I shall not say that this is impossible. If we had ampler evidence, perhaps such facts might appear. But as the evidence stands now, there is nothing whatever to show it. Nor are we entitled (in my judgment) to presume that it was so, in the absence of evidence, simply in order to make out that the Lykurgean mythe is only an exaggeration, and not entire fiction.
[704] Aristotle (Polit. ii. 6, 11) remarks that the territory of the Spartans would maintain fifteen hundred horsemen and thirty thousand hoplites, while the number of citizens was, in point of fact, less than one thousand. Dr. Thirlwall seems to prefer the reading of Göttling,—three thousand instead of thirty thousand; but the latter seems better supported by MSS, and most suitable.
[705] Plutarch, Agis, c. 5.
[706] Herod. vi. 61. οἷα ἀνθρώπων τε ὀλβίων θυγατέρα, etc; vii. 134.
[707] Herod. vi. 70-103; Thucyd. v. 50.
[708] Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 11; Xenoph. de Rep. Lac. v. 3; Molpis ap. Athenæ. iv. p. 141; Aristot. Polit. ii. 2, 5.
[709] Thucyd. i. 6; Aristot. Polit. iv. 7, 4, 5; viii. 1, 3.
[710] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 10-13; v. 6, 7.
[711] The panegyrist Xenophon acknowledges much the same respecting the Sparta which he witnessed; but he maintains that it had been better in former times (Repub. Lac. c. 14).
[712] The view of Dr. Thirlwall agrees, in the main, with that of Manso and O. Müller (Manso, Sparta, vol. i. pp. 118-128; and vol. ii. Beilage, 9, p. 129; and Müller, History of the Dorians, vol. ii. b. iii. c. 10, sect. 2, 3).