Both the Spartan kings dined at the public mess at the same pheidition (Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 30).
Herakleidês Ponticus mentions nothing, either about equality of Spartan lots or fresh partition of lands, by Lykurgus (ad calcem Cragii, De Spartanorum Repub. p. 504), though he speaks about the Spartan lots and law of succession as well as about Lykurgus.
[693] Isokratês, Panathen. Or. xii. pp. 266, 270, 278: οὐδὲ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν οὐδ᾽ ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲν τῶν ἀνηκέστων κακῶν.
[694] Plutarch, Agis, c. iv.
[695] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 21. Παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Λακῶσιν ἕκαστον δεῖ φέρειν, καὶ σφόδρα πενήτων ἐνίων ὄντων, καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ἀνάλωμα οὐ δυναμένων δαπανᾷν.... Ὅρος δὲ τῆς πολιτείας οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ πάτριος, τὸν μὴ δυνάμενον τοῦτο τὸ τέλος φέρειν μὴ μετέχειν αὐτῆς. So also Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. vii. ἴσα μὲν φέρειν εἰς τὰ ἐπιτήδεια, ὁμοίως δὲ διαιτᾶσθαι τάξας.
The existence of this rate-paying qualification, is the capital fact in the history of the Spartan constitution; especially when we couple it with the other fact, that no Spartan acquired anything by any kind of industry.
[696] Herakleidês Ponticus, ad calcem Cragii De Repub. Laced. p. 504. Compare Cragius, iii. 2, p. 196.
Aristotle (ii. 6, 10) states that it was discreditable to buy or sell a lot of land, but that the lot might be either given or bequeathed at pleasure. He mentions nothing about the prohibition to divide, and even states what contradicts it,—that it was the practice to give a large dowry when a rich man’s daughter married (ii. 6, 11). The sister of Agesilaus, Kyniska, was a person of large property, which apparently implies the division of his father’s estate (Plutarch, Agesilaus, 30).
Whether there was ever any law prohibiting a father from dividing his lot among his children, may well be doubted. The Rhetra of the ephor Epitadeus (Plutarch, Agis, 5), granted unlimited power of testamentary disposition to the possessor, so that he might give away or bequeathe his land to a stranger if he chose. To this law great effects are ascribed: but it is evident that the tendency to accumulate property in few hands, and the tendency to diminution in the number of qualified citizens, were powerfully manifested before the time of Epitadeus, who came after Lysander. Plutarch, in another place, notices Hesiod, Xenokrates, and Lykurgus, as having concurred with Plato, in thinking that it was proper to leave only one single heir (ἕνα μόνον κληρόνομον καταλιπεῖν) (Ὑπομνήματα εἰς Ἡσίοδον, Fragm. vol. v. p. 777, Wyttenb.). But Hesiod does not lay down this as a necessity or as a universal rule; he only says, that a man is better off who has only one son (Opp. Di. 374). And if Plato had been able to cite Lykurgus as an authority for that system of an invariable number of separate κλῆροι, or lots, which he sets forth in his treatise De Legibus (p. 740), it is highly probable that he would have done so. Still less can Aristotle have supposed that Lykurgus or the Spartan system either insured, or intended to insure, the maintenance of an unalterable number of distinct proprietary lots; for he expressly notices that scheme as a peculiarity of Philolaus the Corinthian, in his laws for the Thebans (Polit. ii. 9, 7).
[697] Polybius, Fragm. ap. Maii. Collect. Vett. Scrip. vol. ii. p. 384.