If this the freeman and the slave might be as conspic- had been reduced to slavery by the conquerors, | dered to the intent that the distinction between and upon their lot as the most wretched and degrading kind of servitude. A modern historian views them in a totally different light, as an aboriginal race, subdued at a very early period, which immediately passed over as slaves to the Dorians, and who suffered no worse treatment than was necessarily incident to their station, or than they had probably experienced under their former masters.* The two questions as to their origin and their treatment are intimately connected. As to the former, we have no sufficient direct evidence, and are left to the uncertain guidance of etymological conjectures. But as to the second point we have more satisfactory information; and though the degree of oppression to which the Helots were subjected may have been sometimes exaggera-ilar stories there is much exaggeration or misted, it is incontestable that they were always viewed with suspicion by their masters, as enemies who only waited for an opportunity to revolt; that they were placed under the inspection of a vigilant police; and that measures of atrocious violence were sometimes adopted to reduce their strength or to break their spirit. This is very intelligible, according to the common notion of their origin; but if they belonged to a race which the Dorians, at their first invasion, found already enslaved, it is not so easy to explain this hereditary enmity between them and their masters. For if they did not lose their liberty, they would appear to have been gainers by the Dorian conquest. They were obliged, indeed, to share the produce of the land which they cultivated with its new lords; but the rent demanded from them was moderate, and it was fixed, so that they could reckon on the whole benefit of extraordinary industry, frugality, and prosperous seasons. They were bound to the soil; but, in return, they could not be torn from it, and were secured by express compact or by unbroken custom from the danger of being sold to be carried away from their homes-a calamity to which the cultivators of the soil were long liable in Attica. A part of them was employed in public works, a part in domestic service: a less profitable occupation, indeed, but one which afforded them a chance of emancipation, as a reward of zeal and activity. The same prospect, and opportunities of enriching themselves with booty, sweetened their compulsory attendance in the camp and their share in the dangers of the field. Hence, unless their political condition had undergone a change, there appears no cause in their ordinary and permanent relations that should have rendered them impatient of the new yoke, which, at least, cannot have been heavier than the old one. On the other hand, though humanity was not one of the Dorian virtues, the conquerors would have been deterred by prudence from using wanton cruelty or contumely towards a numerous class of men, on whose submissiveness the existence of the state depended. But they seem to have been conscious that they had no claim to the goodwill of their serfs, and that they could only hope to keep them under by a strong arm and a threatening countenance. Hence the usual treatment of the Helots seems to have been or *Plut., Lyc., 28. + Myron in Athen., xiv., p. 657. Mueller (Dor., iii., 3) treats this as a palpable misrepresentation, because it could be no hardship for the Helots to wear a usual peasant's dress. But Welcker (Theognis, p. xxxv.) very judiciously observes, "Est aliquid tam singulis quam populis galerum villosum et gestare posse, et deponere." LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS, stroke of an invisible hand. That no scruples | all noble. of justice or humanity would have diverted the equality does not exclude internal distinctions 131 government or their agents from giving such of rank, we have still to inquire whether the Since, however, such a relative warnings where policy might seem to require Spartans were all equal among themselves. it, is abundantly evident from that deed of That at a period, the history of which is better blood, which, in its singular atrocity, leaves known than that of the age of Lycurgus, but every other crime recorded in Greek history when great changes had taken place in their far behind it, and over which Thucydides, condition, there subsisted among them a disthough without leaving room for the slightest parity of rank, which involved the most impordoubt as to the fact, draws a veil of mystery tant consequences, is indisputable; but it is an which serves to heighten its horror. He in- interesting and difficult question, whether this forms us that, on one occasion, when the weak- difference was an ancient one, and founded on ness of Sparta gave reason to dread an insur- their original relations, or was of later growth, rection of the Helots, all those whose past ser- and introduced by altered circumstances. There vices in war seemed to entitle them to freedom were, undoubtedly, certain divisions of the ruwere publicly invited to come forward and claim ling class, some as old as the conquest, others their reward. The bravest and most aspiring still more ancient; but it is not clear how far presented themselves, and, out of the whole these implied any distinction in rank or privinumber, two thousand were selected as the leges. The Dorians, in general, were divided worthiest. They crowned themselves in joy, into three tribes, and a portion of each joined and went round the temples to pay thanks to in the invasion of Laconia. Among these the the gods; and then they were all destroyed, but Hylleans, as that to which the two royal famiwith the decent secrecy which commonly marks lies belonged, would naturally have some prethe proceedings of an oligarchy; so that the cedence in dignity over the Dymanes and Pamhistorian, though he knew well what was done, phylians. But we find no intimation that this was unable to learn the exact manner. Emancipation of Helots was not unfrequent, recognised, or attended with any political adand there appear to have been several degrees vantages. But, besides this division, which was pre-eminence, if it existed, was ever legally between bondage and the full freedom of a common to the Dorian race, we hear of others Spartan citizen. can scarcely be reconciled with the notion that Egeids, according to Herodotus, were a great But the story just mentioned which were peculiar to Laconia. The Cadmean this ascent was open, of right or by custom, tribe (a phyle) at Sparta; and so the Heracleids, to every serf as a reward of merit, which it de- and even the Dorians, are sometimes described pended on his own exertions to earn. only surprising that a government, which some- probable that this last statement is a mere misIt is as separate tribes. It seems, however, most times granted this boon, should ever have re-take, and that the Ægeids and Heracleids were sorted to so horrible an expedient as the strat- both incorporated in the national threefold diagem related by Thucydides. ever, be remembered, that there was probably a It must, how-vision. great difference in the treatment which the Helots experienced at different periods. Plutarch observes that, in later times, the Spartans became more jealous, and, consequently, more cruel; and for this there appear to have been more causes than the partial insurrection to which he refers the fact.* have to relate an event which gave rise to a We shall also soon new class of Helots, who, as they were widely distinct in position and feelings from those of Laconia, were probably dealt with according to different maxims. cal tribes at Sparta, corresponding to the quarters or regions of the capital, or, perhaps, more But there appear to have been also loproperly 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 subdivispeculiar name of an obe, which originally signiions: at Sparta, the next lower unity bore the fied 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· The servitude of the Helots was the founda-division of the nation, but yet is not inconsiswhich corresponds perfectly well with the triple a number tion on which the existence of the Spartans, as a separate people, rested. The subjection of the rest of Laconia contributed, indeed, very materially to their power and security; but the district cultivated by the Helots, and their services in the field and in the city, were required to afford the ruling class that leisure which was the essential condition of all the Spartan institutions. To minister by his toil to this leisure was, according to the Spartan system, ence of such an order may be safely inferred the only end for which the Helot existed: to from analogy; and it is certainly probable It may, however, be thought, that the existenjoy it, or to use it in the immediate service enough, whether the Heracleids were foreignof the commonwealth, was the only occupationers or not, that there were among the Dorians which did not degrade a freeman. In this respect the Spartans were all equal: contrasted with the serfs who tilled their land and waited at their table, all gentle; compared with the tributary provincials, who were excluded from the councils and the government of the state, Lyc., 28. tent with those of five, six, and ten, which dif- other races, distinguished from the common 'bh, kwun, according to the true reading in Hesych., and perhaps was. Kwμas. The supplies the place of a digamma. See note 5, p. 801, of Alberti's Hesychius. 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. 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 leşser; 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 license 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 respect, 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 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. This, 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 besides 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 fellow-citizens. 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 carcer 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 king; 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 heroie 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 per LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS. 133 however, still greater than its power, and suffered little diminution after this had been most The honours attached to their office were, reduced. They were revered, not simply as the first magistrates of the state, but as persons allied to the gods by their heroic descent. But the outward marks of this reverence were such as it became freemen and Spartans to bestow, and were conformable to the simplicity of the heroic times from which they were derived. The ensigns of the royal dignity did not consist in pomp and ceremony, in personal splendour and luxury. A king of Sparta was not distinguished from his fellow-citizens either in his dress or his manner of living; he was subject to the same laws which regulated the diet of the common freeman; but the state made an ample provision for the maintenance of his household, and for a species of hospitality which he exercised rather in his character of priest than of king. For this purpose, besides the domains which were assigned to each king in the provincial districts, he was entitled to certain seasons to sacrifice to the gods and to entertain his friends. At every public sacrifice ofpayments in kind, which enabled him at stated fered by other citizens, he was of right the most honoured guest; to him belonged the foremost place in every assembly; and, before the ephors made an exception, every one rose at his approach. In the camp he was surrounded with still more state than at home; he was guarded by a chosen band of a hundred men; his table, at which he entertained the principal officers, was maintained at the public expense; and that of conducting the general operations of the though he was relieved from every care but campaign by a number of inferior functionaries, it was provided that they should in no case act without his express permission. How the two kings shared the command when they both led the same expedition, we are not distinctly informed. Both the accession and the decease of the kings were marked by usages which, as Herodotus observed, have rather an Oriental than a Hellenic aspect. On the one occasion, the public joy was expressed by a release of all debts due from individuals to the state; for the Spartan treasury, perhaps, no great sacrifice. The royal obsequies were celebrated by a ten days' intermission of all public business, and by provincials were compelled to take the most active part; horsemen carried the tidings through a general mourning, in which the Helots and the the country, and thousands of the subject class, as well as of the serfs, attended the funeral, rent the air with their wailings, and proclaimed the virtues of the deceased prince superior to those of all his predecessors. sons. But even this was not peculiar to Spar- | of the public roads,* and appointed officers, in ta: the legends of Thebes, as well as numerous instances in the catalogue of the Iliad, seem to prove that a diarchy, though less usual than a the nature of consuls, to protect the interests of monarchy, was not a very rare form of governstrangers. ment, 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 it tends to show that design had probably as great a share as chance in producing this institution. Its inevitable effect the rivalry of the two royal lines, was undoubtedly not unforeseen; but this rivalry, which might have been pernicious if the royal authority had been greater, was likely to prove useful to the state, as that of the Roman consuls, when both parties were placed under due control; and this may have been the result contemplated by those who procured the sanction of the oracle for the divided royalty. According to those authors, indeed, who believed that the senate was founded by Lycurgus, the dismemberment of the crown might have seemed necessary for the protection of the liberty of the people; but according to the view we have here taken of the senate, as an original and essential part of the Spartan institutions, the power of the kings can never have been formidable. In council the voice of each told for no more than that of any other senator: in their absence their place seems to have been supplied, according to some regulation which is not clearly explained, by the senators of the same tribe; and it is not improbable that the king of the elder house had a casting vote.* separate tribunal, which, before the rise of the They also presided in a ephoralty, perhaps exercised a more extensive civil jurisdiction, but was subsequently confined to certain questions of inheritance and legal forms connected with the patriarchal character of the kings. Like all the kings of the heroic ages, they were the high-priests of the nation: both were priests of Jupiter; but with the distinction that the one, probably the elder, ministered to the god under his Dorian title, the other under that which he bore in Laconia, probably before the conquest.† They had likewise, apparently as a branch of the same office, the more important charge of consulting the Delphic oracle by officers of their own appointment, and of preserving the answers received. the most important of all their prerogatives was the command of the armies, and it was in time But of war that the royal majesty was seen in its highest lustre. Though to make war or peace rested with the nation, the kings appear originally to have had the unfettered direction of all military operations, assisted, however, by a council of war; and it was long before any inconvenience was found to arise from their taking the field together. Their military authority, especially in expeditions beyond the border, seems to have been nearly unlimited; at home, in the same capacity of hereditary generals of the nation, they provided for the maintenance This may, perhaps, reconcile the difference between Herod., v., 57, and Thucyd., i, 20. ↑ Her., v., 56. the inferior magistrates is not important enough the state. And hence, perhaps, exercised a special jurisdiction over the Helots and provincials, on whom the repair of the highways usually fell. Herod., 1., 57. narrowly limited. The Helots who cultivated it might rather have been considered as the real owners of it, since they were only charged with the payment of an invariable quantity of the produce, with which their lord was to support his household as he could. The average amount of this rent seems to have been no more than was required for the frugal maintenance of a family of 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, and, it would appear, 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 rep trates, nor their original functions, seem to have been peculiar to Sparta: they occur in other Dorian cities, and were, therefore, probably of higher antiquity even than Lycurgus, though by some authors their origin was referred to him, by others to a later reign. Their number, five, which, so far as we know, was always the same, was probably connected with that of the local tribes or quarters of Sparta. They were elected annually, and appear from the first to have exercised a jurisdiction and superintendence over the Spartans in their civil concerns, which was, perhaps, never exactly ascertained, and, therefore, admitted of indefinite enlargement. In the ordinance of the oracle, which contains the general outline of the Constitution as it existed in the time of Lycurgus, they are not men-resented by one head of a household; but the tioned, from which it may be inferred that no new powers accrued to them from any of the changes which he introduced. It is, at all events, clear that their political importance arose at a later period; and the new character which their office then assumed appears to be so intimately connected with the history of the times, that it will be most convenient to consider both together. nature of the means employed for this end is one of the most obscure subjects in the Spartan system. The first difficulty was to provide that the whole number of families to be maintained should not exceed or fall short of the number of lots assigned for their support. To guard against the evils which might arise, even while this equality was preserved, from a great disproportion between the numbers and the property of each family, was the second difficulty. A superabundant population might have been easily discharged by the ordinary expedient of a colony; but, in fact, this was an evil which seems never to have been felt or feared at Sparta. We read of penalties enacted by Lycurgus against celibacy, and of rewards assigned, in later times, to the fathers of a numerous offspring; yet we find that the number of Spartan citizens was continually decreasing. Hence the common stock was always amply sufficient for the wants of the community; and the only practical difficulty was to regulate its distribution, so as to guard against the extremes of wealth and utter indigence. In the better times of the commonwealth, this seems to have been In the institutions hitherto described, we have found nothing that can with any probability be attributed to Lycurgus, and little that was originally peculiar to Sparta. But as the Spartans were at all times chiefly distinguished from the other Greeks by the usages of their civil and domestic life, so it is in these that the influence of the legislator is generally thought to be most conspicuous. And here, as we have already given reasons for believing that in many points he reduced habit and custom to rule and law, we have no doubt that, in the same spirit, he not only modified and corrected, but also added much that was new. No one, however, can now pretend to distinguish these various elements from each other, except so far as some are more, some less accordant with the gen-principally effected by means of adoptions, and eral practice of Greek antiquity. There is, indeed, one principle which pervades all the Spartan institutions: the citizen is born and lives but for the state; his substance, time, strength, faculties, and affections are dedicated to its service; its welfare is his happiness, its glory his honour. But this principle was assuredly not introduced by Lycurgus, even if he was the first Spartan in whose mind it became a distinct thought. It was the necessary result of the circumstances by which a handful of men were placed in a country of which they occupied only a single point, in the midst of a population great-casions, even in opposition to the wishes of inly superior to them in numbers, over which, nevertheless, they were determined to lord as princes and masters. Lycurgus, however, seems both to have recognised it as the supreme principle of his legislation, and in the application of it to have gone some steps farther than any one before him. The sacrifice exacted from the wealthy, whom he compelled to resign a part of their lands, was an acknowledgment of the precarious tenure by which every Spartan held his movable property, if, indeed, he could be said to have any; for, in fact, he was far from having an absolute control over the portion of land assigned to him; his interest in it was most *As at Cyrene. Heracl., 4. marriages with heiresses, which provided for the younger sons of families too large to be supported on their 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, where the father had not signified his will, there can be little doubt that the magistrate had the power of interposing on such oc dividuals, to relieve poverty and check the ac cumulation of wealth. What farther foundation there may have been for Plutarch's assertion, that every child at its birth was brought to the assembled elders of its tribe, and, if pronounced worthy to live, had one of the 9000 lots assigned for its subsistence, is now only matter for very uncertain conjecture. The institutions which restrained the Spartan from every kind of profitable industry, except so far as the chase might be viewed in that light, left him to depend wholly on the produce of his land. For the few and simple transactions by which he provided for the wants of his household, he needed but little money at a time. Lyc., 16. |