The Despots; The Democracies.
Brilliant age of the great lyric poets.
The Sparta of Alcman's time.
§ 34. At last we emerge into the open light of day, and find ourselves in the seventh century (more strictly 650-550 B.C.), in that brilliant, turbulent, enterprising society which produced the splendid lyric poetry of Alcæus and Sappho, of Alcman and Terpander, and carried Greek commerce over most of the Mediterranean[77:1]. We have still but scanty facts to guide us; yet they are enough to show us the general condition of the country,—aristocratical governments which had displaced monarchies, and beside them the ancient twin-monarchy of Sparta, gradually passing into the oligarchy of the ephors. There is evidence in the character of Alcman's poetry that he did not sing to a Sparta at all resembling the so-called Sparta of Lycurgus. The remains of early art found there point in the same direction, as do also the strange funeral customs described by
Herodotus on the death of the kings[78:1]. It would seem that there was luxury, that there was artistic taste, that there was considerable license in this older society. The staid sobriety and simplicity of what is known as Spartan life seems therefore rather a later growth, than the original condition of this Doric aristocracy. And so this type is far more explicable, in its exceptional severity, and its contrast to all other Dorian states, if we take it to be the gradual growth of exceptional circumstances, than if we regard it as a primitive type, which would naturally appear in other branches of the race.
Its exceptional constitution.
At all events the Greeks had before them the example of an ancient, a respectable and a brilliant monarchy. It is nevertheless most remarkable that in all the changes of constitution attempted through the various States, amid the universal respect in which the Spartans were held, no attempt was ever made in practical[78:2] Greek history to copy their institutions. The distinct resemblances to Spartan institutions in some of the Cretan communities were probably not imitations, nor can we say that they were Dorian ideas, for the many Dorian States we know well, such as Argos, Corinth, Syracuse, did not possess them.
E. Curtis on the age of the despots.
The Spartan State may therefore be regarded as standing outside the development of Greece, even in the political sense[78:3]. In one respect only was its
policy an aggressive one,—in interfering on the side of the aristocracies against the despots who took up the cause of the common people against their noble oppressors. It is one of those brilliant general views which make Curtius' history so attractive, that he interprets this great conflict as partly one of race, so far as Ionic and Doric can severally be called such. The Doric aristocracies of the Peloponnesus were opposed by their Ionic subjects, or by Ionic States rising in importance with the growing commerce and wealth of the Asiatic cities. The tyrants generally carried out an anti-Dorian policy, even though they were often Dorian nobles themselves. There was no more successful aspirant to a tyranny than a renegade nobleman who adopted the cause of the people.
