recognized mistresses of two houses,[672] and mothers of two distinct families,—a sort of bigamy strictly forbidden to the men, and never permitted, except in the remarkable case of king Anaxandrides, when the royal Herakleidan line of Eurysthenes was in danger of becoming extinct. The wife of Anaxandrides being childless, the ephors strongly urged him, on grounds of public necessity, to repudiate her and marry another. But he refused to dismiss a wife who had given him no cause of complaint; upon which, when they found him inexorable, they desired him to retain her, but to marry another wife besides, in order that at any rate there might be issue to the Eurystheneid line. “He thus (says Herodotus) married two wives, and inhabited two family-hearths, a proceeding unknown at Sparta;”[673] yet the same privilege which, according to Xenophon, some Spartan women enjoyed without reproach from any one, and with perfect harmony between the inmates of both their houses. O. Müller[674] remarks—and the evidence, as far as we know it, bears him out—that love-marriages and genuine affection towards a wife were more familiar to Sparta than to Athens; though in the former, marital jealousy was a sentiment neither indulged nor recognized,—while in the latter, it was intense and universal.[675]

[669] Aristot. Polit. vii. 14, 4.

[670] “It is certain (observes Dr. Thirlwall, speaking of the Spartan unmarried women) that in this respect the Spartan morals were as pure as those of any ancient, perhaps of any modern, people.” (History of Greece, ch. viii. vol. i. p. 371.)

[671] Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 15; Xenoph. Rep. Lac. i. 5. Xenophon does not make any allusion to the abduction as a general custom. There occurred cases in which it was real and violent: see Herod. v. 65. Demaratus carried off and married the betrothed bride of Leotychides.

[672] Xenoph. Rep. Lac. i. 9. Εἰ δέ τις αὖ γυναικὶ μὲν συνοικεῖν μὴ βούλοιτο, τέκνων δὲ ἀξιολόγων ἐπιθυμοίη, καὶ τούτῳ νόμον ἐποίησεν, ἥντινα ἂν εὔτεκνον καὶ γενναίαν ὁρῴη, πείσαντα τὸν ἔχοντα, ἐκ ταύτης τεκνοποιεῖσθαι. Καὶ πολλὰ μὲν τοιαῦτα συνεχώρει. ~Αἵ τε γὰρ γυναῖκες δίττους οἴκους βούλονται κατέχειν~, οἵ τε ἄνδρες ἀδελφοὺς τοῖς παισὶ προσλαμβάνειν, οἳ τοῦ μὲν γένους καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως κοινωνοῦσι, τῶν δὲ χρημάτων οὐκ ἀντιποιοῦνται.

[673] Herodot. v. 39-40. Μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα, γυναῖκας ἔχων δύο, διξὰς ἱστίας οἴκεε, ποιέων οὐδαμᾶ Σπαρτιητικά.

[674] Müller, Hist. of Dorians, iv. 4, 1. The stories recounted by Plutarch, (Agis, c. 20; Kleomenês, c. 37-38,) of the conduct of Agesistrata and Kratesikleia, the wives of Agis and Kleomenês, and of the wife of Panteus (whom he does not name) on occasion of the deaths of their respective husbands, illustrate powerfully the strong conjugal affection of a Spartan woman, and her devoted adherence and fortitude in sharing with her husband the last extremities of suffering.

[675] See the Oration of Lysias, De Cæde Eratosthenis, Orat. i. p. 94, _seq._

To reconcile the careful gymnastic training, which Xenophon and Plutarch mention, with that uncontrolled luxury and relaxation which Aristotle condemns in the Spartan women, we may perhaps suppose that, in the time of the latter, the women of high position and wealth had contrived to emancipate themselves from the general obligation, and that it is of such particular cases that he chiefly speaks. He dwells especially upon the increasing tendency to accumulate property in the hands of the women,[676] which seems to have been still more conspicuous a century afterwards, in the reign of Agis the Third. And we may readily imagine that one of the employments of wealth thus acquired would be to purchase exemption from laborious training,—an object more easy to accomplish in their case than in that of the men, whose services were required by the state as soldiers. By what steps so large a proportion as two-fifths of the landed property of the state came to be possessed by women, he partially explains to us. There were (he says) many sole heiresses,—the dowries given by fathers to their daughters were very large,—and the father had unlimited power of testamentary bequest, which he was disposed to use to the advantage of his daughter over his son. In conjunction with this last circumstance, we have to notice that peculiar sympathy and yielding disposition towards women in the Spartan mind, of which Aristotle also speaks,[677] and which he ascribes to the warlike temper both of the citizen and the state,—Arês bearing the yoke of Aphroditê. But, apart from such a consideration, if we suppose, on the part of a wealthy Spartan father, the simple disposition to treat sons and daughters alike as to bequest,—nearly one half of the inherited mass of property would naturally be found in the hands of the daughters, since on an average of families the number of the two sexes born is nearly equal. In most societies, it is the men who make new acquisitions: but this seldom or never happened with Spartan men, who disdained all money-getting occupations.

[676] Plutarch, Agis, c. 4.

[677] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 6; Plutarch, Agis, c. 4. τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους κατηκόους ὄντας ἀεὶ τῶν γυναικῶν, καὶ πλεῖον ἐκείναις τῶν δημοσίων, ἢ τῶν ἰδίων αὐτοῖς, πολυπραγμονεῖν δίδοντας.

Xenophon, a warm panegyrist of Spartan manners, points with some pride to the tall and vigorous breed of citizens which the Lykurgic institutions had produced. The beauty of the Lacedæmonian women was notorious throughout Greece, and Lampitô, the Lacedæmonian woman introduced in the Lysistrata of Aristophanês, is made to receive from the Athenian women the loudest compliments upon her fine shape and masculine vigor.[678] We may remark that, on this as well as on the other points, Xenophon emphatically insists on the peculiarity of Spartan institutions, contradicting thus the views of those who regard them merely as something a little Hyper-Dorian. Indeed, such peculiarity seems never to have been questioned in antiquity, either by the enemies or by the admirers of Sparta. And those who censured the public masculine exercises of the Spartan maidens, as well as the liberty tolerated in married women, allowed at the same time that the feelings of both were actively identified with the state to a degree hardly known in Greece; that the patriotism of the men greatly depended upon the sympathy of the other sex, which manifested itself publicly, in a manner not compatible with the recluse life of Grecian women generally, to the exaltation of the brave as well as to the abasement of the recreant; and that the dignified bearing of the Spartan matrons under private family loss seriously assisted the state in the task of bearing up against public reverses. “Return either with your shield or upon it,” was their exhortation to their sons when departing for foreign service: and after the fatal day of Leuktra, those mothers who had to welcome home their surviving sons in dishonor and defeat, were the bitter sufferers; while those whose sons had perished, maintained a bearing comparatively cheerful.[679]

[678] Aristophan. Lysistr. 80.

[679] See the remarkable account in Xenophon, Hellen. iv. 16; Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 29; one of the most striking incidents in Grecian history. Compare, also, the string of sayings ascribed to Lacedæmonian women, in Plutarch, Lac. Apophth. p. 241, _seq._

Such were the leading points of the memorable Spartan discipline, strengthened in its effect on the mind by the absence of communication with strangers. For no Spartan could go abroad without leave, nor were strangers permitted to stay at Sparta; they came thither, it seems, by a sort of sufferance, but the uncourteous process called xenêlasy[680] was always available to remove them, nor could there arise in Sparta that class of resident metics or aliens who constituted a large part of the population of Athens, and seem to have been found in most other Grecian towns. It is in this universal schooling, training, and drilling, imposed alike upon boys and men, youths and virgins, rich and poor, that the distinctive attribute of Sparta is to be sought,—not in her laws or political constitution.

[680] How offensive the Lacedæmonian xenêlasy or expulsion of strangers appeared in Greece, we may see from the speeches of Periklês in Thucydidês (i. 144; ii. 39). Compare Xenophon, Rep. Lac. xiv. 4; Plutarch, Agis, c. 10; Lykurgus, c. 27; Plato, Protagoras, p. 348.

No Spartan left the country without permission: Isokratês, Orat. xi. (Busiris), p. 225; Xenoph. _ut sup._

Both these regulations became much relaxed after the close of the Peloponnesian war.

Lykurgus (or the individual to whom this system is owing, whoever he was) is the founder of a warlike brotherhood rather than the lawgiver of a political community; his brethren live together like bees in a hive (to borrow a simile from Plutarch), with all their feelings implicated in the commonwealth, and divorced from house and home.[681] Far from contemplating the society as a whole, with its multifarious wants and liabilities, he interdicts beforehand, by one of the three primitive Rhetræ, all written laws, that is to say, all formal and premeditated enactments on any special subject. When disputes are to be settled or judicial interference is required, the magistrate is to decide from his own sense of equity; that the magistrate will not depart from the established customs and recognized purposes of the city, is presumed from the personal discipline which he and the select body to whom he belongs, have undergone. It is this select body, maintained by the labor of others, over whom Lykurgus exclusively watches, with the provident eye of a trainer, for the purpose of disciplining them into a state of regimental preparation,[682] single-minded obedience, and bodily efficiency and endurance, so that they may be always fit and ready for defence, for conquest and for dominion. The parallel of the Lykurgean institutions is to be found in the Republic of Plato, who approves the Spartan principle of select guardians carefully trained and administering the community at discretion; with this momentous difference, indeed, that the Spartan character[683] formed by Lykurgus is of a low type, rendered savage and fierce by exclusive and overdone bodily discipline,—destitute even of the elements of letters,—immersed in their own narrow specialities, and taught to despise all that lay beyond,—possessing all the qualities requisite to procure dominion, but none of those calculated to render dominion popular or salutary to the subject; while the habits and attributes of the guardians, as shadowed forth by Plato, are enlarged as well as philanthropic, qualifying them not simply to govern, but to govern for purposes protective, conciliatory, and exalted. Both Plato and Aristotle conceive as the perfection of society something of the Spartan type,—a select body of equally privileged citizens, disengaged from industrious pursuits, and subjected to public and uniform training. Both admit (with Lykurgus) that the citizen belongs neither to himself nor to his family, but to his city; both at the same time note with regret, that the Spartan training was turned only to one portion of human virtue,—that which is called forth in a state of war;[684] the citizens being converted into a sort of garrison, always under drill, and always ready to be called forth either against Helots at home or against enemies abroad. Such exclusive tendency will appear less astonishing if we consider the very early and insecure period at which the Lykurgean institutions arose, when none of those guarantees which afterwards maintained the peace of the Hellenic world had as yet become effective,—no constant habits of intercourse, no custom of meeting in Amphiktyony from the distant parts of Greece, no common or largely frequented festivals, no multiplication of proxenies (or standing tickets of hospitality) between the important cities, no pacific or industrious habits anywhere. When we contemplate the general insecurity of Grecian life in the ninth or eighth century before the Christian era, and especially the precarious condition of a small band of Dorian conquerors in Sparta and its district, with subdued Helots on their own lands and Achæans unsubdued all around them,—we shall not be surprised that the language which Brasidas in the Peloponnesian war addresses to his army in reference to the original Spartan settlement, was still more powerfully present to the mind of Lykurgus four centuries earlier—“We are a few in the midst of many enemies; we can only maintain ourselves by fighting and conquering.”[685]

[681] Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 25.

[682] Plutarch observes justly about Sparta, under the discipline of Lykurgus, that it was “not the polity of a city, but the life of a trained and skilful man,”—οὐ πόλεως ἡ Σπάρτη πολίτειαν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀνδρὸς ἀσκητοῦ καὶ σοφοῦ βίον ἔχουσα (Plutarch, Lyk. c. 30).

About the perfect habit of obedience at Sparta, see Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 5, 9, 15-iv. 4, 15, the grand attributes of Sparta in the eyes of its admirers (Isokratês, Panathen. Or. xii. pp. 256-278), πειθαρχία—σωφροσύνη—τα γυμνάσια τἄκει καθεστῶτα καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἄσκησιν τῆς ἀνδρίας καὶ πρὸς τὴν ὁμόνοιαν καὶ συνόλως τὴν περὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἐμπειρίαν.

[683] Aristot. Polit. viii. 3, 3. Οἱ Λάκωνες ... θηριώδεις ἀπεργάζονται τοῖς πόνοις.

That the Spartans were absolutely ignorant of letters, and could not read, is expressly stated by Isokratês (Panathen. Or. xii. p. 277). οὗτοι δὲ τοσοῦτον ἀπολελειμμένοι τῆς κοινῆς παιδείας καὶ φιλοσοφίας εἰσὶν, ὥστ᾽ οὐδὲ γράμματα μανθάνουσιν, etc.

The preference of rhetoric to accuracy, is so manifest in Isokratês, that we ought to understand his expressions with some reserve; but in this case it is evident that he means literally what he says, for in another part of the same discourse, there is an expression dropped, almost unconsciously, which confirms it. “The most rational Spartans (he says) will appreciate this discourse, if they _find any one to read it to them_,”—ἢν λάβωσι τὸν ἀναγνωσόμενον (p. 285).

[684] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 22; vii. 13, 11; viii. 1, 3; viii. 3, 3. Plato, Legg. i. pp. 626-629. Plutarch, Solôn, c. 22.

[685] Thucyd. iv. 126. Οἵ γε μηδὲ ἀπὸ πολιτειῶν τοιούτων ἥκετε, ἐν αἷς οὐ πολλοὶ ὀλίγων ἄρχουσι, ἀλλὰ πλειόνων μᾶλλον ἐλάσσους· οὐκ ἄλλῳ τινὶ κτησάμενοι τὴν δυναστείαν ἢ τῷ μαχόμενοι κρατεῖν.

The most remarkable circumstance is, that these words are addressed by Brasidas to an army composed, in large proportion, of manumitted Helots (Thucyd. iv. 81).

Under such circumstances, the exclusive aim which Lykurgus proposed to himself is easily understood; but what is truly surprising, is the violence of his means and the success of the result. He realized his project of creating, in the eight thousand or nine thousand Spartan citizens, unrivalled habits of obedience, hardihood, self-denial, and military aptitude,—complete subjection on the part of each individual to the local public opinion, and preference of death to the abandonment of Spartan maxims, intense ambition on the part of every one to distinguish himself within the prescribed sphere of duties, with little ambition for anything else. In what manner so rigorous a system of individual training can have been first brought to bear upon any community, mastering the course of the thoughts and actions from boyhood to old age,—a work far more difficult than any political revolution,—we are not permitted to discover. Nor does the influence of an earnest and energetic Herakleidman,—seconded by the still more powerful working of the Delphian god behind, upon the strong pious susceptibilities of the Spartan mind,—sufficiently explain a phenomenon so remarkable in the history of mankind, unless we suppose them aided by some combination of coöperating circumstances which history has not transmitted to us,[686] and preceded by disorders so exaggerated as to render the citizens glad to escape from them at any price.

[686] Plato treats of the system of Lykurgus, as emanating from the Delphian Apollo and Lykurgus as his missionary (Legg. i. p. 632).

Respecting the ante-Lykurgean Sparta we possess no positive information whatever. But although this unfortunate gap cannot be filled up, we may yet master the negative probabilities of the case sufficiently to see that, in what Plutarch has told us (and from Plutarch the modern views have, until lately, been derived), there is indeed a basis of reality, but there is also a large superstructure of romance,—in not a few particulars essentially misleading. For example, Plutarch treats Lykurgus as introducing his reforms at a time when Sparta was mistress of Laconia, and distributing the whole of that territory among the Periœki. Now we know that Laconia was not then in possession of Sparta, and that the partition of Lykurgus (assuming it to be real) could only have been applied to the land in the immediate vicinity of the latter. For even Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ, were not conquered until the reign of Têleklus, posterior to any period which we can reasonably assign to Lykurgus: nor can any such distribution of Laconia have really occurred. Farther, we are told that Lykurgus banished from Sparta coined gold and silver, useless professions and frivolities, eager pursuit of gain, and ostentatious display. Without dwelling upon the improbability that any one of these anti-Spartan characteristics should have existed at so early a period as the ninth century before the Christian era, we may at least be certain that coined silver was not then to be found, since it was first introduced into Greece by Pheidon of Argos in the succeeding century, as has been stated in the preceding section.

But amongst all the points stated by Plutarch, the most suspicious by far, and the most misleading, because endless calculations have been built upon it, is the alleged redivision of landed property. He tells us that Lykurgus found fearful inequality in the landed possessions of the Spartans; nearly all the land in the hands of a few, and a great multitude without any land; that he rectified this evil by a redivision of the Spartan district into nine thousand equal lots, and the rest of Laconia into thirty thousand, giving to each citizen as much as would produce a given quota of barley, etc.; and that he wished, moreover, to have divided the movable property upon similar principles of equality, but was deterred by the difficulties of carrying his design into execution.

Now we shall find on consideration that this new and equal partition of lands by Lykurgus is still more at variance with fact and probability than the two former alleged proceedings. All the historical evidences exhibit decided inequalities of property among the Spartans,—inequalities which tended constantly to increase; moreover, the earlier authors do not conceive this evil as having grown up by way of abuse out of a primeval system of perfect equality, nor do they know anything of the original equal redivision by Lykurgus. Even as early as the poet Alkæus (B. C. 600-580) we find bitter complaints of the oppressive ascendency of wealth, and the degradation of the poor man, cited as having been pronounced by Aristodêmus at Sparta: “Wealth (said he) makes the man,—no poor person is either accounted good or honored.”[687] Next, the historian Hellanikus certainly knew nothing of the Lykurgean redivision,—for he ascribed the whole Spartan polity to Eurysthenês and Proklês, the original founders, and hardly noticed Lykurgus at all. Again, in the brief, but impressive description of the Spartan lawgiver by Herodotus, several other institutions are alluded to, but nothing is said about a redivision of the lands; and this latter point is in itself of such transcendent moment, and was so recognized among all Grecian thinkers, that the omission is almost a demonstration of ignorance. Thucydidês certainly could not have believed that equality of property was an original feature in the Lykurgean system; for he says that, at Lacedæmon, “the rich men assimilated themselves greatly in respect of clothing and general habits of life to the simplicity of the poor, and thus set an example which was partially followed in the rest of Greece:” a remark which both implies the existence of unequal property, and gives a just appreciation of the real working of Lykurgic institutions.[688] The like is the sentiment of Xenophon:[689] he observes that the rich at Sparta gained little by their wealth in point of superior comfort; but he never glances at any original measure carried into effect by Lykurgus for equalizing possessions. Plato too,[690] while he touches upon the great advantage possessed by the Dorians, immediately after their conquest of Peloponnesus, in being able to apportion land suitably to all,—never hints that this original distribution had degenerated into an abuse, and that an entire subsequent redivision had been resorted to by Lykurgus: moreover, he is himself deeply sensible of the hazards of that formidable proceeding. Lastly, Aristotle clearly did not believe that Lykurgus had redivided the soil. For he informs us first, that, “both in Lacedæmon and in Krete,[691] the legislator had rendered the enjoyment of property common through the establishment of the Syssitia, or public mess.” Now this remark (if read in the chapter of which it forms a part, a refutation of the scheme of Communism for the select guardians in the Platonic Republic) will be seen to tell little for its point, if we assume that Lykurgus at the same time equalized all individual possessions. Had Aristotle known that fact, he could not have failed to notice it: nor could he have assimilated the legislators in Lacedæmon and Krete, seeing that in the latter no one pretends that any such equalization was ever brought about. Next, not only does Aristotle dwell upon the actual inequality of property at Sparta as a serious public evil, but he nowhere treats this as having grown out of a system of absolute equality once enacted by the lawgiver as a part of the primitive constitution: he expressly notices inequality of property so far back as the second Messenian war. Moreover, in that valuable chapter of his Politics, where the scheme of equality of possessions is discussed, Phaleas of Chalkedôn is expressly mentioned as the first author of it, thus indirectly excluding Lykurgus.[692] The mere silence of Aristotle is in this discussion a negative argument of the greatest weight. Isokratês,[693] too, speaks much about Sparta for good and for evil,—mentions Lykurgus as having established a political constitution much like that of the earliest days of Athens,—praises the gymnasia and the discipline, and compliments the Spartans upon the many centuries which they have gone through without violent sedition, extinction of debts, and redivision of the land,—those “monstrous evils,” as he terms them. Had he conceived Lykurgus as being himself the author of a complete redivision of land, he could hardly have avoided some allusion to it.

[687] Alcæi Fragment. 41, p. 279, ed. Schneidewin:—

Ὡς γὰρ δήποτ᾽ Ἀριστόδαμον φαισ᾽ οὐκ ἀπάλαμνον ἐν ~Σπάρτᾳ λόγον~ Εἰπῆν—~Χρήματ᾽ ἀνηρ~· πενιχρὸς δ᾽ οὐδεὶς πέλετ᾽ ἐσθλὸς οὐδὲ τίμιος.

Compare the Schol. ad Pindar. Isthm. ii. 17, and Diogen. Laërt. i. 31.

[688] Thucydid. i. 6. μετρίᾳ δ᾽ αὖ ἐσθῆτι καὶ ἐς τὸν νῦν τρόπον πρῶτοι Λακεδαιμόνιοι ἐχρήσαντο, καὶ ἐς τὰ ἄλλα πρὸς τοὺς πολλοὺς οἱ τὰ μείζω κεκτημένοι ἰσοδίαιτοι μάλιστα κατέστησαν. See, also, Plutarch, Apophthegm. Lacon. p. 210. A.-F.

[689] Xenoph. Republ. Laced. c. 7.

[690] Plato, Legg. iii. p. 684.

[691] Aristotel. Politic. ii. 2, 10. ὥσπερ τὰ περὶ τὰς κτήσεις ἐν Λακεδαίμονι καὶ Κρήτῃ τοῖς συσσιτίοις ὁ νομοθέτης ἐκοίνωσε.

[692] Aristot. Politic. ii. 4, 1, about Phaleas; and about Sparta and Krete, generally, the whole sixth and seventh chapters of the second book; also, v. 6, 2-7.

Theophrastus (apud Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 10) makes a similar observation, that the public mess, and the general simplicity of habits, tended to render wealth of little service to the possessor: τὸν πλοῦτον ἄπλουτον ἀπεργάσασθαι τῇ κοινότητι τῶν δείπνων, καὶ τῇ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν εὐτελείᾳ. Compare Plutarch. Apophthegm. Lacon. p. 226 E. The wealth, therefore, was not formally done away with in the opinion of Theophrastus: there was no positive equality of possessions.

Both the Spartan kings dined at the public mess at the same pheidition (Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 30).

Herakleidês Ponticus mentions nothing, either about equality of Spartan lots or fresh partition of lands, by Lykurgus (ad calcem Cragii, De Spartanorum Repub. p. 504), though he speaks about the Spartan lots and law of succession as well as about Lykurgus.

[693] Isokratês, Panathen. Or. xii. pp. 266, 270, 278: οὐδὲ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν οὐδ᾽ ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲν τῶν ἀνηκέστων κακῶν.

It appears, then, that none of the authors down to Aristotle ascribe to Lykurgus a redivision of the lands, either of Sparta or of Laconia. The statement to this effect in Plutarch, given in great detail and with precise specification of number and produce, must have been borrowed from some author later than Aristotle; and I think we may trace the source of it, when we study Plutarch’s biography of Lykurgus in conjunction with that of Agis and Kleomenês. The statement is taken from authors of the century after Aristotle, either in, or shortly before, the age when both those kings tried extreme measures to renovate the sinking state: the former by a thorough change of system and property, yet proposed and accepted according to constitutional forms; the latter by projects substantially similar, with violence to enforce them. The accumulation of landed property in few hands, the multiplication of poor, and the decline in the number of citizens, which are depicted as grave mischiefs by Aristotle, had become greatly aggravated during the century between him and Agis. The number of citizens, reckoned by Herodotus in the time of the Persian invasion at eight thousand, had dwindled down in the time of Aristotle to one thousand, and in that of Agis to seven hundred, out of which latter number one hundred alone possessed most of the landed property of the state.[694] Now, by the ancient rule of Lykurgus, the qualification for citizenship was the ability to furnish the prescribed quota, incumbent on each individual, at the public mess: so soon as a citizen became too poor to answer to this requisition, he lost his franchise and his eligibility to offices.[695] The smaller lots of land, though it was held discreditable either to buy or sell them,[696] and though some have asserted (without ground, I think) that it was forbidden to divide them,—became insufficient for numerous families, and seem to have been alienated in some indirect manner to the rich; while every industrious occupation being both interdicted to a Spartan citizen and really inconsistent with his rigorous personal discipline, no other means of furnishing his quota, except the lot of land, was open to him. The difficulty felt with regard to these smaller lots of land may be judged of from the fact stated by Polybius,[697] that three or four Spartan brothers had often one and the same wife, the paternal land being just sufficient to furnish contributions for all to the public mess, and thus to keep alive the citizen-rights of all the sons. The tendency to diminution in the number of Spartan citizens seems to have gone on uninterruptedly from the time of the Persian war, and must have been aggravated by the foundation of Messênê, with its independent territory around, after the battle of Leuktra, an event which robbed the Spartans of a large portion of their property. Apart from these special causes, moreover, it has been observed often as a statistical fact, that a close corporation of citizens, or any small number of families, intermarrying habitually among one another, and not reinforced from without, have usually a tendency to diminish.

[694] Plutarch, Agis, c. iv.

[695] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 21. Παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Λακῶσιν ἕκαστον δεῖ φέρειν, καὶ σφόδρα πενήτων ἐνίων ὄντων, καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ἀνάλωμα οὐ δυναμένων δαπανᾷν.... ~Ὅρος δὲ τῆς πολιτείας οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ πάτριος, τὸν μὴ δυνάμενον τοῦτο τὸ τέλος φέρειν μὴ μετέχειν αὐτῆς~. So also Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. vii. ἴσα μὲν φέρειν εἰς τὰ ἐπιτήδεια, ὁμοίως δὲ διαιτᾶσθαι τάξας.

The existence of this rate-paying qualification, is the capital fact in the history of the Spartan constitution; especially when we couple it with the other fact, that no Spartan acquired anything by any kind of industry.

[696] Herakleidês Ponticus, ad calcem Cragii De Repub. Laced. p. 504. Compare Cragius, iii. 2, p. 196.

Aristotle (ii. 6, 10) states that it was discreditable to buy or sell a lot of land, but that the lot might be either given or bequeathed at pleasure. He mentions nothing about the prohibition to divide, and even states what contradicts it,—that it was the practice to give a large dowry when a rich man’s daughter married (ii. 6, 11). The sister of Agesilaus, Kyniska, was a person of large property, which apparently implies the division of his father’s estate (Plutarch, Agesilaus, 30).

Whether there was ever any law prohibiting a father from dividing his lot among his children, may well be doubted. The Rhetra of the ephor Epitadeus (Plutarch, Agis, 5), granted unlimited power of testamentary disposition to the possessor, so that he might give away or bequeathe his land to a stranger if he chose. To this law great effects are ascribed: but it is evident that the tendency to accumulate property in few hands, and the tendency to diminution in the number of qualified citizens, were powerfully manifested before the time of Epitadeus, who came after Lysander. Plutarch, in another place, notices Hesiod, Xenokrates, and Lykurgus, as having concurred with Plato, in thinking that it was proper to leave only one single heir (ἕνα μόνον κληρόνομον καταλιπεῖν) (Ὑπομνήματα εἰς Ἡσίοδον, Fragm. vol. v. p. 777, Wyttenb.). But Hesiod does not lay down this as a necessity or as a universal rule; he only says, that a man is better off who has only one son (Opp. Di. 374). And if Plato had been able to cite Lykurgus as an authority for that system of an invariable number of separate κλῆροι, or lots, which he sets forth in his treatise De Legibus (p. 740), it is highly probable that he would have done so. Still less can Aristotle have supposed that Lykurgus or the Spartan system either insured, or intended to insure, the maintenance of an unalterable number of distinct proprietary lots; for he expressly notices that scheme as a peculiarity of Philolaus the Corinthian, in his laws for the Thebans (Polit. ii. 9, 7).

[697] Polybius, Fragm. ap. Maii. Collect. Vett. Scrip. vol. ii. p. 384.

Perhaps, as O. Müller remarks, this may mean only, that none except the eldest brother could afford to marry; but the feelings of the Spartans in respect to marriage were, in many other points, so different from ours, that we are hardly authorized to reject the literal statement (History of the Dorians, iii. 10, 2),—which, indeed, is both illustrated and rendered credible by the permission granted in the laws of Solôn to an ἐπίκληρος who had been claimed in marriage by a relative in his old age,—ἂν ὁ κρατῶν καὶ κύριος γεγονὼς κατὰ τὸν νόμον αὐτὸς μὴ δυνατὸς ᾖ πλησιάζειν ὑπὸ τῶν ἔγγιστα τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ὀπυίεσθαι (Plutarch, Solôn, c. 20).

I may observe that of O. Müller’s statements, respecting the lots of land at Sparta, several are unsupported and some incorrect.

The present is not the occasion to enter at length into that combination of causes which partly sapped, partly overthrew, both the institutions of Lykurgus and the power of Sparta. But taking the condition of that city as it stood in the time of Agis the Third (say about 250 B. C.), we know that its citizens had become few in number, the bulk of them miserably poor, and all the land in a small number of hands. The old discipline and the public mess (as far as the rich were concerned) had degenerated into mere forms,—a numerous body of strangers or non-citizens (the old xenêlasy, or prohibition of resident strangers, being long discontinued) were domiciled in the town, forming a powerful moneyed interest; and lastly, the dignity and ascendency of the state amongst its neighbors were altogether ruined. It was insupportable to a young enthusiast like king Agis, as well as to many ardent spirits among his contemporaries, to contrast this degradation with the previous glories of their country: nor did they see any other way of reconstructing the old Sparta except by again admitting the disfranchised poor citizens, redividing the lands, cancelling all debts, and restoring the public mess and military training in all their strictness. Agis endeavored to carry through these subversive measures, (such as no demagogue in the extreme democracy of Athens would ever have ventured to glance at,) with the consent of the senate and public assembly, and the acquiescence of the rich. His sincerity is attested by the fact, that his own property, and that of his female relatives, among the largest in the state, was cast as the first sacrifice into the common stock. But he became the dupe of unprincipled coadjutors, and perished in the unavailing attempt to realize his scheme by persuasion. His successor, Kleomenês, afterwards accomplished by violence a change substantially similar, though the intervention of foreign arms speedily overthrew both himself and his institutions.

Now it was under the state of public feeling which gave birth to these projects of Agis and Kleomenês at Sparta, that the historic fancy, unknown to Aristotle and his predecessors, first gained ground, of the absolute equality of property as a primitive institution of Lykurgus. How much such a belief would favor the schemes of innovation is too obvious to require notice; and without supposing any deliberate imposture, we cannot be astonished that the predispositions of enthusiastic patriots interpreted, according to their own partialities, an old unrecorded legislation from which they were separated by more than five centuries. The Lykurgean discipline tended forcibly to suggest to men’s minds the _idea_ of equality among the citizens,—that is, the negation of all inequality not founded on some personal attribute,—inasmuch as it assimilated the habits, enjoyments, and capacities of the rich to those of the poor; and the equality thus existing in idea and tendency, which seemed to proclaim the wish of the founder, was strained by the later reformers into a positive institution which he had at first realized, but from which his degenerate followers had receded. It was thus that the fancies, longings, and indirect suggestions of the present assumed the character of recollections out of the early, obscure, and extinct historical past. Perhaps the philosopher Sphærus of Borysthenês (friend and companion of Kleomenês,[698] disciple of Zeno the Stoic, and author of works now lost, both on Lykurgus and Socrates, and on the constitution of Sparta) may have been one of those who gave currency to such an hypothesis. And we shall readily believe that, if advanced, it would find easy and sincere credence, when we recollect how many similar delusions have obtained vogue in modern times, far more favorable to historical accuracy,—how much false coloring has been attached by the political feeling of recent days to matters of ancient history, such as the Saxon Witenagemote, the Great Charter, the rise and growth of the English House of Commons, or even the Poor Law of Elizabeth.

[698] Plutarch, Kleomenês, cap. 2-11, with the note of Schömann, p. 175; also, Lycurg. cap. 8; Athenæ. iv. p. 141.

Phylarchus, also, described the proceedings of Kleomenês, seemingly with favor (Athenæ. ib.); compare Plutarch, Agis, c. 9.

Polybius believed, that Lykurgus had introduced equality of landed possession, both in the district of Sparta, and throughout Laconia: his opinion is, probably, borrowed from these same authors, of the third century before the Christian era. For he expresses his great surprise, how the best-informed ancient authors (οἱ λογιώτατοι τῶν ἀρχαίων συγγραφέων), Plato, Xenophon, Ephorus, Kallisthenês, can compare the Kretan polity to the old Lacedæmonian, the main features of the two being (as he says) so different,—equality of property at Sparta, great inequality of property in Krete, among other differences (Polyb. vi. 45-48).

This remark of Polybius, exhibits the difference of opinion of the earlier writers, as compared with those during the third century before the Christian era. The former compared Spartan and Kretan institutions, because they did not conceive equality of landed property as a feature in old Sparta.

When we read the division of lands really proposed by king Agis, it is found to be a very close copy of the original division ascribed to Lykurgus. He parcels the lands bounded by the four limits of Pellênê, Sellasia, Malea, and Taygetus, into four thousand five hundred lots, one to every Spartan; and the lands beyond these limits into fifteen thousand lots, one to each Periœkus; and he proposes to constitute in Sparta fifteen pheiditia, or public mess-tables, some including four hundred individuals, others two hundred,—thus providing a place for each of his four thousand five hundred Spartans. With respect to the division originally ascribed to Lykurgus, different accounts were given. Some considered it to have set out nine thousand lots for the district of Sparta, and thirty thousand for the rest of Laconia;[699] others affirmed that six thousand lots had been given by Lykurgus, and three thousand added afterwards by king Polydorus; a third tale was, that Lykurgus had assigned four thousand five hundred lots, and king Polydorus as many more. This last scheme is much the same as what was really proposed by Agis.

[699] Respecting Sphærus, see Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 8; Kleomen. c. 2; Athenæ. v. p. 141; Diogen. Laërt. vii. sect. 137.

In the preceding argument respecting the redivision of land ascribed to Lykurgus, I have taken that measure as it is described by Plutarch. But there has been a tendency, in some able modern writers, while admitting the general fact of such redivision, to reject the account given by Plutarch in some of its main circumstances. That, for instance, which is the capital feature in Plutarch’s narrative, and which gives soul and meaning to his picture of the lawgiver—the equality of partition—is now rejected by many as incorrect, and it is supposed that Lykurgus made some new agrarian regulations tending towards a general equality of landed property, but not an entirely new partition; that he may have resumed from the wealthy men lands which they had unjustly taken from the conquered Achæans, and thus provided allotments both for the poorer citizens and for the subject Laconians. Such is the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, who at the same time admits that the exact proportion of the Lykurgean distribution can hardly be ascertained.[700]

[700] Hist. of Greece, ch. viii. vol. i. pp. 344-347.

C. F. Hermann, on the contrary, considers the equal partition of Laconia into lots indivisible and inalienable, as “an essential condition” (eine wesentliche Bedingung) of the whole Lykurgean system (Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staatsalterthümer, sect. 28).

Tittmann (Griechische Staatsverfassungen, pp. 588-596) states and seems to admit the equal partition as a fact, without any commentary.

Wachsmuth (Hellenisch. Alterthumskunde, v. 4, 42, p. 217) supposes “that the best land was already parcelled, before the time of Lykurgus, into lots of equal magnitude, corresponding to the number of Spartans, which number afterwards increased to nine thousand.” For this assertion, I know no evidence: it departs from Plutarch, without substituting anything better authenticated or more plausible. Wachsmuth notices the partition of Laconia among the Periœki in thirty thousand equal lots, without any comment, and seemingly as if there were no doubt of it (p. 218).

Manso, also, supposes that there had once been an equal division of land prior to Lykurgus,—that it had degenerated into abuse,—and that Lykurgus corrected it, restoring, not absolute equality, but something near to equality (Manso, Sparta, vol. i. pp. 110-121). This is the same gratuitous supposition as that of Wachsmuth.

O. Müller admits the division as stated by Plutarch, though he says that the whole number of nine thousand lots cannot have been set out before the Messenian war; and he adheres to the idea of equality as contained in Plutarch; but he says that the equality consisted in “equal estimate of average produce,”—not in equal acreable dimensions. He goes so far as to tell us that “the lots of the Spartans, which supported twice as many men as the lots of the Periœki, must, upon the whole, have been twice as extensive (_i. e._ in the aggregate): each lot must, therefore, have been seven times greater,” (compare History of the Dorians, iii. 3, 6; iii. 10, 2.) He also supposes, that “similar partitions of land had been made from the time of the first occupation of Laconia by the Dorians.” Whoever compares his various positions with the evidence brought to support them, will find a painful disproportion between the basis and the superstructure.

The views of Schömann, as far as I collect from expressions somewhat vague, seem to coincide with those of Dr. Thirlwall. He admits, however that the alleged Lykurgean equalization is at variance with the representations of Plato (Schömann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. iv. 1, 7, note 4, p. 116).

I cannot but take a different view of the statement made by Plutarch. The moment that we depart from that rule of equality, which stands so prominently marked in his biography of Lykurgus, we step into a boundless field of possibility, in which there is nothing to determine us to one point more than to another. The surmise started by Dr. Thirlwall, of lands unjustly taken from the conquered Achæans by wealthy Spartan proprietors, is altogether gratuitous; and granting it to be correct, we have still to explain how it happened that this correction of a partial injustice came to be transformed into the comprehensive and systematic measure which Plutarch describes; and to explain, farther, from whence it arose that none of the authors earlier than Plutarch take any notice of Lykurgus as an agrarian equalizer. These two difficulties will still remain, even if we overlook the gratuitous nature of Dr. Thirlwall’s supposition, or of any other supposition which can be proposed respecting the real Lykurgean measure which Plutarch is affirmed to have misrepresented.

It appears to me that these difficulties are best obviated by adopting a different canon of historical interpretation. We cannot accept as real the Lykurgean land division described in the life of the lawgiver; but treating this account as a fiction, two modes of proceeding are open to us. We may either consider the fiction, as it now stands, to be the exaggeration and distortion of some small fact, and then try to guess, without any assistance, what the small fact was. Or we may regard it as fiction from first to last, the expression of some large idea and sentiment so powerful in its action on men’s minds at a given time, as to induce them to make a place for it among the realities of the past. Now the latter supposition, applied to the times of Agis the Third, best meets the case before us. The eighth chapter of the life of Lykurgus by Plutarch, in recounting the partition of land, describes the dream of king Agis, whose mind is full of two sentiments,—grief and shame for the actual condition of his country,—together with reverence for its past glories, as well as for the lawgiver from whose institutions those glories had emanated. Absorbed with this double feeling, the reveries of Agis go back to the old ante-Lykurgean Sparta, as it stood more than five centuries before. He sees, in the spirit, the same mischiefs and disorders as those which afflict his waking eye,—gross inequalities of property, with a few insolent and luxurious rich, a crowd of mutinous and suffering poor, and nothing but fierce antipathy reigning between the two. Into the midst of this froward, lawless, and distempered community, steps the venerable missionary from Delphi,—breathes into men’s minds new impulses, and an impatience to shake off the old social and political Adam,—and persuades the rich, voluntarily abnegating their temporal advantages, to welcome with satisfaction a new system, wherein no distinction shall be recognized, except that of good or evil desert.[701] Having thus regenerated the national mind, he parcels out the territory of Laconia into equal lots, leaving no superiority to any one. Fraternal harmony becomes the reigning sentiment, while the coming harvests present the gratifying spectacle of a paternal inheritance recently distributed, with the brotherhood contented, modest, and docile. Such is the picture with which “mischievous Oneirus” cheats the fancy of the patriotic Agis, whispering the treacherous message that the gods have promised _him_ success in a similar attempt, and thus seducing him into that fatal revolutionary course, which is destined to bring himself, his wife, and his aged mother, to the dungeon and the hangman’s rope.[702]

[701] Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 8. συνέπεισε τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν εἰς μέσον θέντας, ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀναδάσασθαι, καὶ ζῆν μετ᾽ ἀλλήλων ἅπαντας, ὁμαλεῖς καὶ ἰσοκλήρους τοῖς βίοις γενομένους, τὸ δὲ πρωτεῖον ἀρετῇ μετιόντας· ὡς ἄλλης ἑτέρῳ πρὸς ἕτερον οὐκ οὔσης διαφορᾶς, οὐδὲ ἀνισότητος, πλὴν ὅσην αἰσχρῶν ψόγος ὁρίζει καὶ καλῶν ἔπαινος. Ἐπάγων δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἔργον, διένειμε, etc.

[702] Plutarch, Agis, c. 19-20.

That the golden dream just described was dreamed by some Spartan patriots is certain, because it stands recorded in Plutarch; that it was not dreamed by the authors of centuries preceding Agis, I have already endeavored to show; that the earnest feelings, of sickness of the present and yearning for a better future under the colors of a restored past, which filled the soul of this king and his brother-reformers,—combined with the levelling tendency between rich and poor which really was inherent in the Lykurgean discipline,—were amply sufficient to beget such a dream, and to procure for it a place among the great deeds of the old lawgiver, so much venerated and so little known,—this too I hold to be unquestionable. Had there been any evidence that Lykurgus had interfered with private property, to the limited extent which Dr. Thirlwall and other able critics imagine,—that he had resumed certain lands unjustly taken by the rich from the Achæans,—I should have been glad to record it; but, finding no such evidence, I cannot think it necessary to presume the fact, simply in order to account for the story in Plutarch.[703]

[703] I read with much satisfaction, in M. Kopstadt’s Dissertation, that the general conclusion which I have endeavored to establish respecting the alleged Lykurgean redivision of property, appears to him successfully proved. (Dissert. De Rerum Laconic. Const. sect. 18, p. 138.)

He supposes, with perfect truth, that, at the time when the first edition of these volumes was published, I was ignorant of the fact, that Lachmann and Kortüm had both called in question the reality of the Lykurgean redivision. In regard to Professor Kortüm, the fact was first brought to my knowledge, by his notice of these two volumes, in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher, 1846, No. 41, p. 649.

Since the first edition, I have read the treatise of Lachmann (Die Spartanische Staats Verfassung in ihrer Entwicklung und ihrem Verfalle, sect. 10, p. 170) wherein the redivision ascribed to Lykurgus is canvassed. He, too, attributes the origin of the tale, as a portion of history, to the social and political feelings current in the days of Agis the Third, and Kleomenês the Third. He notices, also, that it is in contradiction with Plato and Isokratês. But a large proportion of the arguments which he brings to disprove it, are connected with ideas of his own respecting the social and political constitution of Sparta, which I think either untrue or uncertified. Moreover, he believes in the inalienability as well as the indivisibility of the separate lots of land,—which I believe to be just as little correct as their supposed equality.

Kopstadt (p. 139) thinks that I have gone too far in rejecting every middle opinion. He thinks that Lykurgus must have done something, though much less than what is affirmed, tending to realize equality of individual property.

I shall not say that this is impossible. If we had ampler evidence, perhaps such facts might appear. But as the evidence stands now, there is nothing whatever to show it. Nor are we entitled (in my judgment) to presume that it was so, in the absence of evidence, simply in order to make out that the Lykurgean mythe is only an exaggeration, and not entire fiction.

The various items in that story all hang together, and must be understood as forming parts of the same comprehensive fact, or comprehensive fancy. The fixed total of nine thousand Spartan, and thirty thousand Laconian lots,[704] the equality between them, and the rent accruing from each, represented by a given quantity of moist and dry produce,—all these particulars are alike true or alike uncertified. Upon the various numbers here given, many authors have raised calculations as to the population and produce of Laconia, which appear to me destitute of any trustworthy foundation. Those who accept the history, that Lykurgus constituted the above-mentioned numbers both of citizens and of lots of land, and that he contemplated the maintenance of both numbers in unchangeable proportion,—are perplexed to assign the means whereby this adjustment was kept undisturbed. Nor are they much assisted in the solution of this embarrassing problem by the statement of Plutarch, who tells us that the number remained fixed of itself, and that the succession ran on from father to son, without either consolidation or multiplication of parcels, down to the period when foreign wealth flowed into Sparta, as a consequence of the successful conclusion of the Peloponnesian war. Shortly after that period (he tells us) a citizen named Epitadeus became ephor,—a vindictive and malignant man, who, having had a quarrel with his son, and wishing to oust him from the succession, introduced and obtained sanction to a new Rhetra, whereby power was granted to every father of a family either to make over during life, or to bequeathe after death, his house and his estate to any one whom he chose.[705] But it is plain that this story (whatever be the truth about the family quarrel of Epitadeus) does not help us out of the difficulty. From the time of Lykurgus to that of this disinheriting ephor, more than four centuries must be reckoned: now, had there been real causes at work sufficient to maintain inviolate the identical number of lots and families during this long period, we see no reason why his new law, simply permissive and nothing more, should have overthrown it. We are not told by Plutarch what was the law of succession prior to Epitadeus. If the whole estate went by law to one son in the family, what became of the other sons, to whom industrious acquisition in any shape was repulsive as well as interdicted? If, on the other hand, the estate was divided between the sons equally (as it was by the law of succession at Athens), how can we defend the maintenance of an unchanged aggregate number of parcels?

[704] Aristotle (Polit. ii. 6, 11) remarks that the territory of the Spartans would maintain fifteen hundred horsemen and thirty thousand hoplites, while the number of citizens was, in point of fact, less than one thousand. Dr. Thirlwall seems to prefer the reading of Göttling,—three thousand instead of thirty thousand; but the latter seems better supported by MSS, and most suitable.

[705] Plutarch, Agis, c. 5.

Dr. Thirlwall, after having admitted a modified interference with private property by Lykurgus, so as to exact from the wealthy a certain sacrifice in order to create lots for the poor, and to bring about something approaching to equi-producing lots for all, observes: “The average amount of the rent, paid by the cultivating Helots from each lot, seems to have been no more than was required for the frugal maintenance of a family with six persons. The right of transfer was as strictly confined as that of enjoyment; the patrimony was indivisible, inalienable, and descended to the eldest son; in default of a male heir, to the eldest daughter. The object seems to have been, after the number of the allotments became fixed, that each should be constantly represented by one head of a household. But the nature of the means employed for this end is one of the most obscure points of the Spartan system.... In the better times of the commonwealth, this seems to have been principally effected by adoptions and marriages with heiresses, which provided for the marriages of younger sons in families too numerous to be supported on their own hereditary property. It was then probably seldom necessary for the state to interfere, in order to direct the childless owner of an estate, or the father of a rich heiress, to a proper choice. But as all adoption required the sanction of the kings, and they had also the disposal of the hand of orphan heiresses, there can be little doubt that the magistrate had the power of interposing on such occasions, even in opposition to the wishes of individuals, to relieve poverty and check the accumulation of wealth.” (Hist. Gr. ch. 8, vol. i. p. 367).

I cannot concur in the view which Dr. Thirlwall here takes of the state of property, or the arrangements respecting its transmission, in ancient Sparta. Neither the equal modesty of possession which he supposes, nor the precautions for perpetuating it, can be shown to have ever existed among the pupils of Lykurgus. Our earliest information intimates the existence of rich men at Sparta: the story of king Aristo and Agêtus, in Herodotus, exhibits to us the latter as a man who cannot be supposed to have had only just “enough to maintain six persons frugally,”—while his beautiful wife, whom Aristo coveted and entrapped from him, is expressly described as the daughter of opulent parents. Sperthiês and Bulis, the Talthybiads, are designated as belonging to a distinguished race, and among the wealthiest men in Sparta.[706] Demaratus was the only king of Sparta, in the days of Herodotus, who had ever gained a chariot-victory in the Olympic games; but we know by the case of Lichas, during the Peloponnesian war, Evagoras, and others, that private Spartans were equally successful;[707] and for one Spartan who won the prize, there must of course have been many who bred their horses and started their chariots unsuccessfully. It need hardly be remarked, that chariot-competition at Olympia was one of the most significant evidences of a wealthy house: nor were there wanting Spartans who kept horses and dogs without any exclusive view to the games. We know from Xenophon that, at the time of the battle of Leuktra, “the very rich Spartans” provided the horses to be mounted for the state-cavalry.[708] These and other proofs, of the existence of rich men at Sparta, are inconsistent with the idea of a body of citizens each possessing what was about enough for the frugal maintenance of six persons, and no more.

[706] Herod. vi. 61. οἷα ἀνθρώπων τε ὀλβίων θυγατέρα, etc; vii. 134.

[707] Herod. vi. 70-103; Thucyd. v. 50.

[708] Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 11; Xenoph. de Rep. Lac. v. 3; Molpis ap. Athenæ. iv. p. 141; Aristot. Polit. ii. 2, 5.

As we do not find that such was in practice the state of property in the Spartan community, so neither can we discover that the lawgiver ever tried either to make or to keep it so. What he did was to impose a rigorous public discipline, with simple clothing and fare, incumbent alike upon the rich and the poor (this was his special present to Greece, according to Thucydidês,[709] and his great point of contact with democracy, according to Aristotle); but he took no pains either to restrain the enrichment of the former, or to prevent the impoverishment of the latter. He meddled little with the distribution of property, and such neglect is one of the capital deficiencies for which Aristotle censures him. That philosopher tells us, indeed, that the Spartan law had made it dishonorable (he does not say, peremptorily forbidden) to buy or sell landed property, but that there was the fullest liberty both of donation and bequest: and the same results, he justly observes, ensued from the practice tolerated as would have ensued from the practice discountenanced,—since it was easy to disguise a real sale under an ostensible donation. He notices pointedly the tendency of property at Sparta to concentrate itself in fewer hands, unopposed by any legal hindrances: the fathers married their daughters to whomsoever they chose, and gave dowries according to their own discretion, generally very large: the rich families, moreover, intermarried among one another habitually, and without restriction. Now all these are indicated by Aristotle as cases in which the law might have interfered, and ought to have interfered, but did not,—for the great purpose of disseminating the benefits of landed property as much as possible among the mass of the citizens. Again, he tells us that the law encouraged the multiplication of progeny, and granted exemptions to such citizens as had three or four children,—but took no thought how the numerous families of poorer citizens were to live, or to maintain their qualification at the public tables, most of the lands of the state being in the hands of the rich.[710] His notice, and condemnation, of that law, which made the franchise of the Spartan citizen dependent upon his continuing to furnish his quota to the public table,—has been already adverted to; as well as the potent love of money[711] which he notes in the Spartan character, and which must have tended continually to keep together the richer families among themselves: while amongst a community where industry was unknown, no poor citizen could ever become rich.

[709] Thucyd. i. 6; Aristot. Polit. iv. 7, 4, 5; viii. 1, 3.

[710] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 10-13; v. 6, 7.

[711] The panegyrist Xenophon acknowledges much the same respecting the Sparta which he witnessed; but he maintains that it had been better in former times (Repub. Lac. c. 14).

If we duly weigh these evidences, we shall see that equality of possessions neither existed in fact, nor ever entered into the scheme and tendencies of the lawgiver at Sparta. And the picture which Dr. Thirlwall[712] has drawn of a body of citizens each possessing a lot of land about adequate to the frugal maintenance of six persons,—of adoptions and marriages of heiresses arranged with a deliberate view of providing for the younger children of numerous families,—of interference on the part of the kings to insure this object,—of a fixed number of lots of land, each represented by one head of a household,—this picture is one, of which the reality must not be sought on the banks of the Eurotas. The “better times of the commonwealth,” to which he refers, may have existed in the glowing retrospect of Agis, but are not acknowledged in the sober appreciation of Aristotle. That the citizens were far more numerous in early times, the philosopher tells us, and that the community had in his day greatly declined in power, we also know: in this sense, the times of Sparta had doubtless once been better. We may even concede that during the three centuries succeeding Lykurgus, when they were continually acquiring new territory, and when Aristotle had been told that they had occasionally admitted new citizens, so that the aggregate number of citizens had once been ten thousand,—we may concede that in these previous centuries the distribution of land had been less unequal, so that the disproportion between the great size of the territory and the small number of citizens was not so marked as it had become at the period which the philosopher personally witnessed; for the causes tending to augmented inequality were constant and uninterrupted in their working. But this admission will still leave us far removed from the sketch drawn by Dr. Thirlwall, which depicts the Lykurgean Sparta as starting from a new agrarian scheme not far removed from equality of landed property,—the citizens as spontaneously disposed to uphold this equality, by giving to unprovided men the benefit of adoptions and heiress-marriages,—and the magistrate as interfering to enforce this latter purpose, even in cases where the citizens were themselves unwilling. All our evidence exhibits to us both decided inequality of possessions and inclinations on the part of rich men, the reverse of those which Dr. Thirlwall indicates; nor will the powers of interference which he ascribes to the magistrate be found sustained by the chapter of Herodotus on which he seems to rest them.[713]

[712] The view of Dr. Thirlwall agrees, in the main, with that of Manso and O. Müller (Manso, Sparta, vol. i. pp. 118-128; and vol. ii. Beilage, 9, p. 129; and Müller, History of the Dorians, vol. ii. b. iii. c. 10, sect. 2, 3).

Both these authors maintain the proposition stated by Plutarch (Agis c. 5, in his reference to the ephor Epitadeus, and the new law carried by that ephor), that the number of Spartan lots, nearly equal and rigorously indivisible, remained with little or no change from the time of the original division, down to the return of Lysander, after his victorious close of the Peloponnesian war. Both acknowledge that they cannot understand by what regulations this long unalterability, so improbable in itself, was maintained: but both affirm the fact positively. The period will be more than four hundred years if the original division be referred to Lykurgus: more than three hundred years, if the nine thousand lots are understood to date from the Messenian war.

If this alleged fact be really a fact, it is something almost without a parallel in the history of mankind: and before we consent to believe it, we ought at least to be satisfied that there is considerable show of positive evidence in its favor, and not much against it. But on examining Manso and Müller, it will be seen that not only is there very slender evidence in its favor,—there is a decided balance of evidence against it.

The evidence produced to prove the indivisibility of the Spartan lot, is a passage of Herakleidês Ponticus, c. 2 (ad. calc. Cragii, p. 504), πωλεῖν δὲ γὴν Λακεδαιμονίοις αἰσχρὸν νενόμισται,—τῆς ἀρχαίας μοίρας ἀνανέμεσθαι (or νενεμῆσθαι) οὐδὲν ἔξεστι. The first portion of this assertion is confirmed by, and probably borrowed from, Aristotle, who says the same thing, nearly in the same words: the second portion of the sentence ought, according to all reasonable rules of construction, to be understood with reference to the first part; that is, to the _sale_ of the original lot. “To sell land, is held disgraceful among the Lacedæmonians, nor is it permitted to sever off any portion of the original lot,” i. e. _for sale_. Herakleidês is not here speaking of the law of _succession_ to property at Lacedæmon, nor can we infer from his words that the whole lot was transmitted entire to one son. No evidence except this very irrelevant sentence is produced by Müller and Manso to justify their positive assertion, that the Spartan lot of land was indivisible in respect to inheritance.

Having thus determined the indivisible transmission of lots to one son of a family, Manso and Müller presume, without any proof, that that son must be the eldest: and Müller proceeds to state something equally unsupported by proof: “The extent of his rights, however, was perhaps no farther than that he was considered master of the house and property; while the other members of the family had an equal right to the enjoyment of it.... The master of the family was, therefore, obliged to contribute for all these to the syssitia, without which contribution no one was admitted.”—pp. 199, 200.

All this is completely gratuitous, and will be found to produce as many difficulties in one way as it removes in another.

The next law as to the transmission of property, which Manso states to have prevailed, is, that all daughters were to marry without receiving any dowry,—the case of a sole daughter is here excepted. For this proposition he cites Plutarch, Apophtheg. Laconic. p. 227; Justin, iii. 3; Ælian. V. H. vi. 6. These authors do certainly affirm, that there was such a regulation, and both Plutarch and Justin assign reasons for it, real or supposed. “Lykurgus, being asked why he directed that maidens should be married without dowry, answered,—In order that maidens of poor families might not remain unmarried, and that character and virtue might be exclusively attended to in the choice of a wife.” The same general reason is given by Justin. Now the _reason_ here given for the prohibition of dowry, goes, indirectly, to prove that there existed no such law of general succession, as that which had been before stated, namely, the sacred indivisibility of the primitive lot. For had this latter been recognized, the reason would have been obvious why daughters could receive no dowry; the father’s whole landed property (and a Spartan could have little of any other property, since he never acquired anything by industry) was under the strictest entail to his eldest son. Plutarch and Justin, therefore, while in their statement as to the matter of fact, they warrant Manso in affirming the prohibition of dowry (about this matter of fact, more presently), do, by the reason which they give, discountenance his former supposition as to the indivisibility of the primitive family lots.

Thirdly, Manso understands Aristotle (Polit. ii. 6, 11), by the use of the adverb νῦν, to affirm something respecting his own time specially, and to imply at the same time that the ancient custom had been the reverse. I cannot think that the adverb, as Aristotle uses it in that passage, bears out such a construction: νῦν δὲ, there, does not signify present time as opposed to past, but the antithesis between the actual custom and that which Aristotle pronounces to be expedient. Aristotle gives no indication of being aware that any material change had taken place in the laws of succession at Sparta: this is one circumstance, for which both Manso and Müller, who both believe in the extraordinary revolution caused by the permissive law of the ephor Epitadeus, censure him.

Three other positions are laid down by Manso about the laws of property at Sparta. 1. A man might give away or bequeathe his land to whomsoever he pleased. 2. But none except childless persons could do this. 3. They could only give or bequeathe it to citizens who had no land of their own. Of these three regulations, the first is distinctly affirmed by Aristotle, and may be relied upon: the second is a restriction not noticed by Aristotle, and supported by no proof except that which arises out of the story of the ephor Epitadeus, who is said to have been unable to disinherit his son without causing a new law to be passed: the third is a pure fancy.

So much for the positive evidence, on the faith of which Manso and Müller affirm the startling fact, that the lots of land in Sparta remained distinct, indivisible, and unchanged in number, down to the close of the Peloponnesian war. I venture to say that such positive evidence is far too weak to sustain an affirmation in itself so improbable, even if there were no evidence on the other side for contradiction. But in this case there is powerful contradictory evidence.

First, the assertions of these authors are distinctly in the teeth of Aristotle, whose authority they try to invalidate, by saying that he spoke altogether with reference to his own time at Sparta, and that he misconceived the primitive Lykurgean constitution. Now this might form a reasonable ground of presumption against the competency of Aristotle, if the witnesses produced on the other side were older than he. But it so happens, that _every one_ of the witnesses produced by Manso and Müller, are _younger_ than Aristotle: Herakleidês Ponticus, Plutarch, Justin, Ælian, etc. Nor is it shown that these authors copied from any source earlier than Aristotle,—for his testimony cannot be contradicted by any inferences drawn from Herodotus, Thucydidês, Xenophon, Plato, Isokratês, or Ephorus. None of these writers, anterior to, or contemporary with, Aristotle, countenance the fancy of equal, indivisible, perpetual lots, or prohibition of dowry.

The fact is, that Aristotle is not only our best witness, but also our oldest witness, respecting the laws of property in the Spartan commonwealth. I could have wished, indeed, that earlier testimonies had existed, and I admit that even the most sagacious observer of 340-330 B. C. is liable to mistake when he speaks of one or two centuries before. But if Aristotle is to be discredited on the ground of late date, what are we to say to Plutarch? To insist on the intellectual eminence of Aristotle would be superfluous: and on this subject he is a witness the more valuable, as he had made careful, laborious, and personal inquiries into the Grecian governments generally, and that of Sparta among them,—the great _point de mire_ for ancient speculative politicians.

Now the statements of Aristotle, distinctly exclude the idea of equal, indivisible, inalienable, perpetual lots,—and prohibition of dowry. He particularly notices the habit of giving very large dowries, and the constant tendency of the lots of land to become consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. He tells us nothing upon the subject which is not perfectly consistent, intelligible, and uncontradicted by any known statements belonging to his own, or to earlier times. But the reason why men refuse to believe him, and either set aside or explain away his evidence, is, that they sit down to the study with their minds full of the division of landed property ascribed to Lykurgus by Plutarch. I willingly concede that, on this occasion, we have to choose between Plutarch and Aristotle. We cannot reconcile them except by arbitrary suppositions, every one of which breaks up the simplicity, beauty, and symmetry of Plutarch’s agrarian idea,—and every one of which still leaves the perpetuity of the original lots unexplained. And I have no hesitation in preferring the authority of Aristotle (which is in perfect consonance with what we indirectly gather from other authors, his contemporaries and predecessors) as a better witness on every ground; rejecting the statement of Plutarch, and rejecting it altogether, with all its consequences.

But the authority of Aristotle is not the only argument which may be urged to refute this supposition that the distinct Spartan lots remained unaltered in number down to the time of Lysander. For if the number of distinct lots remained undiminished, the number of citizens cannot have greatly diminished. Now the conspiracy of Kinadôn falls during the life of Lysander, within the first ten years after the close of the Peloponnesian war: and in the account which Xenophon gives of that conspiracy, the paucity of the number of citizens is brought out in the clearest and most emphatic manner. And this must be before the time when the new law of Epitadeus is said to have passed, at least before that law can have had room to produce any sensible effects. If, then, the ancient nine thousand lots still remained all separate, without either consolidation or subdivision, how are we to account for the small number of citizens at the time of the conspiracy of Kinadôn?

This examination of the evidence, for the purpose of which I have been compelled to prolong the present note, shows—1. That the hypothesis of indivisible, inalienable lots, maintained for a long period in undiminished number at Sparta, is not only sustained by the very minimum of affirmative evidence, but is contradicted by very good negative evidence. 2. That the hypothesis which represents dowries to daughters as being prohibited by law, is, indeed, affirmed by Plutarch, Ælian, and Justin, but is contradicted by the better authority of Aristotle.

The recent edition of Herakleidês Ponticus, published by Schneidewin, in 1847, since my first edition, presents an amended text, which completely bears out my interpretation. His text, derived from a fuller comparison of existing MSS., as well as from better critical judgment (see his Prolegg. c. iii. p. liv.), stands—Πωλεῖν δὲ γὴν Λακεδαιμονίοις αἰσχρὸν νενόμισται· τῆς δὲ ἀρχαίας μοίρας οὐδὲ ἔξεστιν (p. 7). It is plain that all this passage relates to sale of land, and not to testation, or succession, or division. Thus much _negatively_ is certain, and Schneidewin remarks in his note (p. 53) that it contradicts Müller, Hermann, and Schömann,—adding, that the distinction drawn is, between land inherited from the original family lots, and land otherwise acquired, by donation, bequest, etc. Sale of the former was absolutely illegal: sale of the latter was discreditable, yet not absolutely illegal. Aristotle in the Politics (ii. 6, 10) takes no notice of any such distinction, between land inherited from the primitive lots, and land otherwise acquired. Nor was there, perhaps, any well-defined line of distinction, in a country of unwritten customs, like Sparta, between what was simply disgraceful and what was positively illegal. Schneidewin, in his note, however, assumes the original equality of the lots as certain in itself, and as being the cause of the prohibition: neither of which appears to me true.

I speak of this confused compilation still under the name of Herakleidês Ponticus, by which it is commonly known: though Schneidewin, in the second chapter of his Prolegomena, has shown sufficient reason for believing that there is no authority for connecting it with the name of Herakleidês. He tries to establish the work as consisting of Excerpta from the lost treatise of Aristotle’s περὶ Πολιτειῶν: which is well made out with regard to some parts, but not enough to justify his inference as to the whole. The article, wherein Welcker vindicates the ascribing of the work to an Excerptor of Herakleidês, is unsatisfactory (Kleine Schriften, p. 451).

Beyond this irrelevant passage of Herakleidês Ponticus, no farther evidence is produced by Müller and Manso to justify their positive assertion, that the Spartan lot of land was indivisible in respect to inheritance.

[713] Herod. vi. 57, in enumerating the privileges and perquisites of the kings—δικάζειν δὲ μούνους τοὺς βασιλῆας τόσαδε μοῦνα· πατρούχου τε παρθένου πέρι, ἐς τὸν ἱκνέεται ἔχειν, ἢν μή περ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτὴν ἐγγυήσῃ· καὶ ὁδῶν δημοσιέων πέρι· καὶ ἤν τις θετὸν παῖδα ποιέεσθαι ἐθέλῃ, βασιλήων ἐνάντιον ποιέεσθαι.

It seems curious that πατρούχος πάρθενος should mean a damsel who has _no father_ (literally, _lucus a non lucendo_): but I suppose that we must accept this upon the authority of Julius Pollux and Timæus. Proceeding on this interpretation, Valckenaer gives the meaning of the passage very justly: “Orbæ nuptias, necdum a patre desponsatæ, si plures sibi vindicarent, fieretque ἡ ἐπίκληρος, ut Athenis loquebantur, ἐπίδικος, Spartæ lis ista dirimebatur a regibus solis.”

Now the judicial function here described, is something very different from the language of Dr. Thirlwall, that “the kings had the disposal of the hand of orphan heiresses in cases where the father had not signified his will.” Such disposal would approach somewhat to that omnipotence which Aristophanês (Vesp. 585) makes old Philokleon claim for the Athenian dikasts (an exaggeration well calculated to serve the poet’s purpose of making the dikasts appear monsters of caprice and injustice), and would be analogous to the power which English kings enjoyed three centuries ago as feudal guardians over wards. But the language of Herodotus is inconsistent with the idea that the kings _chose_ a husband for the orphan heiress. She was claimed, as of right, by persons in certain degrees of relationship to her. Whether the law about ἀγχίστεια, affinity carrying legal rights, was the same as at Athens, we cannot tell; but the question submitted for adjudication at Sparta, to the kings, and at Athens to the dikasteries, was certainly the same, agreeably to the above note of Valckenaer,—namely, to whom, among the various claimants for the marriage, the best legal title really belonged. It is, indeed, probable enough, that the two royal descendants of Hêraklês might abuse their judicial function, as there are various instances known in which they take bribes; but they were not likely to abuse it in favor of an unprovided youth.

Next, as to adoption: Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of adoption was performed before the kings: probably enough, there was some fee paid with it. But this affords no ground for presuming that they had any hand in determining _whom_ the childless father was to adopt. According to the Attic law about adoption, there were conditions to be fulfilled, consents to be obtained, the absence of disqualifying circumstances verified, etc; and some authority before which this was to be done was indispensable (see Meier und Schömann, Attisch. Prozess, b. iii. ch. ii. p. 436). At Sparta, such authority was vested by ancient custom in the king: but we are not told, nor is it probable, “that he could interpose, in opposition to the wishes of individuals, to relieve poverty,” as Dr. Thirlwall supposes.

To conceive correctly, then, the Lykurgean system, as far as obscurity and want of evidence will permit, it seems to me that there are two current misconceptions which it is essential to discard. One of these is, that the system included a repartition of landed property, upon principles of exact or approximative equality (distinct from that appropriation which belonged to the Dorian conquest and settlement), and provisions for perpetuating the number of distinct and equal lots. The other is, that it was first brought to bear when the Spartans were masters of all Laconia. The illusions created by the old legend,—which depicts Laconia as all one country, and all conquered at one stroke,—yet survive after the legend itself has been set aside as bad evidence: we cannot conceive Sparta as subsisting by itself without dominion over Laconia; nor Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ, as really and truly independent of Sparta. Yet, if these towns were independent in the time of Lykurgus, much more confidently may the same independence be affirmed of the portions of Laconia which lie lower than Amyklæ down the valley of the Eurotas, as well as of the eastern coast, which Herodotus expressly states to have been originally connected with Argos.

Discarding, then, these two suppositions, we have to consider the Lykurgean system as brought to bear upon Sparta and its immediate circumjacent district, apart from the rest of Laconia, and as not meddling systematically with the partition of property, whatever that may have been, which the Dorian conquerors established at their original settlement. Lykurgus does not try to make the poor rich, nor the rich poor; but he imposes upon both the same subjugating drill,[714]—the same habits of life, gentlemanlike idleness, and unlettered strength,—the same fare, clothing, labors, privations, endurance, punishments, and subordination. It is a lesson instructive at least, however unsatisfactory, to political students,—that, with all this equality of dealing, he ends in creating a community in whom not merely the love of preëminence, but even the love of money, stands powerfully and specially developed.[715]

[714] Σπάρτα δαμασίμβροτος, Simonidês, apud Plutarch. Agesilaus, c. 1.

[715] Aristotel. Polit. ii. 6, 9, 19, 23. τὸ φιλότιμον—τὸ φιλοχρήματον.

How far the peculiar of the primitive Sparta extended we have no means of determining; but its limits down the valley of the Eurotas were certainly narrow, inasmuch as it did not reach so far as Amyklæ. Nor can we tell what principles the Dorian conquerors may have followed in the original allotment of lands within the limits of that peculiar. Equal apportionment is not probable, because all the individuals of a conquering band are seldom regarded as possessing equal claims; but whatever the original apportionment may have been, it remained without any general or avowed disturbance until the days of Agis the Third, and Kleomenês the Third. Here, then, we have the primitive Sparta, including Dorian warriors with their Helot subjects, but no Periœki. And it is upon these Spartans separately, perhaps after the period of aggravated disorder and lawlessness noticed by Herodotus and Thucydidês, that the painful but invigorating discipline, above sketched, must have been originally brought to bear.

The gradual conquest of Laconia, with the acquisition of additional lands and new Helots, and the formation of the order of Periœki, both of which were a consequence of it,—is to be considered as posterior to the introduction of the Lykurgean system at Sparta, and as resulting partly from the increased force which that system imparted. The career of conquest went on, beginning from Têleklus, for nearly three centuries,—with some interruptions, indeed, and in the case of the Messenian war, with a desperate and even precarious struggle,—so that in the time of Thucydidês, and for some time previously, the Spartans possessed two-fifths of Peloponnesus. And this series of new acquisitions and victories disguised the really weak point of the Spartan system, by rendering it possible either to plant the poorer citizens as Periœki in a conquered township, or to supply them with lots of land, of which they could receive the produce without leaving the city,—so that their numbers and their military strength were prevented from declining. It is even affirmed by Aristotle,[716] that during these early times they augmented the numbers of their citizens by fresh admissions, which of course implies the acquisition of additional lots of land. But successful war, to use an expression substantially borrowed from the same philosopher, was necessary to their salvation: the establishment of their ascendency, and of their maximum of territory, was followed, after no very long interval, by symptoms of decline.[717] It will hereafter be seen that, at the period of the conspiracy of Kinadôn (395 B. C.), the full citizens (called Homoioi, or Peers) were considerably inferior in number to the Hypomeiŏnes, or Spartans, who could no longer furnish their qualification, and had become disfranchised. And the loss thus sustained was very imperfectly repaired by the admitted practice, sometimes resorted to by rich men, of associating with their own children the children of poorer citizens, and paying the contribution for these latter to the public tables, so as to enable them to go through the prescribed course of education and discipline,—whereby they became (under the title or sobriquet of Mothăkes[718]) citizens, with a certain taint of inferiority, yet were sometimes appointed to honorable commands.

[716] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 12.

[717] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 22. Τοιγαροῦν ἐσῴζοντο μὲν πολεμοῦντες, ἀπώλοντο δὲ ἄρξαντες, etc. Compare also vii. 13, 15.

[718] Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 8; Phylarch. ap. Athenæ. vi. p. 271.

The strangers called Τρόφιμοι, and the illegitimate sons of Spartans, whom Xenophon mentions with eulogy, as “having partaken in the honorable training of the city,” must probably have been introduced in this same way, by private support from the rich (Xenoph. Hellen. v. 3, 9). The xenêlasy must have then become practically much relaxed, if not extinct.

Laconia, the state and territory of the Lacedæmonians, was affirmed, at the time of its greatest extension, to have comprehended a hundred cities,[719]—this after the conquest of Messenia; so that it would include all the southern portion of Peloponnesus, from Thyrea, on the Argolic gulf, to the southern bank of the river Nedon, in its course into the Ionian sea. But Laconia, more strictly so called, was distinguished from Messenia, and was understood to designate the portion of the above-mentioned territory which lay to the east of Mount Taygetus. The conquest of Messenia by the Spartans we shall presently touch upon; but that of Laconia proper is very imperfectly narrated to us. Down to the reign of Têleklus, as has been before remarked, Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ, were still Achæan: in the reign of that prince they were first conquered, and the Achæans either expelled or subjugated. It cannot be doubted that Amyklæ had been previously a place of consequence: in point of heroic antiquity and memorials, this city, as well as Therapnæ, seems to have surpassed Sparta. And the war of the Spartans against it is represented as a struggle of some moment,—indeed, in those times, the capture of any walled city was tedious and difficult. Timomachus, an Ægeid from Thebes,[720] at the head of a body of his countrymen, is said to have rendered essential service to the Spartans in the conquest of the Achæans of Amyklæ; and the brave resistance of the latter was commemorated by a monument erected to Zeus Tropæus, at Sparta, which was still to be seen in the time of Pausanias.[721] The Achæans of Pharis and Geronthræ, alarmed by the fate of Amyklæ, are said to have surrendered their towns with little or no resistance: after which the inhabitants of all the three cities, either wholly or in part, went into exile beyond sea, giving place to colonists from Sparta.[722] From this time forward, according to Pausanias, Amyklæ continued as a village.[723] But as the Amyklæan hoplites constituted a valuable portion of the Spartan army, it must have been numbered among the cities of the Periœki, as one of the hundred;[724] the distinction between a dependent city and a village not being very strictly drawn. The festival of the Hyacinthia, celebrated at the great temple of the Amyklæan Apollo, was among the most solemn and venerated in the Spartan calendar.

[719] Strabo, viii. p. 362; Steph. Byz. Αἴθεια.

Construing the word πόλεις extensively, so as to include townships small as well as considerable, this estimate is probably inferior to the truth; since, even during the depressed times of modern Greece, a fraction of the ancient Laconia (including in that term Messenia) exhibited much more than one hundred _bourgs_.

In reference merely to the territory called La Magne, between Calamata in the Messenian gulf and Capo di Magna, the lower part of the peninsula of Tænarus, see a curious letter, addressed to the Duc de Nevers, in 1618, (on occasion of a projected movement to liberate the Morea from the Turks, and to insure to him the sovereignty of it, as descendant of the Palæologi,) by a confidential agent whom he despatched thither,—M. Chateaurenaud,—who sends to him “une sorte de tableau statistique du Magne, ou sont énumerés 125 bourgs ou villages renfermans 4,913 feux, et pouvans fournir 10,000 combattans, dont 4,000 armés, et 6,000 sans armes (between Calamata and Capo di Magna).” (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. 1842, p. 329. Mémoire de M. Berger Xivrey.)

This estimate is not far removed from that of Colonel Leake, towards the beginning of the present century, who considers that there were then in Mani (the same territory) one hundred and thirty towns and villages; and this too in a state of society exceedingly disturbed and insecure,—where private feuds and private towers, or pyrghi, for defence, were universal, and in parts of which, Colonel Leake says, “I see men preparing the ground for cotton, with a dagger and pistols at their girdles. This, it seems, is the ordinary armor of the cultivator when there is no particular suspicion of danger: the shepherd is almost always armed with a musket.” ... “The Maniotes reckon their population at thirty thousand, and their muskets at ten thousand.” (Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. i. ch. vii. pp. 243, 263-266.)

Now, under the dominion of Sparta, all Laconia doubtless enjoyed complete internal security, so that the idea of the cultivator tilling his land in arms would be unheard of. Reasoning upon the basis of what has just been stated about the Maniote population and number of townships, one hundred πόλεις, for all Laconia, is a very moderate computation.

[720] Aristot. Λακων. Πολιτεία, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vii. 18.

I agree with M. Boeckh, that Pindar himself identifies this march of the Ægeids to Amyklæ with the original Herakleid conquest of Peloponnesus. (Notæ Criticæ ad Pindar. Pyth. v. 74, p. 479.)

[721] Pausan. iii. 2, 6; iii. 12, 7.

[722] Pausan. iii. 22, 5.

[723] Pausan. iii. 19, 5.

[724] Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 5, 11.

It was in the time of Alkamenês, the son of Têleklus, that the Spartans conquered Helus, a maritime town on the left bank of the Eurotas, and reduced its inhabitants to bondage,—from whose name,[725] according to various authors, the general title _Helots_, belonging to all the serfs of Laconia, was derived. But of the conquest of the other towns of Laconia,—Gytheium, Akriæ, Therapnæ, etc.,—or of the eastern land on the coast of the Argolic gulf, including Brasiæ and Epidaurus Limêra, or the island of Kythêra, all which at one time belonged to the Argeian confederacy, we have no accounts.

[725] Pausan. iii. 2, 7; iii. 20, 6. Strabo, viii. p. 363.

If it be true, as Pausanias states, that the Argeians aided Helus to resist, their assistance must probably have been given by sea; perhaps from Epidaurus Limêra, or Prasiæ, when they formed part of the Argeian federation.

Scanty as our information is, it just enables us to make out a progressive increase of force and dominion on the part of the Spartans, resulting from the organization of Lykurgus. Of this progress, a farther manifestation is found, besides the conquest of the Achæans in the south by Têleklus and Alkamenês, in their successful opposition to the great power of Pheidôn the Argeian, related in a previous chapter. We now approach the long and arduous efforts by which they accomplished the subjugation of their brethren the Messenian Dorians.