we have still to inquire whether the Spartans were all equal among themselves. That at a period, the history of which is better known than that of the age of Lycurgus, but when great changes had taken place in their condition, there subsisted among them a disparity of rank, which involved the most important consequences, is indisputable; but it is an interesting and difficult question, whether this difference was an ancient one, and founded on their original relations, or was of later growth, and introduced by altered circumstances. There were undoubtedly certain divisions of the ruling class, some as old as the conquest, others still more ancient; but it is not clear how far these implied any distinction in rank or privileges. The Dorians, in general, were divided into three tribes, and a portion of each joined in the invasion of Laconia. Among these the Hylleans, as that to which the two royal families belonged, would naturally have some precedence in dignity over the Dymanes and Pamphylians. But we find no intimation that this pre-eminence, if it existed, was ever legally recognised, or attended with any political advantages. But beside this division, which was common to the Dorian race, we hear of others which were peculiar to Laconia. The Cadmean Ægeids, according to Herodotus, were a great tribe (a phyle) at Sparta; and so the Heracleids, and even the Dorians, are sometimes described as separate tribes. It seems however most probable that this last statement is a mere mistake, and that the Ægeids and Heracleids were both incorporated in the national threefold division. But there appear to have been also local tribes at Sparta, corresponding to the quarters or regions of the capital, or perhaps more properly to the hamlets or boroughs of which it was composed: four are enumerated, but without including the name of Sparta, which most probably raised the number to five. All natural or genealogical tribes include sundry subdivisions: at Sparta, the next lower unity bore the peculiar name of an obe, which originally signified a village or district', though we do not find that it was at all connected with the local tribes. There were thirty of these obes, -a number which corresponds perfectly well with the triple division of the nation; but yet is not inconsistent with those of five, six, and ten, which different authors have assigned to the Spartan tribes. But still, except the hereditary right to the crown, which was lodged in two families of the Heracleid race, we do not find any privilege attached to any of these bodies, or any trace of an order of nobles, distinct from the common freemen of Sparta. It may however be thought that the existence of such an order may be safely inferred from analogy; and it is certainly probable enough, whether the Heracleids were foreigners or not, that there were among the Dorians other races, distinguished from the common mass by their illustrious descent. We would not even deny that the division of the three tribes may have originally imported a political inequality; but it would not follow that this should have subsisted after the conquest. The common enterprise, the glory, and the danger, which, as we have seen, did not immediately cease, tended to level all political distinctions among the conquerors; and there seems to be no ground for believing that there was any class intermediate between the kings and the main body of the people; all seem to have formed one commonalty of nobles. The original Spartan constitution therefore, though it did not exclude all inequality either of rank or property, may be described as a democracy, with two hereditary magistrates at its head; and the institutions of Lycurgus appear to have tended rather to efface, than to introduce, artificial distinctions. It will belong to the history of a later period to show how this state of things was changed. 1 'Nẞh, xun, according to the true reading in Hesych., and perhaps bas, nouas The supplies the place of a digamma. See note 5. p. 801. of Alberti's Hesychius. At Sparta, as in all other Greek republics, the sovereign power resided in the assembly of the people; where a Heracleid, however respected for his birth, had no advantage in his vote over the common Dorian. In later times we hear of two assemblies, a greater and a lesser; but this appears to have been an innovation, connected with other changes to be hereafter described. The first of the ordinances for which Lycurgus procured the sanction of the oracle,-regulating no doubt an ancient custom, directed that assemblies of the people should be held periodically in a field near the city; that the magistrate who convened them should have the right of proposing measures, and the people the power of approving or rejecting. But it appears that the assembly could only express the general will by its vote, and that none but persons in office were entitled to deliver their opinion. The licence of amending a proposition was for a time assumed by the assembly; but it seems to have been considered as a departure from the principles of the constitution, and, as we shall see, was formally abolished in a subsequent reign. The ordinary business of the Spartan assembly, especially in early times, must have been small, and the extraordinary of rare occurrence: the former perhaps confined to the election of those magistrates and priests who held their offices for a fixed term; and the latter relating chiefly to questions of war or peace, and to those of imposts, treaties, and the like, arising out of them. Proposed changes in the constitution, and disputes concerning the succession to the throne, were also, whenever so singular a subject occurred, decided by the same supreme authority. As it cannot be doubted that assemblies of the people had been held at Sparta long before the time of Lycurgus, and that, in this respeet, the oracle did little more than describe what had been always customary; so there is the strongest reason to believe, that among the Dorians, as in all the heroic states, there was from time immemorial a council of elders. Not only is it This utterly incredible that the Spartan council (called the gerusia, or senate), was first instituted by Lycurgus, it is not even clear that he introduced any important alteration in its constitution or functions. It was composed of thirty members, corresponding to the number of the obes, a division as ancient as that of the tribes; which alone would suffice to refute the legend, that the first council was formed of the thirty who aided Lycurgus in his enterprise, even without the conclusive fact that two of the obes were represented by the kings. This privilege of the two royal families might indeed seem to favour the suspicion, that Lycurgus, though he did not create the senate, effected an important innovation in it; and that before his time the other twenty-eight places were also filled up by certain families, the most ancient or illustrious in each obe. however is no more than a conjecture; so far as we know, the twenty-eight colleagues of the kings were always elected by the people, without regard to any qualification beside age and personal merit. The mode of election breathes a spirit of primitive simplicity: the candidates, who were required to have reached the age of sixty, presented themselves in succession to the assembly, and were received with applause proportioned to the esteem in which they were held by their fellowcitizens. These manifestations of popular feeling were noted by persons appointed for the purpose, who were shut up in an adjacent room, where they could hear the shouts, but could not see the competitors. He who in their judgment had been greeted with the loudest plaudits, won the prize the highest dignity in the commonwealth next to the throne. The senators held their office for life, no provision being made for the extraordinary case of decrepitude or dotage, and were subject to no regular responsibility; as men raised above suspicion by a long career of honour, and yet liable to punishment if convicted of misconduct. Their functions were partly deliberative, partly judicial, partly executive: they prepared measures which were to be laid before the popular assembly; they exercised a criminal jurisdiction, with the power of inflicting death or civil degradation, and not confined by any written laws; and they also appear to have interposed with a kind of patriarchal authority, to enforce the observance of ancient usage and discipline. But it is not easy to define with exactness the original limits of their power, particularly in the last-mentioned branch of their office; because a part of their functions was very early assumed by a magistracy of later growth, the ephors, who, as we shall see, gradually reduced both the senate and the kings to comparative insignificance. The twenty-eight senators, as we have observed, were colleagues of the kings: and this is one side from which it is necessary to consider the Spartan royalty, in order to understand its peculiar nature. In general we may remark, that what rendered it so singular an object in later times was not merely that it stood alone after the kingly office had been abolished in the rest of Greece, but that while in most of its functions and attributes it presented a lively image of the royalty of the heroic ages, it was tempered and restrained in a manner unknown to the constitution of any of the heroic states. Most of these restrictions were introduced after the age of Lycurgus, by the growing power of the ephors: in the early period there was perhaps only one important feature in which the kings of Sparta differed from most of those described in the Homeric poems-the division of the sovereignty between two persons. But even this was not peculiar to Sparta: the legends of Thebes, as well as numerous instances in the catalogue of the Iliad, seem to prove that la diarchy, though less usual than a monarchy, was not a very rare form of government, at least in the latter part of the heroic ages. It was probably one of the first fruits of the jealousy of the nobles, which in the end swallowed up the kingly power. This may not be a sufficient ground for rejecting the substance of the Spartan legend, according to which the two royal families sprang from the twin sons of Aristodemus; but |