Chapter I.
§ 1. End of a state according to the Doric notions. § 2. Difference between the political institutions of the Dorians and Ionians. § 3. Successive changes in the constitutions of the Greek states; 1st, royal aristocracy of the heroic ages. § 4. 2nd, Timocracy, or aristocracy of wealth. § 5. 3rd, Tyranny. § 6. 4th, Democracy. § 7. Form of government characteristic of the Doric race. § 8. Supposed legislation of Lycurgus. § 9. Derivation of Spartan laws from the Delphic oracle. § 10. Characteristics of the Doric form of government.
1. Before we speak of the form of government which prevailed in the Doric states, it will be necessary to set aside all modern ideas respecting the origin, essence, and object of a state; namely, that it is an institution for protecting the persons and property of the individuals contained in it. We shall approach nearer to the ancient notion, if we consider the essence of a state to be, that by a recognition of the same opinions and principles, and the direction of actions to the same ends, the whole body become, as it were, one moral agent. Such an unity of opinions and actions can only be produced by the ties of some natural affinity, such as of a nation, a tribe, or a part of one: although in process of time the meaning of the terms state and nation became more distinct. The more complete the unity of feelings and principles is, the [pg 002] more vigorous will be the common exertions, and the more comprehensive the notion of the state. As this was in general carried to a wider extent among the Greeks than by modern nations, so it was perhaps nowhere so strongly marked as in the Dorian states, whose national views with regard to political institutions were most strongly manifested in the government of Sparta. Here the plurality of the persons composing the state was most completely reduced to unity; and hence the life of a Spartan citizen was chiefly concerned in public affairs. The greatest freedom of the Spartan, as well as of the Greeks in general, was only to be a living member of the body of the state; whereas that which in modern times commonly receives the name of liberty, consists in having the fewest possible claims from the community; or in other words, in dissolving the social union to the greatest degree possible, as far as the individual is concerned. What the Dorians endeavoured to obtain in a state was good order, or κόσμος, the regular combination of different elements. The expression of king Archidamus in Thucydides,[1] that “it is most honourable, and at the same time most secure, for many persons to show themselves obedient to the same order (κόσμος),” was a fundamental principle of this race. And hence the Spartans honoured Lycurgus so greatly, as having instituted the existing order of things (κόσμος):[2] and called his son by the laudatory title of Eucosmus.[3] For the same reason the supreme magistrate among the Cretans was called [pg 003] Cosmus; among the Epizephyrian Locrians, Cosmopolis. Thus this significant word expresses the spirit of the Dorian government, as well as of the Dorian music and philosophy.[4] With this desire to obtain a complete uniformity, an attempt after stability is necessarily connected. For an unity of this kind having been once established, the next object is to remove whatever has a tendency to destroy it, and to repress all causes which may lead to a change: yet an attempt to exclude all alteration is never completely successful: partly on account of the internal changes which take place in the national character, and partly because causes operating from without necessarily produce some modifications. These states, however, endeavour to retain unchanged a state of things once established and approved; while others, in which from the beginning the opinions of individuals have out-weighed the authority of the whole, admit, in the progress of time, of greater variety, and more innovations, readily take up whatever is offered to them by accident of time and place, or even eagerly seek for opportunities of change. States of this description must soon lose all firmness and character, and fall to pieces from their own weakness; while those which never admit of innovation will at last, after having long stood as ruins in a foreign neighbourhood, yield to the general tide of human affairs, and their destruction is commonly preceded by the most complete anarchy.
2. This description expresses, though perhaps too forcibly, the difference between the Doric and Ionic races. The former had, of all the Grecians, the [pg 004] greatest veneration for antiquity; and not to degenerate from his ancestors was the strongest exhortation which a Spartan could hear:[5] the latter, on the other hand, were in everything fond of novelty, and delighted in foreign communication; whence their cities were always built on the sea, whereas the Dorians generally preferred an inland situation. The anxiety of the Dorians, and the Spartans in particular, to keep up the pure Doric character and the customs of their ancestors, is strongly shown by the prohibition to travel,[6] and the exclusion of foreigners, an institution common both to the Spartans and Cretans, and which has been much misrepresented by ancient authors.[7] It is very possible, as Plutarch thinks, [pg 005] that the severity of these measures was increased by the decline of all morals and discipline, which had arisen among the Ionians from the contrary practice; that race having in the earliest times fallen into a state of the greatest effeminacy and inactivity, from their connexion with their Asiatic neighbours. For how early was the period when the ancient constitution of the Grecian family degenerated among the Ionians into the slavery of the wife! how weak, effeminate, and luxurious do their ancient poets Callinus[8] and Asius[9] represent them! and if the legend describes even the daughters of Neleus, the founder of the colony, as completely destitute of morality,[10] what must have been the condition of this people, when the wives of the Ionians had mixed with Lydian women! The warning voice of such examples might well stimulate the ancient lawgivers to draw in with greater closeness the iron bond of custom.
3. But with all this difference in the races of [pg 006] which the Grecian nation consisted, there was, in the development of the constitutions of the Greek states, a common progress, which extended a certain influence even to such as retained their earlier impressions with a firm adherence to antiquity. As it is our present object to give a general view of this advance, we will begin with the constitution of the heroic age, so clearly described in Homer. This can scarcely be called by any other name than that of aristocracy, as its most important feature is the accurate division between the nobles[11] and the people. The former composed the deliberative councils, and the courts of justice;[12] and although both were commonly combined with a public assembly (ἀγορὰ), the nobles were the only persons who proposed measures, deliberated and voted; the people was only present in order to hear the debate, and to express its feelings as a body; which expressions might then be noticed by princes of a mild disposition.[13] The chief ruler himself was properly of equal rank with the other nobles, and was only raised above them by the authority intrusted to him as president in the council, and commander in the field. This form of government [pg 007] continued to exist for a considerable time in the Ionian, Achæan, and Æolian states; but the power of the chief ruler gradually declined, and was at last wholly abolished. With the Dorians, however, the case was very different; they were peculiar in possessing a very limited nobility, for the Heraclidæ had nearly an exclusive right to that appellation: while, on the other hand, a whole nation occupied by means of conquest, a station analogous to that of an aristocracy, uniting military pursuits with independence obtained by the possession of the land.
4. About the 30th Olympiad (660 B.C.), however, on account of the increased trade and intercourse with foreign nations, and consequently of the greater demand for luxuries, the value of wealth rose in comparison with the honour of noble descent. The land, indeed, still remained for the most part in the hands of the aristocracy; but as it had at this time become more easy to dissipate an inherited estate, and to obtain consideration by the profits of trade, property was more exposed to sudden changes. It is probable that the Geomori of the Ionic Samos, as well as the Hippobotæ of Chalcis (which, as well as Samos, had once belonged to Ionians), whose distinction was derived from the possession of land, also carried on the extensive commerce of these two states; otherwise the wealth of the merchant would soon have exceeded that of the landowner. In the Doric states also, which were much engaged in trade, such as Corinth, Ægina, &c., it was attempted to unite the government of hereditary aristocracy and of wealth.[14] The new importance attached to wealth, even at the time of the Seven Sages, gave rise to the saying of Aristodemus the Argive, [pg 008] “Money makes the man;”[15] and at a later period Theognis the Megarean complains that the pursuit of riches confounds all distinction of rank, and that estimation was derived from it.[16] The ancient legislators of Greece considered the power of money, or moveable property (which is as changeable as property in land is durable), most prejudicial to the safety of states; and they endeavoured by oppressing the commercial classes, as well as by rendering the land inalienable, to palliate a danger which they were unable wholly to remove. Sparta alone, from the unchangeableness of her institutions, remained free from these revolutions. Solon, on the other hand, endeavoured to arrest and perpetuate a state of things which was merely fleeting and transitory. He left some remnants of the aristocracy, particularly the political union of the γένεα, or houses, untouched; while he made his government in principle a timocracy, the amount of property determining the share in the governing power; and at the same time showed a democratic tendency in the low rate at which he fixed the valuation. In his poetry also Solon considers the middle ranks as most valuable to the state; and therefore he endeavoured to give them political importance.[17] But the temperature which he chose was too artificial to be lasting; and the constitution of Solon, in its chief points, only remained in force for a few years. In other Ionic states also similar reconciliations were attempted, but without obtaining any stability.[18] The spirit of the age was manifestly turned towards democracy; and though at Athens [pg 009] Solon, as being the friend of the people, succeeded perhaps in effecting a more gradual transition; in other places the parties were more directly opposed, as is clearly shown by the contest between the parties Πλοῦτις and Χειρομάχα at Miletus.[19]
5. At Athens however, and generally throughout Greece, the first result of these democratic movements was the establishment of tyranny or despotism; which may be considered as a violent revulsion, destined to precede a complete subversion of all the existing institutions. It has been already shown that the tyrants of Corinth, Sicyon, Megara, and Epidaurus, were originally leaders of the popular party against the Doric nobility, or demagogues, according to the expression of Aristotle; and for this reason Sparta, as being the protector of aristocracy, overthrew them, wherever her power extended.[20] In Ionia and Sicily the tyrants found an oligarchical timocracy, which was commonly opposed by a democratical party;[21] and in some instances, as in that of Gelon, the tyrant acted against the popular faction. At the time of the Persian war democracy had struck deep root among the Ionians; and Mardonius the Persian, after the expulsion of the tyrants, restored it in their cities as the desired form of government.[22] In Athens Cleisthenes had deprived the union of the houses (the last support of the aristocracy) of its political importance; [pg 010] and Aristides was at length compelled by circumstances to change the timocracy into a democracy. For in the Persian invasion the lower orders had discovered, while serving as rowers and sailors in the fleet, how much the safety of the state depended upon their exertions, and would no longer submit to be excluded from a share in the highest offices.[23] The democracy flourished so long as great men understood how to guide it by the imposing superiority of their individual characters, and educated persons (οἱ βελτίονες) dared to take a share in public affairs; it fell when the greedy and indolent people, allured by the prospect of rewards pernicious to the state, filled the public assemblies and courts of justice. We will not carry on any further our picture of the ochlocracy, in which all social union was entirely dissolved, and the state was surrendered to the arbitrary will of a turbulent populace.
6. The last of these changes, produced by what is called the spirit of the times, we have illustrated by the history of Athens, although the same course may be shown to have taken place in other, even originally Doric states. Thus in Ambracia, about the same time as at Athens, the timocracy gradually passed into a democracy,[24] and at Argos also the democracy rose at the same period. At the time of Polybius, the people had in the Doric states of Crete so unlimited an authority, that this writer himself wonders that his description of them should be so entirely opposed to all former accounts.[25] But since, in general, these alterations threw down the Doric families from their high station, and put an end to the Doric customs, they [pg 011] have not so strong a claim upon our attention, as the peculiar system of the Doric form of government, which was most strongly expressed in the ancient Cretan and Lacedæmonian constitutions: the latter of which, although in many points it yielded and adapted itself to the progress of civilization, existed in its essential parts for five centuries;[26] and by its durability preserved Sparta alone among all the states of Greece from revolutions and revolutionary excesses.[27]
7. But, it may be asked, what right have we to speak of a Doric constitution in general; and why should we select Sparta in preference to any other state of the Doric race, as a model of that system? May not Lycurgus have formed his legislation from reflection upon the condition and wants of his own nation, or have conceived it from arbitrary principles of his own, and have thus impressed upon Sparta the character which it ever after retained, as an essential element of its system?[28] Against this opinion, not unfrequently advanced, instead of bringing forward any general arguments, we prefer adducing the words of Pindar,[29] who, beyond a doubt, was far better acquainted with the basis and origin of ancient constitutions, than either Ephorus or Plutarch. Pindar mentions that Hieron, the Syracusan, wished to establish the new city of Ætna (which was inhabited by 5000 [pg 012] Syracusans, and the same number of Peloponnesians) upon the genuine Doric principles; as in later times Dion wished to establish in Syracuse itself a Lacedæmonian or Cretan constitution.[30] He founded it “with heaven-built freedom, according to the laws of the Hylean model;” i.e., after the example of the Spartan constitution. “For the descendants of Pamphylus, and of the Heraclidæ, who dwell under the brow of Taygetus, wish always to retain the Doric institutions of Ægimius.” Now in the first place, this passage proves that the laws of Sparta were considered the true Doric institutions; and, secondly, that their origin was held to be identical with that of the people. It proves that the Spartan laws (νόμοι) were the true Doric institutions (νόμιμα), and indeed, in no other nation was the distinction between usage and positive law less marked; from which circumstance alone it is evident how little opportunity the legislator had for fresh enactments, since custom can never be the work of one person. From this view of the subject we can also explain why Hellanicus, the most ancient writer on the constitution of Sparta,[31] made no mention of Lycurgus (for which he is ignorantly censured by Ephorus),[32] and attributed what are called the institutions of Lycurgus to the first kings, Procles and Eurysthenes. It also follows, that when Herodotus describes the Spartans before the time of Lycurgus, as being in a state of the greatest [pg 013] anarchy,[33] he can only mean that the original constitution (the τεθμοὶ Αἰγιμίου) had been overthrown and perverted by external circumstances, until it was restored and renewed by Lycurgus. Lycurgus, of whose real or imaginary existence we have already spoken,[34] must at the time of Herodotus have been considered a mythical personage, as he had a temple, annual sacrifices, and, in fact, a regular worship.[35] Now it is the tendency of mythological narration to represent accordant actions of many minds at different times under the name of one person: consequently, the mere name of an institution of Lycurgus says very little respecting its real origin and author.
8. The legislation of Lycurgus was, however, according to ancient traditions, aided by the support of Crete and Delphi, and the connexion between the religious usages of these states thus influenced their political condition. The form of government which was prevalent throughout the whole of Crete, originated, according to the concurrent testimony of the ancients, in the time of Minos; and it has been already shown that the Dorians at that time extended their dominion to this island, which thus received their [pg 014] language and customs.[36] In Crete therefore, the constitution founded on the principles of the Doric race, was first moulded into a firm and consistent shape, but even in a more simple and antiquated manner than in Sparta at a subsequent period.[37] Thus Lycurgus was enabled, without forcing any foreign usages upon Sparta, to take for a model the Cretan institutions which had been more fully developed at an earlier period; so that the constitutions of Crete and Sparta had from that time, as it were, a family resemblance.[38] When therefore we are told that a pæan singer and expiatory priest of Crete, by name Thaletas of Elyrus,[39] sent by the command of the Pythian oracle, composed the troubles and dissensions of Sparta by the power of his music, and that he was the instructor of Lycurgus;[40] it is easy to perceive that the latter part of this account is an addition, made without any attention to chronology; but the operation of Cretan music upon the regulation of political affairs, is strictly in the spirit of an age, and of a race, in which religion, arts, and laws conduced far more than among any other people to attain the same end, and had their basis in the same notions.
9. On the other hand, it was the pride of the [pg 015] Spartans, that their laws had proceeded from the oracle of the Pythian god:[41] and Tyrtæus says, in some verses of his Eunomia, that the fundamental principles of the Spartan constitution had been laid down by Apollo.[42] It is probable that these laws were really composed in the form of injunctions to Lycurgus, or to the people.[43] The oracle, however, continued to possess a superintending power over the constitution, chiefly through the intervention of the Pythians,[44] four persons appointed by the kings as messengers to the temple of Pytho, who delivered the oracles truly and honestly to the kings,[45] and were equally acquainted with their purport. On account of the importance of these oracles, the Pythians were the assessors of the kings and the gerusia,[46] and were always the messmates, both at home and in the field, of the kings. It is probable that the three “Pythian interpreters” at Athens, who, besides explaining the oracles, performed public and domestic expiatory sacrifices,[47] once possessed a similar dignity, although they lost these powers at a very early period. The theori of Ægina, Mantinea, Messenia, Trœzen, and Thasos, who composed separate colleges, ate together, and who were regular magistrates, not being like the theori of Athens, [pg 016] chosen for a single theoria, may be compared with the Pythians.[48]
10. This comparison again leads us back to our former position, that in the genuine Doric form of government there were certain predominant ideas, which were peculiar to that race, and were also expressed in the worship of Apollo, viz., those of harmony and order (τὸ εὔκοσμον); of self-control and moderation (σωφροσύνη), and of manly virtue (ἀρετή).[49] Accordingly, the constitution was formed for the education as well of the old as of the young, and in a Doric state education was upon the whole a subject of greater importance than government. And for this reason all attempts to explain the legislation of Lycurgus, from partial views and considerations, have necessarily failed. That external happiness and enjoyment were not the aim of these institutions was soon perceived. But it was thought, with Aristotle,[50] that every thing could be traced to a desire of making the Spartans courageous warriors, and Sparta a dominant [pg 017] and conquering state; whereas the fact is, that Sparta was hardly ever known to seek occasion for a war, or to follow up a victory; and during the whole of her flourishing period (that is, from about the 50th Olympiad to the battle of Leuctra) did not make a single conquest by which her territory was enlarged. In conclusion we may say, that the Doric state was a body of men, acknowledging one strict principle of order, and one unalterable rule of manners; and so subjecting themselves to this system, that scarcely anything was unfettered by it, but every action was influenced and regulated by the recognised principles. Before however we come to the consideration of this system, it will be necessary to explain the condition of an order of persons, upon which it was in a certain measure founded, namely, the subject classes in the several Doric states.