CHAPTER IV.

THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS.

London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,

AVE MARIA LANE.

Glasgow: 263, ARGYLE STREET.

[Illustration: Coat of arms]

Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.

New York: MACMILLAN AND CO.

THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS

BY

BASIL EDWARD HAMMOND

FELLOW AND LECTURER, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE:

UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN HISTORY.

LONDON:

C. J. CLAY AND SONS,

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,

AVE MARIA LANE.

1895

[_All Rights reserved._]

Cambridge:

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE.

These chapters are not intended to form a whole by themselves. They

are merely an enlarged version of a course of lectures in which

European Political Institutions in general were treated historically

and comparatively: and as I wish hereafter to make similar enlarged

versions of the other parts of the course and to append them to what I

have here written, I hope that these chapters on the Greek Institutions

may prove to be only a first instalment of a book on Comparative

Politics. The following pages contain what their title indicates, a

description and examination of Greek governments: but in view of the

additions which may probably be made to them, they also contain a small

amount of matter which is necessary as a preliminary to an examination

of European governments in general.

The attention which I have paid to method and definitions of terms

might lead my readers to suppose that I conceive Comparative Politics

to be a science. It is only fair to them to express the opinions

that I have formed on the matter. I do think that the part of the

comparative study of Politics, which deals with barbaric and more

particularly with non-European peoples and their governments, has been

placed on a scientific footing by Mr Herbert Spencer in his _Political

Institutions_, though he has attained this great result by a method

which is not purely comparative, and which, as it takes no heed of

historical sequence of events, has not stood him in good stead where

he treats of historical European communities and their constitutions.

The part--the most interesting and important part--of the study, that

which is concerned with civilised peoples and governments, seems to me

not yet to be science. It does indeed enable us to lay down empirical

rules, or rules founded solely on observation, about peoples and

governments, just as the study of a language enables a grammarian to

lay down empirical rules about words and sentences. And further, among

the rules which have been laid down, there are some, (their number is,

I believe, very small,) which seem to be distinguished from the rest

in two respects, firstly because they are not subject to any known

exception, and secondly because some of the causes which lie at the

root of them have been discovered: and these rules have something of

the character of scientific laws, or rules which are true, not only in

all known instances, but universally. But, on the other hand, most of

the rules which have as yet been laid down are of a different sort,

and, either because they are vague and indefinite, or because they are

subject to many exceptions, or for other like reasons, nothing of the

nature of a scientific law has been founded on them.

It is however common to all studies to be imperfect and only half

conclusive while they are in their infancy: many studies, especially

among those which are based on comparisons, have before now progressed

within the lapse of a few generations from a very lowly condition to

the status of complete inductive sciences: and it is hard to see why

the same good fortune should not at some future time fall to the lot of

Comparative Politics.

The classification of European political bodies, which is given in my

second chapter, was suggested to me in its main outlines by a lecture

which I heard delivered in Cambridge many years ago by my friend Sir

John Seeley: the usefulness of some such classification was made clear

to me some years later but yet long ago by a course of lectures which

was given by another friend Professor Henry Sidgwick: and I have

constructed the classification as it stands in the second chapter with

the intention of making it serve as a framework both for what I have

here written about the Greeks and their governments and for what I

hope to write hereafter about other European peoples and governments.

To both the gentlemen whom I have named I desire to express my hearty

thanks for the help and guidance that their lectures have given me in

my attempts to study Politics methodically.

B. E. HAMMOND.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

_December 12, 1894._

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE ARYAN RACES 1

II. A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES 8

III. GREEK POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. HEROIC MONARCHIES 23

IV. SPARTA 37

V. THE GREEK CITIES 57

VI. ARISTOTLE'S CLASSIFICATION OF POLITIES 99

VII. THE ACHÆAN LEAGUE 114

ERRATUM.

Page 14, line 21, _for_ empires _read_ empire.

CHAPTER I.

THE ARYAN RACES.

It is proved by similarities in the languages of the European peoples

and the Hindus and the Persians that they had in some sense a common

origin. It is not indeed probable that they are sprung from the same

parents: but their ancestors once formed a group of closely associated

peoples who lived beside one another as neighbours and used either

the same language or dialects of the same language. The peoples which

had in this sense a common origin comprise all those that belong to

the stocks of the Hindus, the Persians, the Celts, the Greeks, the

Italians, the Teutons and the Slavs, and are known collectively as the

Aryans or as the Indo-European peoples.

The evidence of language not only proves that the Aryans lived together

as neighbours, but also tells us something about their pursuits and

habits. From the languages of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans and

the ancient Hindus we learn that the forefathers of these peoples

before they left their common dwelling-place were acquainted with the

most important domestic animals and had a name for each of them: for

the words _cow_, German _Kuh_, Sanskrit _gâus_, Greek βοῦς, Latin

_bos_, are mere variations from an Aryan word whose meaning they

retain unaltered: the same is true of the word _ewe_, Sanskrit _avis_,

Greek ὄϊς, Latin _ovis_; of _goose_, German _Gans_, Sanskrit _hansas_,

Greek χήν, Latin _anser_; of _sow_, German _Sau_, Sanskrit _sû_, Greek

σύς or ὕς, Latin _sus_; of _hound_, German _Hund_, Sanskrit _çvan_,

Greek κύων, Latin _canis_; and of Sanskrit _açvas_, Greek ἵππος, Latin

_equus_, Saxon _eoh_ or _ehu_.

In like manner the words _door_, German _Thüre_, Sanskrit _dvaras_,

Greek θύρα, Latin _fores_, prove that the Aryans used a word bearing

the same meaning and therefore their dwellings were something more

than mere tents or moveable huts. _Yoke_, German _Joch_, Sanskrit

_jugam_, Greek ξυγόν, Latin _jugum_, prove that they employed cattle

for draught; ἄξων, Latin _axis_, Sanskrit _akshas_ (axle and cart),

Old High German _ahsa_ (axle) indicate the use of carts; the Sanskrit

_nâus_, Greek ναῦς, Latin _navis_, German _Nachen_, show that they

could make boats: the Sanskrit _aritram_ (an oar or paddle[1]), Greek

ἐρετμός, Latin _remus_ (_resmus_), prove that they propelled them by

rowing or paddling. The absence however of common words for a mast, a

sail, the sea, indicate that the waters that they knew were rivers or

small lakes and that they did not possess the art of getting propulsion

from the wind[2].

[1] See Curtius, _Grundzüge der Griechischen Etymologie_, under the

word ἀρόω.

[2] The evidence derived from comparison of the Greek, Latin

and Sanskrit is taken from Mommsen, _History of Rome_, English

translation, vol. I. p. 15: the additional evidence from German

languages from Max Müller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. II.

pp. 22, 44. Curtius, _Grundzüge der Griechischen Etymologie_, has been

used for verification.

The Aryans were not entirely ignorant of plants that produce corn: for

there was an Aryan word from which are descended the Sanskrit _yavas_

(barley), the Greek ζειά (spelt, a kind of grain) and _jáva_ in Zend

(or Old Persian), Slavic and Lithuanian. Mommsen, noticing only the

Sanskrit and the Greek, and observing the difference of meaning, thinks

that the Aryans while they were all together merely gathered and ate

the grains of barley and spelt that grew wild. A recent English writer

points out the wide diffusion of the words descended from the Aryan

word, and thinks it could not have left traces of its existence in

so many languages unless corn had been cultivated by the Aryans and

had thus become well known to them[3]. This inference seems to be

fair: but the absence of traces of other original Aryan words for

agricultural products or instruments shows clearly that agriculture

played only a subordinate part in their economy. It is probable that

they sowed some kind of grain in little plots of ground that scarcely

needed tillage.

[3] Mommsen, _Hist. Rome_, vol. I. p. 16. Rendall, _The Cradle of the

Aryans_, p. 11.

The results of the evidence which has been adduced may be summed up by

saying that the forefathers of the Greeks, Romans, Germans and Hindus,

while they still occupied their common Aryan home, lived not in tents

but in houses with doors, and were therefore not mere wanderers but had

more or less permanent abodes: they were not savages dependent on wild

animals and wild fruits for subsistence, but had sheep and cattle to

supply them with flesh and milk: they had carts on wheels and knew how

to yoke their oxen and horses: they made boats and propelled them on

their rivers or lakes with oars or paddles: and they were acquainted

with some kinds of grain, but were either ignorant of agriculture or

cared little for it.

From the condition in which the Aryans lived we may safely infer that

they were not totally devoid of political institutions. All men live

under government except a few to whom government is either impossible

or useless. The multitude of uncivilised races who inhabit or have

inhabited the earth may be divided into two great classes; the first

and lower class consisting of those who depend for subsistence solely

on wild plants and wild animals, the second and upper class comprising

all those who, in addition to the wild fruits that they may gather and

the wild animals that they may kill, also have tame cattle to supply

them with flesh and milk or cultivated plants that produce grain. The

lower class are known either as savages or as hunting peoples: the

upper, for want of a better name, may be designated as barbarians. In

the lower class, the savages and hunting peoples, a very small number

of peoples are found who have been prevented by specially adverse

circumstances from having any governments: but in the rest of the lower

class and in all the upper class of uncivilised peoples the existence

of some kind of government is universal.

In illustration and proof of these statements some facts may be cited.

The Bushmen of South Africa were at the beginning of the present

century a race of savages who wandered over an arid sloping plain that

lies to the South of the Orange River. They just contrived to maintain

a miserable existence on the roots that they could grub up and on the

flesh of animals that they shot with poisoned arrows or entrapped in

pitfalls: but, as every family was compelled to keep itself isolated

from all neighbours in order to have enough to eat, government was

impossible. Other races resembling the Bushmen in the isolation of

their families and in having no government are the Rock Veddahs in

Ceylon and the Digger Indians in California. A slightly different case

occurs in the regions near the North Pole. The Esquimaux, who live

by catching seals and other marine animals, are not precluded from

grouping their huts in small clusters: but nature offers so little

reward to any combined effort of a large number of men that they have

never cared to form political communities: and they afford perhaps

the only example of human beings living as neighbours but without

government. Leaving these very exceptional cases, we next observe a

group of hunting peoples with whom nature dealt less unkindly. Some

forty years ago, almost the only inhabitants of the western part of

British North America, now known as Manitoba, were a number of Red

Indian tribes who supported themselves entirely by the chase, killing

buffalo for food and other animals for their furs, which they passed on

to traders in return for such commodities as the traders brought them.

During the greater part of the year each Red Indian family wandered

almost as much apart from communication with mankind as did the

Bushmen, for so the wild animals could most advantageously be pursued:

and of course while they remained in dispersion had no government.

But at certain seasons in every year a whole tribe came together for

a great buffalo hunt: at other times they assembled to organize a war

against some neighbouring tribe: and whenever they met for either

purpose they subjected themselves to an efficient government, which

included even a system of police. Apart from the groups of peoples whom

I have mentioned, no great number of savage peoples seems to have been

observed in recent times: the New Zealanders when first the Europeans

went among them were savages and cannibals, and yet they lived under

well established kingly governments.

With regard to the upper class of uncivilised peoples, the barbarians,

who either keep cattle or grow corn or do both, it will suffice to

say that observation of all of them (and they are extremely numerous)

proves that all of them have governments. Nor is the fact hard to

understand: for in their case it is never necessary for single families

to live in isolation: they do as a matter of fact live collected

together in groups of families, and each group gains numberless

advantages by living together and acting together: and, where men live

together and act together, government naturally comes into existence.

Those of the barbarian peoples who, like the Aryans, have more or less

fixed abodes, always group themselves in small independent tribes

and adopt such simple forms of government as are suited to their

circumstances. There are many different kinds of tribal governments.

In nearly all of them a small number of men distinguished for prowess

daring or intelligence have some authority over the rest: sometimes

above these chiefs there is a higher chief or king: and sometimes the

whole body of warriors may be called together to hear what the chiefs

have to say to them. Among the ancient Aryans all the governments were

no doubt tribal governments: but it is impossible to say that any one

of the various kinds of tribal governments prevailed to the exclusion

of the rest[4].

[4] The classification of uncivilised peoples as hunting peoples

and peoples with cattle forms part of the classification used by

John Stuart Mill at the beginning of his _Political Economy_: and it

is adopted and fully worked out by Mr Lewis Morgan in his _Ancient

Society_.

All the statements of a general kind which I have made about

uncivilised peoples have been verified by reference to _Descriptive

Sociology, Division I._, an encyclopædia of facts relating to such

peoples, which was designed by Mr Herbert Spencer and compiled by

Professor Duncan. The advantages which uncivilised men gain from

living and acting together and from having a government are explained

by Mr Herbert Spencer in his _Political Institutions_, §§ 440-442.

My authorities for the individual peoples which have been noticed are

these: for the Bushmen, Burchell, _Travels_ (1822), and Thompson,

_Travels_ (1827): for the Esquimaux, C. F. Hall, _Life with the

Esquimaux_ (1864): for the Red Indians, H. Y. Hind, _The Canadian

Red River Exploring Expedition_ (1860). All these books are cited in

_Descriptive Sociology_.

When the Aryans had made such progress as I have described they divided

into two groups: one group contained the forefathers of the Europeans,

the other the forefathers of the Hindus and Persians. Whether the

separation arose through a migration of only the Europeans or of only

the Asiatics or from migrations of both Europeans and Asiatics cannot

be determined. It is certain however that after the division of the

stocks took place the Europeans still remained together long enough

to acquire in common the art of ploughing. The English word to _ear_,

Anglo-Saxon _erian_, Gothic _erjan_, Old High German _eren_, Latin

_arare_, Greek ἀρόειν, Irish _araim_ (I plough) are mere variations

of a single word and show that when ploughing was introduced the

European stocks were still in close neighbourhood with one another and

all adopted dialectic varieties of the same sound to indicate the new

method of breaking up the soil[5].

[5] It may be objected that the Goths from about 250 A.D. were living

close to the Greeks, and the Old Germans from about 50 B.C. had the

Romans as their neighbours, and possibly learned the art of ploughing

from these neighbours and borrowed a name for it. It seems enough,

however, to answer that if the Goths had taken a word from ἀρόειν they

would have chosen something more like the pattern word than _erjan_:

in like manner if the Germans had borrowed from _arare_ they would

hardly have formed _eren_.

The region in which the forefathers of the Europeans lived together

cannot be precisely ascertained: the hypothesis that it was in central

Europe seems to fit in best with the geographical distribution of their

descendants and the relationships between their languages.

The invention of the art of ploughing opened new possibilities for the

European peoples: for an agricultural people has far better chances

than a people of herdsmen of accumulating wealth and making progress

in the useful arts. But not all of them cared to make use of the new

art and to become tillers of the soil. Those who took their homes amid

the forests of central Europe still continued the life of hunters and

herdsmen which had once been common to all the Aryans. Others devoted

themselves to agricultural pursuits with delight and success: and among

them were those who settled in the peninsulas of Greece and Italy,

where, favoured by many circumstances, they made comparatively rapid

progress in arts, knowledge and political development.

CHAPTER II.

A CLASSIFICATION OF EUROPEAN POLITICAL BODIES.

The subject matter of the study of politics consists firstly of the

groups or collections of men who have lived under governments, and

secondly of the governments under which they have lived. In the present

chapter I wish to speak of the groups, to describe in outline the

various forms which they have taken, and to define the names by which

their forms are severally known. I must premise that I shall call some

of the groups political communities, meaning by a political community

a number of persons living under one government and also having much

else in common besides government: the rest I shall call political

aggregates, meaning by a political aggregate a number of persons or

bodies of persons living under one government and having nothing

else or very little else in common. Having said this, I can proceed

to notice the forms of individual communities or aggregates, with a

view to classifying them according to their forms. In my survey the

earliest forms will be taken first, and the others afterwards, as far

as possible in chronological order[6].

[6] I have thought it needless in most cases to give authorities for

statements of historical facts made in this chapter, because the

statements are generally such that it is very easy to settle whether

they are true or false. In cases where verification might be in the

least degree difficult I have given references.

The two European races into whose past we can grope our way farthest

back are the Germans and the Greeks. Each of these races, when first

we have any knowledge of them, had formed a large number of tribes or

small primitive political communities. The German tribes in the times

of Cæsar and of Tacitus and the Greek tribes in the time of Homer were

alike in being of small size and in being primitive in their habits and

government: but in a German tribe the whole population lived scattered

over the open country and there was no walled city, while in a Greek

tribe, though most of the people lived in the open country, there was

a walled city as a centre for the community and a dwelling place for a

few of the most important tribesmen. It is desirable to give the word

_tribe_ such a definition as will emphasize the distinction between a

tribe and a city, and I shall therefore define it as meaning a small

primitive political community, living in the open country without any

walled city. From this definition it follows that I must regard the

German tribes alone as being perfect specimens of the genus tribe or as

being tribes pure and simple: the early Greek communities, though for

brevity I shall speak of them as tribes, ought in strict accuracy to be

regarded as tribes which were on the way to become cities and which had

already acquired some small portion of the qualities by which cities

are characterized.

In Greece tribes were succeeded by cities, that is to say small

communities in which a walled city is everything, and the country

districts are of little importance: and similar communities arose also

in Italy. The cities of ancient Greece and Italy are often further

designated as city-states, and the name is rightly applied to them: for

they were not only cities in the sense which I have given to the word,

but were also states because each of them was an independent community

with a government of its own.

But the cities of ancient Greece and Italy were not all alike: the

Greek cities were inexpansive: in Italy one city expanded itself by

conquering a host of other cities and absorbing their populations into

its own body politic. The contrast between the inexpansive cities of

Greece and the expansive city of Rome is a matter of which I hope some

time to speak at length: for the present it will suffice to notice

that the Athenians, the largest political community known to Greek

history in the age of the city states (that is to say before 338 B.C.),

inhabited a territory of less area than an average English county:

while in Italy before the beginning of the second Punic war (218 B.C.)

towns or fortresses peopled by fully qualified citizens of the Roman

Republic were to be found scattered over all the central region from

Sena Gallica in Umbria to Sinuessa in Campania, and other towns or

fortresses whose inhabitants possessed the private but not the public

rights of Roman citizens existed in all parts of the peninsula[7]. It

must however be observed that Rome did not by its expansion lose the

distinguishing characteristics of a city state: it still continued

after its expansion over all Italy to be a community in which a single

city was of supreme importance and the population remote from the city

was, politically at least, of little moment: but as it was incomparably

larger than any ordinary city state, we must call it not simply a city

state but an enlarged or expanded city state.

[7] Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, Vol. I. pages 22-57, in

the edition of 1873, comprising the section headed _Italien vor der

lex Julia_. Mommsen, _History of Rome_, Vol. II., especially the

_Military Map of Italy_ at the beginning of the volume.

The small size of the Greek cities and their incapacity for acting in

concert led to their subjugation by Macedonia in 338 B.C. About sixty

or eighty years later many of them had recovered their independence,

and some of them, in order to guard against a second conquest by

Macedonia, joined together in a league or federation. The union of

many communities in a federation was not a new thing in Greek history:

during several centuries that preceded the year 338 B.C. some obscure

tribes of mountaineers (the Achæans) had lived in such a union; their

league had been broken up by the Macedonian conquerors, but they had

been able, about 281 B.C., to reconstitute it: and the Greek cities,

when they began, about 251 B.C., to see their need of mutual defence,

had the Achæan League ready at hand, and were able to gain what they

needed by enrolling themselves among its members. The Achæan League,

enlarged by the admission of many important cities, was a federal

state: that is to say, it was a community in which each city or canton

had a government of its own for most purposes, but the federation or

union of cities and cantons had also a common government for those

matters which most nearly concerned the safety of them all. The League

was perfectly successful till 221 B.C. in attaining the ends for which

it had been established, and is remarkable as furnishing the first

example in history of a well organized federal state[8].

[8] For details see Chapter VII.

The Romans employed the strength, which they had acquired through their

conquest of Italy and their success in the second Punic war, in getting

possession of many distant territories inhabited by alien races. Before

146 B.C. they were masters of Macedonia, part of Asia Minor, Spain and

northern Africa, and the Roman dominions presented an example of a

mere political aggregate, or heterogeneous empire or number of peoples

having no natural attraction for one another and held together only by

force. For the rule of a heterogeneous empire the institutions of a

city and even of an expanded city proved utterly unsuitable: and it was

necessary that both the conquering city and the dominions which it had

conquered should submit to be ruled under a centralised and despotic

system of government adapted to the needs of a heterogeneous empire.

The right system was only gradually made, but it had been completed by

the death of the Emperor Constantine the Great in 337 A.D.

But it is time to return to the Germans: for the Germans were the

successors of the Romans as masters of Western Europe. The Germans in

their primitive tribal condition possessed a great aptitude for forming

large political communities by the union of many small communities:--an

aptitude which is probably common to all peoples in a tribal

condition:--and they inhabited a flat country which put no obstacles

in the way of the amalgamation of their tribes. At any rate the German

tribes between 150 A.D. and 400 A.D. were engaged in a process of

amalgamation. About 150 A.D. Ptolemy enumerated more than fifty of

them[9]: by the year 400 all or nearly all of these had gathered

themselves into a few great hordes or associations of tribes, (which

may themselves be called overgrown tribes,) bearing severally the names

of the Saxons, the Salian Franks, the Ripuarian Franks, the Angli, the

Alamanni, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Lombards.

After 400 A.D. came the great migrations of the German peoples: some

of them invaded the provinces of the Western Roman Empire, still full

of wealth and of such civilisation as the Romans had planted there:

others, in the second half of the fifth century, betook themselves to

Britain, from whence the Romans had departed in the year 407.

[9] Smith's _Atlas of Ancient Geography_, Map 13, contains a map of

Germania Magna according to Ptolemy.

During the eleven centuries which intervened between the migrations of

the Germans and the year 1500, the Germans who went to Britain, Spain

and Gaul succeeded in forming certain large political communities which

are usually known as the nations of medieval Europe. These political

communities as they existed about the year 1480 or 1500 possessed three

of the distinguishing features of nations: for each of them was of

large size, lived under a single government, and was composed of men

well suited for living together and under one government: but all of

them lacked one quality which is essential for the making of a perfect

nation: and that lacking quality was a strong cohesion between the

inhabitants of the different parts of their territories. But it will

be necessary to observe in detail the processes by which the large

political communities were built up.

The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who went to Britain established

themselves at first in a number of small settlements on its southern

and eastern coasts. From these settlements they gradually pushed their

way inland, and by 577 A.D. they had conquered nearly all the richest

and most fertile regions in Britain. The many political communities

formed by settlement and conquest were soon afterwards engaged in

strife with one another: in the beginning of the ninth century the

West Saxons overpowered all their opponents and the West Saxon king

received the submission of all the German settlers in the island. The

conquering West Saxons and the conquered Angles and Jutes showed the

same genius for amalgamation as had been shown by their forefathers in

Germany long before: and by the middle of the ninth century all the

Germans in Britain (we may now call them the English) had combined

into a single large political community. Three times over, in 867-878,

988-1016, and 1066-1070, the English were disturbed by invasions of

fresh immigrants from the continent of Europe: but on each occasion the

new comers were successfully united in a single political community

with the older settlers, and by the year 1174 or at any rate by 1215

the English people had been for the last time fashioned into one

kindred under one government.

The German peoples who invaded Spain were the Vandals, the Alans, the

Suevi and the Visigoths. The Visigoths proved to be the strongest of

the four, and by the early years of the sixth century they had occupied

nearly all the peninsula except the north east corner, which they

left to the Suevi. In the enjoyment of the luxuries afforded by Roman

civilisation, and in the fancied security of their position, they

neglected the arts of war in which they had once so greatly excelled.

In 710 A.D. their country was invaded and in the three following years

was conquered by Moors from Africa, so that none of it was left to the

Goths, the Suevi and some other tribes who were neither Germans nor

Moors, except some valleys among the Pyrenees and a narrow strip of

land about twenty miles broad and two hundred miles long between the

shore of the Bay of Biscay and the mountain range of Cantabria and

Asturias[10].

[10] Spruner-Menke, _Historischer Hand-Atlas_, _Maps_ 14 _and_ 15.

During the five centuries which followed the Moorish conquest of

Spain the Goths who lived on the shores of the Bay of Biscay and the

inhabitants of the southern valleys of the Pyrenees gradually expanded

by reconquering territory from the Moors, and before the middle of

the twelfth century had formed the two large political communities of

Castile and Arragon[11]. Each of these communities during its long

contest with the Moors had acquired habits, thoughts and institutions

of its own, and they were but little inclined to join themselves

together into a single nation. The marriage of Ferdinand of Arragon

with Isabella of Castile in 1469 produced as its result some time later

that both Castile and Arragon were ruled by the same government: but

differences and jealousies between the two peoples continued to exist

long afterwards, even so late as the War of the Spanish Succession in

the eighteenth century[12], and it may well be doubted whether the two

were ever welded together into a single Spanish nation until after the

terrible misfortunes which they endured and the great efforts which

they made in a common cause during their war against Napoleon.

[11] Hallam, _Middle Ages_, Chapter IV.

[12] Stanhope, _Reign of Queen Anne_, Vol. I. p. 264.

In Gaul the formation of a large political community was delayed till

late in the middle ages; in Germany, the original home of the Germans,

no large political community of great importance was established till

late in the seventeenth century. In both countries the same hindrances

stood in the way of the making of great communities. The two countries

were included in the heterogeneous empires founded between 687 A.D. and

800 A.D. by the house of Pepin, especially by Charlemagne, the greatest

man of the house of Pepin: in that empire, as in all heterogeneous

empires, it was found necessary that the central ruler should delegate

very great powers to the officials who governed provinces or districts:

and under the circumstances of the time it was also found convenient

for him to grant large estates of land to men who had been useful to

him and could be trusted to serve him well in the future. In 843 Gaul

(or the land of the West Franks) was severed from the empire, and

set up a king of its own, who pretended to have the same powers as

Charlemagne had exercised. But the kings of the West Franks could not

control the local officials and landowners: by the eleventh century

the local officials and the landowners had converted themselves into

independent sovereigns, each ruling his own lands and the men who

lived on his lands: that particular landowner who still enjoyed the

title of king had no authority (or at any rate no authority which he

could habitually exercise) except within the lands which specially

belonged to him: and even within his own lands he, like the other

landowners in Gaul, found that his authority was often disputed in arms

by his tenants.

In the early years of the twelfth century Louis VI., owning or claiming

to own an estate or demesne of land which had Paris as its centre and

measured about 140 miles from north to south and about 50 miles from

east to west, set himself to establish order and government within

his demesne by force of arms. The inhabitants of the demesne valued

the good government and the order that was maintained among them by

Louis VI. and his grandson Philip II., and when the twelfth century

ended they may be counted as forming a small political community or a

body of men, possessing not only a common government, but also common

interests habits and wishes[13]. In the thirteenth century the king's

demesne was increased by the acquisition of Normandy, Anjou, Maine,

Touraine, Poitou, Champagne in the north of Gaul, and by the distant

region of Languedoc in the south. The new parts of the demesne were

placed under the same government with the old, and no doubt those of

them which lay together in the north of Gaul constantly tended to

unite themselves into a single political community. But the work of

unification was greatly impeded by causes all closely connected with

the independence which the different parts of Gaul had possessed in the

tenth and eleventh centuries, and it had not made very great progress

in 1415 when France was invaded by the armies of the English. After the

expulsion of the invaders the work was taken up again and carried on

with better success by Charles VII., Louis XI. and the later kings of

France.

[13] My statements about Frankish and early French history down to the

reign of Philip II. are all based on original authorities: but see

Kitchin, _History of France_, Vol. I., and some excellent maps (No.

57) in Droysen, _Historischer Hand-Atlas_.

In Germany events followed much the same course as in Gaul; but they

occurred later. The extinction of the Emperor's authority and the rise

of the local governors and landowners to independence did not come to

pass in Germany till the middle of the thirteenth century; and none of

the princes who then gained their independence succeeded during the

middle ages in rising to preeminence above the rest.

In order to complete our survey of the chief political communities

of the middle ages we must glance at northern Italy and Switzerland.

Northern Italy contained many important towns which had been founded

by the Romans: during the early part of the middle ages it became the

commercial centre of Europe: the towns grew in wealth and influence,

and before the year 1200 they succeeded in making themselves

independent, and constituted themselves as city states, resembling

the city states of ancient Greece. In Switzerland three tribes of

mountaineers in Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, in 1291, agreed to form a

league or permanent alliance, which was afterwards joined by many of

their neighbours, though no steps towards forming a federal state were

taken till about the year 1500[14].

[14] Oechsli, _Quellenbuch zur Schweizergeschichte_, pages 49,

199-202, 261-266. The second of these passages, especially page 200,

proves that so late as 1481 no Swiss Federation had been made, but

each canton was an independent state, managing its foreign relations

for itself: the third shows that by 1512 a central body had been

established which received ambassadors sent by foreign powers to the

Swiss, and settled what answers the Swiss League should give them.

It has been remarked already that the large political communities of

the middle ages were not thoroughly coherent or consolidated. A want of

coherence was exhibited both in France and in England by the frequent

recurrence of rebellions or civil strife, in France under John II.

and Charles VI., in England under Edward II., Richard II. and Henry

VI.; still more clearly was it made visible in France in 1356-1360 and

1415-1422 by the inability of the French to act unitedly in resistance

to an invading enemy, and by the ease with which portions of French

territory were detached from the dominions of the French king and

transferred to the victorious invaders. The danger of civil discord

was great enough in the fifteenth century when it arose mainly from

the armies of retainers kept by ambitious noblemen: but it became

still greater in the sixteenth, when differences of creed divided

each people into two hostile camps. The disruptive forces at length

became so strong that both France and England seemed to be in danger

of losing the character of political communities and of lapsing into

masses of heterogeneous elements; and accordingly each country adopted

that kind of government which is best suited to hold heterogeneous

elements together, namely, a monarchy with almost unlimited power.

The subsequent histories of the two countries, though dissimilar in

general character, were in one respect alike: in both countries civil

war actually occurred, in France in the sixteenth century, in England

in the seventeenth; and in each country experience of the miseries of

war brought a love for the blessings of peace, with the result that

France from 1700 to 1789 and England from 1745 to this day present very

perfect examples of united nations.

Besides the nations of France, England, Spain, Scotland, Sweden, Norway

and Denmark which grew up directly from the large political communities

of the middle ages, others have been founded in more recent times,

some of them having only a single government, and being therefore

called unitary states, and others having one government for some

purposes and many governments for other purposes, and being known as

federal states. Among the unitary or non-federal nations we must notice

Brandenburg-Prussia 1700-1866, Italy since 1859, Belgium, Holland,

Greece, and the Balkan States: among the federal nations the United

States of America and modern Switzerland stand out conspicuously. The

German Empire founded in 1871 is a federal nation, though it differs

from other federal nations because Prussia, one of its component

states, is larger than all the other component states put together:

Austria Hungary was for centuries a mere heterogeneous empire, but in

recent times its parts have been held together by the possession of

common interests and not by force, so that it has acquired some of the

characters of a federation, though it cannot be said that it has grown

together into a single nation.

But the making and consolidation of nations is not the only kind of

state-building that has gone on since the end of the middle ages:

for other sorts of construction have also been actively carried on,

and they have resulted in the making of a number of states that are

larger than nations. In some cases two European nations or a European

nation and some other European population have been brought under a

single government: in other cases a European nation has expanded by the

foundation of colonies far away from its original abode: and yet again

in some cases a European state has conquered a host of non-European

peoples and formed them into a heterogeneous empire dependent on itself.

The most conspicuous instances of the union of a nation with another

nation or people occurred in 1683 when Alsace was acquired by France,

in 1707 when England and Scotland placed themselves under one

government, in 1771, 1793 and 1795 when parts of Poland were annexed

to Prussia, and in 1801 when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and

Ireland was formed. The enlarged states which result from such unions

can never be strictly called single nations immediately after the union

has taken place, and for a time at least after the union they must be

denoted merely as unitary states: but usually they have not for most

purposes differed very greatly from nations: for in all cases one of

the two peoples united together has been a large and well consolidated

nation and the other has been much smaller and far less perfectly

organized: and consequently the larger partner in the union has had a

predominant share in the government, and has gradually succeeded in

communicating its own national characteristics and feelings to some

part at least of the population of the lesser partner in the union.

A state formed by colonial expansion presents difficulties to any one

who tries to define its nature. It is like a family of plants all

sprung from one stock; the stock has sent out offshoots, which have

themselves struck root, but are still connected with the parent stock

from which they sprang. In one sense such an expanded state is still a

single political community: in another sense each of the colonies which

belongs to it is also a political community, though it never possesses

complete independence, and therefore is not to be counted as a state.

The greatest conquerors of distant lands outside Europe have been

the Spaniards, the English and the Russians. Their conquests formed

three great political aggregates or heterogeneous empires, the Spanish

Empire in southern and central America, the Indian Empire, and the

Russian Empire. The Indian and the Russian Empires are administered by

methods more or less resembling those used in the old heterogeneous

Empire of the Romans by Constantine the Great and his successors: the

administration of the Spaniards was very defective from the outset, and

at the beginning of the nineteenth century their empire broke up into a

number of independent states.

And now I may attempt a classification of all the more important forms

that have been assumed by groups or collections of men living under

governments. First of all, some of these groups are mere political

aggregates, having little in common save the fact of living under one

government, and the rest are political communities whose members have

much else beside government in common. The mere aggregates will not

need to be further divided; they are all heterogeneous empires held

together by force. The political communities must be divided into three

classes, tribes, cities, and the larger political communities. The

class tribes needs no subdivision: cities must be divided according as

they are inexpansive or expansive: the larger political communities (a

class identical with the nations and those communities which possess

many of the qualities of nations) need be subdivided only into unitary

states or large political communities each with a single government

only, and federal states or large political communities in which there

is one government for some purposes and many governments for other

purposes.

The essentials of a perfect classification are four in number. Firstly,

it ought to be exhaustive or to comprehend all individual specimens, so

that no individual shall be without a place in it. Secondly, the marks

which distinguish the classes should be easily recognisable. Thirdly,

the marks of one class should never be present in a single individual

together with the marks of another: for, if they are, the individual is

in two classes at once. Fourthly (and this is most essential of all),

the classes should be such that many important general propositions are

true of all the individuals which compose any given class.

It will be well to try to ascertain in what measure these essentials

are found in a classification of European bodies politic under the five

heads of tribes, cities, nations unitary and federal, and heterogeneous

empires. Firstly, the classification is, I believe, so far exhaustive

that it includes all those bodies which most clearly deserve to be

called both political and European: it does not however provide a

place for mere feudal principalities which never grew into nations,

nor is it intended to include the Asiatic Empire of the Turks in

Europe. Secondly, the marks which distinguish the classes are easily

recognisable. Thirdly, the classification is decidedly imperfect

because it does not make it impossible for a political body to be in

two classes at once. But the possibility that a political body may be

in two classes at once does not occur except during those periods when

a community is gradually growing out of one form and into another. Such

periods of transition have occurred in the history of many peoples:

there was one in Greek history when the tribes were growing into

cities: one in Roman history when the Republic was ceasing to be a mere

enlarged city and was growing into a heterogeneous empire: and one in

English history when the English were losing the character of a tribe

and acquiring the qualities of a nation. But such periods of transition

do not occur in the life of all peoples, and where they do occur,

they are not usually of long duration when compared with the whole

of the people's history. Fourthly, there are many important general

propositions which are true of all or of nearly all the individuals in

any given class. To establish such general propositions by historical

evidence will be my task in the present chapters and in any future

additions which I may be able to make to them. Some of these general

propositions may be at once indicated in an imperfect form, though the

proofs of them must be postponed.

The most important of these propositions are those which assert that

there is an intimate connexion between the form of a political body

and the form of government by which it is ruled: and that each of the

forms that a political body can assume has a certain type or certain

types of government commonly and almost uniformly associated with it.

The propositions may be set down in the following way. Firstly, all

the tribes of which we have any good records have had governments not

differing from one another in any important particular. Secondly,

cities pure and simple or inexpansive cities have usually three kinds

of government only, pure oligarchy, or pure despotism, or direct and

almost unmixed democracy: and Republican Rome, the single example

of an expanded city, had a government peculiar to itself. Thirdly,

in the large unitary states or nations, it is, roughly speaking,

true that three kinds of government have succeeded one another in

regular sequence: at first, during the middle ages, they were under

governments in which power belonged partly to a king and partly to an

assembly of estates, the assembly consisting usually of the nobles,

the prelates of the church, and representatives from rural districts

and towns: afterwards, when they were in danger of disruption, they

placed themselves under monarchies of unlimited or almost unlimited

power, and these monarchies usually continued to exist after all

danger of disruption had been removed: and now, in modern times, all

unitary states are ruled by cabinets under the control or supervision

of popular representative assemblies. Turning to federal states,

which form the fourth class of political communities, we find that

all of them are alike in having a central government both legislative

and executive, whose sphere of action is strictly limited by the

constitution to certain portions of the work of governing, and in

permitting each of the states, which are joined together in the

federation, also to have a government of its own, which controls all

business except that portion which is allotted by the constitution to

the central government of the federation. And, lastly, heterogeneous

empires must, unless they are to break in pieces, have governments

whose chief object is centralisation. Supreme power may belong to a

despotic monarch or to a small body of men appointed by a foreign

state which rules the empire: but in all cases the one thing necessary

is that there shall be a central supreme power and that the commands of

that supreme power shall be implicitly obeyed by everyone within the

empire.

It will be observed that most of the propositions which I have

enumerated are qualified with a saving word or saving clause to admit

the existence of exceptions. The exceptions however are not, so far as

I can judge, very numerous. Among the governments of city states the

Cleisthenean constitution at Athens was exceptional, since, though it

was more like a democracy than anything else, it was not by any means

an unmixed democracy: and some similar exceptions occur, I believe, in

the earliest part of the history of some medieval cities in Lombardy.

During the middle ages, it was only in those peoples which best

deserved the name of large political communities or incipient nations

that an effective division of power between a king and an assembly of

estates was to be found, and even in them it was not maintained without

occasional interruptions: in England for example there were three

periods (1258-1259, 1310-1322, and 1388-1389) of pure oligarchy, and

two (1200-1215, and 1397-1399) of pure despotism: among the French and

in some other peoples which had not truly acquired the character of

political communities, we find a semblance of a division of power, but

not the reality. The assertion that the nations during the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries were ruled by strong monarchical governments

scarcely needs any qualification: there is however a short exceptional

period in English history, 1649-1653, when the government was an

oligarchy; and Poland never acquired a strong monarchical government,

but was punished for the absence of such a government by ceasing to

exist. In the course of the French Revolution 1789-1795 there occur

some seeming exceptions to the propositions about forms of government

which have been enumerated: but I believe they will be found not to be

exceptions, if we observe that during those years Paris was practically

an independent city state.

CHAPTER III.

GREEK POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. HEROIC MONARCHIES.

The political institutions of the Greeks will be examined first,

because the Greeks are known to us at an earlier period than any other

European people.

Hellas, the land of the Greeks, is about equal in size to half of

Scotland or Ireland or to a third of England[15]. It is intersected

by a network of continuous mountain ranges, which cannot be crossed

without difficulty, and these ranges are almost everywhere so near

together that it is impossible to travel more than twenty miles in

any direction without crossing one of them. There are therefore no

plains of any considerable extent, and the country is cut up into very

numerous small areas, each enclosed, except towards the sea, within

natural barriers which make egress and entrance alike difficult. These

areas are of varying minuteness: by far the greater number of them

measure only ten miles by ten, or twenty by five, but a few are of

larger dimensions, and, in particular, Argolis contains about four

hundred and fifty square miles, and is as large as Bedfordshire,

Attica contains seven hundred and twenty, and just equals Berkshire,

and Laconia, with about nine hundred, is of the same size as

Warwickshire[16].

[15] In making this statement I have regarded Thessaly as not forming

part of Hellas. Thessaly was completely cut off from the rest by two

great ranges of mountains and was conquered before the beginning of

Greek history by a people who were not truly Hellenic.

[16] These areas of Argolis, Attica, Laconia are calculated from

the maps in Smith's _Atlas_: the other areas referred to are taken

from the _Statesman's Yearbook_, or the article _Graecia_ in Smith's

_Dictionary of Geography_.

If communication by land is difficult, by sea it is easy, and was

easy even in the earliest times. Greece and its islands have as much

sea-board as any equal area in Europe; most of the natural divisions of

the country have their share of coast with sheltered beaches where the

boats or small ships of ancient times could be drawn up in safety: the

Mediterranean, though it is sometimes as dangerous as any sea, is often

calm: and by the age of Homer it had come to be a great highway for

war, piracy and commerce.

The career of all the Greek communities, except Sparta, divides itself

readily into periods. The first period, lasting till perhaps 700

B.C. or 650 B.C., was the period of tribes and tribal governments:

the second, lasting to 338 B.C., was the period of cities and city

governments. The period of the cities must however be divided into

three lesser periods, each characterised by the prevalence of a

certain kind of city government: the first of these lesser periods

lasted from about 700 B.C. to 600 B.C., the second from 600 B.C. to

500 B.C., and the third from 500 B.C. to 338 B.C. Between 700 B.C.

and 600 B.C. Athens, Corinth and Megara were under the domination of

groups of privileged families, and many Greek cities in Sicily were

also governed by small groups of citizens distinguished either by birth

or by wealth: and, since the rule of a few is known as an aristocracy

if the few rulers are the men best qualified to rule and if they use

their power for the good of the whole community, but as an oligarchy

if the few rulers govern for their own selfish interest, the century

may be called the period of the early aristocracies and oligarchies.

Between 600 B.C. and 500 B.C. nearly every Greek city, both in Greece

proper and elsewhere, came under the rule of a τύραννος or usurper

of absolute power, so that the century may be called the age of the

tyrants or usurpers. And lastly, between 500 B.C. and 338 B.C. in many

of the Greek cities a system of government was set up under which the

whole body of the citizens acting collectively conducted the work of

government, or at least all parts of it which can in the nature of

things be conducted by a numerous assembly, while in other cities

a small body of the richest citizens ruled selfishly for their own

advantage and the advantage of their class; and, since any system

in which the whole body of citizens directly conduct the work of

government or the greater part of the work of government is known as a

democracy, while the selfish rule of a few is, as we have seen, called

an oligarchy, the period may best be called the age of the democracies

and of the later oligarchies.

The Spartans were unlike, in their history their institutions and the

aims of their policy, not only to all other Greek communities but

perhaps to every other community that has ever existed: they never

completely grew out of their tribal condition, never entirely abandoned

their tribal government, and never formed themselves into a city like

the other Greek cities: and besides all this they were in so many ways

unlike to the rest of mankind that it will be necessary for me to speak

of them by themselves and apart from the rest of the Greeks.

The Greek communities and their political systems from the earliest

times to the first overthrow of Greek independence in 338 B.C. will

be treated in the present and the next two chapters in the following

order: firstly, we shall examine the tribes and the tribal governments,

secondly, the institutions and government of the Spartans, and thirdly,

the cities and the city-governments.

THE GREEK TRIBES AND TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS.

The numerous tribes which composed the Greek race ranged themselves in

several groups, distinguished from one another in name, characteristics

and fortunes. Among these groups the Achæans, the Dorians and the

Ionians are historically the most important. The Achæan group includes

all the tribes that are conspicuous in the Iliad and Odyssey: and from

this circumstance it may safely be inferred that, when those poems

were composed, the Achæan tribes had made more progress than any other

Greeks in knowledge and political organisation. The Dorians in the

days of Homer were an obscure tribe living in a little mountain valley

of Northern Greece: in the next age they invaded the Peloponnesus,

expelled the Achæans from their homes, and formed themselves into the

four peoples of the Spartans, the Messenians, the Corinthians and

the Argives. The Ionian tribes, the Athenians and twelve of the Greek

cities of Asia Minor, including Miletus and Ephesus, were even later

than the Dorian peoples in rising to importance. I shall deal first

with the Achæans and then with the Dorians and Ionians.

1. _The Achæan tribes in the heroic age._

When the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed the Achæans had formed a

great number of small independent communities, some inhabiting islands,

and others living in valleys surrounded by chains of mountains. The

only tribe whose methods of government are depicted in some detail was

one of the least of the Greek peoples, and had its home in Ithaca, a

rocky island of the Ionian sea about seventeen miles long and three or

four miles broad. The larger tribes were the Mycenæans, the Spartans,

and the Achæans of Phthiotis. All the Achæan tribes were much alike in

their political institutions: for the same political terms βασιλεύς,

ἀγορή, γέροντες, λαοί are used in reference to the various tribes

without distinction. Their governments were tribal in character, and we

may call them either by the generic name of tribal governments, or by

the name, which they more usually bear, of heroic monarchies.

The government of an Achæan tribe was conducted, in time of peace,

in assemblies (ἀγορα). The purposes for which they met included

the announcement of any important news[17], discussion of any

public business or question of policy[18] or the settlement of a

litigation[19]. Our knowledge of their character and proceedings is

derived from a full description in the second book of the Odyssey of an

assembly held at Ithaca, and a shorter description in the Iliad[20].

[17] _Odyssey_ II. 30 ἀγγελίην στρατοῦ ἐρχομένοιο (news of the host

returning).

[18] _Odyssey_ II. 32 ἦέ τι ζημιον ἄλλο πιφαύσκεται ἠδ' ἀγορεύει; (or

has he any other public business to discuss?)

[19] _Iliad_ XVIII. 497 νεῖκος (a dispute).

[20] _Odyssey_ II. 1-259, _Iliad_ XVIII. 497-508.

Whenever the king desired that an assembly should be held he gave the

heralds orders to require the immediate attendance of the elders and

the people[21]. The place of meeting was an open space in the city set

apart for the purpose. In the midst was a circle of stone seats for the

king and the elders[22], and one of the seats belonged specially to the

king[23]: outside were the people, all of whom were compelled by the

heralds to seat themselves on the ground[24] and to be silent[25]. When

this had been done, the work of the assembly began; the speakers were

the king and the elders, and the people either kept silence or perhaps

indicated their approval by shouting or their dissent by murmurs. The

councillors who sat with the king and had the right of speaking were

for the most part (as the name γέροντες, if taken literally, denotes)

men of age and experience: but younger men of good family, such as the

wooers of Penelope[26], were also sometimes present among them and

shared their privileges.

[21] _Odyssey_ II. 6. The Ithacan assembly was summoned by the king's

son in his father's absence: but the summons was irregular, as is

shown in the next paragraph.

[22] _Iliad_ XVIII. 503

οἱ δὲ γέροντες

εἵατ' ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίθοις ἱερῷ ἐνὶ κύκλῳ.

The stone seats are mentioned only in the description of a judicial

assembly: but all assemblies met, there is no doubt, in the same place.

[23] _Odyssey_ II. 14 ἕζετο δ' ἐν ἕζετο δ' ἐν (Τηλέμαχος), ϝεῖξαν

δὲ γέροντες (and Telemachus sat down in his father's seat, and the

elders made way for him).

[24] See Grote's note in his _History_, Part I. ch. XX. His instances

(_Iliad_ II. 96 and _Iliad_ XVIII. 246) are both taken from time of

war: but it is not in the least likely that this detail was peculiar

to assemblies held at such times.

[25] _Iliad_ II. 96

ἐννέας δά σφεας

κήρυκες βοόωντες ἐρήτυον, εἴ ποτ' ἀϋτῆς

σχοίατ' ἀκούσειαν δὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων

(and nine heralds were calling them to order, to stop clamouring and

hearken to the heaven-born kings).

[26] At the Ithacan assembly the suitors Antinous, Eurymachus, and

Leiocritus were among the speakers. _Odyssey_ II. 84-254.

The assembly at Ithaca was irregularly summoned. The words of the first

speaker, the aged Ægyptius, show that according to custom the king

alone had the prerogative of issuing a summons by the voice of the

heralds. Odysseus had been absent for twenty years: and Ægyptius says,

"Since the godlike Odysseus departed in his hollow ships our assembly

and session has never been held. And now who is he that summoned us?

who was compelled by so great necessity? has he heard news of our

warriors coming back, and hastens to tell us? or has he aught else of

our country's weal to speak about? I say he is a good man, God bless

him! and may Zeus perform for him whatever his heart desires![27]"

[27] _Odyssey_ II. 25-34.

The business of the assembly at Ithaca was not exactly judicial and

can scarcely be described as deliberation on policy. Telemachus

summoned the elders and the people in order to declare to them that the

proceedings of the suitors were intolerable to him, that he bade them

leave his house, that he would resist them by force, if he could, and

that if they were slain in his house no price for their lives would be

due from him to their kindred.

The assembly came to no formal resolution: the practical result of it

was settled by the speeches of the elders without any intervention of

the common folk, and was expressed by the last speaker Leiocritus, who

declared that the suitors were not afraid of Telemachus nor of Odysseus

himself, and bade all those who were present to go away each about his

own business.

An assembly occupied in administering justice was depicted in

a compartment of the shield of Achilles, which the poet thus

describes[28]: "A people too was there, gathered in assembly: and in

their midst a dispute had arisen, and two men were disputing about the

price (wergild) of a man that had been slain. The one was declaring

aloud to the multitude that he had paid the whole, the other that he

had received none of it. And both were ready to go before a judge to

get a decision: and the people on this side and on that were cheering

them on, but were restrained by the heralds. And there sat the

elders on seats of wrought stone in a circle protected by the gods,

holding staves given them by the loud-voiced heralds; and then the

elders were arising in turn to give judgement. And in the midst were

lying two talents of gold to be given to him whose judgement was the

straightest[29]."

[28] _Iliad_ XVIII. 497-508.

[29] _Or perhaps_, to him who best proved his case.

In this assembly, as in the other, power belonged solely to those

who formed the inner circle. The presence of the king in the judicial

assembly is not mentioned, but kings did sometimes take part in giving

dooms, for Nestor says to Agamemnon: "O most famous son of Atreus,

Agamemnon, king of men, thou shalt be my ending and thou my beginning,

because thou art king of many people and Zeus has given thee the

sceptre _and judgements_ that thou mayst be their counselor[30]."

[30] _Iliad_ IX. 96-99.

There is a story in the Odyssey which indicates more clearly than

the descriptions of the assemblies that, in time of peace, supreme

power belonged to the king and the elders jointly and not to the king

alone or to the elders alone. While Laertes was reigning in Ithaca

three hundred sheep belonging to Ithacans were stolen by robbers from

Messenia. Odysseus, the king's son, was sent to ask satisfaction for

the wrong: and it is expressly stated that it was the king and the

other elders who empowered him to act as ambassador[31].

[31] _Odyssey_ XXI. 16-21.

In time of war the king had supreme and exclusive command over his

tribe. Thus when Achilles king of the Phthiotians was angry with

Agamemnon, he was able without consultation with any one to withdraw

the whole Phthiotian contingent from aiding in the war against the

Trojans: and, when he began to relent, nothing was needed but a word

from him to place his forces in the field again under the orders of his

friend Patroclus[32]. Agamemnon on the other hand, being the commander

of a host composed of contingents from many tribes, found it necessary,

before issuing any orders to the whole army, to consult the kings who

were taking part with him in his enterprise[33].

[32] _Iliad_ XVI. 38-39. Patroclus says to him, "If thou art deterred

by some divine command from fighting thyself, yet let me go and give

me thy people, the Myrmidons (i.e. the Phthiotians)": and Achilles

(lines 49-65) replies, "I have been wronged and therefore will not

fight: thou shalt wear my armour and command the Myrmidons."

[33] _Iliad_ II. 53, IX. 9-17, 89-95.

Our conclusions about the political system which prevailed in the Greek

tribes of the heroic age can be shortly summed up. In time of peace all

public business was conducted in assemblies: in these assemblies the

king and the elders alone had the right of speaking, and the king was

expected to act according to the advice of the elders. In time of war

the king was commander-in-chief, and could act without control from any

one.

Besides the political institutions of the ancient Greeks, some of the

general conditions of their life may be noticed. They depended for

their subsistence partly on their cattle and partly on the produce of

the ground, and most of the poorer free men, not possessing slaves,

lived in the country to tend their herds and till their lands. Some,

who had no herds and no lands of their own, worked as labourers for

hire[34]. The estates and the cattle of the kings and rich men were

committed to the charge of slaves captured in war or in freebooting

expeditions[35]. The kings and rich men themselves lived, not scattered

over the open country after the fashion of the Germans described by

Tacitus[36], but collected in cities. Thus at Ithaca the house of the

king and the houses of the wooers of Penelope were all close together:

for at the end of the first day in the story of the Odyssey the wooers

"went each to his house to sleep[37]" and on the morrow at the dawn

of day at the summons of the heralds they "came very quickly to the

assembly[38]": Pylos, where Nestor lived, is called the gathering place

and the abodes of the Pylians[39]: and, not to multiply instances,

words denoting cities are regularly applied in the Homeric poems to the

dwelling-places of the heroes.

[34] _Odyssey_ XI. 489 θητευέμεν.

[35] Grote's _Greece_, octavo edition vol. I. p. 487, cabinet edition

vol. II. p. 98.

[36] Tac. _Germ._ 16. Nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari satis

notum est, ne pati quidem inter se junctas sedes. Colunt discreti ac

diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit.

[37] _Odyssey_ I. 424 κακκείοντες ἔβαν ϝοικόνδε ϝέκαστος.

[38] _Odyssey_ II. 8 τοὶ δ' ἠγείροντο μάλ' ὦκα.

[39] _Odyssey_ III. 31 Πυλίων ἀνδρῶν ἄγυρίν τε καὶ ἕδρας.

The cities of the heroic age had, for their defence, in all cases a

fortress or strong place of refuge close at hand, and some of them at

least were entirely encircled with a wall. Argos lay at the foot of the

steep isolated mountain of the Larissa which rose about a thousand feet

above it: Corinth was under the still loftier Acrocorinthus; Mycenæ

and Athens had each its Acropolis, a strong fortress built on a rock

rising abruptly but to no great height above the town. That in some

cases the lower city, as distinct from the Acropolis, had also its own

outer wall is proved by the whole story of the siege of Troy, which

shows that cities entirely enclosed in fortifications were well known

to Homer[40].

[40] Especially the scene of the death of Hector in the twenty-second

book of the Iliad. Achilles having driven all the Trojans except

Hector within their walls, pursued Hector thrice round the city, in

the sight of the Trojans on the walls and of the host of the Greeks

assembled on the plain outside the city. If any part of the city had

been outside the wall, it must have been mentioned as impeding or

aiding the flight of Hector, or as having been captured by the Greeks.

As it is, the poet has no landmark outside the city to show how far

the chase had extended except a fountain where the two springs, one

hot and one cold, of the Scamander, had been built round with stone

platforms on which clothing was washed by the Trojan women.

There are numberless passages in the Iliad and Odyssey which prove

that the houses of the heroes were well stored with wealth. The

suitors who intruded as guests at the house of Telemachus always

found plenty of cattle, bread, wine and oil ready at hand for their

riotous feasts, and yet Telemachus was but a poor man among the Greek

princes. When Telemachus paid a visit to Menelaus and Helen at Sparta

he was astonished to find that their palace glittered with gold and

silver, with electrum (a mixture of two metals) and with ivory[41].

The chamber of Odysseus at Ithaca contained abundance of gold and

bronze, and clothing in chests and sweet smelling oil and wine in jars

against his return[42]. The metal used for weapons was brass or bronze:

agricultural implements were chiefly made of iron: of the precious

metals gold was more commonly used than silver[43]. We do not hear that

any of these metals were obtained in the heroic age from the soil of

Greece itself, and may fairly conjecture that they were brought to the

Greeks by the Phœnicians who in that age were more active in trade than

any other people[44].

[41] _Odyssey_ IV. 68-75.

[42] _Odyssey_ II. 337-343.

[43] The evidence concerning the use of the metals is collected by

Grote, octavo edition vol. I. p. 493, cabinet edition vol. II. pp.

104, 105.

[44] For the dealings of the Phœnicians see the story in which Eumæus

the swineherd narrates how he was kidnapped as a child by Phœnician

traders. _Odyssey_ XV. 403-484.

The population of a city must have consisted of the wealthy families

who had slaves to till their lands and tend their flocks and of those

few artificers or professional men whose business brought them to

live near the houses of the rich. Among the handicraftsmen were the

carpenter, the copper-smith, the leather-dresser, the worker in gold:

the professions were those of the leech, the prophet and the bard[45].

Thus it may be that in an assembly the people outside the sacred circle

did not greatly surpass in number the elders who sat within it: for

there were no classes to constitute a people except the younger members

of the families of the elders and the few men who were induced to live

in the city to find employment for their knowledge or skill.

[45] Grote, _Greece_, octavo edition vol. I. p. 486, cabinet edition

vol. II. p. 97. For the worker in gold see _Odyssey_ III. 425.

2. _The Dorians and the Ionians in the heroic age._

Before the beginning of Greek History, properly so called, the

Achæan peoples, so important in the eyes of Homer, had sunk into

comparative insignificance, and the first places in the Hellenic

world had been filled by Dorians and Ionians. The original abode of

the Dorians was a small mountainous country called Doris not far from

Thermopylæ[46]. From hence bands of adventurers had gone forth and,

invading Peloponnesus, had expelled the Achæans from Sparta, Messenia,

Argos and Corinth, had occupied their territories and had copied their

institutions. The Ionians in Attica had grown in prosperity and power,

and, like the Dorian tribes, had adopted that form of government which

I have called heroic monarchy.

[46] Herodotus VIII. 31 in speaking of the position of Doris remarks,

"This country is the mother country of the Dorians in Peloponnesus."

Of the Dorian kingly government at Corinth we know nothing but its

existence[47]: of the Messenian kings we have many stories told by

Myron of Priene, but, on reading them side by side with the stories

told by Geoffrey of Monmouth about King Arthur, I thought that for

complete untrustworthiness there was nothing to choose between the two

authors[48]: concerning the early kings of Argos Athens and Sparta,

a few facts are established on good authority, and these I shall now

proceed to state.

[47] Diodorus Siculus VII. fragment 9. Diodorus wrote about 20-10 B.C.

[48] Myron wrote about 220 B.C. His stories about the early Messenian

kings are preserved by Pausanias in his fourth book.

Argos, with its two neighbours Mycenæ and Tiryns, was in some respects

unlike the other Greek communities. Elsewhere in Greece during the

heroic age each community occupied the whole of a natural division of

the country, and had its territory fenced round with natural barriers.

In the Argolic plain three Achæan communities had found room to settle,

exactly as in Italy many communities found room to settle in and around

the plain of Latium: and thus the Argolic communities rather resembled

the Latin cities than the Greek tribes. Their city walls were of

exceptional strength, as the remains of them testify: their kings were

richer and were exalted to a greater eminence above their subjects than

the other Greek kings, for the palace of the king at Tiryns occupies

nearly the whole of the upper citadel and is such as to demand a most

prodigal expenditure of labour for its construction[49], and Agamemnon

king of Mycenæ is represented by the poet of the Iliad as a powerful

monarch. It cannot be doubted that the three cities had the same

reasons for making their walls strong and their kings powerful as the

Romans had in the days of Servius Tullius: they feared that they might

be conquered by their neighbours, and hoped that they might themselves

be the conquerors.

[49] Professor Gardner, _New Chapters in Greek History_, pp. 96-101.

After the Dorian conquest the three cities still continued to exist:

Argos was the strongest of them, but Mycenæ acted independently of

Argos so late as the year 480 B.C. in sending a contingent to fight

against the Persians at Thermopylæ[50]. The great power of the

Dorian monarchy was conspicuous in the reign of Pheidon, who at some

time between 750 B.C. and 600 B.C. became so powerful that he was

able to conduct an expedition from his own city in the east of the

Peloponnesus to Olympia in the west and to deprive the Eleians by force

of their prerogative of presiding over the Olympic festival[51]. He

also established a hegemony or lordship over a number of Greek peoples

in the neighbourhood of Argos, which had long been independent. The

tradition of his conquest says simply that he "recovered the whole lot

of Têmenus which had been broken up into many parts[52]." Têmenus,

according to the legends of the Heracleids, was one of the leaders of

the Dorians in their invasion of the Peloponnesus: and it seems that

his "lot" must have included the tribes that lived at Cleonæ, Phlius,

Sicyon, Epidaurus, Trœzen, and Ægina. Pheidon's conquest of these

tribes was a remarkable achievement, since all of them were protected

against Argos by mountain ranges or by sea: and it gave him such

despotic authority over his own subjects at Argos that he is counted

among the τύραννοι[53]. But it seems that he ought not, strictly

speaking, to be reckoned among them, being unlike to the rest of them

in two important particulars: first, that his despotic authority at

Argos was no doubt necessary in order to enable Argos to keep control

over the dependent peoples, and second, that it is not likely that he

ever incurred the hatred of the people of Argos: for, if he had been

hated by his own subjects, his power outside Argos must have promptly

come to an end. After his time the power of the king at Argos ceased to

be despotic, the neighbouring tribes recovered their independence, and

the monarchy sank into obscurity, though it continued to exist so late

as 480 B.C. when Greece was invaded by the Persians under Xerxes[54].

[50] Pausanias II. 16. 5.

[51] Pausanias (VI. 22. 2) in speaking of this expedition assigns it

to the eighth Olympiad or the year 748 B.C. I have not ventured to

regard his date as trustworthy, because Professor Mahaffy (_Problems

in Greek History_, Chapter III.) has shown reasons for doubting

whether the order of the early Olympiads was correctly given in

the lists which were current among the Greeks. His date however

cannot well be earlier than 750 B.C., since it was after the Olympic

festivals had become important: and it cannot be later than 600 B.C.,

because in that case clearer traditions about him would have been

preserved.

[52] Ephorus, who wrote about 350 B.C., records this. His words are

quoted by Grote, octavo edition vol. II. p. 90, cabinet edition vol.

II. p. 316, from Strabo.

[53] Aristotle, _Politics_, V. 10. 6, in Bekker's edition (Oxford,

1837). Welldon, p. 381. Pausanias VI. 22. 2.

[54] The king of Argos in 480 B.C. is noticed by Herodotus (VII. 149).

In Attica we can carry back our view not only to the age of the heroic

monarchy but to the age which preceded it. The country, though it is,

as we have seen, of small extent, and though it is not traversed by

any continuous ranges of mountains, was originally peopled by a number

of independent communities, each contained within a single village

or small township: and it is probable that these little communities

retained their independence till after the time of Homer; for Athens,

which rose to greatness by subjugating them, is rarely mentioned in the

Homeric poems, and never, I believe, in any passage which belongs to

the poems as they were originally composed. In course of time however

a powerful king arose at Athens, who succeeded in bringing the whole

country under a single monarchy of the heroic type: and Thucydides

tells us that in his own days the union of Attica under Athens was

regularly celebrated at a public festival[55].

[55] Thucydides II. 15. The original independence of the small

communities is most fully vouched for by the festival, called τὰ

συνοίκια, or the union of dwellings: and it furnishes a reason for

the policy adopted by Cleisthenes of establishing popular local

governments in the demes, or villages and townships, of Attica: see

Chapter V.

The Spartans, instead of having one king, had two kings and two royal

families[56], so that their system of government may best be described

as a dual heroic kingship. Of this government, and of the conquests

made by the Spartans while they lived under it, I shall have more to

say in the next chapter.

[56] Herodotus VI. 52.

Of the other tribes in the prehistoric age we have no traditions: but

Thucydides[57] says without hesitation concerning the early Greeks in

general that their governments were "hereditary kingly governments

with limited prerogatives": and the same view, which was shared by all

the later Greeks, falls in with the little that is known of the Greek

peoples in the first two or three centuries of their history.

[57] Thucydides I. 13 ἐπὶ ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι.

It is clear from many indications that the monarchical part of

the old tribal constitutions was necessary or especially useful

to the primitive Greek peoples so long as they were employed in

making conquests or settlements of new territory, and no longer. In

the prehistoric age the Athenians and all the Dorian peoples were

conquering peoples: and all of them made their conquests under the

leadership of kings. In the next age, which came between the heroic

period and the beginning of Greek history in the proper sense of the

word, the great majority of the Greek peoples had ceased to acquire

new territory within Greece and had also ceased or were ceasing to be

monarchically governed: two peoples, the Spartans and the Argives, were

exceptional both in continuing to make territorial conquests and in

still living under kingly rule.

CHAPTER IV.

SPARTA.

The Spartans present so many peculiarities and are so unlike to any

other people that I must divide what I have to say about them under

separate heads. In regard to the Spartans before the Peloponnesian war

I shall describe (I) their political surroundings, (II) their customs,

(III) their constitution: for the period of the war and that which

followed it, I shall give (IV) a general view of their commonwealth as

it then stood.

I. The Spartans or Spartiatæ were the strongest and most warlike of

those Dorian tribes who at some time after the time of Homer and

yet long before the beginning of history migrated from the rocky

valley of Doris in northern Greece and invaded the Peloponnesus. They

subsequently lived in the unwalled city of Sparta as a small nation of

conquerors surrounded by the two subject populations of the Periœci

and the Helots, who peopled the country of Laconia. In 480 B.C., when

the Spartans were at the height of their power, just after their

king Leonidas and his three hundred had made their heroic defence at

Thermopylæ, Xerxes asked Demaratus, who had once been king of Sparta

but had been deposed, to tell him how many warriors remained to the

Lacedæmonians and how many of them were as brave as the three hundred;

Demaratus replied: "O king, the number of the Lacedæmonians is great

and their cities are many: thou shalt know what thou desirest to learn.

There is in Lacedæmon a city Sparta, of about eight thousand fighting

men, and all these are like to those that fought at Thermopylæ: the

other Lacedæmonians are not indeed equal to these, but yet they are

brave[58]." As the Spartans of military age numbered eight thousand

we may reckon that forty thousand was about the number of persons,

including women and children, who belonged to Spartan families and

formed the Spartan nation.

[58] Herodotus VII. 234.

The Periœci were "the other Lacedæmonians, not indeed equal to the

Spartiatæ, but yet brave men," and by them the cities of Lacedæmon

except Sparta were inhabited. It seems that the Periœci were decidedly

more numerous than the Spartiatæ: in the year after the conversation

between Xerxes and Demaratus the force, which was sent out to fight the

Persian general Mardonius and which took part in the great battle of

Platæa, consisted of five thousand Spartans, of thirty-five thousand

light armed Helots, seven Helots being allotted as attendants to each

Spartan, and of five thousand picked hoplites or heavy armed warriors

from the Periœci[59]. As these Periœci were picked men, there were more

to pick from: of the force of Spartiatæ Grote remarks that "throughout

the whole course of Grecian history we never hear of any number of

Spartan citizens at all approaching to five thousand being put on

foreign service at the same time[60]."

[59] Herodotus IX. 10, IX. 28, and IX. 11.

[60] Grote, _Greece_, octavo edition vol. III. p. 494, cabinet edition

vol. V. p. 11.

It is not certain whether the Periœci were Achæans or Dorians in

origin. Whichever they were, our view of the Spartans and their

government will be much the same. The Periœci were not treated with

distrust or systematic cruelty: they retained their personal freedom

under the Spartan rule, they continued to inhabit the towns or cities

of Laconia, and in each of their towns to manage their local affairs

for themselves[61]: but they had no voice whatever in the politics

of Sparta, which were controlled exclusively by the Spartans.

Occasionally a man of ability from among the Periœci was promoted to

a position of trust: thus in the year 412 B.C. a man named Deiniadas,

a Periœcus, commanded a squadron of ships in the war on the coasts of

Asia Minor and of Lesbos[62].

[61] If they had not possessed the management of their local affairs,

their communities would scarcely have been called πόλεις by Herodotus

in the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus. Herodotus VII. 234;

Smith's _Dict. Antiq._ article Periœci.

[62] Thucydides VIII. 22 ἦρχε τῶν νεῶ ν Δεινιάδας περίοικος (Deiniadas

a Periœcus was in command of the ships).

The Helots formed in the fifth century B.C. a large population of serfs

who tilled the soil: they were the property of the Spartan state, which

however placed the services of Helots at the disposal of the Spartans

and Periœci for the cultivation of their estates. The Helots, who were

bound to the soil on any given estate were compelled every year to

render a fixed quantity of produce to the owner: on the residue they

and their families subsisted[63].

[63] These statements about the condition of the Helots are not

given by either Herodotus or Thucydides, but are found in Plutarch

and Pausanias. Plutarch wrote about 60-70 A.D., and Pausanias about

170-180 A.D.: but both copied authors probably of the fourth century

B.C. Pausanias (III. 20. 6) speaks of the Helots as slaves belonging

to the state (δοῦλοι τοῦ κοινοῦ): the rest comes from Plutarch,

_Lycurgus_, ch. 8.

The name εἵλωτες denotes captives taken in war[64]. It was believed by

the Greeks that the Spartans, when first they made their conquest of

Laconia, reduced some of those whom they conquered to the condition

of Helots as above described: and the account given by them of the

institutions of Lycurgus implies that the lawgiver foresaw some danger

such as would arise from a large servile population. But if the Helots

were dangerous in the age of Lycurgus, they became far more dangerous

after the Spartans had conquered the Messenian country that lay to

the west of Laconia and of the range of Taygetus. The Messenians

were Dorians like the Spartans, and like them had conquered a large

district of the Peloponnesus. Against these neighbours and kinsmen

the Spartans waged two long wars, one probably in the eighth century

B.C. and the other probably in the seventh[65]. In the second war

they were completely successful, and at the end of it they reduced

the Messenians, who had for some two or three centuries been a free

and independent Dorian people, to the condition of Helots[66]. But

to hold the territory was almost as hard as to win it: and to keep

the Messenians enslaved was almost as hard as to enslave them. The

territory is separated from Laconia by a chain of mountains, and the

new serfs were more dangerous than the original Helots because they

remembered their freedom. From the time of the conquest of Messenia

the little Spartan nation stood in perpetual danger of a great servile

revolt. When, in 464 B.C., a rebellion of the Helots actually occurred,

it imperilled the existence of the state. The Spartans at one time

despaired of putting it down without external aid, and, when the

Athenians offered them the services of an armed force, accepted the

offer. Subsequently, when their jealousy of Athens revived and they

resolved to rely on their own unaided efforts, they had to spend all

their strength for nine years before they compelled the Helots in their

stronghold on Mount Ithomê to capitulate on condition that they should

depart from the Peloponnesus and never return[67]. Even after these

brave men had gone into exile, there were plenty of Helots left to keep

the Spartans in anxiety: and Thucydides in telling of the treacherous

murder of the two thousand Helots in 424 B.C. remarks incidentally that

"at all times most of the institutions of the Lacedæmonians were framed

with a view to the Helots, to guard against their insurrections[68]."

[64] See Smith's _Dict. Antiq._, third edition, article Helotes.

[65] The dates of the Messenian wars cannot be determined with

certainty. See the note at the end of this chapter.

[66] Pausanias (III. 20. 6) expressly says that those serfs who were

acquired by the Spartans not in their original conquest of Laconia

but subsequently (that is to say at the conquest of Messenia) were

Messenian Dorians.

[67] The account of the revolt and its duration are taken from

Thucydides I. 101-103. The date of its beginning is given by Pausanias

IV. 24. 2 as being the seventy-ninth olympiad: i.e. seventy-eight

times four years after 776 B.C.: i.e. 464 B.C.

[68] Thucydides IV. 80.

II. The singular regulations under which the Spartans lived were

designed to discipline all the males among their scanty numbers into

a formidable military brotherhood. Possibly some of these regulations

had already been established before they left their original abodes in

Doris to migrate to the Peloponnesus: they were attributed to Lycurgus,

a wise lawgiver, who is placed by the legends after the migration

and some generations before the first Spartans of whom we have any

historical knowledge: but the extreme strictness of their enforcement

may have dated from the end of the second Messenian war, which reduced

a whole people to servitude.

The earliest detailed account of the customs of the Spartans is given

in a treatise on the Commonwealth of the Lacedæmonians, which has been

attributed to Xenophon. Whoever the author may have been, it speaks of

the Spartans as if they were almost irresistible in warfare: and hence

it must be inferred that it was written before 371 B.C., when they

suffered a severe and humiliating defeat at Leuctra in Bœotia. It gives

a picture of Spartan customs whose chief outlines I shall try to reduce

within the dimensions of a sketch.

The aim of the Spartan discipline was to ensure the greatest possible

efficiency in the little band of warriors who formed the Spartan army.

To this end it was first necessary that the race should be healthy: and

as strong parents were likely to have strong offspring, the women no

less than the men were trained in gymnastic exercises and contests[69].

The boys ceased at an early age to be under the sole authority of their

own parents and were placed under the command of an officer of state

whose title was παιδονόμος or warden of the boys[70], and were also

compelled to obey any Spartan who had children of his own[71]. The

training of the boys under their warden is not described in detail:

but there is no doubt it consisted in gymnastics and in marching and

dancing to music. The moral qualities which were insisted on were

firstly personal courage and endurance, and secondly a modest demeanour

in the young. The boys had to go barefoot, were allowed only one

garment to wear throughout the year in heat and cold alike, and were

kept on short rations of food: they were encouraged to steal food,

but, if they were caught, were severely beaten for not having stolen

cleverly[72]; and, if one of them complained to his father that another

boy had beaten him, the father was thought to have disgraced himself

if he did not give him a sound thrashing in addition[73]. The young

men always walked silent with their eyes modestly fixed on the ground

before them; and from this behaviour you could no more seduce them

than you could a statue[74]. The great deference paid to age is merely

hinted at in this treatise[75] but it is well known from other sources.

[69] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 1. § 4.

[70] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 2. § 2.

[71] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 6. § 1, § 2.

[72] All these details from [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 2.

[73] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 6. § 2.

[74] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 3.

[75] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 9. § 5.

When the youths grew up to be men they were compelled to dine at the

common meal provided for them: and unless they paid their contributions

to its cost they lost the rights of citizenship. Their military

training no doubt still continued: for the operations of warfare

which the author describes were such as to require every man in the

army to be always familiar with them from recent recollection[76].

Every Spartan was not only compelled to concentrate his attention on

military excellence, but was completely cut off from all commercial

pursuits and even from agriculture[77]. Commerce and all useful arts

were left to the Periœci: the Spartan could practise none of them

without degradation. His expenditure consisted in his contribution to

the common meals and in the cost of maintaining a house for his wife

and daughters and his sons till they were placed under the care of

the warden of the boys. His income was derived from his lands which

were tilled by Helots assigned to him by the State. The accumulation

of wealth was severely discouraged: the possession of gold or silver

was criminal and was punished with a fine: the currency was made of

iron and was so cumbrous that no one could have much of it without the

knowledge of all, since a quantity worth ten minæ (£40 sterling) would

demand large storage-room and a waggon to remove it[78].

[76] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11.

[77] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 7. § 1.

[78] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 7. § 5.

As every Spartan was a soldier all his life long from attaining

manhood till he was too old for service, the organisation of the army

must be counted among the important parts of the Spartan institutions.

At a great battle fought and won by the Spartans in the year 418

B.C. the number of Spartiatæ on service was about three thousand one

hundred. The force was divided into six regiments of five or six

hundred men, each containing four smaller divisions, and sixteen

smallest divisions or companies, which last bore the name of ἐνωμοτίαι,

or bands of sworn soldiers. Each regiment had its commander and so

had all its compartments down to the smallest: the commander gave his

orders to the officers next below him, and they to the commanders of

companies: and it was only from these last that the orders reached the

soldiers[79]. The success of the whole system thus depended on the

obedience of the lesser officers to their commander, and above all on

the efficiency and good discipline of the companies or Enomoties.

[79] All this is from Thucydides V. 66 and V. 68.

The drill of each company was carried to the highest pitch of

perfection: this at least is clear from the description of their

evolutions given in the treatise from which I have so often quoted[80].

The number of men in a company seems to have been normally twenty-five,

since two companies were sometimes called a fifty[81]: on some

occasions it might be thirty-two or thirty-six. As it was usual at

the beginning of a war to call out all the Spartans who were below

a certain age[82], it is probable that none but men of the same age

were placed together in a company, since in the absence of such an

arrangement the proclamation of war might have divided each company

into two parts, one part going to fight and the other staying at home.

And if each company consisted of equals in age we may conjecture that

when a Spartan attained the age of manhood he was immediately sworn in

as a member of a company, and with that company he remained throughout

his life unless he had to be drafted into another company to fill a

vacancy.

[80] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11. The description takes up the second

half of the chapter.

[81] Thus in [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11 a commander of two companies

is called πεντηκοστήρ or πεντηκοντήρ a captain of fifty.

[82] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11: at the beginning of the chapter.

On the march one company led the way and the others followed in order.

When an enemy came in sight, each regiment was able by means of

evolutions of companies to form itself for battle in the dense array of

the phalanx; and further by varying the evolutions the phalanx was made

to face in any direction that was desired, and it was ensured that the

front rank was composed entirely of the very best of the warriors[83].

[83] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11. The description of the evolutions

there given is well explained in Smith, _Dictionary of Antiquities_,

third edition, vol. I. p. 770, under the word Exercitus.

The Spartan soldiers seem to have had no defensive armour except a

large brazen shield: their dress was of a bright red[84] colour, and

probably consisted of a single large plaid which could be fastened with

a brooch at the shoulder[85]: for offensive weapons they had a long

spear and short sword[86]. A regiment arranged in phalanx had a front

rank of about sixty-four men as in the great battle in 418 B.C.: each

of the ranks behind contained the same number, and there were in some

cases as many as eight ranks[87]. For a body thus arranged the long

spear for thrusting was obviously the best weapon: but the short sword

was also needed whenever there was a close combat between man and man.

[84] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 11: at the beginning of the chapter,

στολὴν φοινικίδα.

[85] Smith, _Dict. Ant._ third edition, article Tribon.

[86] Smith, _Dict. Ant._ third edition, vol. I. p. 773.

[87] Thucydides V. 68.

III. We have already seen[88] that the Spartans in prehistoric times

lived under a system of government which I have called dual heroic

kingship: their political institutions were in most respects the same

as those of the other Greeks in the heroic age, but they regularly had

two kings reigning at the same time, each being head by descent of one

of the two royal houses. After the establishment of the dual heroic

kingship but still in the prehistoric age the Spartans introduced

further modifications in their system of government: and since their

descendants, whether rightly or wrongly, believed that the wise

lawgiver Lycurgus had been the author of these changes, the modified

system of government is known as the constitution of Lycurgus. This

celebrated constitution is defined in a ῥήτρα or solemn compact said to

have been dictated to Lycurgus by the Delphic priestess and accepted

by the Spartans: Plutarch has preserved a document which professes to

be the original text: and, though the pretensions of this document to

extreme antiquity are probably unfounded, there is no doubt that it

gives a truthful account of the government[89]. It orders Lycurgus "to

found a temple of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, to divide the

people into tribes (φυλαί) and obes (ὠβαί), to establish a senate of

elders, thirty in number with the commanders (i.e. the kings), to hold

assemblies at fixed times between Babyca and Knakion, and so to propose

measures and take decisions on them: and that the commons (δᾶμος,

δῆμος, the whole of the Spartiatæ) should have (? the decision?)[90]

and authority." Thus the constitution of Lycurgus retained all the

three component parts of the system to which I have given the name of

dual kingship, the two kings, the council of elders, and the assembly

of the people: but it prescribed that the meetings of the king and

elders and people were to be held no longer according to the caprice of

the kings but at fixed times and between two places which were both in

the town of Sparta or close to it: the council of elders was to consist

of exactly thirty members, the two kings being included in that number:

and the assembly of the people was to possess authority (κράτος).

[88] See p. 35.

[89] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6. The document, being in prose and not

ambiguous, bears no resemblance to the genuine utterances of the

Delphic priestess; and therefore I think not only that it is not

an oracle really delivered to Lycurgus but also that it was not

composed while the oracle of Delphi was active and the character of

its utterances well known: that is to say, before 450 B.C. or 400

B.C. I imagine it to be the work of some antiquarian, who knew the

Doric dialect extremely well: such a man might no doubt be found at

Alexandria during or after the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus B.C.

285-247: for Alexandria was then the home of all sorts of learning,

and was the place in which, about the year 270 B.C., Theocritus the

greatest of the Doric poets wrote the best of his Idylls.

[90] The text is uncertain here.

The powers that belonged severally to the kings to the elders and to

the assembly are not defined. But the constitution was made in the age

of the heroic monarchies and was derived from a dual heroic kingship

by the introduction of slight alterations. We may accordingly assume

that in the system of Lycurgus, as in the government that preceded

it, the important right of initiating measures was intended to belong

exclusively to the kings and elders, and that the "authority" reserved

to the popular assembly was no more than a right of voting Aye or No on

proposals which the kings and elders submitted to it. In making this

assumption we shall moreover be in agreement with Plutarch[91], who,

either from such merely probable reasoning as we can use or on the

authority of some writer who preceded him, states that the kings and

elders alone had the initiative. In course of time however the assembly

attempted to amend what was put before it or to initiate proposals of

its own, and a second enactment (ῥήτρα) was made to put a stop to its

usurpations. From the stories of the wars with Messenia we learn that

the command in war was one of the prerogatives of the kings.

[91] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6.

The first historical Spartan is Theopompus, who was one of the two

kings at some time between 750 B.C. and 650 B.C. In his reign three

great events took place: (1) the Spartans waged war against their

neighbours the Messenians, defeated them, and made either a partial

or a complete conquest of their country, (2) the general assembly of

Spartan people was explicitly declared subordinate to the council of

elders, and (3) the office of the Ephors or Overseers was created.

(1) Somewhere about 650 B.C. the poet Tyrtæus was living at Sparta and

wrote the lines:

Ἡμετέρῳ βασιλῆι, θεοῖσι φίλῳ Θεοπόμπῳ,

ὃν διὰ Μεσσήνην εἵλομεν εὐρύχορον.

i.e. "To our king Theopompus beloved of the gods, to whom we owed our

conquest of the broad plains of Messenia[92]." The subjugation of

Messenia must have been a very difficult task: the country like the

other natural divisions of Greece is protected by mountains and it was

defended by a brave and numerous race of Dorians. Tyrtæus tells us

that one of the wars against Messenia was carried on continuously for

nineteen years[93].

[92] Quoted by Pausanias (IV. 6).

[93] Tyrtæus, Fragment 4. As the conquest of Messenia is a rare if

not a unique example in Greece after the purely legendary age of a

permanent conquest effected in spite of the obstacles interposed by

a mountain range, it is worth while to take notice of the geography.

The Spartans certainly did not cross Taygetus, whose lowest pass, now

known as the Langada Pass, is about five thousand feet above the sea

(Neuman und Partsch, _Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland_,

p. 181 note): to the north of Taygetus they could cross without any

trouble from the valley of the Eurotas to the valley of the Alpheius

(see the page just referred to): but before they could reach Messenia

they still had to march three or four miles up a valley with mountains

on either side of it and then to cross a barren sparsely wooded ridge

which unites Taygetus with Mount Lycæus. The ascent of the ridge takes

an ordinary traveller half an hour, so that the height of it will be

about five or six hundred feet. See Bædeker's _Greece_, p. 283.

(2) We are informed by Plutarch[94] that, long after the establishment

of the Lycurgean constitution, the assembly of the Spartiatæ took to

a practice of distorting and perverting the resolutions laid before

them by omitting or inserting clauses, and therefore the reigning

kings Polydorus and Theopompus added to the constitution a new rule

which enacted that "if the people chose crookedly, the elders and the

kings should have the final decision[95]." Thus the general assembly

was rendered incapable of insisting on measures of its own initiation:

though it probably retained a right of veto on all measures which the

council might propose and was consulted whenever the state had to

decide whether it should undertake a great and important war[96].

[94] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6.

[95] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 6.

[96] For example in 432 B.C. it was the assembly that decided on war

against Athens (Thucydides I. 67 and 87). The kings however, until

about 500 B.C., still had the right to engage in a foreign war, if

they chose, simply on their own responsibility (Herodotus VI. 56).

(3) Plato (quoted by Plutarch) says that though Lycurgus had

established a constitution of mixed elements, yet the Spartans after

his time finding that their oligarchy (the kings and the elders) was

nevertheless too strong and was swelled and puffed up with power and

pride, set up the office of the Ephors to be a bit in its mouth: and

Aristotle says of Theopompus that he reduced the extent of the kingly

power by the creation of the magistracy of the Ephors and adds "They

say that his wife asked him whether he was not ashamed to transmit to

his sons less kingly power than he had inherited, and he replied: 'Not

in the least: for the power will be the more lasting[97].'"

[97] The passages are from Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 7 and Aristotle,

_Politics_ V. 11. 2, 3. Bekker, Oxf. 1837. Welldon's translation, p.

392.

But I must pause for a moment: for there is a passage in Herodotus

which in giving a rapid enumeration of the Lycurgean institutions

counts the Ephors among them and is therefore in conflict with the

statements of Plato and Aristotle. Herodotus was writing about

430 B.C., Plato 400-347 B.C., and Aristotle about 330 B.C.: so

that Herodotus is the oldest of the three writers and, if other

circumstances were equal, ought to be preferred to the others. But in

this case other circumstances are not equal: for Plato and Aristotle

make their statements deliberately and emphatically: Herodotus does

not, but throws in his list of institutions as a sort of parenthesis,

while he is thinking about many other things, and paying less attention

to his parenthetic remark. These facts lead me to the opinion that

Plato and Aristotle give us the true version of the oldest tradition

and Herodotus does not: the opinion moreover is strengthened by the

fact that Aristotle appeals to a story which must have been current

long before his time and was probably older than the days of Herodotus;

and it is further supported by the negative evidence of the ῥήτρα,

which in defining the Lycurgean constitution says not a word about

Ephors.

It is impossible to determine what was the original character of the

magistracy of the Ephors: we do not know what were their functions, how

they were appointed or elected, nor for what term they held office:

but, from the passages which have just been referred to, it is certain

that Plato and Aristotle believed that the power acquired by the Ephors

diminished the power of the kings and the elders. The name Ephors or

Overseers implies that they exercised some kind of supervision over the

government or some part of it.

It cannot be doubted that the three important events of the reign of

Theopompus were in some way connected with one another. In the midst

of a great war for the conquest of Messenia, it might be especially

inconvenient that the assembly of the Spartiatæ should initiate

proposals of its own: for the men who made up the assembly were the

very same who formed the whole of the Spartan army. And again in

the settlement of the affairs of Messenia it was not desirable that

the kings and the council should be entirely uncontrolled, as they

would have been after the assembly had been deprived of the power of

initiating measures, if no Ephors had been appointed.

It is stated by Plutarch that the twenty-eight elders who with the

kings formed the council were elected by the general assembly of

the Spartans[98]: and the method of election which he describes is

so extremely primitive that it probably belongs to the original

constitution or dates from the times of Theopompus. When a councillor

died the best man among those over sixty years of age was to be chosen

to take his place. The people came together in assembly: certain

selected men were shut up in a neighbouring building whence they

could see nothing: the candidates were brought one by one before the

assembly, but in an order which was unknown to the men in the building,

and each as he entered was greeted with shouting: the men in the

building decided that the cheering had been loudest for the man who

came first, or the man who came second, or some other in the order:

and the man, unknown to themselves, for whom they thus pronounced, was

proclaimed as the new member of the council.

[98] Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, 26.

The parts then of the Spartan government from the time of Theopompus

onwards were the kings, the council of elders, the Ephors, and the

assembly of warriors. Until about 500 B.C. the chief power belonged to

the kings or to the kings and the council of elders: the kings had the

active management and direction of foreign affairs[99].

[99] Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, third edition, article

Ephori, where proofs are given.

About that time and soon afterwards we meet with several reigns that

might account for a diminution of the kingly power. In one of the regal

houses there were Cleomenes I. (519-491 B.C.) and Pleistarchus (480-458

B.C.): in the other Leotychidas (491-461 B.C.). Cleomenes contrived

the unfair deposition of Demaratus, was half insane for some time

before his death, and slew himself in a fit of madness. Pleistarchus

was a little child at the death of his father Leonidas the hero of

Thermopylæ: his guardian was Pausanias, who tried to betray Sparta

into the power of the Persian king. Leotychidas was brought into royal

power, without any sound title, by the intrigues of Cleomenes. Whatever

may have been the causes of the decline of the kingly prerogative,

it is certain that between 500 B.C. and 467 B.C. the Ephors rose to

supreme power at Sparta: they sat in judgement on king Cleomenes I. on

an accusation of bribery, they imprisoned the regent Pausanias (about

467 B.C.) on suspicion of treason, and above all, in the year 479 B.C.,

it was on their own sole responsibility that they despatched the great

armament to resist Mardonius in Bœotia[100]. The power which they then

possessed they never lost till the decline of Sparta in the third

century B.C., except perhaps during the reign of an unusually able king

such as Agesilaus (398-361 B.C.).

[100] For Cleomenes, see Herodotus VI. 73-82: for Pausanias,

Thucydides I. 131. 3: for the sending of the great armament, Herodotus

IX. chapters 10, 11, 28: and above, page 38.

It has already been remarked that in the period from Theopompus to

about 500 B.C. we do not know how the Ephors were appointed or elected:

in the time of Aristotle (about 330 B.C.) they were elected from the

whole body of Spartan citizens, and no doubt by the whole body of

Spartan citizens[101]. They must have been thus elected as early as

the time of Cleomenes I.: for if they had been appointed by the kings

or the council of elders they could not have gained that independence

which they then displayed.

[101] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 9. 19 γίγνονται ἐκ τοῦ δήμου πάντες

(they are all created from the people). _Ibid._ II. 9. 23 (αἱρετὴν τὴν

ἀρχὴν ἐξ ἁπάντων), (the office is filled by election from the whole

body).

During the period of their greatness (beginning about 480 B.C.) the

Ephors were a board of five[102] magistrates elected annually. One

of them gave his name to the year[103]: they received ambassadors and

sometimes at least gave them an answer[104]: they could, as we have

seen, send out an armament to a foreign war and fix what troops should

go, and whenever it chanced that the assembly of the Spartiatæ was

called together an Ephor presided over it and took the votes[105].

[102] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 10. 6.

[103] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ II. 3. §§ 9 and 10.

[104] The ambassadors sent by the Athenians in their extreme distress

during the occupation of Athens by Mardonius were received by the

Ephors and were kept waiting ten days for an answer. Herodotus IX.

7-11.

[105] For example in 432 B.C. Thucydides I. 85-87.

The kings in time of peace were dignitaries without power: at

sacrificial feasts and athletic contests they took the seats of honour

and after a sacrifice the skins of the victims were their perquisite:

the state provided them with regular monthly allowances of food: they

superintended religious matters, and settled what Spartan citizens

should be the πρόξενοι or befrienders of visitors to Sparta from

the various Greek states: and they had jurisdiction about marriages

of heiresses, public ways, and adoption of children: but with these

exceptions all control of home affairs had passed from the kings to the

Ephors[106]. In time of war the kings were commanders of the Spartan

armies, and the history of Agesilaus shows that in this capacity they

might gain high distinction and influence: but the expeditions of the

Spartans were usually accompanied by some of the Ephors[107], who could

afterwards report to their colleagues any action of the commander which

displeased them.

[106] For the powers of the kings in time of peace see Herodotus VI.

57.

[107] [Xenophon] _De Rep. Lac._ 13. § 5.

Until the beginning of the Peloponnesian war in 432 B.C., it seems that

the government, whether it was controlled by the kings, the council,

or the Ephors, was faithfully conducted for the interests of the

whole of the little community of the Spartiatæ. We do not hear of the

rulers living in luxury, nor of inequalities or discontents among the

Spartiatæ, nor of emancipations of Helots. Twice only in the course

of several centuries we read that the Spartans made a new law[108]:

in foreign policy they were unenterprising: and they seem to have

devoted themselves to the cultivation of the military virtues enjoined

by their traditions, and to looking after their interests at home,

which consisted largely in keeping down, degrading and humiliating the

Messenians and the other Helots.

[108] Smith, _Dict. Ant._, third edition, vol. I. p. 915.

IV. While the Spartans were waging their great war against the

Athenians (432-404 B.C.) and afterwards when they were enjoying the

advantages which their success procured for them, many alterations

were gradually introduced in their customs and government. Helots

were emancipated for service as soldiers: inequalities arose among

the Spartiatæ, some of them acquiring great fortunes as regulators

(harmosts) in foreign cities, others sinking to poverty and losing

their civic rights: and the Ephors used their time of office for the

getting of wealth and enjoyment of luxury.

Helots had been employed as light-armed soldiers attending on the

heavy-armed Spartiatæ as early as the battle of Platæa in 479 B.C.: in

the first years of the Peloponnesian war some of them had distinguished

themselves in the field, and in the eighth year of the war (in the

beginning of 424 B.C.) the Spartans, fearing they might be dangerous,

thought of sending them on foreign service. This plan of removing

them was not carried into effect: but a proclamation was put out that

those Helots who were conscious of having done good service in the war

might apply for their freedom: two thousand were selected and were

emancipated with striking solemnities: but within a short time most

of them disappeared, no one knew how, by secret assassination[109].

This first liberation of Helots ended in treachery and murder: but

afterwards emancipations were frequently made in good faith. The men

who were raised from serfdom did not become Periœci but were known as

νεοδαμώδεις, or "men resembling new commoners."

[109] Thucydides IV. 80.

Bodies of Neodamodês are mentioned by Thucydides as existing in the

years 421, 418, 413, 412 B.C.[110]: and in one of the occasions where

he speaks of Neodamodês and Helots as serving together he explains the

difference between the two by remarking that "the word Neodamodês

signifies that freedom has been already acquired," thus proving for

certain that a Neodamodês was an emancipated Helot[111]. After the end

of the war the Neodamodês became more numerous: in the year 399 B.C.

the Spartans sent out a thousand under Thimbron to Asia Minor at the

request of the Asiatic Greek cities[112].

[110] Thucydides V. 34, V. 67, VII. 19, VII. 58, VIII. 5.

[111] Thucydides VII. 58 δύναται δὲ τὸ Νεοδαμῶδες ἐλευθερον ἤδη εἶναι.

[112] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ III. 1. 4.

In 398 or 397 B.C., before Agesilaus had reigned a whole year, a

conspiracy against the Spartan government was set on foot by a man

named Cinadon. Xenophon in his account of its detection says that

Cinadon was a young man and vigorous in body and mind but was not one

of the Equals (οὐ μέντοι τῶν ὁμοίων). When the informer was questioned

by the Ephors, he said Cinadon had expressed confidence that many of

the Helots, the Neodamodês, the Inferiors (οἱ ὑπομείονες), and the

Periœci were in sympathy with his aims: for whenever men of these

classes talked about the Spartiatæ, they could not conceal that they

would like to eat them raw[113]. The story shows that the Equals were

the highest of all the classes at Sparta, and that the Inferiors, being

distinct from the Helots, the Neodamodês and the Periœci, were men who

had been Spartiatæ but had lost their position. The difference between

the Equals and the Inferiors is but imperfectly known. Aristotle tells

us that any Spartan who was unable to pay his share of the cost of the

public mess-table was deprived of his rights as a citizen, and many

had thus been disfranchised[114]. From this we may infer that anyone

who sank into the ranks of the Inferiors lost not only his vote in

the assembly, which was of little value, as the assemblies were not

influential, but also his right of being trained as a Spartan: hence he

would have but a poor chance of rising to military distinction or of

obtaining any position of importance.

[113] Xenophon, _Hellenica_ III. 3. 5 and 6.

[114] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 9. 31 and 32. Welldon, _Translation_,

p. 83.

When the Peloponnesian war ended in 404 B.C., the cities of Asia and

the Ægean sea came under the power of Sparta. To each city a harmost or

regulator was sent to establish an oligarchical government consisting

usually of a decarchy or board of ten citizens distinguished for

servility towards the Spartans and readiness to punish any sign of

patriotic spirit with death or banishment and confiscation. Besides the

harmosts, military detachments were sent to enforce the wishes of the

Spartans in their new possessions: both the harmosts and the military

commanders were harsh governors, and some of them amassed large

fortunes by extortion[115]. They took home the wealth that they had

acquired and thus introduced the inequalities among the Spartiatæ which

were so conspicuous and so invidious in the time of Cinadon.

[115] For the harmosts see Xenophon, _Hellenica_ III. 5. § 13.

The supremacy which the Spartans acquired in 404 B.C. was lost again

in 371 B.C. In that year an army with which they invaded Bœotia was

severely defeated by the Thebans under Epaminondas; the victorious

general marched into the Peloponnesus, deprived the Spartans of

Messenia, and, summoning from all parts the descendants of Messenians

who had gone into exile, established them as an independent people in

the new city of Messenê on the site of the old stronghold of Ithomê.

At the same time he founded the Arcadian city of Megalê Polis (in

Latin Megalopolis) to bar the way between the Spartans and their old

allies the Eleians: and in the year 369 B.C. he ensured the permanence

of his work by winning the decisive battle of Mantineia. The Spartans

were reduced lower than they had been for two centuries: but adversity

did not restore them to what they had been before the days of their

prosperity. The number of men possessed of wealth, small already,

steadily became smaller, so that in the reign of Agis IV. (about 243

B.C.) the whole number of the Spartiatæ did not exceed seven hundred;

of these only about a hundred were landowners, and the rest were

reduced to poverty and distress[116].

[116] Plutarch, _Agis_ 5.

The office of the Ephors shared in the general deterioration of the

Spartan commonwealth, and Aristotle (writing about 330 B.C.) speaks of

it with some severity. We can indeed see from his remarks that access

to the office was not obtained by bribery, for very poor citizens

were frequently chosen: the election was conducted under a system

which seemed to him very puerile, but which did not close the door

to poverty. On the other hand the Ephors when in office frequently

accepted bribes: and he says that on one occasion they did all that in

them lay towards the ruin of the state. They often spent the wealth

that they got by such dishonest means in leading a life of extreme

self-indulgence, in strong contrast with the hardships which the poorer

citizens endured[117].

[117] Aristotle, _Politics_ II. 9. 19-24. Welldon, pp. 80, 81.

We may now sum up the results of our observations of the Spartans and

their institutions. From the earliest times they devoted themselves to

acquiring and cultivating those qualities which would enable them to

excel as a people of conquerors and of slave-owners: but in doing this

they lost most of the other virtues, and especially the qualities which

make intelligent citizens. There were few political questions in which

the Spartans took any interest: they did not make new laws; they had no

commerce, no gold or silver except in the treasury of the state: the

only subjects debated in their assemblies were questions of war, peace,

alliances, disputed successions to the throne, and the like: so that

the assembly did not meet save when such questions arose, or when one

of the annual elections of Ephors came round. They did not even care

what men were set over them as rulers: their method of electing Ephors

was childish, and the elections are generally if not always passed over

in silence by the historians. Nor is their indifference surprising:

for their real ruler was, not the Ephors nor any living men, but

their rigid system of custom and discipline: and under that system it

mattered little which of them was in command and which had to obey,

since nearly every Spartan was competent to issue such orders as custom

and usage dictated, and every other Spartan was prepared to obey them.

If this estimate is a just one, it follows that the really important

part of the Spartan institutions was not the political part but the

disciplinary: that their discipline destroyed their capacity for

political activity: that the Spartans from the age of Theopompus till

the Peloponnesian war were rather a military order than a political

body: and that they and their institutions cannot be very interesting

or instructive to students of Politics, except as showing how a

community, which was originally political, may lose the characteristics

by which political communities are distinguished.

After the Peloponnesian war the Spartans got access to rich spoil at a

distance from their own country and began to think less of their common

interests as slave-owners at home, than of their individual hopes of

plundering the inhabitants of the cities of Asia Minor. In consequence

many of the Helots were emancipated to serve as soldiers in foreign

war, and the intensity of the oppression of the rest was probably

diminished: while on the other hand each individual Spartan acted no

longer for the common good of the Spartiatæ but for the sole good of

himself, and the government was conducted in the interest not of the

whole ruling caste but of that smaller number among them who had been

successful in enriching themselves.

_Note._ I do not venture to follow Fynes Clinton (_Fasti Hellenici_

vol. I. Appendix, chapter 6, page 337) in giving precise dates for

the important reign of Theopompus and Polydorus and for the Messenian

wars, because the passages which he quotes are taken from authors who

lived after Myron of Prienê and who may have relied on his romances.

There are however two genealogies of Spartan kings (Herodotus VII. 204

and VIII. 131) which compel us, unless we assume either that in one

royal house the generations were extravagantly long or that in the

other they were abnormally short, to place the beginning of the joint

reign of the two kings not earlier than 730 B.C., and its end not

later than 650 B.C. We shall probably be right in placing the first

Messenian war somewhere before 700 B.C. and in the reign of Theopompus

and Polydorus: the second war may be placed somewhere between 680 B.C.

and 650 B.C.: but further precision seems to be unattainable.