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.
[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.
[576] Herodot. i. 65-66; Thucyd. i. 18.
[577] Strabo, viii. p. 363.
[578] Plutarch, Lykurg. 3, 4, 5.
[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.