Return of the Heraclidae.--The Spartan Constitution and Habits.--The
first and second Messenian War.
I. We have already seen, that while the Dorians remained in Thessaly,
the Achaeans possessed the greater part of the Peloponnesus. But,
under the title of the Return of the Heraclidae (or the descendants of
Hercules), an important and lasting revolution established the Dorians
in the kingdoms of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The true nature of this
revolution has only been rendered more obscure by modern ingenuity,
which has abandoned the popular accounts for suppositions still more
improbable and romantic. The popular accounts run thus:--Persecuted
by Eurystheus, king of Argos, the sons of Hercules, with their friends
and followers, are compelled to take refuge in Attica. Assisted by
the Athenians, they defeat and slay Eurystheus, and regain the
Peloponnesus. A pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger from
offended heaven, drives them again into Attica. An oracle declares
that they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage at
sea. Wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make for
the Corinthian Isthmus. At the entrance of the Peloponnesus they are
met by the assembled arms of the Achaeans, Ionians, and Arcadians.
Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, proposes the issue of a single
combat. Echemus, king of Tegea, is selected by the Peloponnesians.
He meets and slays Hyllus, and the Heraclidae engage not to renew the
invasion for one hundred years. Nevertheless, Cleodaeus, the son, and
Aristomachus, the grandson, of Hyllus, successively attempt to renew
the enterprise, and in vain. The three sons of Aristomachus
(Aristodemus, Temenus, and Cresphontes), receive from Apollo himself
the rightful interpretation of the oracle. It was by the Straits of
Rhium, across a channel which rendered the distance between the
opposing shores only five stadia, that they were ordained to pass; and
by the Return of the third fruit, the third generation was denoted.
The time had now arrived:--with the assistance of the Dorians, the
Aetolians, and the Locrians, the descendants of Hercules crossed the
strait, and established their settlement in Peloponnesus (B. C. 1048).
II. Whether in the previous expeditions the Dorians had assisted the
Heraclidae, is a matter of dispute--it is not a matter of importance.
Whether these Heraclidae were really descendants of the Achaean
prince, and the rightful heritors of a Peloponnesian throne, is a
point equally contested and equally frivolous. It is probable enough
that the bold and warlike tribe of Thessaly might have been easily
allured, by the pretext of reinstating the true royal line, into an
enterprise which might plant them in safer and more wide domains, and
that while the prince got the throne, the confederates obtained the
country [125]. All of consequence to establish is, that the Dorians
shared in the expedition, which was successful--that by time and
valour they obtained nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus--that they
transplanted the Doric character and institutions to their new
possessions, and that the Return of the Heraclidae is, in fact, the
popular name for the conquest of the Dorians. Whatever distinction
existed between the Achaean Heraclidae and the Doric race, had
probably been much effaced during the long absence of the former among
foreign tribes, and after their establishment in the Peloponnesus it
soon became entirely lost. But still the legend that assigned the
blood of Hercules to the royalty of Sparta received early and implicit
credence, and Cleomenes, king of that state, some centuries afterward,
declared himself not Doric, but Achaean.
Of the time employed in consummating the conquest of the invaders we
are unable to determine--but, by degrees, Sparta, Argos, Corinth, and
Messene, became possessed by the Dorians; the Aetolian confederates
obtained Elis. Some of the Achaeans expelled the Ionians from the
territory they held in the Peloponnesus, and gave to it the name it
afterward retained, of Achaia. The expelled Ionians took refuge with
the Athenians, their kindred race.
The fated house of Pelops swept away by this irruption, Sparta fell to
the lot of Procles and Eurysthenes [126], sons of Aristodemus, fifth
in descent from Hercules; between these princes the royal power was
divided, so that the constitution always acknowledged two kings--one
from each of the Heracleid families. The elder house was called the
Agids, or descendants of Agis, son of Eurysthenes; the latter, the
Eurypontids, from Eurypon, descendant of Procles. Although Sparta,
under the new dynasty, appears to have soon arrogated the pre-eminence
over the other states of the Peloponnesus, it was long before she
achieved the conquest even of the cities in her immediate
neighbourhood. The Achaeans retained the possession of Amyclae, built
upon a steep rock, and less than three miles from Sparta, for more
than two centuries and a half after the first invasion of the Dorians.
And here the Achaeans guarded the venerable tombs of Cassandra and
Agamemnon.
III. The consequences of the Dorian invasion, if slowly developed,
were great and lasting. That revolution not only changed the
character of the Peloponnesus--it not only called into existence the
iron race of Sparta--but the migrations which it caused made the
origin of the Grecian colonies in Asia Minor. It developed also those
seeds of latent republicanism which belonged to the Dorian
aristocracies, and which finally supplanted the monarchical
government--through nearly the whole of civilized Greece. The
revolution once peacefully consummated, migrations no longer disturbed
to any extent the continent of Greece, and the various tribes became
settled in their historic homes.
IV. The history of Sparta, till the time of Lycurgus, is that of a
state maintaining itself with difficulty amid surrounding and hostile
neighbours; the power of the chiefs diminished the authority of the
kings; and while all without was danger, all within was turbulence.
Still the very evils to which the Spartans were subjected--their
paucity of numbers--their dissensions with their neighbours--their
pent up and encompassed situation in their mountainous confines--even
the preponderating power of the warlike chiefs, among whom the unequal
divisions of property produced constant feuds--served to keep alive
the elements of the great Doric character; and left it the task of the
first legislative genius rather to restore and to harmonize, than to
invent and create.
As I am writing the history, not of Greece, but of Athens, I do not
consider it necessary that I should detail the legendary life of
Lycurgus. Modern writers have doubted his existence, but without
sufficient reason:--such assaults on our belief are but the amusements
of skepticism. All the popular accounts of Lycurgus agree in this--
that he was the uncle of the king (Charilaus, an infant), and held the
rank of protector--that unable successfully to confront a powerful
faction raised against him, he left Sparta and travelled into Crete,
where all the ancient Doric laws and manners were yet preserved,
vigorous and unadulterated. There studying the institutions of Minos,
he beheld the model for those of Sparta. Thence he is said to have
passed into Asia Minor, and to have been the first who collected and
transported to Greece the poems of Homer [127], hitherto only
partially known in that country. According to some writers, he
travelled also into Egypt; and could we credit one authority, which
does not satisfy even the credulous Plutarch, he penetrated into Spain
and Libya, and held converse with the Gymnosophists of India.
Returned to Sparta, after many solicitations, he found the state in
disorder: no definite constitution appears to have existed; no laws
were written. The division of the regal authority between two kings
must have produced jealousy--and jealousy, faction. And the power so
divided weakened the monarchic energy without adding to the liberties
of the people. A turbulent nobility--rude, haughty mountain chiefs--
made the only part of the community that could benefit by the weakness
of the crown, and feuds among themselves prevented their power from
becoming the regular and organized authority of a government [128].
Such disorders induced prince and people to desire a reform; the
interference of Lycurgus was solicited; his rank and his travels gave
him importance; and he had the wisdom to increase it by obtaining from
Delphi (the object of the implicit reverence of the Dorians) an oracle
in his favour.
Thus called upon and thus encouraged, Lycurgus commenced his task. I
enter not into the discussion whether he framed an entirely new
constitution, or whether he restored the spirit of one common to his
race and not unfamiliar to Sparta. Common sense seems to me
sufficient to assure us of the latter. Let those who please believe
that one man, without the intervention of arms--not as a conqueror,
but a friend--could succeed in establishing a constitution, resting
not upon laws, but manners--not upon force, but usage--utterly hostile
to all the tastes, desires, and affections of human nature: moulding
every the minutest detail of social life into one system--that system
offering no temptation to sense, to ambition, to the desire of
pleasure, or the love of gain, or the propensity to ease--but painful,
hard, steril, and unjoyous;--let those who please believe that a
system so created could at once be received, be popularly embraced,
and last uninterrupted, unbroken, and without exciting even the desire
of change for four hundred years, without having had any previous
foundation in the habits of a people--without being previously rooted
by time, custom, superstition, and character into their breasts. For
my part, I know that all history furnishes no other such example; and
I believe that no man was ever so miraculously endowed with the power
to conquer nature. [129]
But we have not the smallest reason, the slightest excuse, for so
pliant a credulity. We look to Crete, in which, previous to Lycurgus,
the Dorians had established their laws and customs, and we see at once
the resemblance to the leading features of the institutions of
Lycurgus; we come with Aristotle to the natural conclusion, that what
was familiar to the Dorian Crete was not unknown to the Dorian Sparta,
and that Lycurgus did not innovate, but restore and develop, the laws
and the manners which, under domestic dissensions, might have
undergone a temporary and superficial change, but which were deeply
implanted in the national character and the Doric habits. That the
regulations of Lycurgus were not regarded as peculiar to Sparta, but
as the most perfect development of the Dorian constitution, we learn
from Pindar [130], when he tells us that “the descendants of Pamphylus
and of the Heraclidae wish always to retain the Doric institutions of
Aegimius.” Thus regarded, the legislation of Lycurgus loses its
miraculous and improbable character, while we still acknowledge
Lycurgus himself as a great and profound statesman, adopting the only
theory by which reform can be permanently wrought, and suiting the
spirit of his laws to the spirit of the people they were to govern.
When we know that his laws were not written, that he preferred
engraving them only on the hearts of his countrymen, we know at once
that he must have legislated in strict conformity to their early
prepossessions and favourite notions. That the laws were unwritten
would alone be a proof how little he introduced of what was alien and
unknown.
V. I proceed to give a brief, but I trust a sufficient outline, of
the Spartan constitution, social and political, without entering into
prolix and frivolous discussions as to what was effected or restored
by Lycurgus--what by a later policy.
There was at Sparta a public assembly of the people (called alia), as
common to other Doric states, which usually met every full moon--upon
great occasions more often. The decision of peace and war--the final
ratification of all treaties with foreign powers--the appointment to
the office of counsellor, and other important dignities--the
imposition of new laws--a disputed succession to the throne,--were
among those matters which required the assent of the people. Thus
there was the show and semblance of a democracy, but we shall find
that the intention and origin of the constitution were far from
democratic. “If the people should opine perversely, the elders and
the princes shall dissent.” Such was an addition to the Rhetra of
Lycurgus. The popular assembly ratified laws, but it could propose
none--it could not even alter or amend the decrees that were laid
before it. It appears that only the princes, the magistrates, and
foreign ambassadors had the privilege to address it.
The main business of the state was prepared by the Gerusia, or council
of elders, a senate consisting of thirty members, inclusive of the two
kings, who had each but a simple vote in the assembly. This council
was in its outline like the assemblies common to every Dorian state.
Each senator was required to have reached the age of sixty; he was
chosen by the popular assembly, not by vote, but by acclamation. The
mode of election was curious. The candidates presented themselves
successively before the assembly, while certain judges were enclosed
in an adjacent room where they could hear the clamour of the people
without seeing the person, of the candidate. On him whom they
adjudged to have been most applauded the election fell. A mode of
election open to every species of fraud, and justly condemned by
Aristotle as frivolous and puerile [131]. Once elected, the senator
retained his dignity for life: he was even removed from all
responsibility to the people. That Mueller should consider this an
admirable institution, “a splendid monument of early Grecian customs,”
seems to me not a little extraordinary. I can conceive no elective
council less practically good than one to which election is for life,
and in which power is irresponsible. That the institution was felt to
be faulty is apparent, not because it was abolished, but because its
more important functions became gradually invaded and superseded by a
third legislative power, of which I shall speak presently.
The original duties of the Gerusia were to prepare the decrees and
business to be submitted to the people; they had the power of
inflicting death or degradation without written laws, they interpreted
custom, and were intended to preserve and transmit it. The power of
the kings may be divided into two heads--power at home--power abroad:
power as a prince--power as a general. In the first it was limited
and inconsiderable. Although the kings presided over a separate
tribunal, the cases brought before their court related only to repairs
of roads, to the superintendence of the intercourse with other states,
and to questions of inheritance and adoption.
When present at the council they officiated as presidents, but without
any power of dictation; and, if absent, their place seems easily to
have been supplied. They united the priestly with the regal
character; and to the descendants of a demigod a certain sanctity was
attached, visible in the ceremonies both at demise and at the
accession to the throne, which appeared to Herodotus to savour rather
of Oriental than Hellenic origin. But the respect which the Spartan
monarch received neither endowed him with luxury nor exempted him from
control. He was undistinguished by his garb--his mode of life, from
the rest of the citizens. He was subjected to other authorities,
could be reprimanded, fined, suspended, exiled, put to death. If he
went as ambassador to foreign states, spies were not unfrequently sent
with him, and colleagues the most avowedly hostile to his person
associated in the mission. Thus curbed and thus confined was his
authority at home, and his prerogative as a king. But by law he was
the leader of the Spartan armies. He assumed the command--he crossed
the boundaries, and the limited magistrate became at once an imperial
despot! [132] No man could question--no law circumscribed his power.
He raised armies, collected money in foreign states, and condemned to
death without even the formality of a trial. Nothing, in short,
curbed his authority, save his responsibility on return. He might be
a tyrant as a general; but he was to account for the tyranny when he
relapsed into a king. But this distinction was one of the wisest
parts of the Spartan system; for war requires in a leader all the
license of a despot; and triumph, decision, and energy can only be
secured by the unfettered exercise of a single will. Nor did early
Rome owe the extent of her conquests to any cause more effective than
the unlicensed discretion reposed by the senate in the general. [133]
VI. We have now to examine the most active and efficient part of the
government, viz., the Institution of the Ephors. Like the other
components of the Spartan constitution, the name and the office of
ephor were familiar to other states in the great Dorian family; but in
Sparta the institution soon assumed peculiar features, or rather,
while the inherent principles of the monarchy and the gerusia remained
stationary, those of the ephors became expanded and developed. It is
clear that the later authority of the ephors was never designed by
Lycurgus or the earlier legislators. It is entirely at variance with
the confined aristocracy which was the aim of the Spartan, and of
nearly every genuine Doric [134] constitution. It made a democracy as
it were by stealth. This powerful body consisted of five persons,
chosen annually by the people. In fact, they may be called the
representatives of the popular will--the committee, as it were, of the
popular council. Their original power seems to have been imperfectly
designed; it soon became extensive and encroaching. At first the
ephoralty was a tribunal for civil, as the gerusia was for criminal,
causes; it exercised a jurisdiction over the Helots and Perioeci, over
the public market, and the public revenue. But its character
consisted in this:--it was strictly a popular body, chosen by the
people for the maintenance of their interests. Agreeably to this
character, it soon appears arrogating the privilege of instituting an
inquiry into the conduct of all officials except the counsellors.
Every eighth year, selecting a dark night when the moon withheld her
light, the ephors watched the aspect of the heavens, and if any
shooting star were visible in the expanse, the kings were adjudged to
have offended the Deity and were suspended from their office until
acquitted of their guilt by the oracle of Delphi or the priests at
Olympia. Nor was this prerogative of adjudging the descendants of
Hercules confined to a superstitious practice: they summoned the king
before them, no less than the meanest of the magistrates, to account
for imputed crimes. In a court composed of the counsellors (or
gerusia), and various other magistrates, they appeared at once as
accusers and judges; and, dispensing with appeal to a popular
assembly, subjected even royalty to a trial of life and death. Before
the Persian war they sat in judgment on the King Cleomenes for an
accusation of bribery;--just after the Persian war, they resolved upon
the execution of the Regent Pausanias. In lesser offences they acted
without the formality of this council, and fined or reprimanded their
kings for the affability of their manners, or the size [135] of their
wives. Over education--over social habits-over the regulations
relative to ambassadors and strangers--over even the marshalling of
armies and the number of troops, they extended their inquisitorial
jurisdiction. They became, in fact, the actual government of the
state.
It is easy to perceive that it was in the nature of things that the
institution of the ephors should thus encroach until it became the
prevalent power. Its influence was the result of the vicious
constitution of the gerusia, or council. Had that assembly been
properly constituted, there would have been no occasion for the
ephors. The gerusia was evidently meant, by the policy of Lycurgus,
and by its popular mode of election, for the only representative
assembly. But the absurdity of election for life, with irresponsible
powers, was sufficient to limit its acceptation among the people. Of
two assemblies--the ephors and the gerusia--we see the one elected
annually, the other for life--the one responsible to the people, the
other not--the one composed of men, busy, stirring, ambitious, in the
vigour of life--the other of veterans, past the ordinary stimulus of
exertion, and regarding the dignity of office rather as the reward of
a life than the opening to ambition. Of two such assemblies it is
easy to foretell which would lose, and which would augment, authority.
It is also easy to see, that as the ephors increased in importance,
they, and not the gerusia, would become the check to the kingly
authority. To whom was the king accountable? To the people:--the
ephors were the people’s representatives! This part of the Spartan
constitution has not, I think, been sufficiently considered in what
seems to me its true light; namely, that of a representative
government. The ephoralty was the focus of the popular power. Like
an American Congress or an English House of Commons, it prevented the
action of the people by acting in behalf of the people. To
representatives annually chosen, the multitude cheerfully left the
management of their interests [136]. Thus it was true that the ephors
prevented the encroachments of the popular assembly;--but how? by
encroaching themselves, and in the name of the people! When we are
told that Sparta was free from those democratic innovations constant
in Ionian states, we are not told truly. The Spartan populace was
constantly innovating, not openly, as in the noisy Agora of Athens,
but silently and ceaselessly, through their delegated ephors. And
these dread and tyrant FIVE--an oligarchy constructed upon principles
the most liberal--went on increasing their authority, as civilization,
itself increasing, rendered the public business more extensive and
multifarious, until they at length became the agents of that fate
which makes the principle of change at once the vital and the
consuming element of states. The ephors gradually destroyed the
constitution of Sparta; but, without the ephors, it may be reasonably
doubted whether the constitution would have survived half as long.
Aristotle (whose mighty intellect is never more luminously displayed
than when adjudging the practical workings of various forms of
government) paints the evils of the ephoral magistrature, but
acknowledges that it gave strength and durability to the state.
“For,” [137] he says, “the people were contented on account of their
ephors, who were chosen from the whole body.” He might have added,
that men so chosen, rarely too selected from the chiefs, but often
from the lower ranks, were the ablest and most active of the
community, and that the fewness of their numbers gave energy and unity
to their councils. Had the other part of the Spartan constitution
(absurdly panegyrized) been so formed as to harmonize with, even in
checking, the power of the ephors; and, above all, had it not been for
the lamentable errors of a social system, which, by seeking to exclude
the desire of gain, created a terrible reaction, and made the Spartan
magistrature the most venal and corrupt in Greece--the ephors might
have sufficed to develop all the best principles of government. For
they went nearly to recognise the soundest philosophy of the
representative system, being the smallest number of representatives
chosen, without restriction, from the greatest number of electors, for
short periods, and under strong responsibilities. [138]
I pass now to the social system of the Spartans.
VII. If we consider the situation of the Spartans at the time of
Lycurgus, and during a long subsequent period, we see at once that to
enable them to live at all, they must be accustomed to the life of a
camp;--they were a little colony of soldiers, supporting themselves,
hand and foot, in a hostile country, over a population that detested
them. In such a situation certain qualities were not praiseworthy
alone--they were necessary. To be always prepared for a foe--to be
constitutionally averse to indolence--to be brave, temperate, and
hardy, were the only means by which to escape the sword of the
Messenian and to master the hatred of the Helot. Sentinels they were,
and they required the virtues of sentinels: fortunately, these
necessary qualities were inherent in the bold mountain tribes that had
long roved among the crags of Thessaly, and wrestled for life with the
martial Lapithae. But it now remained to mould these qualities into a
system, and to educate each individual in the habits which could best
preserve the community. Accordingly the child was reared, from the
earliest age, to a life of hardship, discipline, and privation; he was
starved into abstinence;--he was beaten into fortitude;--he was
punished without offence, that he might be trained to bear without a
groan;--the older he grew, till he reached manhood, the severer the
discipline he underwent. The intellectual education was little
attended to: for what had sentinels to do with the sciences or the
arts? But the youth was taught acuteness, promptness, and
discernment--for such are qualities essential to the soldier. He was
stimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to say
little, and to the point. An aphorism bounded his philosophy. Such
an education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple and
hardy habits--in indomitable patience--in quick sagacity. But there
were other qualities necessary to the position of the Spartan, and
those scarce so praiseworthy--viz., craft and simulation. He was one
of a scanty, if a valiant, race. No single citizen could be spared
the state: it was often better to dupe than to fight an enemy.
Accordingly, the boy was trained to cunning as to courage. He was
driven by hunger, or the orders of the leader over him, to obtain his
food, in house or in field, by stealth;--if undiscovered, he was
applauded; if detected, punished. Two main-springs of action were
constructed within him--the dread of shame and the love of country.
These were motives, it is true, common to all the Grecian states, but
they seem to have been especially powerful in Sparta. But the last
produced its abuse in one of the worst vices of the national
character. The absorbing love for his native Sparta rendered the
citizen singularly selfish towards other states, even kindred to that
which he belonged to. Fearless as a Spartan,--when Sparta was
unmenaced he was lukewarm as a Greek. And this exaggerated yet
sectarian patriotism, almost peculiar to Sparta, was centred, not only
in the safety and greatness of the state, but in the inalienable
preservation of its institutions;--a feeling carefully sustained by a
policy exceedingly jealous of strangers [139]. Spartans were not
permitted to travel. Foreigners were but rarely permitted a residence
within the city: and the Spartan dislike to Athens arose rather from
fear of the contamination of her principles than from envy at the
lustre of her fame. When we find (as our history proceeds) the
Spartans dismissing their Athenian ally from the siege of Ithome, we
recognise their jealousy of the innovating character of their
brilliant neighbour;--they feared the infection of the democracy of
the Agora. This attachment to one exclusive system of government
characterized all the foreign policy of Sparta, and crippled the
national sense by the narrowest bigotry and the obtusest prejudice.
Wherever she conquered, she enforced her own constitution, no matter
how inimical to the habits of the people, never dreaming that what was
good for Sparta might be bad for any other state. Thus, when she
imposed the Thirty Tyrants on Athens, she sought, in fact, to
establish her own gerusia; and, no doubt, she imagined it would
become, not a curse, but a blessing to a people accustomed to the
wildest freedom of a popular assembly. Though herself, through the
tyranny of the ephors, the unconscious puppet of the democratic
action, she recoiled from all other and more open forms of democracy
as from a pestilence. The simple habits of the Spartan life assisted
to confirm the Spartan prejudices. A dinner, a fine house, these
sturdy Dorians regarded as a pitiable sign of folly. They had no
respect for any other cultivation of the mind than that which produced
bold men and short sentences. Them, nor the science of Aristotle, nor
the dreams of Plato were fitted to delight. Music and dancing were
indeed cultivated among them, and with success and skill; but the
music and the dance were always of one kind--it was a crime to vary an
air [140] or invent a measure. A martial, haughty, and superstitious
tribe can scarcely fail to be attached to poetry,--war is ever the
inspiration of song,--and the eve of battle to a Spartan was the
season of sacrifice to the Muses. The poetical temperament seems to
have been common among this singular people. But the dread of
innovation, when carried to excess, has even worse effect upon
literary genius than legislative science; and though Sparta produced a
few poets gifted, doubtless, with the skill to charm the audience they
addressed, not a single one of the number has bequeathed to us any
other memorial than his name. Greece, which preserved, as in a common
treasury, whatever was approved by her unerring taste, her wonderful
appreciation of the beautiful, regarded the Spartan poetry with an
indifference which convinces us of its want of value. Thebes, and not
Sparta, has transmitted to us the Dorian spirit in its noblest shape:
and in Pindar we find how lofty the verse that was inspired by its
pride, its daring, and its sublime reverence for glory and the gods.
As for commerce, manufactures, agriculture,--the manual arts--such
peaceful occupations were beneath the dignity of a Spartan--they were
strictly prohibited by law as by pride, and were left to the Perioeci
or the Helots.
VIII. It was evidently necessary to this little colony to be united.
Nothing unites men more than living together in common. The syssitia,
or public tables, an institution which was common in Crete, in Corinth
[141], and in Megara, effected this object in a mode agreeable to the
Dorian manners. The society at each table was composed of men
belonging to the same tribe or clan. New members could only be
elected by consent of the rest. Each head of a family in Sparta paid
for his own admission and that of the other members of his house. Men
only belonged to them. The youths and boys had their own separate
table. The young children, however, sat with their parents on low
stools, and received a half share. Women were excluded. Despite the
celebrated black broth, the table seems to have been sufficiently, if
not elegantly, furnished. And the second course, consisting of
voluntary gifts, which was supplied by the poorer members from the
produce of the chase--by the wealthier from their flocks, orchards,
poultry, etc., furnished what by Spartans were considered dainties.
Conversation was familiar, and even jocose, and relieved by songs.
Thus the public tables (which even the kings were ordinarily obliged
to attend) were rendered agreeable and inviting by the attractions of
intimate friendship and unrestrained intercourse.
IX. The obscurest question relative to the Spartan system is that
connected with property. It was evidently the intention of Lycurgus
or the earlier legislators to render all the divisions of land and
wealth as equal as possible. But no law can effect what society
forbids. The equality of one generation cannot be transmitted to
another. It may be easy to prevent a great accumulation of wealth,
but what can prevent poverty? While the acquisition of lands by
purchase was forbidden, no check was imposed on its acquisition by
gift or testament; and in the time of Aristotle land had become the
monopoly of the few. Sparta, like other states, had consequently her
inequalities--her comparative rich and her positive poor--from an
early period in her known history. As land descended to women, so
marriages alone established great disparities of property. “Were the
whole territory,” says Aristotle, “divided into five portions, two
would belong to the women.” The regulation by which the man who could
not pay his quota to the syssitia was excluded from the public tables,
proves that it was not an uncommon occurrence to be so excluded; and
indeed that exclusion grew at last so common, that the public tables
became an aristocratic instead of a democratic institution.
Aristotle, in later times, makes it an objection to the ephoral
government that poor men were chosen ephors, and that their venality
arose from their indigence--a moral proof that poverty in Sparta must
have been more common than has generally been supposed [142];--men of
property would not have chosen their judges and dictators in paupers.
Land was held and cultivated by the Helots, who paid a certain fixed
proportion of the produce to their masters. It is said that Lycurgus
forbade the use of gold and silver, and ordained an iron coinage; but
gold and silver were at that time unknown as coins in Sparta, and iron
was a common medium of exchange throughout Greece. The interdiction
of the precious metals was therefore of later origin. It seems to
have only related to private Spartans. For those who, not being
Spartans of the city--that is to say, for the Laconians or Perioeci--
engaged in commerce, the interdiction could not have existed. A more
pernicious regulation it is impossible to conceive. While it
effectually served to cramp the effects of emulation--to stint the
arts--to limit industry and enterprise--it produced the direct object
it was intended to prevent;--it infected the whole state with the
desire of gold--it forbade wealth to be spent, in order that wealth
might be hoarded; every man seems to have desired gold precisely
because he could make very little use of it! From the king to the
Helot [143], the spirit of covetousness spread like a disease. No
state in Greece was so open to bribery--no magistracy so corrupt as
the ephors. Sparta became a nation of misers precisely because it
could not become a nation of spendthrifts. Such are the results which
man produces when his legislation deposes nature!
X. In their domestic life the Spartans, like the rest of the Greeks,
had but little pleasure in the society of their wives. At first the
young husband only visited his bride by stealth--to be seen in company
with her was a disgrace. But the women enjoyed a much greater freedom
and received a higher respect in Sparta than elsewhere; the soft
Asiatic distinctions in dignity between the respective sexes did not
reach the hardy mountaineers of Lacedaemon; the wife was the mother of
men! Brought up in robust habits, accustomed to athletic exercises,
her person exposed in public processions and dances, which, but for
the custom that made decorous even indecency itself, would have been
indeed licentious, the Spartan maiden, strong, hardy, and half a
partaker in the ceremonies of public life, shared the habits, aided
the emulation, imbibed the patriotism, of her future consort. And, by
her sympathy with his habits and pursuits, she obtained an influence
and ascendency over him which was unknown in the rest of Greece.
Dignified on public occasions, the Spartan matron was deemed, however,
a virago in private life; and she who had no sorrow for a slaughtered
son, had very little deference for a living husband. Her obedience to
her spouse appears to have been the most cheerfully rendered upon
those delicate emergencies when the service of the state required her
submission to the embraces of another! [144]
XI. We now come to the most melancholy and gloomy part of the Spartan
system--the condition of the Helots.
The whole fabric of the Spartan character rested upon slavery. If it
were beneath a Spartan to labour--to maintain himself--to cultivate
land--to build a house--to exercise an art;--to do aught else than to
fight an enemy--to choose an ephor--to pass from the chase or the
palaestra to the public tables--to live a hero in war--an aristocrat
in peace,--it was clearly a supreme necessity to his very existence as
a citizen, and even as a human being, that there should be a
subordinate class of persons employed in the occupations rejected by
himself, and engaged in providing for the wants of this privileged
citizen. Without Helots the Spartan was the most helpless of human
beings. Slavery taken from the Spartan state, the state would fall at
once! It is no wonder, therefore, that this institution should have
been guarded with an extraordinary jealousy--nor that extraordinary
jealousy should have produced extraordinary harshness. It is exactly
in proportion to the fear of losing power that men are generally
tyrannical in the exercise of it. Nor is it from cruelty of
disposition, but from the anxious curse of living among men whom
social circumstances make his enemies because his slaves, that a
despot usually grows ferocious, and that the urgings of suspicion
create the reign of terror. Besides the political necessity of a
strict and unrelaxed slavery, a Spartan would also be callous to the
sufferings, from his contempt for the degradation, of the slave; as he
despised the employments abandoned to the Helot, even so would he
despise the wretch that exercised them. Thus the motives that render
power most intolerant combined in the Spartan in his relations to the
Helot--viz., 1st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curb
were ever relaxed--2dly, consummate contempt for the individual he
debased. The habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary. When the
slave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for a
moment he rebels. He has become your deadliest foe, and
self-preservation renders it necessary that him whom you provoke to
vengeance you should crush to impotence. The longer, therefore, the
Spartan government endured, the more cruel became the condition of the
Helots. Not in Sparta were those fine distinctions of rank which
exist where slavery is unknown, binding class with class by ties of
mutual sympathy and dependance--so that Poverty itself may be a
benefactor to Destitution. Even among the poor the Helot had no
brotherhood! he was as necessary to the meanest as to the highest
Spartan--his wrongs gave its very existence to the commonwealth. We
cannot, then, wonder at the extreme barbarity with which the Spartans
treated this miserable race; and we can even find something of excuse
for a cruelty which became at last the instinct of self-preservation.
Revolt and massacre were perpetually before a Spartan’s eyes; and what
man will be gentle and unsuspecting to those who wait only the moment
to murder him?
XII. The origin of the Helot race is not clearly ascertained: the
popular notion that they were the descendants of the inhabitants of
Helos, a maritime town subdued by the Spartans, and that they were
degraded to servitude after a revolt, is by no means a conclusive
account. Whether, as Mueller suggests, they were the original slave
population of the Achaeans, or whether, as the ancient authorities
held, they were such of the Achaeans themselves as had most
obstinately resisted the Spartan sword, and had at last surrendered
without conditions, is a matter it is now impossible to determine.
For my own part, I incline to the former supposition, partly because
of the wide distinction between the enslaved Helots and the (merely)
inferior Perioeci, who were certainly Achaeans; a distinction which I
do not think the different manner in which the two classes were
originally subdued would suffice to account for; partly because I
doubt whether the handful of Dorians who first fixed their dangerous
settlement in Laconia could have effectually subjugated the Helots, if
the latter had not previously been inured to slavery. The objection
to this hypothesis--that the Helots could scarcely have so hated the
Spartans if they had merely changed masters, does not appear to me
very cogent. Under the mild and paternal chiefs of the Homeric age
[145], they might have been subjected to a much gentler servitude.
Accustomed to the manners and habits of their Achaean lords, they
might have half forgotten their condition; and though governed by
Spartans in the same external relations, it was in a very different
spirit. The sovereign contempt with which the Spartans regarded the
Helots, they would scarcely have felt for a tribe distinguished from
the more honoured Perioeci only by a sterner valour and a greater
regard for freedom; while that contempt is easily accounted for, if
its objects were the previously subdued population of a country the
Spartans themselves subdued.
The Helots were considered the property of the state--but they were
intrusted and leased, as it were, to individuals; they were bound to
the soil; even the state did not arrogate the power of selling them
out of the country; they paid to their masters a rent in corn--the
surplus profits were their own. It was easier for a Helot than for a
Spartan to acquire riches--but riches were yet more useless to him.
Some of the Helots attended their masters at the public tables, and
others were employed in all public works: they served in the field as
light-armed troops: they were occasionally emancipated, but there were
several intermediate grades between the Helot and the freeman; their
nominal duties were gentle indeed when compared with the spirit in
which they were regarded and the treatment they received. That much
exaggeration respecting the barbarity of their masters existed is
probable enough; but the exaggeration itself, among writers accustomed
to the institution of slavery elsewhere, and by no means addicted to
an overstrained humanity, is a proof of the manner in which the
treatment of the Helots was viewed by the more gentle slave-masters of
the rest of Greece. They were branded with ineffaceable dishonour: no
Helot might sing a Spartan song; if he but touched what belonged to a
Spartan it was profaned--he was the Pariah of Greece. The ephors--the
popular magistrates--the guardians of freedom--are reported by
Aristotle to have entered office in making a formal declaration of war
against the Helots--probably but an idle ceremony of disdain and
insult. We cannot believe with Plutarch, that the infamous cryptia
was instituted for the purpose he assigns--viz., that it was an
ambuscade of the Spartan youths, who dispersed themselves through the
country, and by night murdered whomsoever of the Helots they could
meet. But it is certain that a select portion of the younger Spartans
ranged the country yearly, armed with daggers, and that with the
object of attaining familiarity with military hardships was associated
that of strict, stern, and secret surveillance over the Helot
population. No Helot, perhaps, was murdered from mere wantonness; but
who does not see how many would necessarily have been butchered at the
slightest suspicion of disaffection, or for the faintest utility of
example? These miserable men were the objects of compassion to all
Greece. “It was the common opinion,” says Aelian, “that the
earthquake in Sparta was a judgment from the gods upon the Spartan
inhumanity to the Helots.” And perhaps in all history (not even
excepting that awful calmness with which the Italian historians
narrate the cruelties of a Paduan tyrant or a Venetian oligarchy)
there is no record of crime more thrilling than that dark and terrible
passage in Thucydides which relates how two thousand Helots, the best
and bravest of their tribe, were selected as for reward and freedom,
how they were led to the temples in thanksgiving to the gods--and how
they disappeared, their fate notorious--the manner of it a mystery!
XIII. Besides the Helots, the Spartans exercised an authority over
the intermediate class called the Perioeci. These were indubitably
the old Achaean race, who had been reduced, not to slavery, but to
dependance. They retained possession of their own towns, estimated in
number, after the entire conquest of Messenia, at one hundred. They
had their own different grades and classes, as the Saxons retained
theirs after the conquest of the Normans. Among these were the
traders and manufacturers of Laconia; and thus whatever art attained
of excellence in the dominions of Sparta was not Spartan but Achaean.
They served in the army, sometimes as heavy-armed, sometimes as
light-armed soldiery, according to their rank or callings; and one of
the Perioeci obtained the command at sea. They appear, indeed, to have
been universally acknowledged throughout Greece as free citizens, yet
dependant subjects. But the Spartans jealously and sternly maintained
the distinction between exemption from the servitude of a Helot, and
participation in the rights of a Dorian: the Helot lost his personal
liberty--the Perioecus his political.
XIV. The free or purely Spartan population (as not improbably with
every Doric state) was divided into three generic tribes--the Hyllean,
the Dymanatan, and the Pamphylian: of these the Hyllean (the reputed
descendants of the son of Hercules) gave to Sparta both her kings.
Besides these tribes of blood or race, there were also five local
tribes, which formed the constituency of the ephors, and thirty
subdivisions called obes--according to which the more aristocratic
offices appear to have been elected. There were also recognised in
the Spartan constitution two distinct classes--the Equals and the
Inferiors. Though these were hereditary divisions, merit might
promote a member of the last--demerit degrade a member of the first.
The Inferiors, though not boasting the nobility of the Equals, often
possessed men equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners of
England are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more important
station than among the peers--(a term somewhat synonymous with that
of Equal.) But the higher class enjoyed certain privileges which we
can but obscurely trace [146]. Forming an assembly among themselves,
it may be that they alone elected to the senate; and perhaps they were
also distinguished by some peculiarities of education--an assertion
made by Mr. Mueller, but not to my mind sufficiently established.
With respect to the origin of this distinction between the Inferiors
and the Equals, my own belief is, that it took place at some period
(possibly during the Messenian wars) when the necessities of a failing
population induced the Spartans to increase their number by the
admixture either of strangers, but (as that hypothesis is scarce
agreeable to Spartan manners) more probably of the Perioeci; the new
citizens would thus be the Inferiors. Among the Greek settlements in
Italy, it was by no means uncommon for a colony, once sufficiently
established, only to admit new settlers even from the parent state
upon inferior terms; and in like manner in Venice arose the
distinction between the gentlemen and the citizens; for when to that
sea-girt state many flocked for security and refuge, it seemed but
just to give to the prior inhabitants the distinction of hosts, and to
consider the immigrators as guests;--to the first a share in the
administration and a superior dignity--to the last only shelter and
repose.
XV. Such are the general outlines of the state and constitution of
Sparta--the firmest aristocracy that perhaps ever existed, for it was
an aristocracy on the widest base. If some Spartans were noble, every
Spartan boasted himself gentle. His birth forbade him to work, and
his only profession was the sword. The difference between the meanest
Spartan and his king was not so great as that between a Spartan and a
Perioecus. Not only the servitude of the Helots, but the subjection
of the Perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race;
and to be born a Spartan was to be born to power. The sense of
superiority and the habit of command impart a certain elevation to the
manner and the bearing. There was probably more of dignity in the
poorest Spartan citizen than in the wealthiest noble of Corinth--the
most voluptuous courtier of Syracuse. And thus the reserve, the
decorum, the stately simplicity of the Spartan mien could not but
impose upon the imagination of the other Greeks, and obtain the credit
for correspondent qualities which did not always exist beneath that
lofty exterior. To lively nations, affected by externals, there was
much in that sedate majesty of demeanour; to gallant nations, much in
that heroic valour; to superstitious nations, much in that proverbial
regard to religious rites, which characterized the Spartan race.
Declaimers on luxury admired their simplicity--the sufferers from
innovation, their adherence to ancient manners. Many a victim of the
turbulence of party in Athens sighed for the repose of the
Lacedaemonian city; and as we always exaggerate the particular evils
we endure, and admire most blindly the circumstances most opposite to
those by which we are affected, so it was often the fashion of more
intellectual states to extol the institutions of which they saw only
from afar and through a glass the apparent benefits, without examining
the concomitant defects. An Athenian might laud the Spartan
austerity, as Tacitus might laud the German barbarism; it was the
panegyric of rhetoric and satire, of wounded patriotism or
disappointed ambition. Although the ephors made the government really
and latently democratic, yet the concentration of its action made it
seemingly oligarchic; and in its secrecy, caution, vigilance, and
energy, it exhibited the best of the oligarchic features. Whatever
was democratic by law was counteracted in its results by all that was
aristocratic in custom. It was a state of political freedom, but of
social despotism. This rigidity of ancient usages was binding long
after its utility was past. For what was admirable at one time became
pernicious at another; what protected the infant state from
dissension, stinted all luxuriance of intellect in the more matured
community. It is in vain that modern writers have attempted to deny
this fact--the proof is before us. By her valour Sparta was long the
most eminent state of the most intellectual of all countries; and when
we ask what she has bequeathed to mankind--what she has left us in
rivalry to that Athens, whose poetry yet animates, whose philosophy
yet guides, whose arts yet inspire the world--we find only the names
of two or three minor poets, whose works have perished, and some half
a dozen pages of pithy aphorisms and pointed repartees!
XVI. My object in the above sketch has been to give a general outline
of the Spartan character and the Spartan system during the earlier and
more brilliant era of Athenian history, without entering into
unnecessary conjectures as to the precise period of each law and each
change. The social and political state of Sparta became fixed by her
conquest of Messenia. It is not within the plan of my undertaking to
retail at length the legendary and for the most part fabulous accounts
of the first and second Messenian wars. The first was dignified by
the fate of the Messenian hero Aristodemus, and the fall of the rocky
fortress of Ithome; its result was the conquest of Messenia (probably
begun 743 B. C., ended 723); the inhabitants were compelled to an oath
of submission, and to surrender to Sparta half their agricultural
produce. After the first Messenian war, Tarentum was founded by a
Spartan colony, composed, it is said, of youths [147], the offspring
of Spartan women and Laconian men, who were dissatisfied with their
exclusion from citizenship, and by whom the state was menaced with a
formidable conspiracy shared by the Helots. Meanwhile, the
Messenians, if conquered, were not subdued. Years rolled away, and
time had effaced the remembrance of the past sufferings, but not of
the ancient [148] liberties.
It was among the youth of Messenia that the hope of the national
deliverance was the most intensely cherished. At length, in Andania,
the revolt broke forth. A young man, pre-eminent above the rest for
birth, for valour, and for genius, was the head and the soul of the
enterprise (probably B. C. 679). His name was Aristomenes. Forming
secret alliances with the Argives and Arcadians, he at length ventured
to raise his standard, and encountered at Dera, on their own domains,
the Spartan force. The issue of the battle was indecisive; still,
however, it seems to have seriously aroused the fears of Sparta: no
further hostilities took place till the following year; the oracle at
Delphi was solemnly consulted, and the god ordained the Spartans to
seek their adviser in an Athenian. They sent to Athens and obtained
Tyrtaeus. A popular but fabulous account [149] describes him as a
lame teacher of grammar, and of no previous repute. His songs and his
exhortations are said to have produced almost miraculous effects. I
omit the romantic adventures of the hero Aristomenes, though it may be
doubted whether all Grecian history can furnish passages that surpass
the poetry of his reputed life. I leave the reader to learn elsewhere
how he hung at night a shield in the temple of Chalcioecus, in the
very city of the foe, with the inscription, that Aristomenes dedicated
to the goddess that shield from the spoils of the Spartans--how he
penetrated the secret recesses of Trophonius--how he was deterred from
entering Sparta by the spectres of Helen and the Dioscuri--how, taken
prisoner in an attempt to seize the women of Aegila, he was released
by the love of the priestess of Ceres--how, again made captive, and
cast into a deep pit with fifty of his men, he escaped by seizing hold
of a fox (attracted thither by the dead bodies), and suffering himself
to be drawn by her through dark and scarce pervious places to a hole
that led to the upper air. These adventures, and others equally
romantic, I must leave to the genius of more credulous historians.
All that seems to me worthy of belief is, that after stern but
unavailing struggles, the Messenians abandoned Andania, and took their
last desperate station at Ira, a mountain at whose feet flows the
river Neda, separating Messenia from Triphylia. Here, fortified alike
by art and nature, they sustained a siege of eleven years. But with
the eleventh the term of their resistance was completed. The slave of
a Spartan of rank had succeeded in engaging the affections of a
Messenian woman who dwelt without the walls of the mountain fortress.
One night the guilty pair were at the house of the adulteress--the
husband abruptly returned--the slave was concealed, and overheard
that, in consequence of a violent and sudden storm, the Messenian
guard had deserted the citadel, not fearing attack from the foe on so
tempestuous a night, and not anticipating the inspection of
Aristomenes, who at that time was suffering from a wound. The slave
overheard--escaped--reached the Spartan camp--apprized his master
Emperamus (who, in the absence of the kings, headed the troops) of the
desertion of the guard:--an assault was agreed on: despite the
darkness of the night, despite the violence of the rain, the Spartans
marched on:--scaled the fortifications:--were within the walls. The
fulfilment of dark prophecies had already portended the fate of the
besieged; and now the very howling of the dogs in a strange and
unwonted manner was deemed a prodigy. Alarmed, aroused, the
Messenians betook themselves to the nearest weapons within their
reach. Aristomenes, his son Gorgus, Theoclus, the guardian prophet of
his tribe (whose valour was equal to his science), were among the
first to perceive the danger. Night passed in tumult and disorder.
Day dawned, but rather to terrify than encourage--the storm increased
--the thunder burst--the lightning glared. What dismayed the besieged
encouraged the besiegers. Still, with all the fury of despair, the
Messenians fought on: the very women took part in the contest; death
was preferable, even in their eyes, to slavery and dishonour. But the
Spartans were far superior in number, and, by continual reliefs, the
fresh succeeded to the weary. In arms for three days and three nights
without respite, worn out with watching, with the rage of the
elements, with cold, with hunger, and with thirst, no hope remained
for the Messenians: the bold prophet declared to Aristomenes that the
gods had decreed the fall of Messene, that the warning oracles were
fulfilled. “Preserve,” he cried, “what remain of your forces--save
yourselves. Me the gods impel to fall with my country!” Thus saying,
the soothsayer rushed on the enemy, and fell at last covered with
wounds and satiated with the slaughter himself had made. Aristomenes
called the Messenians round him; the women and the children were
placed in the centre of the band, guarded by his own son and that of
the prophet. Heading the troop himself, he rushed on the foe, and by
his gestures and the shaking of his spear announced his intention to
force a passage, and effect escape. Unwilling yet more to exasperate
men urged to despair, the Spartans made way for the rest of the
besieged. So fell Ira! (probably B. C. 662). [150] The brave
Messenians escaped to Mount Lyceum in Arcadia, and afterward the
greater part, invited by Anaxilaus, their own countryman, prince of
the Dorian colony at Rhegium in Italy, conquered with him the
Zanclaeans of Sicily, and named the conquered town Messene. It still
preserves the name [151]. But Aristomenes, retaining indomitable
hatred to Sparta, refused to join the colony. Yet hoping a day of
retribution, he went to Delphi. What counsel he there received is
unrecorded. But the deity ordained to Damagetes, prince of Jalysus in
Rhodes, to marry the daughter of the best man of Greece. Such a man
the prince esteemed the hero of the Messenians, and wedded the third
daughter of Aristomenes. Still bent on designs against the destroyers
of his country, the patriot warrior repaired to Rhodes, where death
delivered the Spartans from the terror of his revenge. A monument was
raised to his memory, and that memory, distinguished by public
honours, long made the boast of the Messenians, whether those in
distant exile, or those subjected to the Spartan yoke. Thus ended the
second Messenian war. Such of the Messenians as had not abandoned
their country were reduced to Helotism. The Spartan territory
extended, and the Spartan power secured, that haughty state rose
slowly to pre-eminence over the rest of Greece; and preserved, amid
the advancing civilization and refinement of her neighbours, the stern
and awing likeness of the heroic age:--In the mountains of the
Peloponnesus, the polished and luxurious Greeks beheld, retained from
change as by a spell, the iron images of their Homeric ancestry!