CHAPTER VI.

LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS AT SPARTA.

Plutarch begins his biography of Lykurgus with the following ominous

words:—

“Concerning the lawgiver Lykurgus, we can assert absolutely nothing

which is not controverted: there are different stories in respect to

his birth, his travels, his death, and also his mode of proceeding,

political as well as legislative: least of all is the time in which

he lived agreed upon.”

And this exordium is but too well borne out by the unsatisfactory

nature of the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch himself,

but in those other authors out of whom we are obliged to make up our

idea of the memorable Lykurgean system. If we examine the sources

from which Plutarch’s life of Lykurgus is deduced, it will appear

that—excepting the poets Alkman, Tyrtæus, and Simonidês, from whom

he has borrowed less than we could have wished—he has no authorities

older than Xenophon and Plato: Aristotle is cited several times, and

is unquestionably the best of his witnesses, but the greater number

of them belong to the century subsequent to that philosopher. Neither

Herodotus nor Ephorus are named, though the former furnishes some

brief, but interesting particulars,—and the latter also (as far as

we can judge from the fragments remaining) entered at large into the

proceedings of the Spartan lawgiver.[567]

[567] See Heeren, Dissertatio de Fontibus Plutarchi, pp. 19-25.

Lykurgus is described by Herodotus as uncle and guardian to king

Labôtas, of the Eurystheneid or Agid line of Spartan kings; and this

would place him, according to the received chronology, about 220

years before the first recorded Olympiad (about B. C. 996).[568]

All the other accounts, on the contrary, seem to represent him as a

younger brother, belonging to the other or Prokleid line of Spartan

kings, though they do not perfectly agree respecting his parentage.

While Simonidês stated him to be the son of Prytanis, Dieutychidas

described him as grandson of Prytanis, son of Eunomus, brother

of Polydektês, and uncle as well as guardian to Charilaus,—thus

making him eleventh in descent from Hêraklês.[569] This latter

account was adopted by Aristotle, coinciding, according to the

received chronology, with the date of Iphitus the Eleian, and the

first celebration of the Olympic games by Lykurgus and Iphitus

conjointly,[570] which Aristotle accepted as a fact. Lykurgus, on

the hypothesis here mentioned, would stand about B. C. 880, a century

before the recorded Olympiads. Eratosthenês and Apollodorus placed

him “not a few years earlier than the first Olympiad.” If they meant

hereby the epoch commonly assigned as the Olympiad of Iphitus, their

date would coincide pretty nearly with that of Herodotus: if, on

the other hand, they meant the first recorded Olympiad (B. C. 776),

they would be found not much removed from the opinion of Aristotle.

An unequivocal proof of the inextricable confusion in ancient times

respecting the epoch of the great Spartan lawgiver is indirectly

afforded by Timæus, who supposed that there had existed two persons

named Lykurgus, and that the acts of both had been ascribed to one.

It is plain from hence that there was no certainty attainable, even

in the third century before the Christian era, respecting the date or

parentage of Lykurgus.

[568] Herodot. i. 65. Moreover, Herodotus gives this as the

statement of the Lacedæmonians themselves.

[569] Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 1. According to Dionys. Halik. (Ant.

Rom. ii. 49) Lykurgus was uncle, not son, of Eunomus.

Aristotle considers Lykurgus as guardian of Charilaus (Politic.

ii. 7, 1): compare v. 10, 3. See O. Müller (Hist. of Dorians, i.

7, 3).

[570] Phlegôn also adds Kleosthenês of Pisa (De Olympiis ap.

Meursii Opp. vii. p. 128). It appears that there existed a quoit

at Olympia, upon which the formula of the Olympic truce was

inscribed, together with the names of Iphitus and Lykurgus as the

joint authors and proclaimers of it. Aristotle believed this to

be genuine, and accepted it as an evidence of the fact which it

professed to certify: and O. Müller is also disposed to admit it

as genuine,—that is, as _contemporary_ with the times to which

it professes to relate. I come to a different conclusion: that

the quoit existed, I do not doubt; but that the inscription upon

it was actually set down in writing, in or near B. C. 880, would

be at variance with the reasonable probabilities resulting from

Grecian palæography. Had this ancient and memorable instrument

existed at Olympia in the days of Herodotus, he could hardly have

assigned to Lykurgus the epoch which we now read in his writings.

The assertions in Müller’s History of the Dorians (i. 7, 7),

about Lykurgus, Iphitus, and Kleosthenês “drawing up the

fundamental law of the Olympic armistice,” are unsupported by any

sufficient evidence. In the later times of established majesty of

the Olympic festival, the Eleians did undoubtedly exercise the

power which he describes; but to connect this with any deliberate

regulation of Iphitus and Lykurgus, is in my judgment incorrect.

See the mention of a similar truce proclaimed throughout

Triphylia by the Makistians as presidents of the common festival

at the temple of the Samian Poseidon (Strabo, viii. p. 343).

Thucydidês, without mentioning the name of Lykurgus, informs us

that it was “400 years and somewhat more” anterior to the close of

the Peloponnesian war,[571] when the Spartans emerged from their

previous state of desperate internal disorder, and entered upon

“their present polity.” We may fairly presume that this alludes to

the Lykurgean discipline and constitution, which Thucydides must

thus have conceived as introduced about B. C. 830-820,—coinciding

with something near the commencement of the reign of king Têleklus.

In so far as it is possible to form an opinion, amidst evidence at

once so scanty and so discordant, I incline to adopt the opinion

of Thucydidês as to the time at which the Lykurgean constitution

was introduced at Sparta. The state of “eunomy” and good order

which that constitution brought about,—combined with the healing of

great previous internal sedition, which had tended much to enfeeble

them,—is represented (and with great plausibility) as the grand

cause of the victorious career beginning with king Têleklus, the

conqueror of Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ. Therefore it would seem,

in the absence of better evidence, that a date, connecting the fresh

stimulus of the new discipline with the reign of Têleklus, is more

probable than any epoch either later or earlier.[572]

[571] Thucyd. i. 18.

[572] Mr. Clinton fixes the legislation of Lykurgus, “in

conformity with Thucydidês,” at about 817 B. C., and his regency

at 852 B. C., about thirty-five years previous (Fasti Hellen. v.

i. c. 7, p. 141): he also places the Olympiad of Iphitus B. C.

828 (F. H. vol. ii. p. 410; App. c. 22).

In that chapter, Mr. Clinton collects and discusses the various

statements respecting the date of Lykurgus: compare, also,

Larcher ad Herodot. i. 67, and Chronologie, pp. 486-492.

The differences in these statements must, after all, be taken

as they stand, for they cannot be reconciled except by the help

of arbitrary suppositions, which only mislead us by producing a

show of agreement where there is none in reality. I agree with

Mr. Clinton, in thinking that the assertion of Thucydidês is

here to be taken as the best authority. But I altogether dissent

from the proceeding which he (in common with Larcher, Wesseling,

Sir John Marsham, and others) employs with regard to the passage

of Herodotus, where that author calls Lykurgus the guardian and

uncle of Labôtas (of the Eurystheneid line). Mr. Clinton says:

“From the notoriety of the fact that Lycurgus was ascribed to the

other house (the Prokleids), it is manifest that _the passage

must be corrupted_” (p. 144); and he then goes on to correct the

text of Herodotus, agreeably to the proposition of Sir J. Marsham.

This proceeding seems to me inadmissible. The text of Herodotus

reads perfectly well, and is not contradicted by anything to

be found elsewhere _in Herodotus himself_: moreover, we have

here a positive guarantee of its accuracy, for Mr. Clinton

himself admits that it stood in the days of Pausanias just as

we now read it (Pausan. iii. 2, 3). By what right, then, do we

alter it? or what do we gain by doing so? Our only right to do

so, is, the assumption that there must have been uniformity of

belief and means of satisfactory ascertainment, (respecting

facts and persons of the ninth and tenth centuries before the

Christian era,) existing among Greeks of the fifth and succeeding

centuries; an assumption which I hold to be incorrect. And all we

gain is, an illusory unanimity produced by gratuitously putting

words into the mouth of one of our witnesses.

If we can prove Herodotus to have been erroneously informed,

it is right to do so; but we have no ground for altering his

deposition. It affords a clear proof that there were very

different stories as to the mere question, to which of the two

lines of Herakleids the Spartan lawgiver belonged,—and that there

was an enormous difference as to the time in which he lived.

O. Müller,[573] after glancing at the strange and improbable

circumstances handed down to us respecting Lykurgus, observes, “that

we have absolutely no account of him as an individual person.” This

remark is perfectly just: but another remark, made by the same

distinguished author, respecting the Lykurgean system of laws,

appears to me erroneous,—and requires more especially to be noticed,

inasmuch as the corollaries deduced from it pervade a large portion

of his valuable History of the Dorians. He affirms that the laws of

Sparta were considered the true Doric institutions, and that their

origin was identical with that of the people: Sparta is, in his view,

the full type of Dorian principles, tendencies, and sentiments,—and

is so treated throughout his entire work.[574] But such an opinion

is at once gratuitous (for the passage of Pindar cited in support

of it is scarcely of any value) and contrary to the whole tenor of

ancient evidence. The institutions of Sparta were not Dorian, but

peculiar to herself;[575] distinguishing her not less from Argos,

Corinth, Megara, Epidaurus, Sikyôn, Korkyra, or Knidus, than from

Athens or Thebes. Krête was the only other portion of Greece in

which there prevailed institutions in many respects analogous, yet

still dissimilar in those two attributes which form the real mark

and pinch of Spartan legislation, namely, the military discipline

and the rigorous private training. There were doubtless Dorians in

Krête, but we have no proof that these peculiar institutions belonged

to them more than to the other inhabitants of the island. That the

Spartans had an original organization, and tendencies common to them

with the other Dorians, we may readily concede; but the Lykurgean

constitution impressed upon them a peculiar tendency, which took them

out of the general march, and rendered them the least fit of all

states to be cited as an example of the class-attributes of Dorism.

One of the essential causes, which made the Spartan institutions work

so impressively upon the Grecian mind, was their perfect singularity,

combined with the conspicuous ascendency of the state in which they

were manifested; while the Kretan communities, even admitting their

partial resemblance (which was chiefly in the institution of the

Syssitia, and was altogether more in form than in spirit) to Sparta,

were too insignificant to attract notice except from speculative

observers. It is therefore a mistake on the part of O. Müller, to

treat Sparta as the type and representative of Dorians generally, and

very many of the positions advanced in his History of the Dorians

require to be modified when this mistake is pointed out.

[573] History of the Dorians, i. 7, 6.

[574] History of the Dorians, iii. 1, 8. Alf. Kopstadt recognizes

this as an error in Müller’s work: see his recent valuable

Dissertation “De Rerum Laconicarum Constitutionis Lycurgeæ

Origine et Indole,” Gryphiæ, 1849, sect. 3, p. 18.

[575] Among the many other evidences to this point, see

Aristotle, Ethic. x. 9; Xenophon, Republ. Laced. 10, 8.

The first capital fact to notice respecting the institutions

ascribed to Lykurgus, is the very early period at which they had

their commencement: it seems impossible to place this period later

than 825 B. C. We do not find, nor have we a right to expect,

trustworthy history in reference to events so early. If we have one

foot on historical ground, inasmuch as the institutions themselves

are real,—the other foot still floats in the unfaithful region of

mythe, when we strive to comprehend the generating causes: the mist

yet prevails which hinders us from distinguishing between the god

and the man. The light in which Lykurgus appeared, to an intelligent

Greek of the fifth century before the Christian era, is so clearly,

yet briefly depicted, in the following passage of Herodotus, that I

cannot do better than translate it:—

“In the very early times (Herodotus observes) the Spartans were

among themselves the most lawless of all Greeks, and unapproachable

by foreigners. Their transition to good legal order took place in

the following manner. When Lycurgus, a Spartan of consideration,

visited Delphi to consult the oracle, the instant that he entered the

sanctuary, the Pythian priestess exclaimed,—

“Thou art come, Lycurgus, to my fat shrine, beloved by Zeus, and by

all the Olympic gods. Is it as god or as man that I am to address

thee in the spirit? I hesitate,—and yet, Lycurgus, I incline more to

call thee a god.”

So spake the Pythian priestess. “Moreover, in addition to these

words, some affirm that the Pythia revealed to him the order of

things now established among the Spartans. _But the Lacedæmonians

themselves_ say, that Lycurgus, when guardian of his nephew Labôtas,

king of the Spartans, introduced these institutions out of Krete. No

sooner had he obtained this guardianship, than he changed all the

institutions into their present form, and took security against any

transgression of it. Next, he constituted the military divisions, the

Enômoties and the Triakads, as well as the Syssitia, or public mess:

he also, farther, appointed the ephors and the senate. By this means

the Spartans passed from bad to good order: to Lycurgus, after his

death, they built a temple, and they still worship him reverentially.

And as might naturally be expected in a productive soil, and with no

inconsiderable numbers of men, they immediately took a start forward,

and flourished so much that they could not be content to remain

tranquil within their own limits,” etc.

Such is our oldest statement (coming from Herodotus) respecting

Lykurgus, ascribing to him that entire order of things which the

writer witnessed at Sparta. Thucydidês also, though not mentioning

Lykurgus, agrees in stating that the system among the Lacedæmonians,

as he saw it, had been adopted by them four centuries previously,—had

rescued them from the most intolerable disorders, and had immediately

conducted them to prosperity and success.[576] Hellanikus, whose

writings a little preceded those of Herodotus, not only did not

(any more than Thucydidês) make mention of Lykurgus, but can hardly

be thought to have attached any importance to the name; since he

attributed the constitution of Sparta to the first kings, Eurysthenes

and Prokles.[577]

[576] Herodot. i. 65-66; Thucyd. i. 18.

[577] Strabo, viii. p. 363.

But those later writers, from whom Plutarch chiefly compiled his

biography, profess to be far better informed on the subject of

Lykurgus, and enter more into detail. His father, we are told, was

assassinated during the preceding state of lawlessness; his elder

brother Polydektês died early, leaving a pregnant widow, who made to

Lykurgus propositions that he should marry her and become king. But

Lykurgus, repudiating the offer with indignation, awaited the birth

of his young nephew Charilaus, held up the child publicly in the

agora, as the future king of Sparta, and immediately relinquished the

authority which he had provisionally exercised. However, the widow

and her brother Leonidas raised slanderous accusations against him,

of designs menacing to the life of the infant king,—accusations which

he deemed it proper to obviate, by a temporary absence. Accordingly,

he left Sparta and went to Krête, where he studied the polity and

customs of the different cities; next, he visited Ionia and Egypt,

and (as some authors affirmed) Libya, Iberia, and even India. While

in Ionia, he is reported to have obtained from the descendants of

Kreophylus a copy of the Homeric poems, which had not up to that time

become known in Peloponnesus: there were not wanting authors, indeed,

who said that he had conversed with Homer himself.[578]

[578] Plutarch, Lykurg. 3, 4, 5.

Meanwhile, the young king Charilaus grew up and assumed the sceptre,

as representing the Prokleid or Eurypontid family. But the reins of

government had become more relaxed, and the disorders worse than

ever, when Lykurgus returned. Finding that the two kings as well as

the people were weary of so disastrous a condition, he set himself

to the task of applying a corrective, and with this view consulted

the Delphian oracle; from which he received strong assurances of the

divine encouragement, together with one or more special injunctions

(the primitive Rhetræ of the constitution), which he brought with

him to Sparta.[579] He then suddenly presented himself in the agora,

with thirty of the most distinguished Spartans, all in arms, as his

guards and partisans. King Charilaus, though at first terrified, when

informed of the designs of his uncle, stood forward willingly to

second them; while the bulk of the Spartans respectfully submitted

to the venerable Herakleid, who came as reformer and missionary

from Delphi.[580] Such were the steps by which Lykurgus acquired his

ascendency: we have now to see how he employed it.

[579] For an instructive review of the text as well as the

meaning of this ancient Rhetra, see Urlichs, Ueber die

Lycurgischen Rhetren, published since the first edition of this

History. His refutation of the rash charges of Göttling seems

to me complete: but his own conjectures are not all equally

plausible; nor can I subscribe to his explanation of ἀφιστάσθαι.

[580] Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 5-6. Hermippus, the scholar of

Aristotle, professed to give the names of twenty out of these

thirty devoted partisans.

There was, however, a different story, which represented that

Lykurgus, on his return from his travels, found Charilaus

governing like a despot (Heraclid. Pontic. c. 2).

His first proceeding, pursuant to the Rhetra or Compact brought

from Delphi, was to constitute the Spartan senate, consisting

of twenty-eight ancient men; making an aggregate of thirty in

conjunction with the two kings, who sat and voted in it. With this

were combined periodical assemblies of the Spartan people, in the

open air, between the river Knakiôn and the bridge Babyka. Yet

no discussion was permitted in these assemblies,—their functions

were limited to the simple acceptance or rejection of that which

had previously been determined in the senate.[581] Such was the

Spartan political constitution as fixed by Lykurgus; but a century

afterwards (so Plutarch’s account runs), under the kings Polydôrus

and Theopompus, two important alterations were made. A rider was then

attached to the old Lykurgean Rhetra, by which it was provided that,

“in case the people decided crookedly, the senate, with the kings,

should reverse their decisions:”[582] while another change, perhaps

intended as a sort of compensation for this bridle on the popular

assembly, introduced into the constitution a new executive Directory

of five men, called Ephors. This Board—annually chosen, by some

capricious method, the result of which could not well be foreseen,

and open to be filled by every Spartan citizen—either originally

received, or gradually drew to itself, functions so extensive and

commanding, in regard to internal administration and police, as to

limit the authority of the kings to little more than the exclusive

command of the military force. Herodotus was informed, at Sparta,

that the ephors as well as the senate had been constituted by

Lykurgus; but the authority of Aristotle, as well as the internal

probability of the case, sanctions the belief that they were

subsequently added.[583]

[581] The words of the old Rhetra—Διὸς Ἑλλανίου καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς

Ἑλλανίας ἱερὸν ἱδρυσάμενον, φυλὰς φυλάξαντα, καὶ ὠβὰς ὠβάξαντα,

τριάκοντα, γερουσίαν σὺν ἀρχαγέταις, καταστήσαντα, ὥρας ἐξ ὥρας

ἀπελλάζειν μεταξὺ Βαβύκας καὶ Κνακίωνος, οὕτως εἰσφέρειν τε καὶ

ἀφίστασθαι· δάμῳ δ᾽ ἀγορὰν εἶμεν καὶ κράτος. (Plutarch, _ib._)

The reading ἀγορὰν (last word but three) is that of Coray’s

edition: other readings proposed are κυρίαν, ἀνωγὰν, ἀγορίαν,

etc. The MSS., however, are incurably corrupt, and none of the

conjectures can be pronounced certain.

The Rhetra contains various remarkable

archaisms,—ἀπελλάζειν—ἀφίστασθαι,—the latter word in the sense of

putting the question for decision, corresponding to the function

of the Ἀφεστὴρ at Knidus, (Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. c. 4; see

Schneider, Lexicon, _ad voc._)

O. Müller connects τριάκοντα with ὠβὰς, and lays it down that

there were thirty Obes at Sparta: I rather agree with those

critics who place the comma after ὠβάξαντα, and refer the number

thirty to the senate. Urlichs, in his Dissertation Ueber Die

Lykurgisch. Rhetren (published in the Rheinisches Museum for

1847, p. 204), introduces the word πρεσβυγενέας after τριάκοντα;

which seems a just conjecture, when we look to the addition

afterwards made by Theopompus. The statements of Müller about the

Obes seem to me to rest on no authority.

The word Rhetra means a solemn compact, either originally

emanating from, or subsequently sanctioned by, the gods, who are

always parties to such agreements: see the old Treaty between the

Eleians and Heræans,—Ἁ ϝράτρα, between the two,—commemorated in

the valuable inscription still preserved,—as ancient, according

to Boeckh, as Olymp. 40-60, (Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. No. 2, p.

26, part i.) The words of Tyrtæus imply such a compact between

contracting parties: first the kings, then the senate, lastly the

people—εὐθείαις ῥήτραις ~ἀνταπαμειβομένους~—where the participle

last occurring applies not to the people alone, but to all the

three. The Rhetra of Lykurgus emanated from the Delphian god;

but the kings, senate, and people all bound themselves, both to

each other and to the gods, to obey it. The explanations given of

the phrase by Nitzsch and Schömann (in Dr. Thirlwall’s note, ch.

viii. p. 334) seem to me less satisfactory than what appears in

C. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthümer, s. 23).

Nitzsch (Histor. Homer. sect. xiv. pp. 50-55) does not take

sufficient account of the distinction between the meaning of

ῥήτρα in the early and in the later times. In the time of the

Ephor Epitadeus, or of Agis the Third, he is right in saying that

ῥήτρα is equivalent to _scitum_,—still, however, with an idea

of greater solemnity and unchangeability than is implied in the

word νόμος, analogous to what is understood by a fundamental or

organic enactment in modern ideas. The old ideas, of a mandate

from the Delphian god, and a compact between the kings and the

citizens, which had once been connected with the word, gradually

dropped away from it. There is no contradiction in Plutarch,

therefore, such as that to which Nitzsch alludes (p. 54).

Kopstadt’s Dissertation (pp. 22, 30) touches on the same subject.

I agree with Kopstadt (Dissert. pp. 28-30), in thinking it

probable that Plutarch copied the words of the old Lykurgean

constitutional Rhetra, from the account given by Aristotle of the

Spartan polity.

King Theopompus probably brought from the Delphian oracle the

important rider which he tacked to the mandate as originally

brought by Lykurgus—οἱ βασιλεῖς Θεόπομπος καὶ Πολύδωρος τάδε

τῇ ῥήτρᾳ παρενέγραψαν. The authority of the oracle, together

with their own influence, would enable them to get these words

accepted by the people.

[582] Αἲ δὲ σκολιὰν ὁ δᾶμος ἕλοιτο, τοὺς πρεσβυγενέας καὶ

ἀρχαγέτας ἀποστατῆρας εἶμεν. (Plutarch, _ib._)

Plutarch tells us that the primitive Rhetra, anterior to this

addition, specially enjoined the assembled citizens either to

adopt or reject, without change, the Rhetra proposed by the

kings and senate, and that the rider was introduced because the

assembly had disobeyed this injunction, and adopted amendments

of its own. It is this latter sense which he puts on the word

σκολιὰν. Urlichs (Ueber Lyc. Rhetr. p. 232) and Nitzsch (Hist.

Homer. p. 54) follow him, and the latter even construes the

epithet Εὐθείαις ῥήτραις ἀνταπαμειβομένους of Tyrtæus in a

corresponding sense: he says, “Populus iis (rhetris) εὐθείαις, i.

e. _nihil inflexis_, suffragari jubetur: nam lex cujus Tyrtæus

admonet, ita sanxerat—si populus rogationem _inflexam_ (_i.

e._ non nisi ad suum arbitrium immutatam) accipere voluerit,

senatores et auctores abolento totam.”

Now, in the first place, it seems highly improbable that the

primitive Rhetra, with its antique simplicity, would contain

any such preconceived speciality of restriction upon the

competence of the assembly. That restriction received its formal

commencement only from the rider annexed by king Theopompus,

which evidently betokens a previous dispute and refractory

behavior on the part of the assembly.

In the second place, the explanation which these authors give

of the words σκολιὰν and εὐθείαις, is not conformable to the

ancient Greek, as we find it in Homer and Hesiod: and these

early analogies are the proper test, seeing that we are dealing

with a very ancient document. In Hesiod, ἰθὺς and σκολιὸς are

used in a sense which almost exactly corresponds to _right_ and

_wrong_ (which words, indeed, in their primitive etymology, maybe

traced back to the meaning of _straight_ and _crooked_). See

Hesiod. Opp. Di. 36, 192, 218, 221, 226, 230, 250, 262, 264; also

Theogon. 97, and Fragm. 217, ed. Göttling; where the phrases are

constantly repeated, ἰθεῖαι δίκαι, σκολιαὶ δίκαι, σκολιοὶ μῦθοι.

There is also the remarkable expression, Opp. Di. 9. ῥεῖα δέ

τ᾽ ἰθύνει σκολιὸν: compare v. 263. ἰθύνετε μύθους: also Homer,

Iliad, xvi. 387. Οἳ βίῃ εἰν ἀγορῇ σκολιὰς κρίνωσι θέμιστας; and

xxiii. 580. ἰθεῖα; xviii. 508. ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴπῃ,

etc.

If we judge by these analogies, we shall see that the words of

Tyrtæus, εὐθείαις ῥήτραις, mean “_straightforward_, _honest_,

statutes or conventions”—not _propositions adopted without

change_, as Nitzsch supposes. And so the words σκολιὰν ἕλοιτο,

mean, “adopt a _wrong or dishonest determination_,”—not a

determination different from what was proposed to them.

These words gave to the kings and senate power to cancel any

decision of the public assembly which they disapproved. It

retained only the power of refusing assent to some substantive

propositions of the authorities, first of the kings and senate,

afterwards of the ephors. And this limited power it seems always

to have preserved.

Kopstadt explains well the expression σκολιὰν, as the antithesis

to the epithet of Tyrtæus, εὐθείαις ῥήτραις (Dissertat. sect. 15,

p. 124).

[583] Herod. i. 65: compare Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 7; Aristot.

Polit. v. 9, 1 (where he gives the answer of king Theopompus).

Aristotle tells us that the ephors were chosen, but not _how_

they were chosen; only, that it was in some manner excessively

puerile,—παιδαριώδης γάρ ἐστι λίαν (ii. 6, 16).

M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, in his note to the passage of

Aristotle, presumes that they were of course chosen in the same

manner as the senators; but there seems no sufficient ground in

Aristotle to countenance this. Nor is it easy to reconcile the

words of Aristotle respecting the election of the senators, where

he assimilates it to an αἵρεσις δυναστευτικὴ (Polit. v. 5, 8; ii.

6, 18), with the description which Plutarch (Lycurg. 26) gives of

that election.

Taking the political constitution of Sparta ascribed to Lykurgus, it

appears not to have differed materially from the rude organization

exhibited in the Homeric poems, where we always find a council of

chiefs or old men, and occasional meetings of a listening agora. It

is hard to suppose that the Spartan kings can ever have governed

without some formalities of this sort; so that the innovation

(if innovation there really was) ascribed to Lykurgus, must have

consisted in some new details respecting the senate and the agora,—in

fixing the number[584] thirty, and the life-tenure of the former,—and

the special place of meeting of the latter, as well as the extent of

privilege which it was to exercise; consecrating the whole by the

erection of the temples of Zeus Hellanius and Athênê Hellania. The

view of the subject presented by Plutarch as well as by Plato,[585]

as if the senate were an entire novelty, does not consist with the

pictures of the old epic. Hence we may more naturally imagine that

the Lykurgean political constitution, apart from the ephors who

were afterwards tacked to it, presents only the old features of the

heroic government of Greece, defined and regularized in a particular

manner. The presence of two coexistent and coordinate kings, indeed,

succeeding in hereditary descent, and both belonging to the gens of

Herakleids, is something peculiar to Sparta,—the origin of which

receives no other explanation than a reference to the twin sons of

Aristodêmus, Eurysthenês and Proklês. These two primitive ancestors

are a type of the two lines of Spartan kings; for they are said to

have passed their lives in perpetual dissensions, which was the

habitual state of the two contemporaneous kings at Sparta. While

the coexistence of the pair of kings, equal in power and constantly

thwarting each other, had often a baneful effect upon the course

of public measures, it was, nevertheless, a security to the state

against successful violence,[586] ending in the establishment of a

despotism, on the part of any ambitious individual among the regal

line.

[584] Kopstadt agrees in this supposition, that the number of the

senate was probably not peremptorily fixed before the Lykurgean

reform (Dissertat. ut sup. sect. 13, p. 109).

[585] Plato, Legg. iii. p. 691; Plato Epist. viii. p. 354, B.

[586] Plato, Legg. iii. p. 691; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 20.

During five successive centuries of Spartan history, from Polydôrus

and Theopompus downward, no such violence was attempted by any of

the kings,[587] until the times of Agis the Third and Kleomenês the

Third,—240 B. C. to 220 B. C. The importance of Greece had at this

last-mentioned period irretrievably declined, and the independent

political action which she once possessed had become subordinate

to the more powerful force either of the Ætolian mountaineers (the

rudest among her own sons) or to Epirotic, Macedonian, and Asiatic

foreigners, preparatory to the final absorption by the Romans.

But amongst all the Grecian states, Sparta had declined the most;

her ascendency was totally gone, and her peculiar training and

discipline (to which she had chiefly owed it) had degenerated in

every way. Under these untoward circumstances, two young kings,

Agis and Kleomenês,—the former a generous enthusiast, the latter

more violent and ambitious,—conceived the design of restoring the

Lykurgean constitution in its supposed pristine purity, with the

hope of reviving both the spirit of the people and the ascendency

of the state. But the Lykurgean constitution had been, even in the

time of Xenophon,[588] in part, an _idéal_ not fully realized in

practice—much less was it a reality in the days of Kleomenês and

Agis moreover, it was an _idéal_ which admitted of being colored

according to the fancy or feelings of those reformers who professed,

and probably believed, that they were aiming at its genuine

restoration. What the reforming kings found most in their way, was

the uncontrolled authority, and the conservative dispositions, of the

ephors,—which they naturally contrasted with the original fulness

of the kingly power, when kings and senate stood alone. Among the

various ways in which men’s ideas of what the primitive constitution

_had_ been, were modified by the feelings of their own time (we

shall presently see some other instances of this), is probably to be

reckoned the assertion of Kleomenês respecting the first appointment

of the ephors. Kleomenês affirmed that the ephors had originally been

nothing more than subordinates and deputies of the kings, chosen

by the latter to perform for a time their duties during the long

absence of the Messenian war. Starting from this humble position,

and profiting by the dissensions of the two kings,[589] they had in

process of time, especially by the ambition of the ephor Asterôpus,

found means first to constitute themselves an independent board, then

to usurp to themselves more and more of the kingly authority, until

they at last reduced the kings to a state of intolerable humiliation

and impotence. As a proof of the primitive relation between the kings

and the ephors, he alluded to that which was the custom at Sparta

in his own time. When the ephors sent for either of the kings, the

latter had a right to refuse obedience to two successive summonses,

but the third summons he was bound to obey.[590]

[587] The conspiracy of Pausanias, after the repulse of Xerxes,

was against the liberty of combined Hellas, to constitute himself

satrap of Hellas under the Persian monarch, rather than against

the established Lacedæmonian government; though undoubtedly one

portion of his project was to excite the Helots to revolt, and

Aristotle treats him as specially aiming to put down the power of

the ephors (Polit. v. 5, 6: compare Thucyd. i. 128-134; Herodot.

v. 32).

[588] Xenophon, Republic. Laced, c. 14.

[589] Plutarch, Agis, c. 12. Τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ἀρχεῖον (the ephors)

ἰσχύειν ἐκ διαφορᾶς τῶν βασιλέων, etc.

[590] Plutarch, Kleomenês, c. 10. σημεῖον δὲ τούτου, ~τὸ μέχρι

νῦν~, μεταπεμπομένων τὸν βασιλέα τῶν Ἐφόρων, etc.

It is obvious that the fact here adduced by Kleomenês (a curious

point in Spartan manners) contributes little to prove the conclusion

which he deduced from it, of the original nomination of the ephors

as mere deputies by the kings. That they were first appointed at the

time of the Messenian war is probable, and coincides with the tale

that king Theopompus was a consenting party to the measure,—that

their functions were at first comparatively circumscribed, and

extended by successive encroachments, is also probable; but they

seem to have been from the beginning a board of specially popular

origin, in contraposition to the kings and the senate. One proof

of this is to be found in the ancient oath, which was every month

interchanged between the kings and the ephors; the king swearing for

himself, that he would exercise his regal functions according to the

established laws,—the ephors swearing on behalf of the city, that

his authority should on that condition remain unshaken.[591] This

mutual compact, which probably formed a part of the ceremony during

the monthly sacrifices offered by the king,[592] continued down to

a time when it must have become a pure form, and when the kings had

long been subordinate in power to the ephors. But it evidently began

first as a reality,—when the king was predominant and effective chief

of the state, and when the ephors, clothed with functions chiefly

defensive, served as guarantees to the people against abuse of the

regal authority. Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero,[593] all interpret the

original institution of the ephors as designed to protect the people

and restrain the kings: the latter assimilates them to the tribunes

at Rome.

[591] Xenophon, Republic. Lacedæmon. c. 15. Καὶ ὅρκους μὲν

ἀλλήλοις κατὰ μῆνα ποιοῦνται· Ἔφοροι μὲν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως,

βασιλεὺς δ᾽ ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ. Ὁ δὲ ὅρκος ἐστὶ, τῷ μὲν βασιλεῖ, κατὰ

τοὺς τῆς πόλεως κειμένους νόμους βασιλεύσειν· τῇ δὲ πόλει,

ἐμπεδορκοῦντος ἐκείνου, ἀστυφέλικτον τὴν βασιλείαν παρέξειν.

[592] Herodot. vi. 57.

[593] Plato, Legg. iii. p. 692; Aristot. Polit. v. 11, 1; Cicero

de Republic. Fragm. ii. 33, ed. Maii—“Ut contra consulare

imperium tribuni plebis, sic illi (ephori) contra vim regiam

constituti;”—also, De Legg. iii. 7. and Valer. Max. iv. 1.

Compare Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 7: Tittmann, Griechisch.

Staatsverfassung, p. 108, _seqq._

Such were the relations which had once subsisted between the kings

and the ephors: though in later times these relations had been

so completely reversed, that Polybius considers the former as

essentially subordinate to the latter,—reckoning it as a point of

duty in the kings to respect the ephors “as their fathers.”[594]

And such is decidedly the state of things throughout all the

better-known period of history which we shall hereafter traverse.

The ephors are the general directors of public affairs[595] and the

supreme controlling board, holding in check every other authority

in the state, without any assignable limit to their powers. The

extraordinary ascendency of these magistrates is particularly

manifested in the fact stated by Aristotle, that they exempted

themselves from the public discipline, so that their self-indulgent

year of office stood in marked contrast with the toilsome exercises

and sober mess common to rich and poor alike. The kings are reduced

to a certain number of special functions, combined with privileges

partly religious, partly honorary: their most important political

attribute is, that they are _ex officio_ generals of the military

force on foreign expeditions. But even here, we trace the sensible

decline of their power. For whereas Herodotus was informed, and it

probably had been the old privilege, that the king could levy war

against whomsoever he chose, and that no Spartan could impede him

on pain of committing sacrilege,[596]—we shall see, throughout the

best-known periods of this history, that it is usually the ephors

(with or without the senate and public assembly) who determine

upon war,—the king only takes the command when the army is put on

the march. Aristotle seems to treat the Spartan king as a sort of

hereditary general; but even in this privilege, shackles were put

upon him,—for two, out of the five ephors, accompanied the army, and

their power seems to have been not seldom invoked to insure obedience

to his orders.[597]

[594] Polyb. xxiv. 8.

[595] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 14-16; Ἐστὶ δὲ καὶ ἡ δίαιτα τῶν

Ἐφόρων οὐχ ὁμολογουμένη τῷ βουλήματι τῆς πόλεως· αὐτὴ μὲν γὰρ

ἀνειμένη λίαν ἐστί· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις μᾶλλον ὑπερβάλλει ἐπὶ τὸ

σκληρὸν, etc.

[596] Herodot. vi. 56.

[597] Aristot. ii. 7, 4; Xenoph. Republ. Laced. c. 13. Παυσανíας,

πείσας τῶν Ἐφόρων τρεῖς, ἐξάγει φρουρὰν, Xenoph. Hellen. ii. 4,

29; φρουρὰν ἔφῃναν οἱ Ἔφοροι, iii. 2, 23.

A special restriction was put on the functions of the king,

as military commander-in-chief, in 417 B. C., after the

ill-conducted expedition of Agis, son of Archidamus, against

Argos. It was then provided that ten Spartan counsellors should

always accompany the king in every expedition (Thucyd. v. 63).

The direct political powers of the kings were thus greatly curtailed;

yet importance, in many ways, was still left to them. They possessed

large royal domains, in many of the townships of the Periœki:

they received frequent occasional presents, and when victims were

offered to the gods, the skins and other portions belonged to them

as perquisites:[598] they had their votes in the senate, which,

if they were absent, were given on their behalf, by such of the

other senators as were most nearly related to them: the adoption of

children received its formal accomplishment in their presence,—and

conflicting claims at law, for the hand of an unbequeathed orphan

heiress, were adjudicated by them. But above all, their root was deep

in the religious feelings of the people. Their preëminent lineage

connected the entire state with a divine paternity. They, the chiefs

of the Herakleids, were the special grantees of the soil of Sparta

from the gods,—the occupation of the Dorians being only sanctified

and blest by Zeus for the purpose of establishing the children of

Hêraklês in the valley of the Eurotas.[599] They represented the

state in its relations with the gods, being by right priests of

Zeus Lacedæmon, (the ideas of the god and the country coalescing

into one), and of Zeus Uranius, and offering the monthly sacrifices

necessary to insure divine protection to the people. Though

individual persons might sometimes be put aside, nothing short of a

new divine revelation could induce the Spartans to step out of the

genuine lineage of Eurysthenês and Proklês. Moreover, the remarkable

mourning ceremony, which took place at the death of every king, seems

to indicate that the two kingly families—which counted themselves

Achæan,[600] not Dorian—were considered as the great common bond

of union between the three component parts of the population of

Laconia,—Spartans, Periœki, and Helots. Not merely was it required,

on this occasion, that two members of every house in Sparta should

appear in sackcloth and ashes,—but the death of the king was formally

made known throughout every part of Laconia, and deputies from the

townships of the Periœki, and the villages of the Helots, to the

number of several thousand, were summoned to Sparta to take their

share in the profuse and public demonstrations of sorrow,[601] which

lasted for ten days, and which imparted to the funeral obsequies a

superhuman solemnity. Nor ought we to forget, in enumerating the

privileges of the Spartan king, that he (conjointly with two officers

called Pythii, nominated by him,) carried on the communications

between the state and the temple of Delphi, and had the custody of

oracles and prophecies generally. In most of the Grecian states, such

inspired declarations were treasured up, and consulted in cases of

public emergency: but the intercourse of Sparta with the Delphian

oracle was peculiarly frequent and intimate, and the responses of

the Pythian priestess met with more reverential attention from the

Spartans than from any other Greeks.[602] So much the more important

were the king’s functions, as the medium of this intercourse: the

oracle always upheld his dignity, and often even seconded his

underhand personal schemes.[603]

[598] The hide-money (δερματικὸν) arising from the numerous

victims offered at public sacrifices at Athens, is accounted for

as a special item of the public revenue in the careful economy of

that city: see Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, iii. 7, p. 333;

Eng. Trans. Corpus Inscription. No. 157.

[599] Tyrtæus, Fragm. 1, ed. Bergk; Strabo, xviii. p. 362:—

Αὐτὸς γὰρ Κρονίων καλλιστεφάνου πόσις Ἥρης

Ζεὺς Ἡρακλείδαις τήνδε δέδωκε πόλιν·

Οἶσιν ἅμα προλιπόντες Ἐρίνεον ἠνεμόεντα

Εὐρεῖαν Πέλοπος νῆσον ἀφικόμεθα.

Compare Thucyd. v. 16; Herodot. v. 39; Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 3;

Plutarch, Lysand. c. 22.

[600] Herod, v. 72. See the account in Plutarch, of the abortive

stratagem of Lysander, to make the kingly dignity elective,

by putting forward a youth who passed for the son of Apollo

(Plutarch, Lysand. c. 25-26).

[601] Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 1. Ἄγις—ἔτυχε σεμνοτέρας ἢ κατ᾽

ἄνθρωπον ταφῆς.

[602] For the privileges of the Spartan kings, see Herodot. vi.

56-57; Xenophon, Republ. Laced. c. 15; Plato, Alcib. i. p. 123.

[603] Herodot. vi. 66, and Thucyd. v. 16, furnish examples of

this.

Sustained by so great a force of traditional reverence, a Spartan

king, of military talent and individual energy, like Agesilaus,

exercised great ascendency; but such cases were very rare, and we

shall find the king throughout the historical period only a secondary

force, available on special occasions. For real political orders,

in the greatest cases as well as the least, the Spartan looks to

the council of ephors, to whom obedience is paid with a degree of

precision which nothing short of the Spartan discipline could have

brought about,—by the most powerful citizens not less than by the

meanest.[604] Both the internal police and the foreign affairs of

the state are in the hands of the ephors, who exercise an authority

approaching to despotism, and altogether without accountability.

They appoint and direct the body of three hundred young and active

citizens, who performed the immediate police service of Laconia: they

cashier at pleasure any subordinate functionary, and inflict fine or

arrest at their own discretion: they assemble the military force, on

occasion of foreign war, and determine its destination, though the

king has the actual command of it: they imprison on suspicion even

the regent or the king himself:[605] they sit as judges, sometimes

individually and sometimes as a board, upon causes and complaints

of great moment, and they judge without the restraint of written

laws, the use of which was peremptorily forbidden by a special

Rhetra,[606] erroneously connected with Lykurgus himself, but at any

rate ancient. On certain occasions of peculiar moment, they take the

sense of the senate and the public assembly,[607]—such seems to have

been the habit on questions of war and peace. It appears, however,

that persons charged with homicide, treason, or capital offences

generally, were tried before the senate. We read of several instances

in which the kings were tried and severely fined, and in which their

houses were condemned to be razed to the ground, probably by the

senate, on the proposition of the ephors: in one instance, it seems

that the ephors inflicted by their own authority a fine even upon

Agesilaus.[608]

[604] Xenophon, Republ. Laced. c. 8, 2, and Agesilaus, cap. 7, 2.

[605] Xenoph. Rep. Laced. 8, 4; Thucydid. i. 131; Aristot. Polit.

ii. 6,14—ἀρχὴν λίαν μεγάλην καὶ ἰσοτύραννον. Plutarch, Lycurg. c.

13.—μὴ χρῆσθαι νόμοις ἐγγράφοις.

Plato, in his Republic, in like manner disapproves of any general

enactments, tying up beforehand the discretion of perfectly

educated men, like his guardians, who will always do what is best

on each special occasion (Republic, iv. p. 425).

[606] Besides the primitive constitutional Rhetra mentioned

above, page 345, various other Rhetræ are also attributed to

Lykurgus: and Plutarch singles out three under the title of “The

Three Rhetræ,” as if they were either the only genuine Lykurgean

Rhetræ, or at least stood distinguished by some peculiar sanctity

from all others (Plutarch, Quæst. Roman. c. 87. Agesilaus, c. 26).

These three were (Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13; comp. Apophth. Lacon.

p. 227): 1. Not to resort to written laws. 2. Not to employ in

house-building any other tools than the axe and the saw. 3. Not

to undertake military expeditions often against the same enemies.

I agree with Nitzsch (Histor. Homer. pp. 61-65) that these

Rhetræ, though doubtless not actually Lykurgean, are,

nevertheless, ancient (that is, probably dating somewhere between

650-550 B. C.) and not the mere fictions of recent writers,

as Schömann (Ant. Jur. Pub. iv. 1; xiv. p. 132) and Urlichs

(p. 241) seem to believe. And though Plutarch specifies the

number _three_, yet there seems to have been still more, as the

language of Tyrtæus must be held to indicate: out of which, from

causes which we do not now understand, the three which Plutarch

distinguishes excited particular notice.

These maxims or precepts of state were probably preserved along

with the dicta of the Delphian oracle, from which authority,

doubtless, many of them may have emanated,—such as the famous

ancient prophecy Ἁ φιλοχρηματία Σπάρταν ὁλεῖ, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν

(Krebs, Lectiones Diodoreæ, p. 140. Aristotel. Περὶ Πολιτειῶν,

ap. Schol. ad Eurip. Andromach. 446. Schömann, Comm. ad Plutarch.

Ag. et Cleomen. p. 123).

Nitzsch has good remarks in explanation of the prohibition

against “using written laws.” This prohibition was probably

called forth by the circumstance that other Grecian states were

employing lawgivers like Zaleukus, Drako, Charondas, or Solon,—to

present them, at once, with a series of written enactments, or

provisions. Some Spartans may have proposed that an analogous

lawgiver should be nominated for Sparta: upon which proposition a

negative was put in the most solemn manner possible, by a formal

Rhetra, perhaps passed after advice from Delphi. There is no such

contradiction, therefore, (when we thus conceive the event,) as

some authors represent, in forbidding the use of written laws by

a Rhetra itself, put into writing. To employ a phrase in greater

analogy with modern controversies—“The Spartans, on the direction

of the oracle, resolve to retain their unwritten common law, and

not to codify.”

[607] Ἔδοξε τοῖς Ἐφόροις καὶ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ (Xen. Hellen. iii. 2,

23).

[608] The case of _Leotychides_, Herod. vi. 72; of _Pleistoanax_,

Thucyd. ii. 21-v. 16; _Agis the Second_, Thucyd. v. 63; _Agis the

Third_, Plutarch, Agis, c. 19: see Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 5.

Respecting the ephors generally, see Wachsmuth, Hellen.

Alterthumskunde, v. 4, 42, vol. i. p. 223; Cragius, Rep. Lac. ii.

4, p. 121.

Aristotle distinctly marks the ephors as ἀνυπεύθυνοι: so that the

story alluded to briefly in the Rhetoric (iii. 18) is not easy to

be understood.

War and peace appear to have been submitted, on most, if not on all

occasions, to the senate and the public assembly; no matter could

reach the latter until it had passed through the former. And we find

some few occasions on which the decision of the public assembly was a

real expression of opinion, and operative as to the result,—as, for

example, the assembly which immediately preceded and resolved upon

the Peloponnesian war. Here, in addition to the serious hazard of the

case, and the general caution of a Spartan temperament, there was

the great personal weight and experience of king Archidamus opposed

to the war, though the ephors were favorable to it.[609] The public

assembly, under such peculiar circumstances, really manifested an

opinion and came to a division. But, for the most part, it seems to

have been little better than an inoperative formality. The general

rule permitted no open discussion, nor could any private citizen

speak except by special leave from the magistrates. Perhaps even

the general liberty to discuss, if given, might have been of no

avail, for not only was there no power of public speaking, but no

habit of canvassing public measures, at Sparta; nothing was more

characteristic of the government than the extreme secrecy of its

proceedings.[610] The propositions brought forward by the magistrates

were either accepted or rejected, without any license of amending.

There could be no attraction to invite the citizen to be present at

such an assembly: and we may gather from the language of Xenophon

that, in his time, it consisted only of a certain number of notables

specially summoned in addition to the senate, which latter body is

itself called “the lesser Ekklesia.[611]” Indeed, the constant and

formidable diminution in the number of qualified citizens was alone

sufficient to thin the attendance of the assembly, as well as to

break down any imposing force which it might once have possessed.

[609] Thucyd. i. 67, 80, 87. ξύλλογον σφῶν αὐτῶν τὸν εἰωθότα.

[610] Thucyd. iv. 68. τῆς πολιτείας τὸ κρυπτόν: compare iv. 74;

also, his remarkable expression about so distinguished a man as

Brasidas, ἦν δὲ οὐκ αδύνατος, ὡς Λακεδαιμόνιος, εἰπεῖν, and iv.

24, about the Lacedæmonian envoys to Athens. Compare Schömann,

Antiq. Jur. Pub. Græc. iv. 1, 10, p. 122. Aristotel. Polit. ii.

8, 3.

[611] Τὴν μικρὰν καλουμένην ἐκκλησίαν (Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3,

8), which means the γέροντες, or senate, and none besides, except

the ephors, who convoked it. (See Lachmann, Spart. Verfass. sect.

12, p. 216.) What is still more to be noted, is the expression

οἱ ἔκκλητοι as the equivalent of ἡ ἐκκλησία (compare Hellen. v.

2, 11; vi. 3, 3), evidently showing a special and limited number

of persons convened: see, also, ii. 4, 38; iv. 6, 3; v. 2, 33;

Thucyd. v. 77.

The expression οἱ ἔκκλητοι could never have got into use as an

equivalent for the Athenian ecclesia.

An assembly thus circumstanced,—though always retained as a

formality, and though its consent on considerable matters and for the

passing of laws (which, however, seems to have been a rare occurrence

at Sparta) was indispensable,—could be very little of a practical

check upon the administration of the ephors. The senate, a permanent

body, with the kings included in it, was the only real check upon

them, and must have been to a certain extent a concurrent body in

the government,—though the large and imposing language in which

its political supremacy is spoken of by Demosthenês and Isokratês

exceeds greatly the reality of the case. Its most important function

was that of a court of criminal justice, before whom every man put

on trial for his life was arraigned.[612] But both in this and in

their other duties, we find the senators as well as the kings and

the ephors charged with corruption and venality.[613] As they were

not appointed until sixty years of age, and then held their offices

for life, we may readily believe that some of them continued to act

after the period of extreme and disqualifying senility,—which, though

the extraordinary respect of the Lacedæmonians for old age would

doubtless tolerate it, could not fail to impair the influence of the

body as a concurrent element of government.

[612] Xenoph. Republ. Laced. 10; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 17; iii.

1, 7; Demosthen. cont. Leptin. c. 23, p. 489; Isokratês, Or.

xii. (Panathenaic.) p. 266. The language of Demosthenês seems

particularly inaccurate.

Plutarch (Agesilaus, c. 32), on occasion of some suspected

conspirators, who were put to death by Agesilaus and the

ephors, when Sparta was in imminent danger from the attack of

Epameinondas, asserts, that this was the first time that any

Spartan had ever been put to death without trial.

[613] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 18. Compare, also, Thucydid.

i. 131, about the guilty Pausanias,—πιστεύων χρήμασι

διαλύσειν τὴν διαβολήν; Herodot. v. 72; Thucyd. v. 16,—about

the kings Leotychides and Pleistoanax; the brave and able

Gylippus,—Plutarch, Lysand. c. 16.

The brief sketch here given of the Spartan government will show

that, though Greek theorists found a difficulty in determining

under what class they should arrange it,[614] it was in substance

a close, unscrupulous, and well-obeyed oligarchy,—including within

it, as subordinate, those portions which had once been dominant,

the kings and the senate, and softening the odium, without abating

the mischief, of the system, by its annual change of the ruling

ephors. We must at the same time distinguish the government from

the Lykurgean discipline and education, which doubtless tended much

to equalize rich and poor, in respect to practical life, habits,

and enjoyments. Herodotus (and seemingly, also, Xenophon) thought

that the form just described was that which the government had

originally received from the hand of Lykurgus. Now, though there is

good reason for supposing otherwise, and for believing the ephors

to be a subsequent addition,—yet, the mere fact that Herodotus

was so informed at Sparta, points our attention to one important

attribute of the Spartan polity, which it is proper to bring into

view. This attribute is, its unparalleled steadiness, for four or

five successive centuries, in the midst of governments like the

Grecian, all of which had undergone more or less of fluctuation.

No considerable revolution—not even any palpable or formal

change—occurred in it, from the days of the Messenian war, down to

those of Agis the Third: in spite of the irreparable blow which

the power and territory of the state sustained from Epameinondas

and the Thebans, the form of government, nevertheless, remained

unchanged. It was the only government in Greece which could trace

an unbroken, peaceable descent from a high antiquity, and from its

real or supposed founder. Now this was one of the main circumstances

(among others which will hereafter be mentioned) of the astonishing

ascendency which the Spartans acquired over the Hellenic mind, and

which they will not be found at all to deserve by any superior

ability in the conduct of affairs. The steadiness of their political

sympathies,—exhibited at one time, by putting down the tyrants,

or despots, at another, by overthrowing the democracies,—stood in

the place of ability; and even the recognized failings of their

government were often covered by the sentiment of respect for

its early commencement and uninterrupted continuance. If such a

feeling acted on the Greeks generally,[615] much more powerful

was its action upon the Spartans themselves, in inflaming that

haughty exclusiveness for which they stood distinguished. And it is

to be observed that the Spartan mind continued to be cast on the

old-fashioned scale, and unsusceptible of modernizing influences,

longer than that of most other people of Greece. The ancient

legendary faith, and devoted submission to the Delphian oracle,

remained among them unabated, at a time when various influences had

considerably undermined it among their fellow-Hellens and neighbors.

But though the unchanged title and forms of the government thus

contributed to its imposing effect, both at home and abroad, the

causes of internal degeneracy were not the less really at work, in

undermining its efficiency. It has been already stated, that the

number of qualified citizens went on continually diminishing, and

even of this diminished number a larger proportion than before were

needy, since the landed property tended constantly to concentrate

itself in fewer hands. There grew up in this way a body of

discontent, which had not originally existed, both among the poorer

citizens, and among those who had lost their franchise as citizens;

thus aggravating the danger arising from Periœki and Helots, who will

be presently noticed.

[614] The ephors are sometimes considered as a democratical

element, because every Spartan citizen had a chance of becoming

ephor; sometimes as a despotical element, because in the exercise

of their power they were subject to little restraint and no

responsibility: see Plato, Legg. iv. p. 712; Aristot. Polit. ii.

3, 10; iv. 7, 4, 5.

[615] A specimen of the way in which this antiquity was lauded,

may be seen in Isokratês, Or. xii. (Panathenaic.) p. 288.

We pass from the political constitution of Sparta to the civil

ranks and distribution, economical relations, and lastly, the

peculiar system of habits, education, and discipline, said to have

been established among the Lacedæmonians by Lykurgus. Here, again,

we shall find ourselves imperfectly informed as to the existing

institutions, and surrounded by confusion when we try to explain how

those institutions arose.

It seems, however, ascertained that the Dorians, in all their

settlements, were divided into three tribes,—the Hylleis, the

Pamphyli, and the Dymanes: in all Dorian cities, moreover, there

were distinguished Herakleid families, from whom œkists were chosen

when new colonies were formed. These three tribes can be traced at

Argos, Sikyôn, Epidaurus, Trœzên, Megara, Korkyra, and seemingly,

also, at Sparta.[616] The Hylleis recognized, as their eponym and

progenitor, Hyllus, the son of Hêraklês, and were therefore, in

their own belief, descended from Hêraklês himself: we may suppose the

Herakleids, specially so called, comprising the two regal families,

to have been the elder brethren of the tribe of Hylleis, the whole

of whom are sometimes spoken of as Herakleids, or descendants of

Hêraklês.[617] But there seem to have been also at Sparta, as

in other Dorian towns, non-Dorian inhabitants, apart from these

three tribes, and embodied in tribes of their own. One of these,

the Ægeids, said to have come from Thebes as allies of the Dorian

invaders, is named by Aristotle, Pindar, and Herodotus,[618]—while

the Ægialeis at Sikyôn, the tribe Hyrnêthia at Argos and Epidaurus,

and others, whose titles we do not know, at Corinth, represent,

in like manner, the non-Dorian portions of their respective

communities.[619] At Corinth, the total number of tribes is said

to have been eight.[620] But at Sparta, though we seem to make out

the existence of the three Dorian tribes, we do not know how many

tribes there were in all: still less do we know what relation the

Obæ, or Obes, another subordinate distribution of the people, bore

to the tribes. In the ancient Rhetra of Lykurgus, the Tribes and

Obês are directed to be maintained unaltered: but the statement

of O. Müller and Boeckh[621]—that there were thirty Obês in all,

ten to each tribe—rests upon no other evidence than a peculiar

punctuation of this Rhetra, which various other critics reject; and

seemingly, with good reason. We are thus left without any information

respecting the Obê, though we know that it was an old, peculiar,

and lasting division among the Spartan people, since it occurs in

the oldest Rhetra of Lykurgus, as well as in late inscriptions of

the date of the Roman empire. In similar inscriptions, and in the

account of Pausanias, there is, however, recognized a classification

of Spartans distinct from and independent of the three old Dorian

tribes, and founded upon the different quarters of the city,—Limnæ,

Mesoa, Pitanê, and Kynosura;[622] from one of these four was derived

the usual description of a Spartan in the days of Herodotus. There

is reason to suppose that the old Dorian tribes became antiquated

at Sparta, (as the four old Ionian tribes did at Athens,) and that

the topical classification derived from the quarters of the city

superseded it,—these quarters having been originally the separate

villages, of the aggregate of which Sparta was composed.[623] That

the number of the old senators, thirty, was connected with the three

Dorian tribes, deriving ten members from each, is probable enough,

though there is no proof of it.

[616] Herodot. v. 68; Stephan. Byz. Ὑλλέες and Δυμᾶν; O. Müller,

Dorians, iii. 5, 2; Boeckh ad Corp. Inscrip. No. 1123.

Thucyd. i. 24, about Phalius, the Herakleid, at Corinth.

[617] See Tyrtæus, Fragm. 8, 1, ed. Schneidewin, and Pindar,

Pyth. i. 61. v. 71, where the expressions “descendants of

Hêraklês” plainly comprehend more than the two kingly families.

Plutarch, Lysand. c. 22; Diodor. xi. 58.

[618] Herodot. iv. 149; Pindar, Pyth. v. 67; Aristot. Λακων.

Πολιτ. p. 127, Fragm. ed. Neuman. The Talthybiadæ, or heralds, at

Sparta, formed a family or caste apart (Herod. vii. 134).

O. Müller supposes, without any proof, that the Ægeids _must_

have been adopted into one of the three Dorian tribes; this is

one of the corollaries from his fundamental supposition, that

Sparta is the type of pure Dorism (vol. ii. p. 78). Kopstadt

thinks (Dissertat. p. 67) that I have done injustice to O.

Müller, in not assenting to his proof: but, on studying the point

over again, I can see no reason for modifying what is here stated

in the text. The Section of Schömann’s work (Antiq. Jur. Publ.

Græc. iv. 1, 6, p. 115) on this subject asserts a great deal more

than can be proved.

[619] Herod. v. 68-92; Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip. Nos. 1130, 1131;

Stephan. Byz. v. Ὑρνίθιον; Pausan. ii. 28, 3.

[620] Photius Πάντα ὀκτώ; also. Proverb. Vatic. Suidas, xi. 64;

compare Hesychius, v. Κυνόφαλοι.

[621] Müller, Dorians, iii. 5, 3-7; Boeckh ad Corp. Inscription.

part iv. sect. 3, p. 609.

[622] Pausan. iii. 16, 6; Herodot. iii. 55; Boeckh, Corp.

Inscript. Nos. 1241, 1338, 1347, 1425; Steph. Byz. v. Μεσόα;

Strabo, viii. p. 364; Hesych. v. Πιτάνη.

There is much confusion and discrepancy of opinion about the

Spartan tribes. Cragius admits six (De Republ. Lacon. i. 6);

Meursius, eight (Rep. Lacon. i. 7): Barthélemy (Voyage du Jeune

Anacharsis, iv. p. 185) makes them five. Manso has discussed the

subject at large, but I think not very satisfactorily, in the

eighth Beilage to the first book of his History of Sparta (vol.

ii. p. 125); and Dr. Thirwall’s second Appendix (vol. i. p. 517)

both notices all the different modern opinions on this obscure

topic, and adds several useful criticisms. Our scanty stock of

original evidence leaves much room for divergent hypotheses, and

little chance of any certain conclusion.

[623] Thucyd. i. 10.

Of the population of Laconia, three main divisions are

recognized,—Spartans, Periœki, and Helots. The first of the three

were the full qualified citizens, who lived in Sparta itself,

fulfilled all the exigences of the Lykurgean discipline, paid their

quota to the Syssitia, or public mess, and were alone eligible to

honors[624] or public offices. These men had neither time, nor

taste even, for cultivation of the land, still less for trade or

handicraft: such occupations were inconsistent with the prescribed

training, even if they had not been positively interdicted. They

were maintained from the lands round the city, and from the large

proportion of Laconia which belonged to them; the land being

tilled for them by Helots, who seem to have paid over to them a

fixed proportion of the produce; in some cases, at least, as much

as one-half.[625] Each Spartan retained his qualification, and

transmitted it to his children, on two conditions,—first, that of

submitting to the prescribed discipline; next, that of paying, each,

his stipulated quota to the public mess, which was only maintained

by these individual contributions. The multiplication of children

in the poorer families, after acquisitions of new territory ceased,

continually augmented both the number and the proportion of citizens

who were unable to fulfil the second of these conditions, and who

therefore lost their franchise: so that there arose towards the

close of the Peloponnesian war, a distinction, among the Spartans

themselves, unknown to the earlier times,—the reduced number of

fully qualified citizens being called The Equals, or Peers,—the

disfranchised poor, The Inferiors. The latter, disfranchised as they

were, nevertheless, did not become Periœki: it was probably still

competent to them to resume their qualification, should any favorable

accident enable them to make their contributions to the public mess.

[624] One or two Periœkic officers appear in military command

towards the end of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. viii. 6, 22),

but these seem rare exceptions, even as to foreign service by sea

or land, while a Periœkus, as magistrate at Sparta, was unheard

of.

[625] One half was paid by the enslaved Messenians (Tyrtæus,

Frag. 4, Bergk): ἥμισυ πᾶν, ὅσσον κάρπον ἄρουσα φέρει.

The Periœkus was also a freeman and a citizen, not of Sparta, but

of some one of the hundred townships of Laconia.[626] Both he and

the community to which he belonged received their orders only from

Sparta, having no political sphere of their own, and no share in

determining the movements of the Spartan authorities. In the island

of Kythêra,[627] which formed one of the Periœkic townships, a

Spartan bailiff resided as administrator. But whether the same was

the case with others, we cannot affirm: nor is it safe to reason

from one of these townships to all,—there may have been considerable

differences in the mode of dealing with one and another. For they

were spread through the whole of Laconia, some near and some distant

from Sparta: the free inhabitants of Amyklæ must have been Periœki,

as well as those of Kythêra, Thuria, Ætheia, or Aulôn: nor can we

presume that the feeling on the part of the Spartan authorities

towards all of them was the same. Between the Spartans and their

neighbors, the numerous Periœki of Amyklæ, there must have subsisted

a degree of intercourse and mutual relation in which the more distant

Periœki did not partake,—besides, that both the religious edifices

and the festivals of Amyklæ were most reverentially adopted by

the Spartans and exalted into a national dignity: and we seem to

perceive, on some occasions, a degree of consideration manifested

for the Amyklæan hoplites,[628] such as perhaps other Periœki might

not have obtained. The class-name, Periœki,[629]—circumresidents,

or dwellers around the city,—usually denoted native inhabitants of

inferior political condition as contrasted with the full-privileged

burghers who lived in the city, but it did not mark any precise or

uniform degree of inferiority. It is sometimes so used by Aristotle

as to imply a condition no better than that of the Helots, so that,

in a large sense, all the inhabitants of Laconia (Helots as well as

the rest) might have been included in it. But when used in reference

to Laconia, it bears a technical sense, whereby it is placed in

contraposition with the Spartan on one side, and with the Helot

on the other: it means, native freemen and proprietors, grouped

in subordinate communities[630] with more or less power of local

management, but (like the subject towns belonging to Bern, Zurich,

and most of the old thirteen cantons of Switzerland) embodied in the

Lacedæmonian aggregate, which was governed exclusively by the kings,

senate, and citizens of Sparta.

[626] Strabo, viii. p. 362. Stephanus Byz. alludes to this total

of one hundred townships in his notice of several different

items among them,—Ἀνθάνα—πόλις Λακωνικὴ μία τῶν ἑκατον; also, v.

Ἀφροδισιὰς, Βοῖαι, Δυῤῥάχιον, etc: but he probably copied Strabo,

and, therefore, cannot pass for a distinct authority. The total

of one hundred townships belongs to the maximum of Spartan power,

after the conquest and before the severance of Messenia; for

Aulôn, Boiæ, and Methônê (the extreme places) are included among

them.

Mr. Clinton (Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 401) has collected the names of

above sixty out of the one hundred.

[627] Thucyd. iv. 53.

[628] Xenophon, Hellen. iv. 5, 11; Herod. ix. 7; Thucyd. v.

18-23. The Amyklæan festival of the Hyacinthia, and the Amyklæan

temple of Apollo, seem to stand foremost in the mind of the

Spartan authorities. Αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ ἐγγύτατα τῶν περιοίκων (Thucyd.

iv. 8), who are ready before the rest, and march against the

Athenians at Pylus, probably include the Amyklæans.

Laconia generally is called by Thucydidês (iii. 16) as the

περιοικὶς of Sparta.

[629] The word περίοικοι is sometimes used to signify simply

“surrounding neighbor states,” in its natural geographical sense:

see Thucyd. i. 17, and Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 1.

But the more usual employment of it is, to mean, the unprivileged

or less privileged members of the same political aggregate living

without the city, in contrast with the full-privileged burghers

who lived within it. Aristotle uses it to signify, in Krête,

the class corresponding to the Lacedæmonian Helots (Pol. ii. 7,

3): there did not exist in Krête any class corresponding to the

Lacedæmonian Periœki. In Krête, there were not two stages of

inferiority,—there was only one, and that one is marked by the

word περίοικοι; while the Lacedæmonian Periœkus had the Helot

below him. To an Athenian the word conveyed the idea of undefined

degradation.

To understand better the _status_ of the Periœkus, we may

contrast him with the Metœkus, or Metic. The latter resides

in the city, but he is an alien resident on sufferance, not a

native: he pays a special tax, stands excluded from all political

functions, and cannot even approach the magistrate except through

a friendly citizen, or Prostatês (επὶ προστάτον οἰκεῖν—Lycurgus

cont. Leocrat. c. 21-53): he bears arms for the defence of the

state. The situation of a Metic was, however, very different

in different cities of Greece. At Athens, that class were

well-protected in person and property, numerous and domiciliated:

at Sparta, there were at first none,—the Xenêlasy excluded them;

but this must have been relaxed long before the days of Agis the

Third.

The Periœkus differs from the Metic, in being a native of the

soil, subject by birth to the city law.

M. Kopstadt (in his Dissertation above cited, on Lacedæmonian

affairs, sect. 7, p. 60) expresses much surprise at that which

I advance in this note respecting Krête and Lacedæmon,—that in

Krête there was no class of men analogous to the Lacedæmonian

Periœki, but only two classes,—_i. e._ free citizens and Helots.

He thinks that this position is “prorsus falsum.”

But I advance nothing more here than what is distinctly stated

by Aristotle, as Kopstadt himself admits (pp. 60, 71). Aristotle

calls the subject class in Krête by the name of Περίοικοι. And

in this case, the general presumptions go far to sustain the

authority of Aristotle. For Sparta was a dominant or capital

city, including in its dependence not only a considerable

territory, but a considerable number of inferior, distinct,

organized townships. In Krête, on the contrary, each autonomous

state included only a town with its circumjacent territory, but

without any annexed townships. There was, therefore, no basis

for the intermediate class called, in Laconia, Periœki: just as

Kopstadt himself remarks (p. 78) about the Dorian city of Megara.

There were only the two classes of free Krêtan citizens, and

serf-cultivators in various modifications and subdivisions.

Kopstadt (following Hoeck, Krêta, b. iii. vol. iii. p. 23) says

that the authority of Aristotle on this point is overborne by

that of Dosiadas and Sosikratês,—authors who wrote specially on

Krêtan affairs. Now if we were driven to make a choice, I confess

that I should prefer the testimony of Aristotle,—considering

that we know little or nothing respecting the other two. But in

this case I do not think that we are driven to make a choice:

Dosiadas (ap. Athenæ. xiv. p. 143) is not cited in terms, so that

we cannot affirm him to contradict Aristotle: and Sosikratês

(upon whom Hoeck and Kopstadt rely) says something which does not

necessarily contradict him, but admits of being explained so as

to place the two witnesses in harmony with each other.

Sosikratês says (ap. Athenæ. vi. p. 263), Τὴν μὲν κοινὴν δουλείαν

οἱ Κρῆτες καλοῦσι μνοίαν, τὴν δὲ ἰδίαν ἀφαμίωτας, τοὺς δὲ

περιοίκους ὑπηκόους. Now the word περιοίκους seems to be here

used just as Aristotle would have used it, to comprehend the

Krêtan serfs universally: it is not distinguished from μνώιται

and ἀφαμιῶται, but comprehends both of them as different species

under a generic term. The authority of Aristotle affords a reason

for preferring to construe the passage in this manner, and the

words appear to me to admit of it fairly.

[630] The πόλεις of the Lacedæmonian Periœki are often noticed:

see Xenophon (Agesilaus, ii. 24; Laced. Repub. xv. 3; Hellenic.

vi. 5, 21).

When we come to describe the democracy of Athens after the revolution

of Kleisthenes, we shall find the demes, or local townships and

villages of Attica, incorporated as equal and constituent fractions

of the integer called The Deme (or The City) of Athens, so that a

demot of Acharnæ or Sphêttus is at the same time a full Athenian

citizen. But the relation of the Periœkic townships to Sparta is

one of inequality and obedience, though both belong to the same

political aggregate, and make up together the free Lacedæmonian

community. In like manner, Orneæ and other places were townships of

men personally free, but politically dependent on Argos,—Akræphiæ

on Thebes,—Chæroneia on Orchomenus,—and various Thessalian towns

on Pharsalus and Larissa.[631] Such, moreover, was, in the main,

the state into which Athens would have brought her allies, and

Thebes the free Bœotian communities,[632] if the policy of either

of these cities had permanently prospered. This condition carried

with it a sentiment of degradation, and a painful negation of that

autonomy for which every Grecian community thirsted; while being

maintained through superior force, it had a natural tendency, perhaps

without the deliberate wish of the reigning city, to degenerate into

practical oppression. But in addition to this general tendency, the

peculiar education of a Spartan, while it imparted force, fortitude,

and regimental precision, was at the same time so rigorously

peculiar, that it rendered him harsh, unaccommodating, and incapable

of sympathizing with the ordinary march of Grecian feeling,—not to

mention the rapacity and love of money, which is attested, by good

evidence, as belonging to the Spartan character,[633] and which

we should hardly have expected to find in the pupils of Lykurgus.

As Harmosts out of their native city,[634] and in relations with

inferiors, the Spartans seem to have been more unpopular than other

Greeks, and we may presume that a similar haughty roughness pervaded

their dealings with their own Periœki; who were bound to them

certainly by no tie of affection, and who for the most part revolted

after the battle of Leuktra, as soon as the invasion of Laconia by

Epameinondas enabled them to do so with safety.

[631] Herod. viii. 73-135; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 1, 8; Thucyd. iv.

76-94.

[632] Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 3, 5, 9, 19. Isokratês, writing in the

days of Theban power, after the battle of Leuktra, characterizes

the Bœotian towns as περίοικοι of Thebes (Or. viii. De Pace, p.

182); compare Orat. xiv. Plataic. pp. 299-303. Xenophon holds the

same language, Hellen. v. 4, 46: compare Plutarch, Agesilaus, 28.

[633] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 23.

[634] Thucyd. i. 77-95; vi. 105. Isokratês (Panathenaic. Or.

xii. p. 283), Σπαρτιάτας δὲ ὑπεροπτικοὺς καὶ πολεμικοὺς καὶ

πλεονέκτας, οἵους περ αὐτοὺς εἶναι πάντες ὑπειλήφασι. Compare his

Oratio de Pace (Or. viii. pp. 180-181); Oratio Panegyr. (Or. iv.

pp. 64-67).

Isokratês, taking his point of departure from the old Herakleid

legend, with its instantaneous conquest and triple partition of all

Dorian Peloponnesus, among the three Herakleid brethren, deduces the

first origin of the Periœkic townships from internal seditions among

the conquerors of Sparta. According to him, the period immediately

succeeding the conquest was one of fierce intestine warfare in

newly-conquered Sparta, between the Few and the Many,—the oligarchy

and the demus. The former being victorious, two important measures

were the consequences of their victory. They banished the defeated

Many from Sparta into Laconia, retaining the residence in Sparta

exclusively for themselves; they assigned to them the smallest and

least fertile half of Laconia, monopolizing the larger and better

for themselves; and they disseminated them into many very small

townships, or subordinate little communities, while they concentrated

themselves entirely at Sparta. To these precautions for insuring

dominion, they added another not less important. They established

among their own Spartan citizens equality of legal privilege and

democratical government, so as to take the greatest securities

for internal harmony; which harmony, according to the judgment of

Isokratês, had been but too effectually perpetuated, enabling the

Spartans to achieve their dominion over oppressed Greece,—like the

accord of pirates[635] for the spoliation of the peaceful. The

Periœkic townships, he tells us, while deprived of all the privileges

of freemen, were exposed to all the toils, as well as to an unfair

share of the dangers, of war. The Spartan authorities put them in

situations and upon enterprises which they deemed too dangerous for

their own citizens; and, what was still worse, the ephors possessed

the power of putting to death, without any form of preliminary trial,

as many Periœki as they pleased.[636]

[635] Isokratês, Panathenaic. Or. xii. p. 280. ὥστε οὐδεὶς ἂν

αὐτοὺς διά γε τὴν ὁμόνοιαν δικαίως ἐπαινέσειεν, οὐδεν μᾶλλον ἢ

τοὺς καταποντιστὰς καὶ λῄστας καὶ τοὺς περὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἀδικίας

ὄντας· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ὁμονοοῦντες τοὺς ἄλλους

ἀπολλύουσι.

[636] Isokratês, Orat. xii. (Panathenaic.) pp. 270-271. The

statement in the same oration (p. 246), that the Lacedæmonians

“had put to death without trial more Greeks (πλείους τῶν Ἑλλήνων)

than had ever been tried at Athens since Athens was a city,”

refers to their allies or dependents out of Laconia.

The statement here delivered by Isokratês, respecting the first

origin of the distinction of Spartans and Periœki, is nothing better

than a conjecture, nor is it even a probable conjecture, since it

is based on the historical truth of the old Herakleid legend, and

transports the disputes of his own time, between the oligarchy and

the demus, into an early period, to which such disputes do not

belong. Nor is there anything, so far as our knowledge of Grecian

history extends, to bear out his assertion, that the Spartans took

to themselves the least dangerous post in the field, and threw undue

peril upon their Periœki. Such dastardly temper was not among the

sins of Sparta; but it is undoubtedly true that, as the number of

citizens continually diminished, so the Periœki came to constitute,

in the later times, a larger and larger proportion of the Spartan

force. Yet the power which Isokratês represents to have been vested

in the ephors, of putting to death Periœki without preliminary

trial, we may fully believe to be real, and to have been exercised

as often as the occasion seemed to call for it. We shall notice,

presently, the way in which these magistrates dealt with the Helots,

and shall see ample reason from thence to draw the conclusion that,

whenever the ephors believed any man to be dangerous to the public

peace,—whether an inferior Spartan, a Periœkus, or a Helot,—the most

summary mode of getting rid of him would be considered as the best.

Towards Spartans of rank and consideration, they were doubtless

careful and measured in their application of punishment, but the

same necessity for circumspection did not exist with regard to the

inferior classes: moreover, the feeling that the exigences of justice

required a fair trial before punishment was inflicted, belongs to

Athenian associations much more than to Spartan. How often any such

summary executions may have taken place, we have no information.

We may remark that the account which Isokratês has here given of the

origin of the Laconian Periœki is not essentially irreconcilable

with that of Ephorus,[637] who recounted that Eurysthenês and

Proklês, on first conquering Laconia, had granted to the preëxisting

population equal rights with the Dorians,—but that Agis, son

of Eurysthenês, had deprived them of this equal position, and

degraded them into dependent subjects of the latter. At least, the

two narratives both agree in presuming that the Periœki had once

enjoyed a better position, from which they had been extruded by

violence. And the policy which Isokratês ascribes to the victorious

Spartan oligarchs,—of driving out the demus from concentrated

residence in the city to disseminated residence in many separate

and insignificant townships,—seems to be the expression of that

proceeding which in his time was numbered among the most efficient

precautions against refractory subjects,—the Diœkisis, or breaking up

of a town-aggregate into villages. We cannot assign to the statement

any historical authority.[638] Moreover, the division of Laconia

into six districts, together with its distribution into townships

(or the distribution of settlers into preëxisting townships), which

Ephorus ascribed to the first Dorian kings, are all deductions from

the primitive legendary account, which described the Dorian conquest

as achieved by one stroke, and must all be dismissed, if we suppose

it to have been achieved gradually. This gradual conquest is admitted

by O. Müller, and by many of the ablest subsequent inquirers,—who,

nevertheless, seem to have the contrary supposition involuntarily

present to their minds when they criticize the early Spartan history,

and always unconsciously imagine the Spartans as masters of all

Laconia. We cannot even assert that Laconia was ever under one

government before the consummation of the successive conquests of

Sparta.

[637] Ephorus, Fragm. 18, ed. Marx; ap. Strabo, viii. p. 365.

[638] Dr. Arnold (in his Dissertation on the Spartan

Constitution, appended to the first volume of his Thucydidês, p.

643) places greater confidence in the historical value of this

narrative of Isokratês than I am inclined to do. On the other

hand, Mr. G. C. Lewis, in his Review of Dr. Arnold’s Dissertation

(Philological Museum, vol. ii. p. 45), considers the “account

of Isokratês as completely inconsistent with that of Ephorus;”

which is saying rather more, perhaps, than the tenor of the two

strictly warrants. In Mr. Lewis’s excellent article, most of the

difficult points respecting the Spartan constitution will be

found raised and discussed in a manner highly instructive.

Another point in the statement of Isokratês is, that the Dorians,

at the time of the original conquest of Laconia, were only

two thousand in number (Or. xii. Panath. p. 286). Mr. Clinton

rejects this estimate as too small, and observes, “I suspect

that Isokratês, in describing the numbers of the Dorians at the

original conquest, has adapted to the description the actual

numbers of the Spartans in his own time.” (Fast. Hellen. ii. p.

408.)

This seems to me a probable conjecture, and it illustrates as

well the absence of data under which Isokratês or his informants

labored, as the method which they took to supply the deficiency.

Of the assertion of O. Müller—repeated by Schömann[639]—“that the

difference of races was strictly preserved, and that the Periœki

were always considered as Achæans,”—I find no proof, and I believe

it to be erroneous. Respecting Pharis, Geronthræ, and Amyklæ, three

Periœkic towns, Pausanias gives us to understand that the preëxisting

inhabitants either retired or were expelled on the Dorian conquest,

and that a Dorian population replaced them.[640] Without placing

great faith in this statement, for which Pausanias could hardly

have any good authority, we may yet accept it as representing the

probabilities of the case, and as counterbalancing the unsupported

hypothesis of Müller. The Periœkic townships were probably composed

either of Dorians entirely, or of Dorians incorporated in greater

or less proportion with the preëxisting inhabitants. But whatever

difference of race there may once have been, it was effaced before

the historical times,[641] during which we find no proof of

Achæans, known as such, in Laconia. The Herakleids, the Ægeids, and

the Talthybiads, all of whom belong to Sparta, seem to be the only

examples of separate races, partially distinguishable from Dorians,

known after the beginning of authentic history. The Spartans and

the Periœki constitute one political aggregate, and that too so

completely melted together in the general opinion (speaking of the

times before the battle of Leuktra), that the peace of Antalkidas,

which guaranteed autonomy to every separate Grecian city, was never

so construed as to divorce the Periœkic towns from Sparta. Both are

known as Laconians, or Lacedæmonians, and Sparta is regarded by

Herodotus only as the first and bravest among the many and brave

Lacedæmonian cities.[642] The victors at Olympia are proclaimed, not

as Spartans, but as Laconians,—a title alike borne by the Periœki.

And many of the numerous winners, whose names we read in the Olympic

lists as Laconians, may probably have belonged to Amyklæ or other

Periœkic towns.

[639] Schömann, Antiq. Jurisp. Græcorum, iv. 1, 5, p. 112.

[640] Pausan. iii. 2, 6; iii. 22, 5. The statement of Müller is

to be found (History of the Dorians, iii. 2, 1): he quotes a

passage of Pausanias, which is noway to the point.

Mr. G. C. Lewis (Philolog. Mus. _ut. sup._ p. 41) is of the same

opinion as Müller.

[641] M. Kopstadt (in the learned Dissertation which I have

before alluded to, De Rerum Laconicarum Constitutionis Lycurgeæ

Origine et Indole, cap. ii. p. 31) controverts this position

respecting the Periœki. He appears to understand it in a sense

which my words hardly present,—at least, a sense which I did

not intend them to present: as if the majority of inhabitants

in _each_ of the hundred Periœkic towns were Dorians,—“ut per

centum Laconiæ oppida distributi _ubique majorem_ incolarum

numerum efficerent,” (p. 32.) I meant only to affirm that some

of the Periœkic towns, such as Amyklæ, were wholly, or almost

wholly, Dorian; many others of them partially Dorian. But what

may have been the comparative numbers (probably different in

each town) of Dorian and non-Dorian inhabitants,—there are no

means of determining. M. Kopstadt (p. 35) admits that Amyklæ,

Pharis, and Geronthræ, were Periœkic towns peopled by Dorians;

and if this be true, it negatives the general maxim on the faith

of which he contradicts what I affirm: his maxim is—“nunquam

Dorienses à Doriensibus nisi bello victi erant, civitate æquoque

jure privati sunt,” (p. 31.) It is very unsafe to lay down such

large positions respecting a supposed uniformity of Dorian rules

and practice. The high authority of O. Müller has been extremely

misleading in this respect.

It is plain that Herodotus (compare his expression, viii. 73 and

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

Achæans, but as Dorians. He believes in the story of the legend,

that the Achæans, driven out of Laconia by the invading Dorians

and Herakleidæ, occupied the territory in the north-west of

Peloponnesus which was afterwards called Achæa,—expelling from

it the Ionians. Whatever may be the truth about this legendary

statement,—and whatever may have been the original proportions

of Dorians and Achæans in Laconia,—these two races had (in the

fifth century B. C.) become confounded in one undistinguishable

ethnical and political aggregate called Laconian, or

Lacedæmonian,—comprising both Spartans and Periœki, though with

very unequal political franchises, and very material differences

in individual training and habits. The case was different in

Thessaly, where the Thessalians held in dependence Magnêtes,

Perrhæbi, and Achæans: the separate nationality of these latter

was never lost.

[642] Herod. vii. 234.

The Periœkic hoplites constituted always a large—in later times a

preponderant—numerical proportion of the Lacedæmonian army, and

must undoubtedly have been trained, more or less perfectly, in the

peculiar military tactics of Sparta; since they were called upon

to obey the same orders as the Spartans in the field,[643] and to

perform the same evolutions. Some cases appear, though rare, in which

a Periœkus has high command in a foreign expedition. In the time of

Aristotle, the larger proportion of Laconia (then meaning only the

country eastward of Taygetus, since the foundation of Messênê by

Epameinondas had been consummated) belonged to Spartan citizens,[644]

but the remaining smaller half must have been the property of the

Periœki, who must besides have carried on most of the commerce of

export and import,—the metallurgic enterprise, and the distribution

of internal produce,—which the territory exhibited; since no Spartan

ever meddled in such occupations. And thus the peculiar training

of Lykurgus, by throwing all these employments into the hands of

the Periœki, opened to them a new source of importance, which the

dependent townships of Argos, of Thebes, or of Orchomenus, would not

enjoy.

[643] Thucyd. viii. 6-22. They did not, however, partake in the

Lykurgean discipline; but they seem to be named οἱ ἐκ τῆς χώρας

παῖδες, as contrasted with οἱ ἐκ τῆς ἀγωγῆς (Sosibius ap. Athenæ.

xv. p. 674).

[644] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 23. διὰ γὰρ τὸ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν εἶναι

τὴν πλείστην γῆν, οὐκ ἐξετάζουσιν ἀλλήλων τὰς εἰσφοράς.

Mr. G. C. Lewis, in the article above alluded to (Philolog. Mus.

ii. p. 54), says, about the Periœki: “They lived in the country

or in small towns of the Laconian territory, and cultivated the

land, which they did not hold of any individual citizen, but

paid for it a tribute or rent to the state; being exactly in the

same condition as the _possessores_ of the Roman domain, or the

Ryots, in Hindostan, before the introduction of the Permanent

Settlement.” It may be doubted, I think, whether the Periœki paid

any such rent or tribute as that which Mr. Lewis here supposes.

The passage just cited from Aristotle seems to show that they

paid direct taxation individually, and just upon the same

principle as the Spartan citizens, who are distinguished only

by being larger landed-proprietors. But though the principle of

taxation be the same, there was practical injustice (according to

Aristotle) in the mode of assessing it. “The Spartan citizens (he

observes) being the largest landed-proprietors, take care not to

canvass strictly _each other’s payment of property-tax_”—_i. e._

they wink mutually at each other’s evasions. If the Spartans had

been the _only_ persons who paid εἰσφορὰ, or property-tax, this

observation of Aristotle would have had no meaning. In principle,

the tax was assessed, both on their larger properties and on the

smaller properties of the Periœki: in practice, the Spartans

helped each other to evade the due proportion.

The Helots of Laconia were Coloni, or serfs, bound to the

soil, who tilled it for the benefit of the Spartan proprietors

certainly,—probably, of Periœkic proprietors also. They were the

rustic population of the country, who dwelt, not in towns, but either

in small villages[645] or in detached farms, both in the district

immediately surrounding Sparta, and round the Periœkic Laconian

towns also. Of course, there were also Helots who lived in Sparta

and other towns, and did the work of domestic slaves,—but such was

not the general character of the class. We cannot doubt that the

Dorian conquest from Sparta found this class in the condition of

villagers and detached rustics; but whether they were dependent

upon preëxisting Achæan proprietors, or independent, like much of

the Arcadian village population, is a question which we cannot

answer. In either case, however, it is easy to conceive that the

village lands (with the cultivators upon them) were the most easy

to appropriate for the benefit of masters resident at Sparta; while

the towns, with the district immediately around them, furnished both

dwelling and maintenance to the outgoing detachments of Dorians.

If the Spartans had succeeded in their attempt to enlarge their

territory by the conquest of Arcadia,[646] they might very probably

have converted Tegea and Mantineia into Periœkic towns, with a

diminished territory inhabited (either wholly or in part) by Dorian

settlers,—while they would have made over to proprietors in Sparta

much of the village lands of the Mænalii, Azanes, and Parrhasii,

helotizing the inhabitants. The distinction between a town and a

village population seems the main ground of the different treatment

of Helots and Periœki in Laconia. A considerable proportion of the

Helots were of genuine Dorian race, being the Dorian Messenians

west of Mount Taygetus, subsequently conquered and aggregated to

this class of dependent cultivators, who, as a class, must have

begun to exist from the very first establishment of the invading

Dorians in the district round Sparta. From whence the name of

Helots arose, we do not clearly make out: Ephorus deduced it from

the town of Helus, on the southern coast, which the Spartans are

said to have taken after a resistance so obstinate as to provoke

them to deal very rigorously with the captives. There are many

reasons for rejecting this story, and another etymology has been

proposed, according to which Helot is synonymous with _captive_:

this is more plausible, yet still not convincing.[647] The Helots

lived in the rural villages, as _adscripti glebæ_, cultivating

their lands and paying over their rent to the master at Sparta,

but enjoying their homes, wives, families, and mutual neighborly

feelings, apart from the master’s view. They were never sold out

of the country, and probably never sold at all; belonging, not so

much to the master as to the state, which constantly called upon

them for military service, and recompensed their bravery or activity

with a grant of freedom. Meno, the Thessalian of Pharsalus, took

out three hundred Penestæ of his own, to aid the Athenians against

Amphipolis: these Thessalian Penestæ were in many points analogous

to the Helots, but no individual Spartan possessed the like power

over the latter. The Helots were thus a part of the state, having

their domestic and social sympathies developed, a certain power of

acquiring property,[648] and the consciousness of Grecian lineage and

dialect,—points of marked superiority over the foreigners who formed

the slave population of Athens or Chios. They seem to have been noway

inferior to any village population of Greece; while the Grecian

observer sympathized with them more strongly than with the bought

slaves of other states,—not to mention that their homogeneous aspect,

their numbers, and their employment in military service, rendered

them more conspicuous to the eye.

[645] The village-character of the Helots is distinctly marked

by Livy, xxxiv. 27, in describing the inflictions of the

despot Nabis: “Ilotarum quidam (hi sunt jam inde antiquitus

_castellani_, agreste genus) transfugere voluisse insimulati, per

omnes _vicos_ sub verberibus acti necantur.”

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

Ἀρκάδων χώρῃ.

[647] See O. Müller, Dorians, iii. 3, 1; Ephorus ap. Strabo,

viii. p. 365: Harpocration, v. Εἵλωτες.

[648] Kleomenes the Third, offered manumission to every Helot,

who could pay down five Attic minæ: he was in great immediate

want of money, and he raised, by this means, five hundred

talents. Six thousand Helots must thus have been in a condition

to find five minæ each, which was a very considerable sum

(Plutarch, Kleomenes, c. 23).

The service in the Spartan house was all performed by members of the

Helot class; for there seem to have been few, if any, other slaves in

the country. The various anecdotes which are told respecting their

treatment at Sparta, betoken less of cruelty than of ostentatious

scorn,[649]—a sentiment which we are noway surprised to discover

among the citizens at the mess-table. But the great mass of the

Helots, who dwelt in the country, were objects of a very different

sentiment on the part of the Spartan ephors, who knew their bravery,

energy, and standing discontent, and yet were forced to employ

them as an essential portion of the state army. The Helots commonly

served as light-armed, in which capacity the Spartan hoplites could

not dispense with their attendance. At the battle of Platæa, every

Spartan hoplite had seven Helots,[650] and every Periœkic hoplite

one Helot, to attend him:[651] but, even in camp, the Spartan

arrangements were framed to guard against any sudden mutiny of these

light-armed companions, while, at home, the citizen habitually

kept his shield disjoined from its holding-ring, to prevent the

possibility of its being snatched for the like purpose. Sometimes,

select Helots were clothed in heavy armor, and thus served in

the ranks, receiving manumission from the state as the reward of

distinguished bravery.[652]

[649] Such is the statement, that Helots were compelled to appear

in a state of drunkenness, in order to excite in the youths a

sentiment of repugnance against intoxication (Plutarch, Lycurg.

c. 28; also, Adversus Stoicos de Commun. Notit. c. 19, p. 1067).

[650] Herod. ix. 29. The Spartans, at Thermopylæ, seem to have

been attended each by only one Helot (vii. 229).

O. Müller seems to consider that the light-armed, who attended

the Periœkic hoplites at Platæa, were _not_ Helots (Dor. iii. 3,

6). Herodotus does not distinctly say that they were so, but I

see no reason for admitting two different classes of light-armed

in the Spartan military force.

The calculation which Müller gives of the number of Periœki and

Helots altogether, proceeds upon very untrustworthy data. Among

them is to be noticed his supposition that πολιτικὴ χώρα means

the district of Sparta as distinguished from Laconia, which is

contrary to the passage in Polybius (vi. 45): πολιτικὴ χώρα, in

Polybius, means the territory of the state generally.

[651] Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. 12, 4; Kritias, De Lacedæm. Repub.

ap. Libanium, Orat. de Servitute, t. ii. p. 85, Reisk. ὡς

ἀπιστίας εἵνεκα τῆς πρὸς τοὺς Εἵλωτας ἐξαιρεῖ μὲν Σπαρτιατὴς

οἴκοι τῆς ἄσπιδος τὴν πόρπακα, etc.

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

But Sparta, even at the maximum of her power, was more than once

endangered by the reality, and always beset with the apprehension,

of Helotic revolt. To prevent or suppress it, the ephors submitted

to insert express stipulations for aid in their treaties with

Athens,—to invite Athenian troops into the heart of Laconia,—and to

practice combinations of cunning and atrocity which even yet stand

without parallel in the long list of precautions for fortifying

unjust dominion. It was in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war,

after the Helots had been called upon for signal military efforts

in various ways, and when the Athenians and Messenians were in

possession of Pylus, that the ephors felt especially apprehensive

of an outbreak. Anxious to single out the most forward and daring

Helots, as the men from whom they had most to dread, they issued

proclamation that every member of that class who had rendered

distinguished services should make his claims known at Sparta,

promising liberty to the most deserving. A large number of Helots

came forward to claim the boon: not less than two thousand of them

were approved, formally manumitted, and led in solemn procession

round the temples, with garlands on their heads, as an inauguration

to their coming life of freedom. But the treacherous garland only

marked them out as victims for the sacrifice: every man of them

forthwith disappeared,—the manner of their death was an untold

mystery.

For this dark and bloody deed, Thucydidês is our witness,[653]

and Thucydidês describing a contemporary matter into which he had

inquired. Upon any less evidence we should have hesitated to believe

the statement; but standing as it thus does above all suspicion,

it speaks volumes as to the inhuman character of the Lacedæmonian

government, while it lays open to us at the same time the intensity

of their fears from the Helots. In the assassination of this fated

regiment of brave men, a large number of auxiliaries and instruments

must have been concerned: yet Thucydidês, with all his inquiries,

could not find out how any of them perished: he tells us, that

no man knew. We see here a fact which demonstrates unequivocally

the impenetrable mystery in which the proceedings of the Spartan

government were wrapped,—the absence not only of public discussion,

but of public curiosity,—and the perfection with which the ephors

reigned over the will, the hands, and the tongues, of their Spartan

subjects. The Venetian Council of Ten, with all the facilities for

nocturnal drowning which their city presented, could hardly have

accomplished so vast a _coup-d’état_ with such invisible means. And

we may judge from hence, even if we had no other evidence, how little

the habits of a public assembly could have suited either the temper

of mind or the march of government at Sparta.

[653] Thucyd. iv. 80. οἱ δὲ οὐ πολλῷ ὕστερον ἠφάνισάν τε αὐτοὺς,

καὶ οὐδεὶς ᾔσθετο ὅτῳ τρόπῳ ἕκαστος διεφθάρη.