Next, as to adoption: Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of adoption was performed before the kings: probably enough, there was some fee paid with it. But this affords no ground for presuming that they had any hand in determining whom the childless father was to adopt. According to the Attic law about adoption, there were conditions to be fulfilled, consents to be obtained, the absence of disqualifying circumstances verified, etc; and some authority before which this was to be done was indispensable (see Meier und Schömann, Attisch. Prozess, b. iii. ch. ii. p. 436). At Sparta, such authority was vested by ancient custom in the king: but we are not told, nor is it probable, “that he could interpose, in opposition to the wishes of individuals, to relieve poverty,” as Dr. Thirlwall supposes.
[714] Σπάρτα δαμασίμβροτος, Simonidês, apud Plutarch. Agesilaus, c. 1.
[715] Aristotel. Polit. ii. 6, 9, 19, 23. τὸ φιλότιμον—τὸ φιλοχρήματον.
[716] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 12.
[717] Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 22. Τοιγαροῦν ἐσῴζοντο μὲν πολεμοῦντες, ἀπώλοντο δὲ ἄρξαντες, etc. Compare also vii. 13, 15.
[718] Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 8; Phylarch. ap. Athenæ. vi. p. 271.
The strangers called Τρόφιμοι, and the illegitimate sons of Spartans, whom Xenophon mentions with eulogy, as “having partaken in the honorable training of the city,” must probably have been introduced in this same way, by private support from the rich (Xenoph. Hellen. v. 3, 9). The xenêlasy must have then become practically much relaxed, if not extinct.
[719] Strabo, viii. p. 362; Steph. Byz. Αἴθεια.
Construing the word πόλεις extensively, so as to include townships small as well as considerable, this estimate is probably inferior to the truth; since, even during the depressed times of modern Greece, a fraction of the ancient Laconia (including in that term Messenia) exhibited much more than one hundred bourgs.
In reference merely to the territory called La Magne, between Calamata in the Messenian gulf and Capo di Magna, the lower part of the peninsula of Tænarus, see a curious letter, addressed to the Duc de Nevers, in 1618, (on occasion of a projected movement to liberate the Morea from the Turks, and to insure to him the sovereignty of it, as descendant of the Palæologi,) by a confidential agent whom he despatched thither,—M. Chateaurenaud,—who sends to him “une sorte de tableau statistique du Magne, ou sont énumerés 125 bourgs ou villages renfermans 4,913 feux, et pouvans fournir 10,000 combattans, dont 4,000 armés, et 6,000 sans armes (between Calamata and Capo di Magna).” (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. 1842, p. 329. Mémoire de M. Berger Xivrey.)