The fact is, that Aristotle is not only our best witness, but also our oldest witness, respecting the laws of property in the Spartan commonwealth. I could have wished, indeed, that earlier testimonies had existed, and I admit that even the most sagacious observer of 340-330 B. C. is liable to mistake when he speaks of one or two centuries before. But if Aristotle is to be discredited on the ground of late date, what are we to say to Plutarch? To insist on the intellectual eminence of Aristotle would be superfluous: and on this subject he is a witness the more valuable, as he had made careful, laborious, and personal inquiries into the Grecian governments generally, and that of Sparta among them,—the great point de mire for ancient speculative politicians.
Now the statements of Aristotle, distinctly exclude the idea of equal, indivisible, inalienable, perpetual lots,—and prohibition of dowry. He particularly notices the habit of giving very large dowries, and the constant tendency of the lots of land to become consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. He tells us nothing upon the subject which is not perfectly consistent, intelligible, and uncontradicted by any known statements belonging to his own, or to earlier times. But the reason why men refuse to believe him, and either set aside or explain away his evidence, is, that they sit down to the study with their minds full of the division of landed property ascribed to Lykurgus by Plutarch. I willingly concede that, on this occasion, we have to choose between Plutarch and Aristotle. We cannot reconcile them except by arbitrary suppositions, every one of which breaks up the simplicity, beauty, and symmetry of Plutarch’s agrarian idea,—and every one of which still leaves the perpetuity of the original lots unexplained. And I have no hesitation in preferring the authority of Aristotle (which is in perfect consonance with what we indirectly gather from other authors, his contemporaries and predecessors) as a better witness on every ground; rejecting the statement of Plutarch, and rejecting it altogether, with all its consequences.
But the authority of Aristotle is not the only argument which may be urged to refute this supposition that the distinct Spartan lots remained unaltered in number down to the time of Lysander. For if the number of distinct lots remained undiminished, the number of citizens cannot have greatly diminished. Now the conspiracy of Kinadôn falls during the life of Lysander, within the first ten years after the close of the Peloponnesian war: and in the account which Xenophon gives of that conspiracy, the paucity of the number of citizens is brought out in the clearest and most emphatic manner. And this must be before the time when the new law of Epitadeus is said to have passed, at least before that law can have had room to produce any sensible effects. If, then, the ancient nine thousand lots still remained all separate, without either consolidation or subdivision, how are we to account for the small number of citizens at the time of the conspiracy of Kinadôn?
This examination of the evidence, for the purpose of which I have been compelled to prolong the present note, shows—1. That the hypothesis of indivisible, inalienable lots, maintained for a long period in undiminished number at Sparta, is not only sustained by the very minimum of affirmative evidence, but is contradicted by very good negative evidence. 2. That the hypothesis which represents dowries to daughters as being prohibited by law, is, indeed, affirmed by Plutarch, Ælian, and Justin, but is contradicted by the better authority of Aristotle.
The recent edition of Herakleidês Ponticus, published by Schneidewin, in 1847, since my first edition, presents an amended text, which completely bears out my interpretation. His text, derived from a fuller comparison of existing MSS., as well as from better critical judgment (see his Prolegg. c. iii. p. liv.), stands—Πωλεῖν δὲ γὴν Λακεδαιμονίοις αἰσχρὸν νενόμισται· τῆς δὲ ἀρχαίας μοίρας οὐδὲ ἔξεστιν (p. 7). It is plain that all this passage relates to sale of land, and not to testation, or succession, or division. Thus much negatively is certain, and Schneidewin remarks in his note (p. 53) that it contradicts Müller, Hermann, and Schömann,—adding, that the distinction drawn is, between land inherited from the original family lots, and land otherwise acquired, by donation, bequest, etc. Sale of the former was absolutely illegal: sale of the latter was discreditable, yet not absolutely illegal. Aristotle in the Politics (ii. 6, 10) takes no notice of any such distinction, between land inherited from the primitive lots, and land otherwise acquired. Nor was there, perhaps, any well-defined line of distinction, in a country of unwritten customs, like Sparta, between what was simply disgraceful and what was positively illegal. Schneidewin, in his note, however, assumes the original equality of the lots as certain in itself, and as being the cause of the prohibition: neither of which appears to me true.
I speak of this confused compilation still under the name of Herakleidês Ponticus, by which it is commonly known: though Schneidewin, in the second chapter of his Prolegomena, has shown sufficient reason for believing that there is no authority for connecting it with the name of Herakleidês. He tries to establish the work as consisting of Excerpta from the lost treatise of Aristotle’s περὶ Πολιτειῶν: which is well made out with regard to some parts, but not enough to justify his inference as to the whole. The article, wherein Welcker vindicates the ascribing of the work to an Excerptor of Herakleidês, is unsatisfactory (Kleine Schriften, p. 451).
Beyond this irrelevant passage of Herakleidês Ponticus, no farther evidence is produced by Müller and Manso to justify their positive assertion, that the Spartan lot of land was indivisible in respect to inheritance.
[713] Herod. vi. 57, in enumerating the privileges and perquisites of the kings—δικάζειν δὲ μούνους τοὺς βασιλῆας τόσαδε μοῦνα· πατρούχου τε παρθένου πέρι, ἐς τὸν ἱκνέεται ἔχειν, ἢν μή περ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτὴν ἐγγυήσῃ· καὶ ὁδῶν δημοσιέων πέρι· καὶ ἤν τις θετὸν παῖδα ποιέεσθαι ἐθέλῃ, βασιλήων ἐνάντιον ποιέεσθαι.
It seems curious that πατρούχος πάρθενος should mean a damsel who has no father (literally, lucus a non lucendo): but I suppose that we must accept this upon the authority of Julius Pollux and Timæus. Proceeding on this interpretation, Valckenaer gives the meaning of the passage very justly: “Orbæ nuptias, necdum a patre desponsatæ, si plures sibi vindicarent, fieretque ἡ ἐπίκληρος, ut Athenis loquebantur, ἐπίδικος, Spartæ lis ista dirimebatur a regibus solis.”
Now the judicial function here described, is something very different from the language of Dr. Thirlwall, that “the kings had the disposal of the hand of orphan heiresses in cases where the father had not signified his will.” Such disposal would approach somewhat to that omnipotence which Aristophanês (Vesp. 585) makes old Philokleon claim for the Athenian dikasts (an exaggeration well calculated to serve the poet’s purpose of making the dikasts appear monsters of caprice and injustice), and would be analogous to the power which English kings enjoyed three centuries ago as feudal guardians over wards. But the language of Herodotus is inconsistent with the idea that the kings chose a husband for the orphan heiress. She was claimed, as of right, by persons in certain degrees of relationship to her. Whether the law about ἀγχίστεια, affinity carrying legal rights, was the same as at Athens, we cannot tell; but the question submitted for adjudication at Sparta, to the kings, and at Athens to the dikasteries, was certainly the same, agreeably to the above note of Valckenaer,—namely, to whom, among the various claimants for the marriage, the best legal title really belonged. It is, indeed, probable enough, that the two royal descendants of Hêraklês might abuse their judicial function, as there are various instances known in which they take bribes; but they were not likely to abuse it in favor of an unprovided youth.