Dr. Thirlwall, after having admitted a modified interference with private property by Lykurgus, so as to exact from the wealthy a certain sacrifice in order to create lots for the poor, and to bring about something approaching to equi-producing lots for all, observes: “The average amount of the rent, paid by the cultivating Helots from each lot, seems to have been no more than was required for the frugal maintenance of a family with six persons. The right of transfer was as strictly confined as that of enjoyment; the patrimony was indivisible, inalienable, and descended to the eldest son; in default of a male heir, to the eldest daughter. The object seems to have been, after the number of the allotments became fixed, that each should be constantly represented by one head of a household. But the nature of the means employed for this end is one of the most obscure points of the Spartan system.... In the better times of the commonwealth, this seems to have been principally effected by adoptions and marriages with heiresses, which provided for the marriages of younger sons in families too numerous to be supported on their own hereditary property. It was then probably seldom necessary for the state to interfere, in order to direct the childless owner of an estate, or the father of a rich heiress, to a proper choice. But as all adoption required the sanction of the kings, and they had also the disposal of the hand of orphan heiresses, there can be little doubt that the magistrate had the power of interposing on such occasions, even in opposition to the wishes of individuals, to relieve poverty and check the accumulation of wealth.” (Hist. Gr. ch. 8, vol. i. p. 367).
I cannot concur in the view which Dr. Thirlwall here takes of the state of property, or the arrangements respecting its transmission, in ancient Sparta. Neither the equal modesty of possession which he supposes, nor the precautions for perpetuating it, can be shown to have ever existed among the pupils of Lykurgus. Our earliest information intimates the existence of rich men at Sparta: the story of king Aristo and Agêtus, in Herodotus, exhibits to us the latter as a man who cannot be supposed to have had only just “enough to maintain six persons frugally,”—while his beautiful wife, whom Aristo coveted and entrapped from him, is expressly described as the daughter of opulent parents. Sperthiês and Bulis, the Talthybiads, are designated as belonging to a distinguished race, and among the wealthiest men in Sparta.[706] Demaratus was the only king of Sparta, in the days of Herodotus, who had ever gained a chariot-victory in the Olympic games; but we know by the case of Lichas, during the Peloponnesian war, Evagoras, and others, that private Spartans were equally successful;[707] and for one Spartan who won the prize, there must of course have been many who bred their horses and started their chariots unsuccessfully. It need hardly be remarked, that chariot-competition at Olympia was one of the most significant evidences of a wealthy house: nor were there wanting Spartans who kept horses and dogs without any exclusive view to the games. We know from Xenophon that, at the time of the battle of Leuktra, “the very rich Spartans” provided the horses to be mounted for the state-cavalry.[708] These and other proofs, of the existence of rich men at Sparta, are inconsistent with the idea of a body of citizens each possessing what was about enough for the frugal maintenance of six persons, and no more.
As we do not find that such was in practice the state of property in the Spartan community, so neither can we discover that the lawgiver ever tried either to make or to keep it so. What he did was to impose a rigorous public discipline, with simple clothing and fare, incumbent alike upon the rich and the poor (this was his special present to Greece, according to Thucydidês,[709] and his great point of contact with democracy, according to Aristotle); but he took no pains either to restrain the enrichment of the former, or to prevent the impoverishment of the latter. He meddled little with the distribution of property, and such neglect is one of the capital deficiencies for which Aristotle censures him. That philosopher tells us, indeed, that the Spartan law had made it dishonorable (he does not say, peremptorily forbidden) to buy or sell landed property, but that there was the fullest liberty both of donation and bequest: and the same results, he justly observes, ensued from the practice tolerated as would have ensued from the practice discountenanced,—since it was easy to disguise a real sale under an ostensible donation. He notices pointedly the tendency of property at Sparta to concentrate itself in fewer hands, unopposed by any legal hindrances: the fathers married their daughters to whomsoever they chose, and gave dowries according to their own discretion, generally very large: the rich families, moreover, intermarried among one another habitually, and without restriction. Now all these are indicated by Aristotle as cases in which the law might have interfered, and ought to have interfered, but did not,—for the great purpose of disseminating the benefits of landed property as much as possible among the mass of the citizens. Again, he tells us that the law encouraged the multiplication of progeny, and granted exemptions to such citizens as had three or four children,—but took no thought how the numerous families of poorer citizens were to live, or to maintain their qualification at the public tables, most of the lands of the state being in the hands of the rich.[710] His notice, and condemnation, of that law, which made the franchise of the Spartan citizen dependent upon his continuing to furnish his quota to the public table,—has been already adverted to; as well as the potent love of money[711] which he notes in the Spartan character, and which must have tended continually to keep together the richer families among themselves: while amongst a community where industry was unknown, no poor citizen could ever become rich.
If we duly weigh these evidences, we shall see that equality of possessions neither existed in fact, nor ever entered into the scheme and tendencies of the lawgiver at Sparta. And the picture which Dr. Thirlwall[712] has drawn of a body of citizens each possessing a lot of land about adequate to the frugal maintenance of six persons,—of adoptions and marriages of heiresses arranged with a deliberate view of providing for the younger children of numerous families,—of interference on the part of the kings to insure this object,—of a fixed number of lots of land, each represented by one head of a household,—this picture is one, of which the reality must not be sought on the banks of the Eurotas. The “better times of the commonwealth,” to which he refers, may have existed in the glowing retrospect of Agis, but are not acknowledged in the sober appreciation of Aristotle. That the citizens were far more numerous in early times, the philosopher tells us, and that the community had in his day greatly declined in power, we also know: in this sense, the times of Sparta had doubtless once been better. We may even concede that during the three centuries succeeding Lykurgus, when they were continually acquiring new territory, and when Aristotle had been told that they had occasionally admitted new citizens, so that the aggregate number of citizens had once been ten thousand,—we may concede that in these previous centuries the distribution of land had been less unequal, so that the disproportion between the great size of the territory and the small number of citizens was not so marked as it had become at the period which the philosopher personally witnessed; for the causes tending to augmented inequality were constant and uninterrupted in their working. But this admission will still leave us far removed from the sketch drawn by Dr. Thirlwall, which depicts the Lykurgean Sparta as starting from a new agrarian scheme not far removed from equality of landed property,—the citizens as spontaneously disposed to uphold this equality, by giving to unprovided men the benefit of adoptions and heiress-marriages,—and the magistrate as interfering to enforce this latter purpose, even in cases where the citizens were themselves unwilling. All our evidence exhibits to us both decided inequality of possessions and inclinations on the part of rich men, the reverse of those which Dr. Thirlwall indicates; nor will the powers of interference which he ascribes to the magistrate be found sustained by the chapter of Herodotus on which he seems to rest them.[713]
To conceive correctly, then, the Lykurgean system, as far as obscurity and want of evidence will permit, it seems to me that there are two current misconceptions which it is essential to discard. One of these is, that the system included a repartition of landed property, upon principles of exact or approximative equality (distinct from that appropriation which belonged to the Dorian conquest and settlement), and provisions for perpetuating the number of distinct and equal lots. The other is, that it was first brought to bear when the Spartans were masters of all Laconia. The illusions created by the old legend,—which depicts Laconia as all one country, and all conquered at one stroke,—yet survive after the legend itself has been set aside as bad evidence: we cannot conceive Sparta as subsisting by itself without dominion over Laconia; nor Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ, as really and truly independent of Sparta. Yet, if these towns were independent in the time of Lykurgus, much more confidently may the same independence be affirmed of the portions of Laconia which lie lower than Amyklæ down the valley of the Eurotas, as well as of the eastern coast, which Herodotus expressly states to have been originally connected with Argos.
Discarding, then, these two suppositions, we have to consider the Lykurgean system as brought to bear upon Sparta and its immediate circumjacent district, apart from the rest of Laconia, and as not meddling systematically with the partition of property, whatever that may have been, which the Dorian conquerors established at their original settlement. Lykurgus does not try to make the poor rich, nor the rich poor; but he imposes upon both the same subjugating drill,[714]—the same habits of life, gentlemanlike idleness, and unlettered strength,—the same fare, clothing, labors, privations, endurance, punishments, and subordination. It is a lesson instructive at least, however unsatisfactory, to political students,—that, with all this equality of dealing, he ends in creating a community in whom not merely the love of preëminence, but even the love of money, stands powerfully and specially developed.[715]
How far the peculiar of the primitive Sparta extended we have no means of determining; but its limits down the valley of the Eurotas were certainly narrow, inasmuch as it did not reach so far as Amyklæ. Nor can we tell what principles the Dorian conquerors may have followed in the original allotment of lands within the limits of that peculiar. Equal apportionment is not probable, because all the individuals of a conquering band are seldom regarded as possessing equal claims; but whatever the original apportionment may have been, it remained without any general or avowed disturbance until the days of Agis the Third, and Kleomenês the Third. Here, then, we have the primitive Sparta, including Dorian warriors with their Helot subjects, but no Periœki. And it is upon these Spartans separately, perhaps after the period of aggravated disorder and lawlessness noticed by Herodotus and Thucydidês, that the painful but invigorating discipline, above sketched, must have been originally brought to bear.
The gradual conquest of Laconia, with the acquisition of additional lands and new Helots, and the formation of the order of Periœki, both of which were a consequence of it,—is to be considered as posterior to the introduction of the Lykurgean system at Sparta, and as resulting partly from the increased force which that system imparted. The career of conquest went on, beginning from Têleklus, for nearly three centuries,—with some interruptions, indeed, and in the case of the Messenian war, with a desperate and even precarious struggle,—so that in the time of Thucydidês, and for some time previously, the Spartans possessed two-fifths of Peloponnesus. And this series of new acquisitions and victories disguised the really weak point of the Spartan system, by rendering it possible either to plant the poorer citizens as Periœki in a conquered township, or to supply them with lots of land, of which they could receive the produce without leaving the city,—so that their numbers and their military strength were prevented from declining. It is even affirmed by Aristotle,[716] that during these early times they augmented the numbers of their citizens by fresh admissions, which of course implies the acquisition of additional lots of land. But successful war, to use an expression substantially borrowed from the same philosopher, was necessary to their salvation: the establishment of their ascendency, and of their maximum of territory, was followed, after no very long interval, by symptoms of decline.[717] It will hereafter be seen that, at the period of the conspiracy of Kinadôn (395 B. C.), the full citizens (called Homoioi, or Peers) were considerably inferior in number to the Hypomeiŏnes, or Spartans, who could no longer furnish their qualification, and had become disfranchised. And the loss thus sustained was very imperfectly repaired by the admitted practice, sometimes resorted to by rich men, of associating with their own children the children of poorer citizens, and paying the contribution for these latter to the public tables, so as to enable them to go through the prescribed course of education and discipline,—whereby they became (under the title or sobriquet of Mothăkes[718]) citizens, with a certain taint of inferiority, yet were sometimes appointed to honorable commands.
Laconia, the state and territory of the Lacedæmonians, was affirmed, at the time of its greatest extension, to have comprehended a hundred cities,[719]—this after the conquest of Messenia; so that it would include all the southern portion of Peloponnesus, from Thyrea, on the Argolic gulf, to the southern bank of the river Nedon, in its course into the Ionian sea. But Laconia, more strictly so called, was distinguished from Messenia, and was understood to designate the portion of the above-mentioned territory which lay to the east of Mount Taygetus. The conquest of Messenia by the Spartans we shall presently touch upon; but that of Laconia proper is very imperfectly narrated to us. Down to the reign of Têleklus, as has been before remarked, Amyklæ, Pharis, and Geronthræ, were still Achæan: in the reign of that prince they were first conquered, and the Achæans either expelled or subjugated. It cannot be doubted that Amyklæ had been previously a place of consequence: in point of heroic antiquity and memorials, this city, as well as Therapnæ, seems to have surpassed Sparta. And the war of the Spartans against it is represented as a struggle of some moment,—indeed, in those times, the capture of any walled city was tedious and difficult. Timomachus, an Ægeid from Thebes,[720] at the head of a body of his countrymen, is said to have rendered essential service to the Spartans in the conquest of the Achæans of Amyklæ; and the brave resistance of the latter was commemorated by a monument erected to Zeus Tropæus, at Sparta, which was still to be seen in the time of Pausanias.[721] The Achæans of Pharis and Geronthræ, alarmed by the fate of Amyklæ, are said to have surrendered their towns with little or no resistance: after which the inhabitants of all the three cities, either wholly or in part, went into exile beyond sea, giving place to colonists from Sparta.[722] From this time forward, according to Pausanias, Amyklæ continued as a village.[723] But as the Amyklæan hoplites constituted a valuable portion of the Spartan army, it must have been numbered among the cities of the Periœki, as one of the hundred;[724] the distinction between a dependent city and a village not being very strictly drawn. The festival of the Hyacinthia, celebrated at the great temple of the Amyklæan Apollo, was among the most solemn and venerated in the Spartan calendar.
It was in the time of Alkamenês, the son of Têleklus, that the Spartans conquered Helus, a maritime town on the left bank of the Eurotas, and reduced its inhabitants to bondage,—from whose name,[725] according to various authors, the general title Helots, belonging to all the serfs of Laconia, was derived. But of the conquest of the other towns of Laconia,—Gytheium, Akriæ, Therapnæ, etc.,—or of the eastern land on the coast of the Argolic gulf, including Brasiæ and Epidaurus Limêra, or the island of Kythêra, all which at one time belonged to the Argeian confederacy, we have no accounts.