The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 2 of 2
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Title: The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, Vol. 2 of 2
Author: Karl Otfried Müller
Translator: Sir George Cornewall Lewis
Henry Tufnell
Release date: September 28, 2010 [eBook #34010]
Most recently updated: June 16, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34010
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF THE DORIC RACE, VOL. 2 OF 2 ***
The History and Antiquities
Of The
Doric Race
by Karl Otfried Müller
Professor in the University of Göttingen
Translated From the German by
Henry Tufnell, Esq.
And
George Cornewall Lewis, Esq., A.M.
Student of Christ Church.
Second Edition, Revised.
Vol. II
London:
John Murray, Albemarle Street.
1839.
CONTENTS
Book III. Political Institutions Of The Dorians.
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter X.
Chapter XI.
Chapter XII.
Book IV. Domestic Institutions, Arts, And Literature Of The Dorians.
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Appendices.
Appendix V. On the Doric Dialect.
Appendix VI. Chronological Tables.
Index.
Footnotes
BOOK III. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE DORIANS.
Chapter I.
§ 1. End of a state according to the Doric notions. § 2.
Difference between the political institutions of the Dorians and
Ionians. § 3. Successive changes in the constitutions of the Greek
states; 1st, royal aristocracy of the heroic ages. § 4. 2nd,
Timocracy, or aristocracy of wealth. § 5. 3rd, Tyranny. § 6. 4th,
Democracy. § 7. Form of government characteristic of the Doric
race. § 8. Supposed legislation of Lycurgus. § 9. Derivation of
Spartan laws from the Delphic oracle. § 10. Characteristics of the
Doric form of government.
1. Before we speak of the form of government which prevailed in the Doric
states, it will be necessary to set aside all modern ideas respecting the
origin, essence, and object of a state; namely, that it is an institution
for protecting the persons and property of the individuals contained in
it. We shall approach nearer to the ancient notion, if we consider the
essence of a state to be, that by a recognition of the same opinions and
principles, and the direction of actions to the same ends, the whole body
become, as it were, one moral agent. Such an unity of opinions and actions
can only be produced by the ties of some natural affinity, such as of a
nation, a tribe, or a part of one: although in process of time the meaning
of the terms _state_ and _nation_ became more distinct. The more complete
the unity of feelings and principles is, the more vigorous will be the
common exertions, and the more comprehensive the notion of the state. As
this was in general carried to a wider extent among the Greeks than by
modern nations, so it was perhaps nowhere so strongly marked as in the
Dorian states, whose national views with regard to political institutions
were most strongly manifested in the government of Sparta. Here the
plurality of the persons composing the state was most completely reduced
to unity; and hence the life of a Spartan citizen was chiefly concerned in
public affairs. The greatest freedom of the Spartan, as well as of the
Greeks in general, was only to be a living member of the body of the
state; whereas that which in modern times commonly receives the name of
liberty, consists in having the fewest possible claims from the community;
or in other words, in dissolving the social union to the greatest degree
possible, as far as the individual is concerned. What the Dorians
endeavoured to obtain in a state was good order, or κόσμος, the regular
combination of different elements. The expression of king Archidamus in
Thucydides,(1) that “it is most honourable, and at the same time most
secure, for many persons to show themselves obedient to the same order
(κόσμος),” was a fundamental principle of this race. And hence the
Spartans honoured Lycurgus so greatly, as having instituted the existing
order of things (κόσμος):(2) and called his son by the laudatory title of
Eucosmus.(3) For the same reason the supreme magistrate among the Cretans
was called Cosmus; among the Epizephyrian Locrians, Cosmopolis. Thus this
significant word expresses the spirit of the Dorian government, as well as
of the Dorian music and philosophy.(4) With this desire to obtain a
complete uniformity, an attempt after stability is necessarily connected.
For an unity of this kind having been once established, the next object is
to remove whatever has a tendency to destroy it, and to repress all causes
which may lead to a change: yet an attempt to exclude all alteration is
never completely successful: partly on account of the internal changes
which take place in the national character, and partly because causes
operating from without necessarily produce some modifications. These
states, however, endeavour to retain unchanged a state of things once
established and approved; while others, in which from the beginning the
opinions of individuals have out-weighed the authority of the whole,
admit, in the progress of time, of greater variety, and more innovations,
readily take up whatever is offered to them by accident of time and place,
or even eagerly seek for opportunities of change. States of this
description must soon lose all firmness and character, and fall to pieces
from their own weakness; while those which never admit of innovation will
at last, after having long stood as ruins in a foreign neighbourhood,
yield to the general tide of human affairs, and their destruction is
commonly preceded by the most complete anarchy.
2. This description expresses, though perhaps too forcibly, the difference
between the Doric and Ionic races. The former had, of all the Grecians,
the greatest veneration for antiquity; and not to degenerate from his
ancestors was the strongest exhortation which a Spartan could hear:(5) the
latter, on the other hand, were in everything fond of novelty, and
delighted in foreign communication; whence their cities were always built
on the sea, whereas the Dorians generally preferred an inland situation.
The anxiety of the Dorians, and the Spartans in particular, to keep up the
pure Doric character and the customs of their ancestors, is strongly shown
by the prohibition to travel,(6) and the exclusion of foreigners, an
institution common both to the Spartans and Cretans, and which has been
much misrepresented by ancient authors.(7) It is very possible, as
Plutarch thinks, that the severity of these measures was increased by the
decline of all morals and discipline, which had arisen among the Ionians
from the contrary practice; that race having in the earliest times fallen
into a state of the greatest effeminacy and inactivity, from their
connexion with their Asiatic neighbours. For how early was the period when
the ancient constitution of the Grecian family degenerated among the
Ionians into the slavery of the wife! how weak, effeminate, and luxurious
do their ancient poets Callinus(8) and Asius(9) represent them! and if the
legend describes even the daughters of Neleus, the founder of the colony,
as completely destitute of morality,(10) what must have been the condition
of this people, when the wives of the Ionians had mixed with Lydian women!
The warning voice of such examples might well stimulate the ancient
lawgivers to draw in with greater closeness the iron bond of custom.
3. But with all this difference in the races of which the Grecian nation
consisted, there was, in the development of the constitutions of the Greek
states, a common progress, which extended a certain influence even to such
as retained their earlier impressions with a firm adherence to antiquity.
As it is our present object to give a general view of this advance, we
will begin with the constitution of the heroic age, so clearly described
in Homer. This can scarcely be called by any other name than that of
_aristocracy_, as its most important feature is the accurate division
between the nobles(11) and the people. The former composed the
deliberative councils, and the courts of justice;(12) and although both
were commonly combined with a public assembly (ἀγορὰ), the nobles were the
only persons who proposed measures, deliberated and voted; the people was
only present in order to hear the debate, and to express its feelings as a
body; which expressions might then be noticed by princes of a mild
disposition.(13) The chief ruler himself was properly of equal rank with
the other nobles, and was only raised above them by the authority
intrusted to him as president in the council, and commander in the field.
This form of government continued to exist for a considerable time in the
Ionian, Achæan, and Æolian states; but the power of the chief ruler
gradually declined, and was at last wholly abolished. With the Dorians,
however, the case was very different; they were peculiar in possessing a
very limited nobility, for the Heraclidæ had nearly an exclusive right to
that appellation: while, on the other hand, a whole nation occupied by
means of conquest, a station analogous to that of an aristocracy, uniting
military pursuits with independence obtained by the possession of the
land.
4. About the 30th Olympiad (660 B.C.), however, on account of the
increased trade and intercourse with foreign nations, and consequently of
the greater demand for luxuries, the value of wealth rose in comparison
with the honour of noble descent. The land, indeed, still remained for the
most part in the hands of the aristocracy; but as it had at this time
become more easy to dissipate an inherited estate, and to obtain
consideration by the profits of trade, property was more exposed to sudden
changes. It is probable that the Geomori of the Ionic Samos, as well as
the Hippobotæ of Chalcis (which, as well as Samos, had once belonged to
Ionians), whose distinction was derived from the possession of land, also
carried on the extensive commerce of these two states; otherwise the
wealth of the merchant would soon have exceeded that of the landowner. In
the Doric states also, which were much engaged in trade, such as Corinth,
Ægina, &c., it was attempted to unite the government of hereditary
aristocracy and of wealth.(14) The new importance attached to wealth, even
at the time of the Seven Sages, gave rise to the saying of Aristodemus the
Argive, “Money makes the man;”(15) and at a later period Theognis the
Megarean complains that the pursuit of riches confounds all distinction of
rank, and that estimation was derived from it.(16) The ancient legislators
of Greece considered the power of money, or moveable property (which is as
changeable as property in land is durable), most prejudicial to the safety
of states; and they endeavoured by oppressing the commercial classes, as
well as by rendering the land inalienable, to palliate a danger which they
were unable wholly to remove. Sparta alone, from the unchangeableness of
her institutions, remained free from these revolutions. Solon, on the
other hand, endeavoured to arrest and perpetuate a state of things which
was merely fleeting and transitory. He left some remnants of the
aristocracy, particularly the political union of the γένεα, or houses,
untouched; while he made his government in principle a timocracy, the
amount of property determining the share in the governing power; and at
the same time showed a democratic tendency in the low rate at which he
fixed the valuation. In his poetry also Solon considers the middle ranks
as most valuable to the state; and therefore he endeavoured to give them
political importance.(17) But the temperature which he chose was too
artificial to be lasting; and the constitution of Solon, in its chief
points, only remained in force for a few years. In other Ionic states also
similar reconciliations were attempted, but without obtaining any
stability.(18) The spirit of the age was manifestly turned towards
democracy; and though at Athens Solon, as being the friend of the people,
succeeded perhaps in effecting a more gradual transition; in other places
the parties were more directly opposed, as is clearly shown by the contest
between the parties Πλοῦτις and Χειρομάχα at Miletus.(19)
5. At Athens however, and generally throughout Greece, the first result of
these democratic movements was the establishment of tyranny or despotism;
which may be considered as a violent revulsion, destined to precede a
complete subversion of all the existing institutions. It has been already
shown that the tyrants of Corinth, Sicyon, Megara, and Epidaurus, were
originally leaders of the popular party against the Doric nobility, or
_demagogues_, according to the expression of Aristotle; and for this
reason Sparta, as being the protector of aristocracy, overthrew them,
wherever her power extended.(20) In Ionia and Sicily the tyrants found an
oligarchical timocracy, which was commonly opposed by a democratical
party;(21) and in some instances, as in that of Gelon, the tyrant acted
against the popular faction. At the time of the Persian war democracy had
struck deep root among the Ionians; and Mardonius the Persian, after the
expulsion of the tyrants, restored it in their cities as the desired form
of government.(22) In Athens Cleisthenes had deprived the union of the
houses (the last support of the aristocracy) of its political importance;
and Aristides was at length compelled by circumstances to change the
timocracy into a democracy. For in the Persian invasion the lower orders
had discovered, while serving as rowers and sailors in the fleet, how much
the safety of the state depended upon their exertions, and would no longer
submit to be excluded from a share in the highest offices.(23) The
democracy flourished so long as great men understood how to guide it by
the imposing superiority of their individual characters, and educated
persons (οἱ βελτίονες) dared to take a share in public affairs; it fell
when the greedy and indolent people, allured by the prospect of rewards
pernicious to the state, filled the public assemblies and courts of
justice. We will not carry on any further our picture of the ochlocracy,
in which all social union was entirely dissolved, and the state was
surrendered to the arbitrary will of a turbulent populace.
6. The last of these changes, produced by what is called the spirit of the
times, we have illustrated by the history of Athens, although the same
course may be shown to have taken place in other, even originally Doric
states. Thus in Ambracia, about the same time as at Athens, the timocracy
gradually passed into a democracy,(24) and at Argos also the democracy
rose at the same period. At the time of Polybius, the people had in the
Doric states of Crete so unlimited an authority, that this writer himself
wonders that his description of them should be so entirely opposed to all
former accounts.(25) But since, in general, these alterations threw down
the Doric families from their high station, and put an end to the Doric
customs, they have not so strong a claim upon our attention, as the
peculiar system of the Doric form of government, which was most strongly
expressed in the ancient Cretan and Lacedæmonian constitutions: the latter
of which, although in many points it yielded and adapted itself to the
progress of civilization, existed in its essential parts for five
centuries;(26) and by its durability preserved Sparta alone among all the
states of Greece from revolutions and revolutionary excesses.(27)
7. But, it may be asked, what right have we to speak of a Doric
constitution in general; and why should we select Sparta in preference to
any other state of the Doric race, as a model of that system? May not
Lycurgus have formed his legislation from reflection upon the condition
and wants of his own nation, or have conceived it from arbitrary
principles of his own, and have thus impressed upon Sparta the character
which it ever after retained, as an essential element of its system?(28)
Against this opinion, not unfrequently advanced, instead of bringing
forward any general arguments, we prefer adducing the words of Pindar,(29)
who, beyond a doubt, was far better acquainted with the basis and origin
of ancient constitutions, than either Ephorus or Plutarch. Pindar mentions
that Hieron, the Syracusan, wished to establish the new city of Ætna
(which was inhabited by 5000 Syracusans, and the same number of
Peloponnesians) upon the genuine Doric principles; as in later times Dion
wished to establish in Syracuse itself a Lacedæmonian or Cretan
constitution.(30) He founded it “with heaven-built freedom, according to
the laws of the Hylean model;” _i.e._, after the example of the Spartan
constitution. “For the descendants of Pamphylus, and of the Heraclidæ, who
dwell under the brow of Taygetus, wish always to retain the Doric
institutions of Ægimius.” Now in the first place, this passage proves that
the laws of Sparta were considered the true Doric institutions; and,
secondly, that their origin was held to be identical with that of the
people. It proves that the Spartan _laws_ (νόμοι) were the true Doric
_institutions_ (νόμιμα), and indeed, in no other nation was the
distinction between usage and positive law less marked; from which
circumstance alone it is evident how little opportunity the legislator had
for fresh enactments, since custom can never be the work of one person.
From this view of the subject we can also explain why Hellanicus, the most
ancient writer on the constitution of Sparta,(31) made no mention of
Lycurgus (for which he is ignorantly censured by Ephorus),(32) and
attributed what are called the institutions of Lycurgus to the first
kings, Procles and Eurysthenes. It also follows, that when Herodotus
describes the Spartans before the time of Lycurgus, as being in a state of
the greatest anarchy,(33) he can only mean that the original constitution
(the τεθμοὶ Αἰγιμίου) had been overthrown and perverted by external
circumstances, until it was restored and renewed by Lycurgus. Lycurgus, of
whose real or imaginary existence we have already spoken,(34) must at the
time of Herodotus have been considered a mythical personage, as he had a
temple, annual sacrifices, and, in fact, a regular worship.(35) Now it is
the tendency of mythological narration to represent accordant actions of
many minds at different times under the name of one person: consequently,
the mere name of an institution of Lycurgus says very little respecting
its real origin and author.
8. The legislation of Lycurgus was, however, according to ancient
traditions, aided by the support of Crete and Delphi, and the connexion
between the religious usages of these states thus influenced their
political condition. The form of government which was prevalent throughout
the whole of Crete, originated, according to the concurrent testimony of
the ancients, in the time of Minos; and it has been already shown that the
Dorians at that time extended their dominion to this island, which thus
received their language and customs.(36) In Crete therefore, the
constitution founded on the principles of the Doric race, was first
moulded into a firm and consistent shape, but even in a more simple and
antiquated manner than in Sparta at a subsequent period.(37) Thus Lycurgus
was enabled, without forcing any foreign usages upon Sparta, to take for a
model the Cretan institutions which had been more fully developed at an
earlier period; so that the constitutions of Crete and Sparta had from
that time, as it were, a family resemblance.(38) When therefore we are
told that a pæan singer and expiatory priest of Crete, by name Thaletas of
Elyrus,(39) sent by the command of the Pythian oracle, composed the
troubles and dissensions of Sparta by the power of his music, and that he
was the instructor of Lycurgus;(40) it is easy to perceive that the latter
part of this account is an addition, made without any attention to
chronology; but the operation of Cretan music upon the regulation of
political affairs, is strictly in the spirit of an age, and of a race, in
which religion, arts, and laws conduced far more than among any other
people to attain the same end, and had their basis in the same notions.
9. On the other hand, it was the pride of the Spartans, that their laws
had proceeded from the oracle of the Pythian god:(41) and Tyrtæus says, in
some verses of his Eunomia, that the fundamental principles of the Spartan
constitution had been laid down by Apollo.(42) It is probable that these
laws were really composed in the form of injunctions to Lycurgus, or to
the people.(43) The oracle, however, continued to possess a superintending
power over the constitution, chiefly through the intervention of the
Pythians,(44) four persons appointed by the kings as messengers to the
temple of Pytho, who delivered the oracles truly and honestly to the
kings,(45) and were equally acquainted with their purport. On account of
the importance of these oracles, the Pythians were the assessors of the
kings and the gerusia,(46) and were always the messmates, both at home and
in the field, of the kings. It is probable that the three “Pythian
interpreters” at Athens, who, besides explaining the oracles, performed
public and domestic expiatory sacrifices,(47) once possessed a similar
dignity, although they lost these powers at a very early period. The
theori of Ægina, Mantinea, Messenia, Trœzen, and Thasos, who composed
separate colleges, ate together, and who were regular magistrates, not
being like the theori of Athens, chosen for a single theoria, may be
compared with the Pythians.(48)
10. This comparison again leads us back to our former position, that in
the genuine Doric form of government there were certain predominant ideas,
which were peculiar to that race, and were also expressed in the worship
of Apollo, viz., those of _harmony_ and _order_ (τὸ εὔκοσμον); of
_self-control and moderation_ (σωφροσύνη), and of _manly virtue_
(ἀρετή).(49) Accordingly, the constitution was formed for the education as
well of the old as of the young, and in a Doric state education was upon
the whole a subject of greater importance than government. And for this
reason all attempts to explain the legislation of Lycurgus, from partial
views and considerations, have necessarily failed. That external happiness
and enjoyment were not the aim of these institutions was soon perceived.
But it was thought, with Aristotle,(50) that every thing could be traced
to a desire of making the Spartans courageous warriors, and Sparta a
dominant and conquering state; whereas the fact is, that Sparta was hardly
ever known to seek occasion for a war, or to follow up a victory; and
during the whole of her flourishing period (that is, from about the 50th
Olympiad to the battle of Leuctra) did not make a single conquest by which
her territory was enlarged. In conclusion we may say, that the Doric state
was a body of men, acknowledging one strict principle of order, and one
unalterable rule of manners; and so subjecting themselves to this system,
that scarcely anything was unfettered by it, but every action was
influenced and regulated by the recognised principles. Before however we
come to the consideration of this system, it will be necessary to explain
the condition of an order of persons, upon which it was in a certain
measure founded, namely, the _subject classes_ in the several Doric
states.
Chapter II.
§ 1. Origin and distribution of the Periœci of Laconia. § 2. Their
political condition and civil rights. § 3. Their service in war,
and their occupation in manufactures, trade, and art. § 4. Noble
families in Sparta not of Doric origin. Trades and crafts
hereditary in Sparta.
1. The clearest notion of the subjection enforced by the dominant race of
Dorians may be collected from the speech of Brasidas to the
Peloponnesians, in Thucydides.(51) “You are not come,” he says, “from
states in which the many rule over the few, but the few over the many,
having obtained their sovereignty in no other manner than by victory in
the field.” The only right indeed which they possessed was the right of
conquerors; the Dorians had by the sword driven out the Achæans, and these
again could not rest their claim to Peloponnesus on any better title. It
seemed also like a continuation of the heroic age, the existence of which
was founded on the rule exercised by the military over the agricultural
classes. The relative rights of the Dorians and Achæans appear, however,
to have been determined by mutual compact, since the Dorians, obtaining
the superiority only by slow degrees, were doubtless glad to purchase the
accession of each town on moderate conditions; and this was perhaps
especially the case in Messenia.(52) The native inhabitants of the towns,
thus reduced to a state of dependence, were called Περίοικοι.(53) The
difference of races was strictly preserved; and was not (as elsewhere)
obliterated by an union in the same city and political community. The
Periœci were always considered as Achæans, that people having in early
times composed the larger mass of the people thus subdued. So, for
example, the inhabitants of the maritime town of Asopus were called by the
title of Ἀχαιοὶ οἱ παρακοπαρίσσιοι.(54) At a later date, when the power of
Sparta had been long broken, and her freedom annihilated by the tyrant
Nabis, Titus Quinctius detached the hamlets (once called πόλεις, then
κῶμαι, _vici_) from all connexion with Sparta, and placed them under the
protection of the Achæan league.(55) Augustus confirmed the independence
of twenty-four Laconian towns under the name of Eleutherolacones; these,
like the former, being entirely released from the power of Sparta, were
governed by their own laws,(56) and formed a small distinct confederation.
Hence it is evident that these Periœci had previously maintained a certain
degree of independence, and composed separate communities. Of these
twenty-four towns eighteen are mentioned—viz., Gerenia, Alagonia, Thalamæ,
Leuctra, Œtylus, Cænepolis, Pyrrhichus, Las, Teuthrone, Gythium, Asopus,
Acriæ, Bœæ, Zarax, Epidaurus, Limera, Prasiæ, Geronthræ, and Marius;(57) a
small part only of the coast near Cardamyle remained at that time under
the power of Sparta.(58) The towns, however, belonging to the Periœci did
not lie merely on the coast, but also more inland; for example, Thuria and
Æthæa, which were in what had formerly been Messenia.(59) This Æthæa is
reckoned among the hundred cities of Laconia,(60) which Androtion had
enumerated at full length in his Atthis, and perhaps also Stephanus of
Byzantium, on the authority of Androtion;(61) the epitome of whose work
which we now possess only mentions Æthæa, Amyclæ, Croceæ, Epidaurus,
Limera, Dyrrachium, Tenos, Aulon, and Anthana. Now since two of these
towns are known from other authorities to have belonged to Periœci, we may
perhaps infer the same of the whole hundred. The round number of a hundred
cannot however have been fixed before the time when the whole of Messenia,
as far as the river Neda (on which Aulon was situated), as well as Cynuria
(to which Anthana, or Athene, belonged), came finally under the dominion
of Sparta, that is to say, after Olymp. 58. 548 B.C.(62) It must therefore
have been subsequent to this epoch that Sparta fixed the exact number of
the towns inhabited by her Periœci, and somewhat arbitrarily set them at a
hundred; as Cleisthenes at Athens, though by what means is indeed unknown,
contrived likewise to raise the number of demi in Attica to a hundred.
We have already(63) taken notice of another division of Laconia besides
that into towns, and shown that the Periœci of this country had formerly
dwelt in five districts, of which the chief towns were Amyclæ, Las,
Epidaurus Limera (or else Gytheium), Ægys, and Pharis; as also Messenia,
in addition to the territory round the city inhabited by Dorians,
contained four provinces—viz., Pylos, Rhium, Mesola, and Hyamia. For what
length of time these districts were retained, and what relation they bore
to the division into a hundred towns or hamlets, cannot now be determined.
2. It will next be necessary to ascertain what were the political rights
and condition of the Periœci. The main circumstances are without doubt
correctly given by Ephorus. “They were,” he says, “tributary to Sparta,
and had not equal rights of citizenship.” If these words are taken in
their literal sense, it is plain that the Periœci had not a share in the
great legislative assembly of the citizens. And in truth the passages
adduced by modern writers to show that they had a vote in this assembly
are not by any means satisfactory.(64) Perhaps the following
considerations are sufficient to convince us of the impossibility of such
general assemblies. Had the Spartan constitution permitted the whole
people to hold large assemblies with the right of deciding on all public
questions, it would have been in principle completely democratic, and
would have had a perpetual tendency to become more so, in the necessary
course of events. But, in addition to this objection, let us only picture
to ourselves the absurdity of the Periœci, in the neighbourhood of Sparta,
all flocking together between the brook Babyca and the bridge Cnacion!
Where again were those, who took several days to arrive at Sparta from
Cyphanta, Pylos, or Tænarus, to find houseroom and food? How could any of
them be ready to leave their homes and trades at such a summons? It was
esteemed a difficult matter even to collect an armed force of Periœci at a
short notice. A _city-community_ was doubtless everywhere requisite for a
popular assembly; and hence in the Athenian, and every similar democracy,
each citizen was in some way settled in the town, and had the right of
there possessing an house (ἔγκτησις οἰκίας), which a Periœcus most
assuredly had not.(65)
3. Now, if it is acknowledged that the distant situation and state of the
Periœci presented almost insuperable objections to their possessing a
share in the general government, their political inferiority to the
Spartans will not appear very oppressive. They were admitted equally with
the Spartans to the honourable occupation of war, and indeed sometimes
served as heavy-armed soldiers, or as troops of the line.(66) There were
at Platæa 5000 Dorian hoplitæ, and the same number of Periœci; at
Sphacteria 292 prisoners were taken, of whom only 120 were Spartans.(67)
How, if the Periœci had been an oppressed people, could Sparta have
ventured to collect so large a number into her armies; and for what reason
should the Periœci have taken part in the heroic devotion of that small
band, if they had not the victory and honour of Sparta as much at heart as
their own? “Sparta,” said the Spartan king Demaratus, to Xerxes,(68)
“contains 8000 Spartans, all of equal bravery; the other Lacedæmonians, in
many surrounding cities, are indeed inferior to them, but yet not
deficient in courage.” Nor do we hear of any insurrection of Periœci (if
we except the revolt of two Messenian towns in Olymp. 78. 468 B.C.) until
the downfall of the constitution.(69) Again, would it be possible, on the
assumption of an oppressive subjection, to explain how the Asinæans and
Nauplians, when deprived of their independence by Argos, fled to Laconia,
that they might occupy the maritime towns of Mothone and Asine, manifestly
as Periœci? Nor is it consistent with a general contempt of the Periœci
that καλοὶ καγαθοὶ—“gentlemen”—are mentioned in their number.(70) All
trade and commerce, of indispensable need to Laconia, were in the hands of
the maritime towns. Merchants from Libya and Egypt brought their cargoes
to the Periœci of Cythera,(71) who, among other branches of trade,
followed the lucrative employment of the purple fishery.(72) All manual
labour in Sparta, not performed by slaves, was in the hands of this class,
since no Spartan, before the introduction of the Achæan constitution, was
allowed to follow any trade.(73) The low estimation in which trade was
held was founded on the ancient Grecian customs and opinions, in departing
from which the Corinthians were nearly singular among the Doric states,
the productiveness of trade having taught them to set a higher value upon
it.(74) And yet in their colony of Epidamnus public slaves were the only
manual labourers;(75) Diophantus wished to introduce the converse of this
system at Athens, and to make all the manual labourers slaves. The
Spartans, moreover, appear to have admitted those alone of the Periœci who
were engaged in agriculture to serve among the heavy-armed, while artisans
were admitted only to the light-armed infantry.(76) This had been once the
case at Athens, where the Thetes (to which class the artificers belonged)
served only in that inferior rank. According to this, then, the 5000
Periœci, who at the battle of Platæa were allotted as light-armed to the
same number of heavy-armed soldiers, were in part perhaps artificers. The
industrious pursuit of trade did not, however, suffer so much as might be
supposed, from the low estimation in which it was held; for not only were
many raw commodities obtained in a high degree of perfection in Laconia,
but many Lacedæmonian manufactures were also used and sought after in the
rest of Greece. The Laconian _cothon_, a drinking vessel used in camps and
marches,(77) the bowl,(78) the goblet,(79) tables, seats, elbow
chairs,(80) doors,(81) and cars,(82) the Laconian steel,(83) keys,(84)
swords, helmets, axes, and other iron fabrics,(85) the shoes of
Amyclæ,(86) the Laconian mantles,(87) and woollen garments dyed with
native purple, which adorned alike the warriors setting out to battle and
the bloody corpses of the slain; all these bespeak an active pursuit of
trade, and at the same time a peculiar sense of propriety and comfort,
which brought several of these goods and implements into general use. Many
men were probably employed in the iron mines and forges;(88) stone
quarries of Tænarus had also been worked from early times;(89) and that
their industry was not confined to the mere drudgery of manufactures is
shown by the schools of Lacedæmonian embossers and brass-founders
(probably a branch of that in Crete), to which Chartas, Syadras, Dontas,
Dorycleidas and Medon, Theocles, Gitiadas, and Cratinus belonged,(90) all
of whom were probably Periœci, although Pausanias, neglecting the
distinction, calls them Spartans. Upon the whole we may venture to affirm
that the Doric dominion did not discourage or stifle the intellectual
growth of her dependent subjects, but allowed it full room for a vigorous
development. Myson, by many reckoned one of the seven sages, was,
according to some, and perhaps the most credible accounts, a husbandman of
the Laconian town of Etia, and resided at a place called Chen in the same
country.(91) Even the highest honour among the Greeks, the victory at the
Olympic games, was not denied to the Lacedæmonians; an inhabitant of Acriæ
was found in the list of the conquerors at Olympia:(92) from which
circumstance it is evident that the Periœci of Sparta were in all other
parts of Greece considered as free citizens. They must also without doubt
have possessed civil rights, but only in those communities to which they
immediately belonged, and which would never have been called _cities_
(πόλεις) unless they had to a certain point been independent bodies.
Isocrates,(93) indeed, states that they possessed less freedom and power
than the demi of Attica; but no general comparison can be drawn between
the δῆμοι of Attica and πόλεις of Laconia. Perhaps they had the power of
electing their own municipal magistrates, though we find that a Spartan
was sent as governor to the island of Cythera.(94) The same was the case
in war. We find the command at sea intrusted to one of the class of
Periœci,(95) doubtless because the Spartans did not hold the naval service
in much estimation, and because the inhabitants of the maritime towns were
more practised in naval affairs than the Dorians of the interior.
Concerning the tribute of the towns belonging to the Periœci no accurate
account has been preserved.
4. Though for the most part the early inhabitants were driven into the
country by the Doric conquerors, there still remained some families which
inhabited the city conjointly with the Spartans, and were held in equal
consideration with them; as at Athens, for example, many families of the
original inhabitants appear to have had the rank of Eupatridæ. Of this the
Talthybiadæ are an instance. The office of herald was at Sparta (as in the
fabulous times) hereditary, and not, as in other parts of Greece, obtained
by competition.(96) The privilege of performing all foreign embassies,(97)
and a share in the sacred missions,(98) were assigned to the pretended
descendants of the Mycenean herald Talthybius, who also enjoyed especial
honours amongst the Achæans at Ægium;(99) and there is doubtless reason to
suppose that this family belonged to the Achæan race, without entering
into the question of the correctness of their pedigree. The dignity
attached to their office was very great, especially if, as was the case in
the heroic ages, it was the custom for the heralds to address the princes
as “beloved sons.” As to property and effects, they ranked with the first
Spartans,(100) if, as it appears, Sperthias and Bulis, who offered
themselves to the Persian king as an atonement for the murder of his
ambassadors,(101) were of the family of the Talthybiadæ.
Indeed almost all the other trades and occupations, besides that of
herald, were hereditary at Sparta, as, for example, those of cooking,
baking, mixing wine, flute-playing, &c.(102) The trade of cooks had its
particular heroes, viz., Dæton, Matton, and Ceraon, whose statue stood in
the Hyacinthian street.(103) It is easy to see how this hereditary
transmission of employments favoured the maintenance of ancient customs.
In fact, Sparta would not have so long remained contented with her black
broth, either if her cooks had not learnt the art of dressing it from
their youth upwards, and continued to exercise their craft after the
manner of their fathers, or if this office could have been assigned at
will to those who were able by their art to gratify the palate. It is not
probable that any of these families of artisans were of Doric origin, and
they doubtless belonged to the class of Periœci; nor is it to be supposed
that, like the Talthybiadæ, they possessed the Spartan rights of
citizenship.(104)
Chapter III.
§ 1. Helots of Sparta. Their political condition. § 2. Their
service in war. § 3. Treatment of the helots. § 4. The crypteia. §
5. Various degrees of helotism. § 6. Number of the helots. § 7.
The phylæ of Pitana, Limnæ, Mesoa, and Cynosura.
1. The condition of the Periœci and that of the Helots must be carefully
distinguished from each other; the latter state may be termed “villenage,”
or “bondage,” to which that of the Periœci had not the slightest
resemblance.(105) The common account of the origin of this class is, that
the inhabitants of the maritime town Helos were reduced by Sparta to this
state of degradation, after an insurrection against the Dorians already
established in power.(106) This explanation, however, rests merely on an
etymology, and that by no means a probable one; since such a Gentile name
as Εἵλως (which seems to be the more ancient form) cannot by any method of
formation have been derived from Ἕλος. The word Εἵλως is probably a
derivative from Ἕλω; in a passive sense, and consequently means _the
prisoners_.(107) Perhaps it signifies those who were taken after having
resisted to the uttermost, whereas the Periœci had surrendered upon
conditions; at least Theopompus(108) calls them Achæans as well as the
others. It appears, however, more probable that they were an aboriginal
race, which was subdued at a very early period, and which immediately
passed over as slaves to the Doric conquerors.(109)
In speaking of the condition of the Helots, we will consider their
political rights and their personal treatment under separate heads, though
in fact the two subjects are very nearly connected. The first were
doubtless exactly defined by law and custom, though the expressions made
use of by ancient authors are frequently vague and ambiguous. “They were,”
says Ephorus,(110) “in a certain point of view public slaves. Their
possessor could neither liberate them, nor sell them beyond the borders.”
From this it is evident that they were considered as belonging properly to
the state, which to a certain degree permitted them to be possessed, and
apportioned them out to individuals, reserving to itself the power of
enfranchising them. But to sell them out of the country was not in the
power even of the state; and, to the best of our knowledge, such an event
never occurred. It is, upon the whole, most probable that individuals had
no power to sell them at all; since they were, for the most part, attached
to the land, which was inalienable. On these lands they had certain fixed
dwellings of their own, and particular services and payments were
prescribed to them.(111) They paid as rent a fixed measure of corn; not,
however, like the Periœci, to the state, but to their masters. As this
quantity had been definitively settled at a very early period (to raise
the amount being forbidden under heavy imprecations),(112) the Helots were
the persons who profited by a good, and lost by a bad harvest; which must
have been to them an encouragement to industry and good husbandry; a
motive which would have been wanting, if the profit and loss had merely
affected the landlords. And thus (as is proved by the accounts respecting
the Spartan agriculture),(113) a careful management of the cultivation of
the soil was kept up. By means of the rich produce of the land, and in
part by plunder obtained in war,(114) they collected a considerable
property,(115) to the attainment of which almost every access was closed
to the Spartans. Now the annual rent paid for each lot was eighty-two
medimni of barley, and a proportionate quantity of oil and wine.(116) It
may therefore be asked how much remained to the Helots themselves, after
paying this amount of corn from each lot. Tyrtæus appears to give some
information, where he describes the Messenian bondmen(117) “as groaning
like asses under heavy burdens, and compelled by force to pay to their
masters a half of the entire produce of the land.”(118)
According to this account, the families of the Helots (of which many
resided on one lot) would have retained only eighty-two medimni on an
average, and the whole amount would have been one hundred and sixty-four.
But this cannot be the institution of which Plutarch speaks; and Tyrtæus
doubtless describes some oppression much aggravated by particular
circumstances. For, assuming that the property of the Spartans amounted to
two-thirds of the whole Laconian territory, which may be rated at three
thousand eight hundred and forty square miles English, and three-fourths
being deducted for hill, wood, pasture-land, vineyards, and plantations,
we have two thousand eight hundred and eighty square miles for the nine
thousand lots of the Spartans; each of which accordingly amounted to
72/225 of a square mile, or one hundred and ninety-two plethra; a space
amply sufficient to have produced four hundred medimni,(119) which, after
the deduction of the eighty-two medimni, would have supplied twenty-one
men with double the common daily allowance, viz., one chœnix of bread. It
is at least manifest that each lot would have been quite sufficient to
maintain six or seven families of Helots. It must not, however, be
supposed that the rent was precisely the same for all the lots of the
Spartan territory. The different quality of the land made such a strict
equalization impossible; not to mention that it would have entirely
destroyed all interest in the possession. We even know that many Spartans
were possessed of herds and flocks, from which they provided young animals
for the public meals.(120) The proprietors, besides their share of the
harvest, received from their lands, at particular periods, the fruits of
the season.(121)
There could not, on the whole, have been much intercourse and connexion
between the Spartans, as possessors of the land, and the bondsmen upon
their estates. For how little interest would the Spartan, who seldom left
the town, and then only for a few days,(122) have felt for Helots, who
dwelt perhaps at Mothone! Nevertheless, the cultivation of the land was
not the only duty of the Helots; they also attended upon their masters at
the public meal,(123) who, according to the Lacedæmonian principle of a
community of goods, mutually lent them to one another.(124) A large number
of them was also doubtless employed by the state in public works.
2. In the field the Helots never served as Hoplitæ, except in
extraordinary cases; and then it was the general practice afterwards to
give them their liberty.(125) On other occasions they attended the regular
army as light-armed troops; and that their numbers were very considerable
may be seen from the battle of Platæa, in which 5000 Spartans were
attended by 35,000 Helots.(126) Although they did not share the honour of
the heavy-armed soldiers, they were in return exposed to a less degree of
danger. For while the former in close rank received the onset of the enemy
with spear and shield, the Helots, armed only with the sling and light
javelin, were in a moment either before or behind the ranks, as Tyrtæus
accurately describes the relative duties of the light-armed soldier
(γύμνης), and the Hoplite. Sparta, in her better time, is never recorded
to have unnecessarily sacrificed the lives of her Helots. A certain number
of them was allotted to each Spartan;(127) at the battle of Platæa this
number was seven. Those who were assigned to a single master were probably
called ἀμπίτταρες.(128) Of these, however, one in particular was the
_servant_ (θεράπων) of his master, as in the story of the blind Spartan,
who was conducted by his Helot into the thickest of the battle of
Thermopylæ, and, while the latter fled, fell with the other heroes.(129)
Θεράπων, or servant, is the appropriate, and indeed honourable,
appellation which the Dorians, particularly in Crete, gave to the armed
slaves;(130) these in Sparta were probably called ἐρυκτῆρες, in allusion
to their duty of drawing (ἐρύκειν) the wounded from the ranks.(131) It
appears that the Helots were in the field placed more immediately under
the command of the king than the rest of the army.(132) In the fleet, they
composed the large mass of the sailors,(133) in which service at Athens
the inferior citizens and slaves were employed; when serving in this
manner they were, it appears, called by the name of δεσποσιοναῦται.
These accounts are sufficient to give a tolerably correct notion of the
relation of the Helots to the Doric citizens of Sparta. Although it does
not fall within the scope of the present work to enter upon a moral or
political examination of the condition of Helotism, I may be allowed to
subjoin a few observations. The Grecian states then either contained a
class of bondsmen, which can be traced in nearly all the Doric states, or
they had slaves, who had been brought either by plunder or commerce from
barbarous countries; or a class of slaves was altogether wanting. The last
was the case among the Phoceans, Locrians, and other Greeks.(134) But
these nations, through the scantiness of their resources, never attained
to such power as Sparta and Athens. Slavery was the basis of the
prosperity of all commercial states, and was intimately connected with
foreign trade; but (besides being a continued violation of justice) it was
upon the whole of little advantage to the public, especially in time of
war; and, according to the doctrine of the ancient politicians, it was
both fraught with danger, and prejudicial to morality and good order. It
must also be remembered, that nearly all the ties of family were broken
among the slaves of Athens, with which the institution of bondage did not
at all interfere;(135) and that in the latter the condition of the bondmen
was rather determined by general custom; in the former, by the arbitrary
will of individuals. Sparta had, indeed, some foreign slaves, but their
number was very inconsiderable. Thus Alcman, the slave of Agesidas,(136)
was the son of a slave from Sardis,(137) who had perhaps been brought by
Cretan traders to the coast of Laconia.
3. It is a matter of much greater difficulty to form a clear notion of the
treatment of the Helots, and of their manner of life; for the rhetorical
spirit with which later historians have embellished their philanthropic
views, joined to our own ignorance, has been productive of much confusion
and misconception. Myron of Priene, in his romance on the Messenian war,
drew a very dark picture of Sparta, and endeavoured at the end to rouse
the feelings of his readers by a description of the fate which the
conquered underwent. “The Helots,” says he,(138) “perform for the Spartans
every ignominious service. They are compelled to wear a cap of dog’s skin
and a covering of sheep’s skin, and they are severely beaten every year
without having committed any fault, in order that they may never forget
that they are slaves. In addition to this, those amongst them who, either
by their stature or their beauty, raise themselves above the condition of
a slave, are condemned to death; and the masters who do not destroy the
most manly of them are liable to punishment.” The partiality and ignorance
of this writer is evident from his very first statement. The Helots wore
the leathern cap with a broad band, and the covering of sheep’s skin,
simply because it was the original dress of the natives; which moreover
the Arcadians had retained from ancient usage;(139) Laertes the father of
Ulysses, when he assumed the character of a peasant, is also represented
as wearing a cap of goat’s skin.(140) The truth is, that the ancients made
a distinction between town and country costume. Hence, when the tyrants of
Sicyon wished to accustom the unemployed people, whose numbers they
dreaded, to a country life, they forced them to wear the κατωνάκη, which
had underneath a lining of fur.(141) The Pisistratidæ made use of the very
same measure.(142) Thus also Theognis describes the countrymen of Megara
(whose admission to the rights of citizenship he deplores) as clothed with
dressed skins, and dwelling around the town like frightened deer.(143) The
_dipthera_ of the Helots therefore signified nothing more humiliating and
degrading than their employment in agricultural labour. Myron is doubtless
right in stating that the Helots could not lay aside this dress at
pleasure; indeed, a young Spartan could not assume the dress of an older
man. Whilst in Athens the influence of democracy had produced an
uniformity of dress, and even (according to Xenophon)(144) of bodily form,
in citizens, resident aliens, and slaves; in Sparta the several orders
were characterised by external differences. Now since Myron thus
manifestly misinterpreted this circumstance, it is very probable that his
other objections are founded in error; nor can misrepresentations of this
political state, which was unknown to the later Greeks, and particularly
to the class of writers, have been uncommon. Plutarch,(145) for example,
relates that the Helots were compelled to intoxicate themselves, and
perform indecent dances, as a warning to the Spartan youth; but common
sense is opposed to so absurd a method of education. Is it possible that
the Spartans should have so degraded the men whom they appointed as tutors
over their young children? Female Helots also discharged the office of
nurse in the royal palaces,(146) and doubtless obtained all the affection
with which the attendants of early youth were honoured in ancient times.
It is, however, certain that the Doric laws did not bind servants to
strict temperance;(147) and hence examples of drunkenness among them might
have served as a means of recommending sobriety. It was also an
established regulation, that the national songs and dances of Sparta were
forbidden to the Helots,(148) who, on the other hand, had some extravagant
and lascivious dances peculiar to themselves, which may have given rise to
the above report.(149) We must, moreover, bear in mind, that most of the
strangers who visited Sparta, and gave an account of its institutions,
seized upon particular cases which they had imperfectly observed, and,
without knowing their real nature, described them in the light suggested
by their own false prepossessions.
4. But are we not labouring in vain to soften the bad impression of
Myron’s account, since the fearful word _crypteia_ is of itself sufficient
to show the unhappy fate of the Helots, and the cruelty of their masters?
By this word is generally understood, a chase of the Helots, annually
undertaken at a fixed time by the youth of Sparta, who either assassinated
them by night, or massacred them formally in open day, in order to lessen
their numbers, and weaken their power.(150) Isocrates speaks of this
institution in a very confused manner, and from mere report.(151)
Aristotle however, as well as Heraclides of Pontus,(152) attribute it to
Lycurgus, and represent it as a war which the Ephors themselves, on
entering upon their yearly office, proclaimed against the Helots. Thus it
was a regularly legalised massacre, and the more barbarous, as its
periodical arrival could be foreseen by the unhappy victims. And yet were
not these Helots, who in many districts lived entirely alone, united by
despair for the sake of common protection, and did they not every year
kindle a most bloody and determined war throughout the whole of Laconia?
Such are the inextricable difficulties in which we are involved by giving
credit to the received accounts: the solution of which is, in my opinion,
to be found in the speech of Megillus the Spartan, in the Laws of
Plato,(153) who is there celebrating the manner of inuring his countrymen
to hardships. “There is also amongst us,” he says, “what is called the
_crypteia_, the pain of undergoing which is scarcely credible. It consists
in going barefoot in storms, in enduring the privations of the camp,
performing menial offices without a servant, and wandering night and day
through the whole country.” The same is more clearly expressed in another
passage,(154) where the philosopher settles, that in his state sixty
agronomi or phylarchs, should each choose twelve young men from the age of
twenty-five to thirty, and send them as guards in succession through the
several districts, in order to inspect the fortresses, roads, and public
buildings in the country; for which purpose they should have power to make
free use of the slaves. During this time they were to live sparingly, to
minister to their own wants, and range through the whole country in arms
without intermission, both in winter and summer. These persons were to be
called κρυπτοὶ, or ἀγορανόμοι. Can it be supposed that Plato would have
here used the name of _crypteia_, if it signified an assassination of the
Helots, or rather, if there was not an exact agreement in essentials
between the institution which he proposed, and that in existence at
Sparta, although the latter was perhaps one of greater hardship and
severity? The youth of Sparta were also sent out, under certain
officers,(155) partly for the purpose of training them to hardships,
partly of inspecting the territory of Sparta, which was of considerable
extent. These emissaries may probably have kept a strict watch upon the
Helots, who, living by themselves, and entirely separated from their
masters, must have been for that reason the more formidable to Sparta. We
must allow that oppression and severity were not sufficiently provided
against; only the aim of the custom was wholly different; though perhaps
it is reckoned by Thucydides(156) among those institutions which, as he
says, were established for the purpose of keeping a watch over the Helots.
It is hardly necessary to remark that this established institution of the
crypteia was in no way connected with those extraordinary measures to
which Sparta thought herself compelled in hazardous circumstances to
resort. Thucydides leaves us to guess the fate of the 2000 Helots who,
after having been destined for the field, suddenly disappeared. It was the
curse of this bondage (of which Plato says that it produced the greatest
doubt and difficulty)(157) that the slaves abandoned their masters when
they stood in greatest need of their assistance; and hence the Spartans
were even compelled to stipulate in treaties for aid against their own
subjects.(158)
5. A more favourable side of the Spartan system of bondage is, that a
legal way to liberty and citizenship stood open to the Helots.(159) The
many intermediate steps seem to prove the existence of a regular mode of
transition from the one rank to the other. The Helots, who were esteemed
worthy of an especial confidence, were called ἀργεῖοι;(160) the ἐρυκτῆρες
enjoyed the same in war: the ἀφέται were probably released from all
service. The δεσποσιοναῦται, who served in the fleet, resembled probably
the freed-men of Attica, who were called the _out-dwellers_ (ἱ χωρὶς
οἰκοῦντες).(161) When they received their liberty, they also obtained
permission “_to dwell where they wished_,”(162) and probably at the same
time a portion of land was granted to them without the lot of their former
masters. After they had been in possession of liberty for some time, they
appear to have been called _Neodamodes_,(163) the number of whom soon came
near to that of the citizens.(164) The _Mothones_, or _Mothaces_, also,
were not Periœci (of whose elevation to the rank of Spartans we know
nothing), but Helots, who, being brought up together with the young
Spartans (like Eumæus in the house of Ulysses), obtained freedom without
the rights of citizenship.(165) For μόθων means a domestic slave, _verna_;
and Periœci could never have been called by this name, not being dependent
upon individual Spartans.(166) The descendants of the Mothaces must also
have sometimes received the rights of citizenship, since Callicratidas,
Lysander, and Gylippus were of Mothacic origin.(167) Those citizens who,
in obedience to the ancient law of inheritance, married a widow of a
deceased person, were (if we may judge from the etymology of the word)
called _Epeunacti_: that slaves were once employed for this purpose is
testified by Theopompus.(168)
6. The number of the Helots may be determined with sufficient accuracy
from the account of the army at Platæa. We find that there were present in
this battle 5000 Spartans, 35,000 Helots, and 10,000 Periœci.(169) The
whole number of Spartans that bore arms, amounted on another occasion to
8000, which, according to the same proportion, would give 56,000 for the
number of Helots capable of bearing arms, and for the whole population
about 224,000. If then the state of Sparta possessed 9000 lots there were
twenty male Helots to each (although, as we saw above, a single lot could
probably maintain a larger number), and there remained 44,000 for the
service of the state and of individuals. The account of Thucydides, that
the Chians had the greatest number of slaves of any one state after the
Lacedæmonians,(170) does not compel us to set the amount higher, because
the great number of slaves in Ægina disappeared when that island lost its
freedom, and Athens during the Peloponnesian war certainly did not possess
200,000 slaves. The number of Periœci able to bear arms would, according
to the above proportion, only amount to 16,000; but we must suppose that a
larger portion of them remained behind in Peloponnesus: for since the
Periœci were possessed of 30,000 lots (though of less extent), there must
have been about the same number of families, and we thus get at least
120,000 men; and upon the whole, for the 3800 square miles of Laconia, a
suitable population of 380,000 souls.
From this calculation it also results, that, according to the population
to be maintained, the estates of the Spartans (πολιτικὴ χώρα)(171) must
have amounted to two-thirds of all the tillage-land in the country. This
arrangement could not have been attended with any difficulty after the
conquest of the fertile territory of Messenia, when the number of lots was
doubled,(172) and the area of each was perhaps increased in a still
greater proportion. For when the Spartans had (as it appears) dislodged
the Doric Messenians, and conquered their country, a few maritime and
inland towns (Asine, Mothone, Thuria, and Æthæa) were indeed suffered to
remain in the possession of Periœci; but the best part of a country so
rich in tillage-land, plantations, and pastures,(173) passed into the
hands of Spartan proprietors, and the husbandmen who remained behind
became Helots.(174) It was these last in particular who, during the great
earthquake in 465 B.C., took possession of the towns of Thuria and Æthæa,
fortified the strong hold of Ithome, and afterwards partially
emigrated.(175) If however this insurrection had been common to all the
Helots, as Diodorus relates, how could the Spartans have afterwards
allowed the insurgents to withdraw from the country, without entirely
depriving the land of its cultivators? After the battle of Leuctra also,
it was not the Laconian, but the Messenian Helots who revolted,(176) and
were without doubt the chief promoters of the re-establishment of
Messenia, where they exercised the rights of citizenship in the
newly-founded democracy.(177)
7. In Laconia itself, according to the Rhetra of Agis (which in all
probability merely confirmed existing institutions), the territory
belonging to Sparta consisted of the inland tract, which was bounded by
part of mount Taygetus to the west, by the river Pellene, and by Sellasia
to the north, and extended eastward towards Malea,(178) and this was
therefore at that time cultivated by Helots. Here it may be asked, who
were the inhabitants of the towns situated in this district, for example
Amyclæ, Therapne, and Pharis? Certainly not Helots alone, for there were a
considerable number of Hoplitæ from Amyclæ in the Lacedæmonian army,(179)
who must therefore have been either Spartans or Periœci. But whether the
Periœci inhabited small districts in the midst of the territory
immediately occupied by the Spartans, or whether some Spartans lived out
of the city in country-towns, cannot be completely determined. The former
is, however, the more probable, since some Periœci lived in the vicinity
of the city,(180) and Amyclæ is reckoned among the towns of Laconia;(181)
the Spartans also are mentioned to have had dwellings in the country,(182)
but never to have possessed houses in any other town except Sparta, and a
few villages in the neighbourhood.
This induces us to attempt the solution of the difficult problem, of what
is the proper signification of the Phylæ (as the grammarians sometimes
call them),(183) of Pitana, Limnæ or Limnæum, Mesoa and Cynosura, which
Pausanias also mentions together as divisions of the people.(184) Now
Pausanias calls them divisions of the _Spartans_, and it appears that we
must follow his statement. For in an Amyclæan inscription,(185) Damatrius,
an overseer of the foreigners at Amyclæ, is called a Mesoatan; and in
another inscription, a Gymnasiarch of the Roman time is designated as
belonging to the Phyle of the Cynosurans;(186) and we cannot suppose these
persons to have been Periœci.(187) And if Alcman, according to a credible
account, was a Mesoatan,(188) we may understand by this term a citizen of
Sparta (although of an inferior grade), without contradicting the
authority of Herodotus, who only denies that any _stranger_ besides
Tisamenus and Hegias was ever made a Spartan.(189) Further, it is clear
from ancient writers that Pitana, Limnæ, Mesoa, and Cynosura, were names
of places. We are best informed with respect to Pitana, an ancient town,
and without doubt anterior to the Dorians,(190) which was of sufficient
importance to have its own gymnastic contests,(191) and to furnish a
battalion of its own, called Pitanates.(192) Herodotus, who was there
himself, calls it a demus;(193) and we know that it was near the temple
and stronghold of Issorium,(194) which, according to Pausanias’ topography
of Sparta, must have been situated at the western extremity of the
town.(195) This author also mentions, in the same district of the city,
the porch of the Crotanes, who were a division of the Pitanatæ. We
therefore know that Pitana lay to the west of Sparta, outside the town
according to Herodotus,(196) inside (as it appears) according to
Pausanias. So Limnæ likewise, as we learn from Strabo, was a suburb of
Sparta,(197) and at the same time a part of the town, as also was
Mesoa,(198) whither however Pausanias relates that Preugenes the Achæan
brought the statue of Artemis, rescued from the Dorians at _Sparta_.(199)
It follows from these apparently contradictory accounts, some including
these places in Sparta, and some not, that they were nothing else than the
hamlets (κῶμαι), of which, according to Thucydides,(200) the town of
Sparta consisted, and which lay on all sides around the _city_ (πόλις)
properly so called, but were divided from one another by intervals, until
at a late period (probably when Sparta, during the time of the Macedonian
power, was enclosed with walls) they were united and incorporated
together.
Chapter IV.
§ 1. Subject classes in Crete. § 2. In Argos and Epidaurus. § 3.
In Corinth and Sicyon. § 4. In Syracuse. § 5. In Byzantium,
Heraclea on the Pontus, and Cyrene. § 6. The bond-slaves of
Thessaly. § 7. Cities and villages of Arcadia. § 8. The political
opposition of city and country.
1. After having thus separately considered the two dependent classes in
Sparta, the pattern state of the Dorians, we will now point out the traces
of the analogous ranks in several other states of Doric origin.
The Doric customs were first established in CRETE, whose fortunate
circumstances had given to that race a fertile country, and an undisturbed
dominion. Accordingly, the relative rights of the Dorians and natives must
at an early period have been fixed on a settled basis in this island; and
we may suppose that this settlement was made on equitable terms, since
Aristotle was not aware of any insurrection of the slaves in Crete against
their masters.(201) The Doric customs required here, as elsewhere,
exemption from all agricultural or commercial industry; which is expressed
in a lively manner in the song of Hybrias the Cretan, that “with lance and
sword and shield he reaped and dressed his vines, and hence was called
lord of the Mnoia.”(202) In this island, however, different classes of
dependents must have existed. Sosicrates and Dosiadas, both credible
authors on the affairs of Crete, speak of three classes, the public
bondsmen (κοινὴ δουλεία), called by the Cretans μνοΐα, the slaves of
individual citizens, ἀφαμιῶται, and the Periœci, ὑπήκοοι. Now we know that
the Aphamiotæ received their name from the cultivation of the lands of
private individuals (in Cretan ἀφαμίαι) and accordingly they were
agricultural bondsmen.(203) These latter are identical with the Clarotæ,
who, for this reason, were not separately mentioned by the writers just
quoted: for although they are generally supposed to have taken their name
from the lot cast for prisoners of war, the more natural derivation
doubtless is from the lots or lands of the citizens, which were called
κλῆροι. But whichever explanation we adopt, they were bondsmen belonging
to the individual citizens. Both the Clarotæ and Aphamiotæ have therefore
been correctly compared with the Helots;(204) and as the latter were
entirely distinct from the Laconian Periœci, so were the former from the
Cretan, although Aristotle neglects the distinction accurately observed by
the Cretan writers.(205) In the second place, the μνοία (or μνῴα) was by
more precise historians distinguished as well from the condition of
Periœci as from that of private bondage, and it was explained to mean a
state of _public villenage_; whence we may infer that every state in Crete
was possessed of public lands, which the Mnotæ cultivated in the same
relative situation to the community in which the Aphamiotæ, who cultivated
the allotted estates, stood to the several proprietors. This name,
however, is sometimes extended to all forced labourers, as in the song of
Hybrias noticed above.(206) Finally, the Periœci formed in Crete, as in
Laconia, dependent and tributary communities: their tribute was, like the
produce of the national lands, partly applied to the public banquets;(207)
to which also, according to Dosiadas,(208) every slave in Lyctus
contributed in addition one Æginetan stater. Now in this passage we cannot
suppose that the Periœci are meant, because the exact author would not
have called them slaves: nor yet the slaves purchased in foreign parts
(called ἀργυρώνητοι in Crete), since it would have been impossible to
reckon with any certainty that persons in this situation possessed
anything of their own; nor, lastly, can the Mnotæ be meant, since these
were public slaves, having no connexion with individuals, nor consequently
with their eating clubs.(209) It remains, therefore, that it was the
Clarotæ (or Aphamiotæ), who, in addition to the tax in kind, were also
liable to this payment in money, with which utensils for the use of the
public table were probably purchased. It may be, moreover, observed that
we have no reason to suppose that the bondsmen were admitted to the daily
banquets.(210)
Perhaps, however, there was no Grecian state in which the dependent
classes were so little oppressed as in Crete. In general, every employment
and profession, with the exception of the gymnasia and military service,
was permitted to them.(211) Hence also the Periœci held so firmly to the
ancient legislation of Minos, that they even then observed it, when it had
been neglected by the Dorians of the town of Lyctus;(212) and thus, as was
frequently the case elsewhere, in the decline of public manners the
ancient customs were retained among the lower classes of society longer
than amongst the higher. Upon the whole, Crete was the most fortunate of
all the Doric states in this circumstance, that it could follow up its own
institutions with energy and in quiet, without any powerful obstacle;
although its very tranquillity and far-extended commerce at length
occasioned a gradual decline of ancient customs. The reverse took place at
Argos, whose Doric inhabitants, pressed on all sides, were at length
compelled to renounce the institutions of their race, and adopt those of
the natives. In the early history of this state, therefore, the two
classes of dependents and bondsmen should be distinguished: this division
was, however, very early laid aside, and an entirely different arrangement
introduced.
2. There was at ARGOS a class of bond-slaves, who are compared with the
Helots, and were called _Gymnesii_.(213) The name alone sufficiently
proves the correctness of the comparison; these slaves having evidently
been the light-armed attendants on their masters (γύμνητες). Hence also
the same class of slaves were in Sicyon called κορυνηφύροι; because they
only carried a club or staff, and not, like the heavy-armed Dorians, a
sword and lance. It is to these Gymnesii that the account of Herodotus
refers,(214) that 6000 of the citizens of Argos having been slain in
battle by Cleomenes king of Sparta,(215) the slaves got the government
into their own hands, and retained possession of it until the sons of
those who had fallen were grown to manhood. From this narrative it is
plain that the number of Dorians at Argos was nearly exhausted by the
death of 6000 of their body; and that none but bondsmen dwelt in the
immediate neighbourhood of the city, since otherwise the sovereign power
would not have fallen into their hands. It would be absurd to suppose that
slaves bought in foreign countries can be here intended, since these could
have had no more notion of governing a Grecian state than the bear in the
fable of managing the ship.(216) Afterwards, when the young citizens had
grown up, the slaves were compelled by them to withdraw to Tiryns; and
then, after a long war, as it appears, were either driven from the
territory, or again subdued.(217)
The Argives, however, also had Periœci,(218) who were known by the name of
_Orneatæ_. This appellation was properly applied to the inhabitants of
Orneæ, a town on the frontiers towards Mantinea, which, having been long
independent, was at last, about the year 580 B.C.,(219) reduced by the
Argives; and afterwards the whole class of Periœci was so called from that
place. These Orneatæ, or Periœci, therefore, like those of Laconia, formed
separate communities of their own, which indeed was the case so late as
the Persian war. For (as we have shown above) the Argives about this time
incorporated the surrounding towns belonging to the Periœci,(220) for the
purpose of replenishing and increasing their own numbers, and gave them
the rights of citizens. With this period an entirely new era in the
history of the constitution of Argos commences, although this state of
things has from its greater notoriety often been improperly applied also
to earlier times. Thus Isocrates(221) says that the Dorians of Argos, like
those of Messene, admitted the native inhabitants into the city (as
σύνοικοι), and gave them equal rights of citizenship, with the exception
of offices of honour; contrasting with it the conduct of the Spartans, in
a manner which every one now perceives to have been entirely groundless.
The change in the constitution of Argos then introduced was no less than
if the whole body of Periœci in Laconia had declared themselves the
sovereign community. For the newly-adopted citizens appear to have soon
demanded and obtained the full rights of the old; and hence, ever after
the above epoch, democracy seems to have had the upper hand in Argos. And
this could never be the case without the disappearance of the Doric
character, which showed itself in the diminution of their military skill.
For this reason the Argives in after-times were reduced to form a standing
army of a thousand citizens, of noble extraction, under the command of
generals who possessed great civil power.(222) This body of men, however,
immediately endeavoured to set up an oppressive oligarchy, until they at
length yielded to the preponderating power of the democracy. But of this
more hereafter.(223)
It is not known for what length of time the EPIDAURIANS preserved the
distinction between townsmen and countrymen. The name κονίποδες, _i.e._,
_dusty-feet_, which was applied to the lower classes, is a proof of their
agricultural habits,(224) and is probably not merely a term of reproach.
That this class, however, as at Argos, furnished citizens who were not
originally Dorians, is shown by the occurrence of a fourth tribe, besides
the three Doric.(225)
3. Neither in CORINTH nor in SICYON does there appear to have been any
complete distinction between the Doric and other races. The inhabitants,
especially those of the former state, must have lived on an equality with
the aboriginal possessors, and were probably only admitted by a fresh
division (ἐπ᾽ ἀναδασμῷ) to a joint possession of the lands. Hence it was
that in Corinth there were not only the three Doric tribes (of which we
shall speak hereafter), but eight, all of which dwelt in the city.(226)
Nor were even the Cypselidæ Dorians; though, before they obtained the
tyranny, they had long been distinguished citizens. We may discover a
class of Corinthian Helots in the Cynophali,(227) whose name was, as in a
former instance, derived from the dog-skin cap of the native
Peloponnesians. But regular slavery, as was natural in a commercial state,
soon prevailed at Corinth, and probably under very nearly the same form as
at Athens.(228) In Sicyon there were bondsmen, of whom the names
Corynephori(229) and Catonacophori have been preserved.(230) The first
marks them as light-armed attendants in war, the second as a class always
inhabiting the country. The citizens of this state were divided into four
tribes, of which three were purely Doric, viz., the Hylleans, Dymanes, and
Pamphylians; while the fourth tribe, the Ægialeans, derived their name
from the country which they had inhabited before the Doric invasion.(231)
It is also certain that this fourth tribe possessed not merely some civil
privileges, but the complete rights of citizenship; since the family of
Cleisthenes raised itself from it to the royal dignity, which could
scarcely have taken place had their tribe stood in the same relation to
the citizens as the Periœci or Helots did to the Spartans. This
Cleisthenes, with the arrogance of a tyrant, gave to his own tribe the
name of Archelai, or rulers; while he called the three Doric tribes after
the sow, the swine, and the ass (ὑᾶται, ὀνεᾶται, χοιρεᾶται.) We can
hardly, however, credit the assertion of Herodotus (who too often seeks
for the causes of events in the passions and wishes of individuals, to the
disregard of political circumstances) that these were merely terms of
abuse;(232) it is more probable that Cleisthenes wished to compel the
Dorians to retire into the country, and employ themselves in the care of
cattle and in agriculture, thus bidding an entire defiance to all their
principles. But so arbitrary a subversion of all ancient customs and
habits could not endure for any length of time; and, after the downfall of
that tyrannical dynasty, the former constitution was restored in its most
essential parts.
4. In the colonies of the Dorians the condition of the conquered peasants
and bondsmen was often more oppressed and degraded than in the parent
states; since the ruling class were there placed in contact, not with
Greeks, but with barbarians. In their settlements the following ranks were
generally formed at successive periods of time. A Doric state founded the
colony; and its citizens constituted the sole nobility in the new city;
these parted amongst themselves the conquered land into lots,(233) and
formed the body of citizens, the πολίτευμα strictly so called.(234) These
colonists, however, soon endeavoured to strengthen themselves by fresh
numbers, and opened their harbours to all exiled or discontented persons.
The motley population(235) thus formed, called by the name of _Demus_, was
generally excluded from the body politic (or the πολίτευμα), until it
obtained admittance by force; and at the same time constantly pressed for
a new division of the territory (ἀναδασμὸς).(236) Besides these, a third
rank was formed by the native inhabitants, who were compelled by the
new-comers to serve either as bondsmen or public slaves. Thus, for
example, the distinction at SYRACUSE was—first, the Gamori, viz., the old
Corinthian colonists, who had taken possession of the large lots, and
divided the land;(237) secondly, a Demus; and, thirdly, slaves on the
estates of the nobles, whose number became proverbial. These were, without
doubt, native Siculians, as is shown by the various forms of their name
(Κυλλύριοι, Κιλλικύριοι, Καλλικύριοι,) which cannot be explained from the
Greek.(238) The political condition of Syracuse was formed in a manner
essentially different from that of the Peloponnesian states, chiefly from
the circumstance that the Demus (an _unpleasant fellow-lodger_, according
to the expression of Gelon) was immediately received into the city. Hence
also the prodigious size of the Sicilian and Italian towns in comparison
with those of Peloponnesus. The Gamori, together with their Cyllyrians,
stood in nearly the same relation to the Demus as the patricians with
their clients did to the plebeians at Rome. The changes in the
constitution also had nearly the same course as at Rome; for the two
classes first sought to compromise their pretensions in a moderate
timocracy (the πολιτεία of Aristotle), which subsequently passed (as we
shall see hereafter) into a complete democracy.
5. In the Megarian colony of BYZANTIUM the native inhabitants, the
Bithynians, were in precisely the same condition as the Helots.(239) The
same was likewise the fate of the nation of Mariandynians in HERACLEA ON
THE PONTUS, which city also was founded by the Megarians conjointly with
the Bœotians. They submitted under the stipulation that no Mariandynian
should be sold beyond the borders,(240) which was a fundamental rule of
the ancient system of bondage; and that they should pay a tribute to be
settled once for all, this being called by the mild name of _presents_
(δῶρα(241)). The great number of these native slaves, who never suffered
the country to want for sailors, was very favourable to the commerce and
naval power of Heraclea.(242)
At CYRENE also the several classes were formed in a similar manner. In
Thera, the mother-country of Cyrene, the families of the original colony
from Laconia had once alone possessed the full rights of citizenship, and
held the offices of state.(243) Thus also at Cyrene the families from
Thera at first were sole possessors of the governing power, and did not
admit the after-comers to a full participation of it. It was the natural
course of events, that they who first caused the Grecian name to be
respected amongst the savages of Libya should be supposed to have a
greater claim to honour and property than those who had flocked together
to a town already established and securely defended. But the Cyrenæans
having in the reign of Battus the Second proclaimed throughout Greece a
new division of their lands(244) (which, however, they had first to gain
from the Libyans), and many fresh citizens having collected together, a
new constitution became in time necessary: and this, Demonax of Mantinea
established for them on democratic principles. He abolished the old
tribes, and created in their place three new ones, in which the entire
Grecian population of Cyrene was comprehended. The division of the people
was into three parts, viz., one consisting of the Theræans and Periœci,
the second of Peloponnesians and Cretans, and the third of all the
islanders.(245) From this it is evident that the original colonists still
continued to keep Periœci under their power, while the other citizens did
not enjoy this right; and that the former were a kind of privileged class,
who probably were in a great measure relieved from any personal attendance
to agriculture: in this manner the wise Demonax respected the institutions
of antiquity. Of the origin and condition of these Periœci, not only have
we no direct account, but not even an indirect trace.
6. We have now finished our comparison of the different subject classes in
the Doric states. It has been clearly proved that a class of Periœci, and
also of Helots, was the basis of the Doric form of government, insomuch
that the abolition of servitude generally occasioned a subversion of the
Doric institutions. Hence the Dorians generally, and above all the
Spartans, were distinguished for the obstinacy with which they retained
it. But this species of servitude may be said to have existed in ancient
times, wherever a warlike nation had obtained a settlement by conquest;
for example, in Thessaly, Bœotia, and even among the Ionians of Athens.
Now as the distinction of subjects and bond-slaves was kept up for a
longer time in Thessaly than in any other state, those of the Dorians
alone being excepted, we will include that country in the present inquiry.
The following classes may be there distinguished: First, a number of small
nations were under the dominion of the Thessalians, to whom they paid a
fixed tribute, and were also probably bound to assist in war; but they
nevertheless still retained their national divisions, and a certain degree
of independence. This must have been the state of the Perrhæbians to the
north of Larissa, the Magnesians to the east of mount Pelion, and the
Phthiotan Achæans to the south of mount Othrys and the Enipeus. For all
these were indeed subject to the Thessalians,(246) but had not ceased to
be distinct, nay, even Amphictyonic nations.(247) Their tribute had been
accurately fixed by Scopas, prince of Pharsalus. They were also called
Periœci.(248) Excluding then this tract of country, we retain for Thessaly
Proper the region between the Perrhæbians towards the north, and the
Achæans towards the south, in which direction the Enipeus forms the
boundary,(249) comprehending the valley of the Peneus (the ancient
Pelasgic Argos), and a district towards the Pagasæan bay, called by
Herodotus Æolis.(250) The Thessalians, therefore, held this territory
under their immediate government, and had the towns of Larissa, Crannon,
Pharsalus, Iolcus, and others, in their own possession; the land being
cultivated by the Penestæ, who were the early Pelasgico-Æolian
inhabitants.(251) For, according to Archemachus,(252) the Æolian Bœotians
had in part emigrated from their country, leaving some of their numbers
behind, who submitted conditionally, as Penestæ: amongst these
Theopompus(253) also includes the Magnesians and Perrhæbians; but this
statement can only hold good of a part of these two races, since they were
(as has been already shown) dependent, but not entirely subject.(254) The
fundamental laws of the ancient Greek bondage applied also to the Penestæ.
They could neither be put to death without trial, nor be sold out of the
country.(255) Thus they stood in an intermediate position between freemen
and purchased slaves,(256) like the Mariandynians of Heraclea, the Clarotæ
of Crete, and the Helots of Laconia, with whom they are generally
compared.(257) For, like these, they were reduced to servitude by
conquest, although they cannot properly be called slaves taken in
war.(258) Further, they were not subject to the whole community, but
belonged to particular houses and families:(259) hence also they were
called Θεσσαλοικέται.(260) They were particularly numerous in the great
families of the Aleuadæ and Scopadæ.(261) Their principal employment was
agriculture,(262) from the produce of which they paid a rent to the
proprietors of the soil.(263) At the same time this did not prevent them
from gaining property of their own, and they were frequently richer than
their masters.(264) In war they attended their lords, protecting and
fighting before them, like knights and their squires; generally, however,
contrary to the custom of other Greeks, on horseback.(265) All these
accounts respecting the Penestæ agree sufficiently well with one another,
and refer to one and the same class; although it is certain that the
attempts to obtain civil liberty had much increased amongst the Penestæ at
the time of the Peloponnesian war, and were now and then, though not
constantly, supported by Athens.(266) The other internal affairs of the
Thessalians do not lie within the range of our inquiry. They had little
adapted themselves to a quiet course of events, nor indeed did the
turbulent and haughty disposition of their race allow of a life of
inactivity. In each town of Thessaly we find a constant struggle between
the commons and a number of oligarchical families; from these arise
several princely races, such as the Aleuadæ, Scopadæ,(267) &c. The states
themselves were generally at war with one another: thus their political
constitution, as well as the want of steadiness and forbearance in the
national character, must be regarded as the chief reasons why Thessaly was
of so little importance in Greece. The external means which a wide
territory and military power afforded them were here doubtless present in
a greater degree than in any other country; the Thessalians were also
distinguished for their bravery, and the ancient fame of the country would
have supported claims in themselves well founded; how came it then that
the history of Thessaly was a blank in the annals of Greece, while Sparta
was so long its very soul? The only answer is, that the national character
of the Thessalians was altogether different; for wisdom they had only
cunning; for rational valour only a restless love of war; for strict
self-command only unrestrained passions.
7. It appears, therefore, that foreign conquest universally in Greece gave
birth to that political condition, which may be compared with the
villenage or serfage of the Germanic nations; and indeed it does not seem
that such a state of society could have any other origin. There would
accordingly be matter for surprise if we found a class of bondsmen among
the Arcadians, a nation which neither gained its territory by
conquest,(268) nor was ever conquered itself: and, accordingly, it can
scarcely be doubted that the nation described by Theopompus as possessing
300,000 Prospelatæ, whom he compares with the Helots, is not the
Arcadians, but the Illyrian Ardiæans.(269) The distinction of ranks, which
we find existing in the Arcadian towns, may be satisfactorily explained by
the opposition between the city, properly so called (πόλις), and the
country villages (δῆμοι, κῶμαι), which in later times most of the Arcadian
cities, for example, Mantinea, Tegea, and Heræa, incorporated with
themselves. For although it is asserted that these and other towns were
made up of separate villages, it must not be supposed that they had no
previous existence as cities. The account is to be understood in the same
manner as that of the congregating of the people of Attica to Athens,
which is stated to have taken place in the time of Theseus. Nearly all the
towns of Arcadia possessed citadels of extreme antiquity, in and near
which many princely, sacerdotal, and military families had dwelt from an
early period. These formed a nobility, with reference to the agricultural
classes in the country, which, however, included by far the greater
portion of the Arcadians. If then one large town was formed of several
villages, the constitution at the same time necessarily became more
democratical, which was the result at Argos of the incorporation of the
Periœci,(270) and at Megara also of the same measure.(271) For so long as
the people inhabited a particular village, they interested themselves in
its affairs alone, and the persons in the chief city managed the concerns
of the whole community. But from the moment that they began to live
together, every person considered himself entitled to a share in the
public councils. Hence it was the interest of the head of the
Peloponnesian confederacy again to separate the inhabitants of the towns
(διοικίζειν); of the Athenians, to keep them together. The Argives first
effected the union of the boroughs at Mantinea, doubtless not until they
had seen other instances of the same proceeding, that is, after the
Persian war. They united four hamlets with the ancient city,(272) which
made the fifth; the Lacedæmonians after some time restored the ancient
villages, and with them the aristocracy. The territory of Tegea was also
divided into eight hamlets, which were afterwards united to make the city,
viz., the Gareatæ, Phylaceans, Caryatæ,(273) Corytheans, Botachidæ,
Manthyreans, Echeneteans, and Apheidantes: to these were added, as the
ninth, the Tegeatans of the ancient town,(274) who had previously been the
citizens properly so called, while the former had been the inhabitants of
the open country; a distinction, which, upon their union, must either
instantly or very soon have disappeared.
8. Since it has been ascertained in the course of these inquiries that the
distinction between πόλις and δῆμος, that is, town and country, was of
great political importance in the ancient states, we will conclude this
chapter with some remarks upon those terms.
The word δῆμος originally signified the ground and soil on which the
people lived,(275) and afterwards the whole number of persons inhabiting
it. Πόλις, on the contrary, means the city, which in the time of Homer was
probably always fortified. Now with the city everything that concerned the
government of a state was connected, and those exempt from all personal
share in the labours of the field, namely, the military families and the
nobles,(276) dwelt in it; hence it is viewed in Homer as a disgrace or a
misfortune, for a noble to live among the bondsmen in the country.(277)
This is the state of things described by the most ancient poet; and
particular accounts of an historical nature present the same picture. When
the Achæans settled on the coast of Ægialea, they fortified themselves in
the towns and strongholds, and kept entirely aloof from the natives; at
least we know this to have been the case at Patræ;(278) so that the same
race here inhabited the principal city as conquerors, who in Laconia were
scattered about in the country-towns as a conquered people. Hence also the
town of Dyme was originally called _Stratos_;(279) that is, the station of
the army, the abode of the male population who had the means and the
privilege of bearing arms. It was not till a later period that the Achæan
towns, Patræ, Dyme, and Ægium, incorporated their villages.(280) At Athens
the Eupatridæ are stated to have had possession of the city;(281) an
account which is strikingly confirmed by the circumstance that
Cydathenæum, one of the Attic demi, was situated within the city,(282) and
it had evidently taken its name from Cydathenæus, _i.e._, _a noble and
illustrious Athenian_.(283) Hence is explained the distinction between the
terms “Athenian,” and “inhabitant of Attica (Ἀττικὸς),” which was still
preserved in common language after it had been in fact abolished by the
democracy. Thus Plato uses the former, as a more honourable appellation
than the latter;(284) and when Dicæarchus, describing the manners of
Greece, contrasts the inhabitants of Attica as loquacious, sycophantic,
and fickle, with the noble-minded, simple, and honest Athenians, by the
latter he means the ancient families, and by the former the Demus, which,
since the time of Cleisthenes, had been compounded of the most
heterogeneous elements. Thus the πόλις and δῆμος became identical in
Athens, and the latter word was used by preference to signify the whole
community. But in other states, the πόλις was opposed to the δῆμος, as the
ruling aristocratical power.(285) Thus Theognis the Megarian says of his
native town, with aristocratical feelings—
Πατρίδα κοσμήσω, λιπαρὴν ΠΟΛΙΝ, οὔτ᾽ ἐπὶ ΔΗΜΟΝ τρέψας οὔτ᾽ ἀδίκοις
ἀνδράσι πειθόμενος.(286)
Hence, also, states not under a democratical government used the word
πόλις in their public documents, to signify the sovereign power; for
instance, the Cretan towns, so late as the second century after
Christ.(287) The Spartan community, however, deviating from this usage of
the word, calls itself δᾶμος in ancient laws;(288) because it never
thought of opposing itself as a body to the Periœci.
Democracies then were frequently formed by collecting the inhabitants of
the country into the city (when the δῆμος and πόλις coincided), by the
union of single villages, and by the admission of the Periœci to the
rights of citizenship. At Athens, in order to give the democracy the
highest possible antiquity, this change was dated as far back as the
mythical age of Theseus. In Peloponnesus, the first movements tending to
it had perhaps begun before the time of the tyrants; these very persons,
however, though they had in most cases risen from demagogues, still, for
the purpose of securing a more tranquil dominion, sought again to remove
the common people from the city, and to bind them down to the country.
Instead of the town-costume, they forced them to resume their former dress
of sheep’s skins, as has been remarked above of the tyrants of
Sicyon;(289) for this purpose likewise they very prudently encouraged
agriculture in all its branches.(290) Trade and commerce, by collecting
men together in large towns, promoted the principles of democracy. It was
in the wealthy and populous cities of the Greeks in the Ionian territory
that a popular government was first established. Where, on the other hand,
the courts of justice were at a distance, and there was no other
inducement to mechanical industry and internal commerce, the ancient
habits of life continued much longer in existence; as for example, among
the shepherds of Mænalia and Parrhasia: these, as late as the founding of
Megalopolis, lived in villages, amongst which particular boroughs (as
Basilis) were distinguished as the abodes of sovereign families; such a
state was altogether suited to the interests of the aristocracy or
oligarchy. In oligarchical states, as in Elis, the people in later times
remained almost constantly in the country; and it frequently happened that
grandfathers and grandchildren had never seen the town: there were also
country courts of justice, and other regulations, intended to make up for
the advantages of a city life.(291) But even in the democratic states, as
at Athens, there was among the people a constant struggle of feeling
between the turbulent working of the democracy, and the peaceful
inclination to their ancient country life.
Chapter V.
§ 1. Three tribes of citizens in the Doric states. § 2. Additional
tribes, of inferior rank, in some Doric states. § 3. Each tribe in
Sparta was divided into ten obæ. § 4. Political importance of the
Spartan obæ. § 5. Πάτραι, in other Doric states, corresponding to
the Spartan obæ. § 6. Number of Spartan γένη. § 7. Distinction
between Equals and Inferiors in Sparta. § 8. Powers of the
assembly of citizens at Sparta. § 9. Names of the assembly of the
citizens in the Doric states. § 10. Proceedings of the Spartan
assembly. § 11. Public assembly of Crete.
1. Having considered the subject classes in the several Doric states, we
come to the free citizens properly so called, who, according to an old
Grecian principle,(292) which was actually put in practice in Sparta, were
entirely exempted from all care for providing themselves with the
necessaries of life. The exact distinction between these ranks, and the
advantageous position of the latter class, increased the value of the
rights of citizenship; hence Sparta showed peculiar reluctance to
admitting foreigners to share in them.(293) Before, then, we consider the
body politic of free citizens in its active dealings, it will be proper
first to direct our attention to its component members, to its division
into smaller societies, such as tribes, phratriæ, houses, &c.
In every Doric state there were three tribes, Hylleis, Dymanes (or
Dymanatæ), and Pamphyli. This threefold division belonged so peculiarly to
the nation that even Homer called it “the thrice-divided” τριχάϊκες, which
ancient epithet is correctly explained in a verse of Hesiod, as implying
the division of the territory among the people.(294) Hence in the ancient
fable which this poet has expressed in an epic poem, three sons of the
ancient Doric king Ægimius were mentioned, namely, Dyman, Pamphylus, and
the adopted Hyllus; and the same is confirmed by the direct testimony of
Herodotus, who states that the Doric nation was divided into these three
tribes.(295) Hence also Pindar comprehends the whole Doric nation under
the name of the sons of Ægimius and Hyllus.(296) Thus we should be
warranted in putting forth the proposition stated above in these general
terms, even if in the several Doric states there had been no particular
mention of all these tribes. The fact, however, is, that there are
sufficient accounts of them. Pindar(297) bears testimony to their
existence in Sparta; and from an expression of a grammarian, it may be
conjectured that they were also divisions of the city.(298) Herodotus
states that these tribes existed at Sicyon and Argos.(299) In Argos, the
city was doubtless divided according to them; and Παμφυλιακὸν is mentioned
as a district of the town.(300) The Doric tribes were transmitted from
Argos to Epidaurus and Ægina.(301) Hylleis occur also in the Æginetan
colony of Cydonia.(302) The same name is found in an inscription of
Corcyra:(303) consequently they also existed in the mother-country,
Corinth. It occurs likewise in another inscription of Agrigentum;(304)
they must therefore have also been in existence at Rhodes, as indeed is
declared by Homer.(305) The Pamphylians occur at Megara as late as at the
time of Hadrian.(306) These tribes existed also at Trœzen;(307) but the
Trœzenian colony Halicarnassus seems to have been almost exclusively
founded by Dymanes.(308) On the whole it appears that wherever there were
Dorians there were also Hylleans, Pamphylians, and Dymanes.
2. Wherever the Dorians alone had the full rights of citizenship, no other
tribes of the highest ranks could exist; but if other persons were
admitted in any considerable number to a share in the government, there
were necessarily either one or more tribes in addition to these three.
Thus a fourth, named Hyrnathia,(309) is known to us in the states of Argos
and Epidaurus; in Ægina also an additional tribe of this kind must have
existed, for in this island there were distinguished families not of Doric
origin.(310) In Sicyon the fourth tribe was called the Ægialean. In
Corinth also it appears that there were altogether eight tribes.(311) But
in Sparta, the city of pure Doric customs, we cannot suppose the existence
of any other than the three genuine Doric tribes. At first sight, indeed,
it might appear that the great and distinguished house of the Ægidæ, of
Cadmean descent, was without the pale of these tribes; but it must have
been adopted into one of the three at its admission to the rights of
citizenship.(312) For the number of the Spartan obæ, the gerontes, the
knights, the landed estates, viz., 30, 300, 9000, &c., manifestly allow of
division by the number 3, while they have no reference to the number 4.
3. The tribes of Sparta were again divided into obæ, which are also called
phratriæ.(313) The term _phratria_ (φρατριὰ) signified among the Greeks an
union of houses, whether founded upon the ties of actual relationship, or
formed for political purposes, and according to some fixed rule, for the
convenience of public regulations. Thus the word _oba_ comprehends houses
(γένη, _gentes_), which were either really founded on descent from the
same stock, or had united themselves in ancient times for civil and
religious purposes, and afterwards continued to exist as political bodies
under certain regulations.(314) The Spartan obæ appear to have likewise
been local divisions, since the name ὠβὰ, _i.e._, οἴα, signifies _single_
hamlets or districts of a town; although in the case of Sparta it is not
evident what relation they bore to the five divisions of the city, of
which we have spoken above.(315) It should be, moreover, observed, that
this does not prevent us from supposing that, as in the parallel case of
the phratriæ, the obæ contained the houses; since we may be allowed to
infer with great probability, from the simple and coherent regularity of
the Spartan institutions, that the tribes had taken possession of
particular districts of the town, and that these were again divided into
smaller partitions, according to the obæ; a conjecture which, perhaps,
will be confirmed by the statement, that a place in Sparta was called
Agiadæ:(316) now this was the name of one of the royal families, which, as
being an oba, appears to have given its name to one district of the town.
The obæ were thirty in number;(317) that is, there were ten of the
Hyllean, ten of the Dymanatan, ten of the Pamphylian tribe. Of the
Hyllean, two must have belonged to the royal families of the Heraclidæ.
For since the councillors, together with the kings, amounted to thirty,
and as this number doubtless depended upon and proceeded from that of the
obæ, it follows that the two royal families, although springing from one
stock, must nevertheless have been separated into two different obæ, of
which they were in a manner the representatives. And if we proceed to
conclude in this manner, we shall be obliged, since there were Heraclidæ,
exclusive of the kings, in the gerusia,(318) to suppose that there were,
besides these, other Heraclide obæ in Sparta; although I am not of opinion
that all the Hyllean houses derived themselves from Hercules, and were
considered as Heraclidæ.
4. With respect to the influence and importance of the obæ in a political
view, it was equal to, or even greater than, that of the phratriæ in
ancient Athens. For, in the first place, the assembly of the people, in
obedience to a rhetra of Lycurgus, was held according to tribes and obæ;
afterwards the high council was constituted, and probably the 300 knights
were chosen, upon the same principle. At the same time, all public
situations and offices were not filled in this manner, but only where
distinguished dignity and honour were required: this mode of election, as
will be shown below, had always an aristocratic tendency. Magistrates, on
the contrary, of a more democratical character, particularly the ephors,
were nominated without regard to the division of tribes, as their number
alone shows: it is probable that this had some relation to the number of
the divisions of the city, of which, as was shown above, there were five.
A striking analogy, with regard to this numerary regulation, is afforded
by Athens, while yet under an aristocratic government. The tribe of the
nobles and knights was in this state divided into three phratriæ, which
may be compared with the three tribes of the Doric Spartans. Now, when the
nobility (like a chamber of peers) constituted a court of justice over the
Alcmæonidæ, 300 eupatridæse, 100 out of each phratria, composed the
court.(319) And when Cleisthenes the Alcmæonid had been expelled by the
aristocratic party, and the democratic senate (βουλὴ) overthrown, Isagoras
established a high council of 300.(320) Whereas the senate, to which
Cleisthenes gave existence and stability, consisted of 500 citizens, and
was chosen, without any regard to the ancient division into phratriæ,
according to the new local tribes.
5. No Doric state, with the exception of Sparta, appears to have given the
name of oba to a division of the people. But neither can the name
_phratria_, so common in other places, be proved to have been used by any
Doric people. On the other hand, phratriæ occur at Athens, in the Asiatic
colonies,(321) and in the Chalcidean colony of Neapolis, that is, chiefly
in Ionic states; and Neapolis affords a solitary instance of their being
distinguished by certain proper names, such as Eumelidæ, Eunostidæ,
Cymæans, Aristæans, &c.(322) Pindar however mentions _patræ_ (πάτραι) in
the Doric states of Corinth and Ægina; an expression which, according to
the precise definition of Dicæarchus, is equivalent to houses or γένη,
signifying persons descended from the same ancestor (πατήρ). It was
indeed, although not at Athens, in use among the Ionians of Asia Minor and
the islands, who appear however to have also employed the terms πάτρα or
πατρία for the more extensive word phratria.(323) In Ægina and Corinth it
will be safest to consider the patræ as houses, since they are always
denoted by patronymic names, going back to fabulous progenitors; and by
Pindar himself they are also called “houses.” Since however, as being not
only a natural, but also a political division, the patræ may sometimes
have comprised _several_ houses, and as there was probably in these states
no intermediate division (like the phratria at Athens and the oba at
Sparta) between them and the tribes, the ancient commentators have
neglected their more restricted and original sense, and have compared and
identified them with phratriæ.(324)
6. The name which the _houses_ or γένεα bore at Sparta, and the number of
them which was contained in an oba, may be perhaps ascertained from a
passage of Herodotus,(325) in which he mentions the Enomoties, Triacades,
and Syssitia, as military institutions established by Lycurgus. Other
inferences from this passage we shall not anticipate, remarking only that
the Syssitia appear to have answered to the obæ, from which it is probable
that the Triacades were contained in these latter divisions. Now in
Attica, at an early period, a triacas was the thirtieth part of a
phratria, and contained thirty men, the same number as a γένος.(326)
Following then the argument from analogy (by which we are so often
surprised and guided in our inquiries into the early political
institutions), triacas was in Sparta also the name of a house, which was
so called, either as being the thirtieth part of an oba, or, as appears to
me more probable, because it contained thirty houses. The relation of the
triacas to the enomoty,—a small division of warriors, which originally
contained twenty-four men,—is quite uncertain. The basis of the whole
calculation, and in this case a sufficiently fixed standard, was found in
Sparta in the families (οἶκοι) connected with the landed estates;
indifferently whether these contained several citizens, or whether they
had become extinct and been united with other families.(327)
7. We now proceed to mention another division of the citizens of Sparta,
which concerns the difference of rank. In a certain sense indeed all
Dorians were equal in rights and dignity; but there were yet manifold
gradations, which, when once formed, were retained by the aristocratic
feelings of the people. In the first place, there was the dignity of the
Heraclide families, which had a precedence throughout the whole
nation;(328) and, connected with this, a certain pre-eminence of the
Hyllean tribe; which is also expressed in Pindar. Then again, in the times
of the Peloponnesian war, “men of the first rank” are often mentioned in
Sparta, who, without being magistrates, had a considerable influence upon
the government.(329)
Here also the difference between the _Equals_ (ὅμοιοι) and _Inferiors_
(ὑπομείονες) must be taken into consideration; which, if we judge only
from the terms, would not appear to have been considerable, yet, though it
is never mentioned in connexion with the constitution of Lycurgus, it had
in later times a certain degree of influence upon the government.
According to Demosthenes,(330) the prize of virtue in Sparta was to become
a master of the state, together with the Equals. Whoever neglected a civil
duty, lost, according to Xenophon,(331) his rank among the Equals. Cinadon
wished to overthrow the government, because, although of a powerful and
enterprising mind, he did not belong to the Equals.(332) About the king’s
person in the field there were always three of the Equals, who provided
for all his wants.(333) It also appears that there were many peculiarities
in the education of an Equal.(334) Whoever, during his boyhood and youth,
omitted to make the exertions and endure the fatigues of the Spartan
discipline, lost his rank of an Equal.(335) In like manner, exclusion from
the public tables was followed by a sort of _diminutio capitis_, or civil
degradation.(336) This exclusion was either adjudged by the other members
of the table, or it was the consequence of inability to defray the due
share of the common expense. To them the Inferiors are most naturally
opposed; and if the latter were distinct from the Spartans, by the
Spartans, in a more limited sense of the word, Equals are sometimes
probably understood.(337) From these scanty accounts the unprejudiced
reader can only infer that a distinction of rank is implied, which
depended not upon any charge or office, but continued through life,
without however excluding the possibility of passing from one rank into
the other, any Equal being liable to be degraded for improper conduct, and
an Inferior, under certain circumstances, being enabled to procure
promotion by bravery and submission to the authorities; but if this
degradation did not take place, the rank then remained in the family, and
was transmitted to the children, as otherwise it could not have had any
effect upon education.(338)
8. After these preliminary inquiries concerning the divisions and classes
of the citizens, we have now to examine the manner in which the political
power was distributed and held in Sparta and the other Doric states.
As the foundation of these inquiries, we may premise a rhetra of Lycurgus,
which, given in the form of an oracle of the Pythian Apollo,(339) contains
the main features of the whole constitution of Sparta.(340) “_Build a
temple to Zeus Hellanius and Athene Hellania; divide the tribes, and
institute thirty obas; appoint a council, with its princes; convene the
assembly between Babyca and Cnacion; propose this, and then depart; and
let there be a right of decision and power to the people._” Here then
there is an unlimited authority given to the people to approve or to
reject what the kings proposed. This full power was, however, more nearly
defined and limited by a subsequent clause, the addition of which was
ascribed to kings Theopompus and Polydorus: “_but if the people should
follow a crooked opinion, the elders and the princes shall dissent_.”(341)
Plutarch interprets these words thus; “That in case the people does not
either approve or reject the measure _in toto_, but alters or vitiates it
in any manner, the kings and councillors should dissolve the assembly, and
declare the decree to be invalid.” According to this construction, indeed,
the public assembly had so far the supreme power, that nothing could
become a law without its consent. But it probably could not originate any
legislative measure; inasmuch as such a power would have directly
contravened the aristocratical spirit of the constitution, which feared
nothing so much as the passionate and turbulent haste of the populace in
decreeing and deciding. The sense of the rhetra of Lycurgus is also given
in some verses from the Eunomia of Tyrtæus, which, on account of their
antiquity and importance, we will quote in their original language:—
Φοίβου ἀκούσαντες, Πυθωνόθεν οἴκαδ᾽ ἔνεικαν
μαντείας τε θεοῦ καὶ τελέεντ᾽ ἔπεα.
ἄρχειν μὲν βουλῆς θεοτιμήτους βασιλῆας,
οἷσι μέλει Σπάρτης ἱμερόεσσα πόλις,
πρεσβυγενεῖς δὲ γέροντας, ἔπειτα δὲ δημότας ἄνδρας
εὐθείαις ῥήτραις ἀνταπαμειβομένους.(342)
δήμου τε πλήθει νίκην καὶ κάρτος ἕπεσθαι.(343)
By the sixth line Tyrtæus means to say that the popular assembly could
give a _direct_ answer to a law proposed by the authorities, but not
depart from or alter it.
9. The usual name of a public assembly in the Doric states was ἁλία. This
is the name by which the Spartan assembly is called in Herodotus;(344) and
it is used also in official documents for those of Byzantium,(345) of
Gela, Agrigentum,(346) Corcyra,(347) and Heraclea;(348) ἁλιαῖα was the
term employed by the Tarentines(349) and Epidamnians;(350) the place of
assembly among the Sicilian Dorians was called ἁλιακτήρ.(351) In Crete it
was known by the ancient Homeric expression of ἀγορά.(352) In Sparta the
ancient name of an assembly of the people was ἀπέλλα, whence the word
ἀπελλάζειν in the rhetra quoted above. In later times the names ἐκκλησία
and οἱ ἔκκλητοι appear to have been chiefly in use, which do not, more
than at Athens, signify a select body, or a committee of the
citizens;(353) although in other Doric states select assemblies sometimes
occur under similar names.(354) There was also an assembly of this last
kind at Sparta, but it is expressly called the _small ecclesia_;(355) and,
according to a passage in which it was mentioned, was chiefly occupied
concerning the state of the constitution, and perhaps consisted only of
Equals; for it can hardly be supposed that an assembly was convened of
magistrates alone.(356) To the regular assembly, however, all citizens
above the age of thirty were doubtless admitted, who had not been deprived
of their rights by law.(357) The place of meeting was in Sparta, between
the brook Cnacion(358) and the bridge Babyca, where afterwards was a place
called Œnus, near to Pitana, and therefore situated to the west of the
city;(359) but, whatever might have been the precise spot, it was in the
open air.(360) The time for the regular assembly was each full moon;(361)
yet, for business of emergency, extraordinary meetings were held, often
succeeding one another at short intervals.(362)
Our chief object now is to ascertain what were the subjects which,
according to the customs of Sparta, required the immediate decision of the
people. In the first place, with regard to the external relations of the
state, we know that the whole people alone could proclaim war, conclude a
peace, enter into an armistice for any length of time, &c.;(363) and that
all negociations with foreign states, although conducted by the kings and
ephors, could alone be ratified by the same authority. With regard to
internal affairs, the highest offices, particularly the councillors, were
filled by the votes of the people;(364) a disputed succession to the
throne was decided by the same tribunal;(365) changes in the constitution
were proposed and explained, and all new laws (as often as this rare event
took place), after previous examination in the council, were confirmed in
the assembly.(366) Legally also it required the authority of the assembled
people to liberate any considerable number of Helots, as being their
collective owner.(367) In short, the popular assembly possessed the
supreme legislative authority; but it was so hampered and restrained by
the spirit of the constitution, that it could only exert its authority
within certain prescribed limits.
10. This circumstance was shown in an especial manner in the method of its
proceedings. None but public magistrates, chiefly the ephors and kings,
together with the sons of the latter,(368) addressed the people without
being called upon, and put the question to the vote;(369) foreign
ambassadors also being permitted to enter and speak concerning war and
peace;(370) but that citizens ever came forward upon their own impulse to
speak on public affairs, is neither probable, nor do any examples of such
a practice occur. A privilege of this kind could, according to Spartan
principles, only be obtained by holding a public office.(371) As therefore
the magistrates alone, (τέλη, ἀρχαὶ) were the leaders and speakers of the
assembly, so we often find that stated as a decree of the authorities
(especially in foreign affairs),(372) which had been discussed before the
whole community, and approved by it.(373) The occasional speeches were
short, and spoken extempore; Lysander first delivered before the people a
prepared speech, which he procured from Cleon of Halicarnassus.(374) The
method of voting by acclamation has indeed something rude and barbarous;
but it has the advantage of expressing not only the number of approving
and negative voices, but also the eagerness of the voters, accurately
enough, according to the ancient simplicity of manners.
11. The public assembly of CRETE was, if we may judge from some imperfect
accounts, similar to the Lacedæmonian. It included all the citizens,
strictly so called; and likewise had only power to answer the decree of
the chief officers (cosmi or gerontes) in the negative or
affirmative.(375) In the other Doric states the influence of the assembly
is too closely connected with the historical epoch to allow the collection
of the scattered accounts in this place to form an uniform whole. There
were everywhere popular assemblies, as long as they were not suppressed by
tyrants; nor indeed did every tyrant suppress them; in every state also
they represented the supreme power and sovereignty of the people; its will
was the only law. That this will, however, should be properly directed,
and that the supreme decision should not be intrusted to the blind impulse
of an ignorant or excited populace, was the problem which the founders of
the Doric governments undertook to solve.
Chapter VI.
§ 1. The Gerusia of Sparta, a council of elders. § 2. The Spartan
Gerontes were irresponsible. § 3. Functions of the Spartan
Gerusia. § 4. Gerusia of Crete and of Elis. § 5. Character of the
Spartan royalty. § 6. Honours paid to the Spartan kings, and the
mode of their succession. § 7. Powers of the Spartan kings in
domestic; § 8. and in foreign affairs. 9. Revenues of the Spartan
kings. § 10. Heraclide princes in Doric states other than Sparta.
1. This result was chiefly brought about by the aristocratical
counterpoise to the popular assembly, the gerusia, which was never wanting
in a genuine Doric state, the “council of elders,” as the name
signifies.(376) In this respect it is opposed to the senate (βουλὴ), which
represented the people; although the latter name, as being the more
general term, is sometimes used for the council, but never the converse.
Thus in the Persian war a senate assembled at Argos, which had full powers
to decide concerning peace and war;(377) this was therefore of an
aristocratic character, since the government of Argos had not then become
democratical. The Homeric assembly, which was of a purely aristocratical
form, is called βουλὴ γερόντων or γερουσία;(378) it consisted of the older
men of the ruling families, and decided both public business and judicial
causes conjointly with the kings, properly so called,(379) frequently,
however, in connexion with an ἀγορά. In this assembly lay, but as yet
undeveloped, the political elements of the Doric gerusia. At Sparta the
name was taken in the strictest sense, as the national opinion laid the
greatest importance upon age in the management of public affairs; the
young men were appointed for war;(380) and accordingly none but men of
sixty or more years of age had admission to this council.(381) The office
of a councillor was, however, according to the expression both of
Aristotle and Demosthenes,(382) the prize of virtue, and attended with
general honour;(383) none but men of distinguished families, blameless
lives, and eminent station, could occupy it.(384) Being an office which
was held for life,(385) it never could happen that more than one
individual was elected at a time, and the eyes of the whole state were
directed towards the choice of this one person. Distinguished men,
therefore, bordering upon old age, probably always from the oba to which
the person whose place was vacated had belonged,(386) offered themselves
upon their own judgment(387) before the tribunal of the public voice.
Their advanced age enabled the electors to consider and examine a long
public life, and ensured to the state the greatest prudence and experience
in the elected. To provide against the weakness of age, which Aristotle
considers as a defect attendant on this mode of election, was unnecessary
for a time and a state whose inhabitants enjoyed the highest bodily
health. The aristocratic tendency of the office required that the
candidates should be nominated by vote, not by lot, but yet by the whole
people;(388) and that they themselves should meet with the good-will of
every person; which was particularly required for this dignity.
2. When they had passed through this ordeal they were for ever relieved
from all further scrutiny, and were trusted to their own conscience.(389)
They were subject to no responsibility, since it was thought that the near
prospect of death would give them more moderation,(390) than the fear of
incurring at the cessation of their office the displeasure of the
community; to whom in other states the power of calling the highest
officers to account was intrusted. The spirit of this aristocratic
institution was, that the councillors were morally perfect, and hence it
gave them a complete exemption from all fear as to the consequences of
their actions. To later politicians it appeared still more dangerous that
the councillors of Sparta acted upon their own judgment, and not according
to written laws; but only because they did not take into account the power
of custom and of ancient habit (the ἄγραφα νόμιμα, πάτριοι νόμοι),(391)
which have an absolute sway, so long as the internal unity of a people is
not separated and destroyed. Upon unwritten laws, which were fixed in the
hearts of the citizens, and were there implanted by education, the whole
public and legal transactions of the Spartans depended; and these were
doubtless most correctly delivered through the mouths of the experienced
old men, whom the community had voluntarily selected as its best citizens.
Thousands of written laws always leave open a door for the entrance of
arbitrary decision, if they have not by their mutual connexion a complete
power of supplying what is deficient; this power is, however, alone
possessed by the law, connate with the people, which, in the ancient
simple times, when national habits are preserved in perfect purity, is
better maintained by custom fixed under the inspection of the best men,
than by any writing.
To me, therefore, the gerusia appears to be a splendid monument of early
Grecian customs: and, by its noble openness, simple greatness, and pure
confidence, shows that it was safe to build upon the moral excellence and
paternal wisdom of those who had experienced a long life, and to whom in
this instance the people intrusted its safety and welfare.
3. The functions of the gerusia were double, it having at the same time an
administrative and a judicial authority. In the first capacity it debated
with the kings upon all important affairs, preparing them for the decision
of the public assembly, and passed a decree in its first stage by a
majority of voices,(392) the influence of which was doubtless far greater
than at Athens: in the latter capacity it had the supreme decision in all
criminal cases, and could punish with infamy and death.(393) Since,
however, in both these directions the power of the council gradually came
in conflict with that of the ephors, we must first enter into an
investigation concerning these officers, before it will be possible to
speak of the extent of the functions of the council at different periods.
Another circumstance also, which renders a separate inquiry into the
nature of the ephoralty requisite, is the inspection which it exercised
over the manners of the citizens,(394) in which it manifests a great
similarity with the ancient Athenian court of the Areopagus. As every old
man had the right of severely censuring the habits of any youth, so every
citizen was a youth in comparison with these aged fathers of the state.
Hence the awe and veneration with which they were commonly regarded at
Sparta. That, however, to an Athenian orator of the democratic times, the
gerusia should appear possessed of despotic authority, is not surprising;
for it is so far true, that this institution, if transplanted to Athens,
would necessarily have caused a tyrannical dominion. In Sparta, however,
so little was known of any despotic measure of the gerontes, that, on the
contrary, the constitution was impaired when their antagonist office, the
ephors, gained the ascendency in influence and power. The institution of
the gerusia was in fact, in its main features, once established at Athens,
when Lysander nominated the Thirty, who were to be a legislative body, and
at the same time the supreme court of justice; with how little success is
well known; so true is it, that every institution can only flourish in the
soil in which it is first planted.(395)
4. In early times every Doric state must have had a gerusia; but CRETE is
the only place of whose council accounts have been preserved, and these
represent it in precisely the same light as that of Sparta. It was, we are
informed, armed with large political and legislative powers, and laid its
decrees in a matured state before the general assembly, for its approval
or rejection.(396) It decided, without appeal to written laws, upon its
own judgment, and was responsible to no one.(397) The members were chosen
from those persons who had before filled the supreme magistracy (the
cosmi), not, however, until after a fresh examination of their
fitness.(398) The office lasted for life, as at Sparta.(399) The _princeps
senatus_ was styled βουλῆς πρείγιστος.(400)
In ELIS, also, whose government resembled that of Sparta, a gerusia was a
very important part of the constitution. It consisted of ninety members,
who were chosen for their lifetime from oligarchical families;(401) but in
other respects the election was the same as at Sparta, and therefore they
were chosen by the whole people. Yet there was also a larger council of
600,(402) which may have been an aristocratical committee selected from
the popular assembly. Thus much at least is clear, that the power of the
people was very limited; and that, as Aristotle says, there was one
oligarchy within another.(403)
5. To the consideration of the gerusia may be joined the inquiry
concerning the kingly office in Sparta and other Doric states, as being a
cognate element of the constitution. The Doric royalty was a continuation
of the heroic or Homeric; and neither in the one nor in the other are we
to look for that despotic power, with which the Greeks were not acquainted
until they had seen it in foreign countries. In those early times the
king, together with his council, was supreme ruler and judge, but not
without it; he was also chief commander in war, and as such possessed a
large executive authority, as circumstances required. On the whole,
however, his station with regard to the nobles was that of an equal; and
his office, although for the most part hereditary, could yet be
transferred to another family of the aristocracy. He ruled over the common
people either in an arbitrary manner, as the suitors in Ithaca, or as a
mild father, like Ulysses.(404) His office on the whole bore an analogy to
the power of Zeus; and it received a religious confirmation from the
circumstance of his presiding at and performing the great public
sacrifices with the assistance of soothsayers.
6. These are the principal features of the kingly office at Sparta, where,
according to Aristotle, as well as among the Molossi in Epirus, it
acquired firmness by the limitation of its power; it also derived an
additional strength from the mythical notion that the conquest of the
country had originated from the royal family.(405) The main support of the
dignity of the kings was doubtless the honour paid to the Heraclidæ, which
extended throughout the whole of Greece, and was the theme of many fables;
even the claim of the Spartans to the command of the allied Grecian armies
was in part founded upon it. These princes, deriving their origin from the
first of the heroes of Greece, were in many respects themselves considered
as heroes,(406) and enjoyed a certain religious respect. Hence also we may
account for their funeral ceremonies, so splendid, when compared with the
simplicity of Doric customs; for the general mourning of ten days,(407) to
which a fixed number of Spartans, Periœci and Helots came, together with
their wives, from all parts of the country into the city, where they
covered their heads with dust or ashes with great lamentation, and on each
occasion praised the dead king as the best of all princes;(408) as well as
for the exposure of those kings who had fallen in battle, whose images
were laid upon a state-couch:(409) usages which approximate very closely
to the worship of an hero (τιμαὶ ἡρωϊκαί). The royal dignity was also
guarded by the sanction of the sacerdotal office: for the kings were
priests of Zeus Uranius and Zeus Lacedæmon, and offered public sacrifices
to Apollo on every new moon and seventh day (Νεομήνιος and
Ἑβδομαγέτας);(410) they also received the skins of all sacrificed animals
as a part of their income. From this circumstance, added to the fact that
in war they had a right to the back of every victim, and had liberty to
sacrifice as much as they wished,(411) it follows that they presided over
the entire worship of the army, being both priests and princes, like the
Agamemnon of Homer.(412) Their power, however, most directly required that
they should maintain a constant intercourse between the state and the
Delphian oracle; hence they nominated the Pythians, and, together with
these officers, read and preserved the oracles.(413) As then it appears
from these facts that the dignity of the kings was founded on a religious
notion, so it was also limited by religion; although the account we have
is rather of an ancient custom, which was retained when its meaning had
been lost, than an institution of real influence. Once in every eight
years (δι᾽ ἐτῶν ἐννέα) the ephors chose a calm and moonless night, and
placed themselves in the most profound silence to observe the heavens: if
there was any appearance of a shooting star, it was believed that the
kings had in some manner offended the Deity, and they were suspended until
an oracle from Delphi, or the priests at Olympia, absolved them from the
guilt.(414) If this custom (doubtless of great antiquity) is compared with
the frequent occurrence of this period of nine years in early times, and
especially with the tradition preserved in a verse of Homer, “of Minos,
who reigned for periods of nine years, holding intercourse with
Zeus,”(415) it is easy to perceive that the dominion of the ancient Doric
princes determined, as it were, at the period of every eight years, and
required a fresh religious ratification. So intimate in early times was
the connexion between civil government and religion.
It is clear, from what has been said, that the Dorians considered the
kingly office as proceeding from the Deity, and not as originating from
the people; which would, I believe, have seemed to them in no-wise more
natural, than that the liberty of the people should be dependent on the
king. But they were well aware that the elements of the constitution had
not been formed by a people consisting, like the American colonists after
their defection from the mother-country, of individuals possessed of equal
rights: but they had existed at the beginning, and grown with the growth
of the nation. For this reason the people were not empowered to nominate
the king (from which disputes concerning the rightful succession to the
throne should be carefully distinguished;)(416) but the royal dignity
passed in a regular succession to the eldest son, with this exception,
that the sons born during the reign of the father had the precedence of
their elder brothers: if the eldest son died, the throne passed to his
next male descendant; and on failure of his line, to the younger brothers
in succession; if there was no male issue of the king, the office went to
his brother(417) (who also, during the minority of the son of the late
king, was his natural guardian),(418) and his heirs; or, lastly, if the
whole line was extinct, to the next of kin.(419) The anxiety of the
Spartans for the legitimacy of their kings, also serves to prove the high
importance which was attached to the genuineness of their birth.
Notwithstanding these large privileges, the people believed its liberty to
be secured by the oath which was taken every month by the kings, that they
would reign according to the laws; a custom also in force among the
Molossi;(420) in return for which, the state engaged through the ephors to
preserve the dominion of the kings unshaken (ἀστυφέλικτος), if they
adhered to their oath.(421)
7. The constitutional powers of the kings of Sparta were inconsiderable,
as compared with their dignity and honours. In the first place, the two
kings were members of the gerusia, and their presence was requisite to
make a full council; but as such they only had single votes,(422) which in
their absence were held by the councillor who was most nearly related to
them, and therefore a Heraclide.(423) If they were present, they presided
at the council, and accordingly, in the ancient rhetra above mentioned,
they are styled _princes_ (ἀρχαγέται) in reference to the council; it was
also their especial office to speak and to propose measures in the public
assembly. When the council sat as a court of justice, the kings of course
presided in it; besides which, they had a distinct tribunal of their
own,(424) for in Sparta all magistrates had a jurisdiction in cases which
belonged to the branch of the administration with which they were
intrusted: the only remnant of which custom, spared by the democracy at
Athens, was, that the public officers always _introduced_ such suits into
the courts. This coincidence of administrative and judicial authority also
existed at Sparta in the person of their kings. They held a court in cases
concerning the repair and security of the public roads, probably in their
capacity of generals, and as superintendents of the intercourse with
foreign nations. It is remarkable that they gave judgment in all cases of
heiresses, and that all adoptions were made in their presence.(425) Both
these duties regarded the maintenance of families, the basis of the
ancient Greek states, the care for which was therefore intrusted to the
kings. Thus in Athens also, the same duty had been transferred from the
ancient kings to the archon eponymus, who accordingly had the
superintendence, and a species of guardianship over all heiresses and
orphans.(426)
8. The greater part of the king’s prerogative was his power in foreign
affairs. The kings of Sparta were the commanders of the Peloponnesian
confederacy. They also went out as ambassadors; although at times of
mistrust companions were assigned, who were known to be disinclined and
hostile to them.(427) By the same power the kings also nominated citizens
as proxeni, who entertained ambassadors and citizens of foreign states in
their houses,(428) and otherwise provided for them; it appears that the
kings themselves were in fact the proxeni for foreign countries, and that
those persons whom they nominated are only to be considered as their
deputies.
As soon as the king had assumed the command of the army, and had crossed
the boundaries, he became, according to ancient custom, general with
unlimited power (στρατηγὸς αὐτοκράτωρ).(429) He had authority to despatch
and assemble armies, to collect money in foreign countries, and to lead
and encamp the army according to his own judgment. Any person who dared to
impede him, or to resist his authority, was outlawed.(430) He had power of
life and death, and could execute without trial (ἐν χειρὸς νόμῳ);
although, from the well-known subordination of the Spartans, such cases
were probably of rare occurrence. But it is manifest that the king, upon
his return, was always responsible and liable to punishment, as well for
an imprudent, as for a tyrannical use of his powers. His political was
separated with sufficient accuracy from his military authority, and the
king was not permitted to conclude treaties, or to decide the fate of
cities, without communication with and permission from the state.(431) His
military power was, however, thought dangerous and excessive, and was from
time to time curtailed. This limitation was not indeed effected by the
arrangement which originated from the dissension between Demaratus and
Cleomenes, viz., that only one king should be with the army at the same
time(432) (for this regulation rather increased the power of the one king
who was sent out); but chiefly by the law, that the king should not go
into the field without ten councillors (a rule which owed its origin to
the over-hasty armistice of Agis),(433) and by the compulsory attendance
of the ephors.(434)
9. The investigation concerning the revenue of the kings is not in itself
so important as it is rendered interesting by the parallel with the same
office in the Homeric age. In Homer the kings are represented as having
three sorts of revenues; first, the produce of their lands (τεμένη),(435)
which often contained tillage ground, pastures, and plantations; secondly,
the fees for judicial decisions (δῶρα); and, thirdly, the public banquets,
which were provided at the expense of the community.(436) To these were
added extraordinary gifts, shares of the booty, and other honorary
presents. The case was nearly the same at Sparta, except that they
received no fees for judicial decisions. But in the first place, the king
in this country had his landed property, which was situated in the
territory of several cities belonging to the Periœci,(437) and the royal
tribute (βασιλικὸς φόρος) was probably derived from the same source.(438)
This was the foundation of the private wealth of the kings, which
frequently amounted to a considerable sum; otherwise, how could it have
been proposed to fine king Agis a hundred thousand drachmas,(439) that is,
doubtless, Æginetan drachmas, and therefore about 5800_l._ of our money?
Also the younger Agis, the son of Eudamidas, was possessed of six hundred
talents in coin;(440) and in a dialogue attributed to Plato, the king of
Sparta is declared to be richer than any private individual at
Athens.(441) But besides these revenues, the king received a large sum
from the public property; a double portion at the public banquets,(442) an
animal without blemish for sacrifice, a medimnus of wheat, and a
Lacedæmonian quart of wine on the first and seventh days of each
month;(443) the share in the sacrifices above mentioned, &c. It was,
moreover, customary for private individuals who gave entertainments, to
invite the kings, as was the practice in the Homeric times;(444) on these
occasions a double portion was set before them, and when a public
sacrifice took place, the kings had the same rights and preferences.(445)
In war, also, the king received a large portion of the plunder; thus the
share of Pausanias, after the battle of Platæa, was ten women, horses,
camels, and talents:(446) in later times it appears that a third of the
booty fell to the lot of the king.(447) Lastly, it is proper to mention
the official residence of the two kings of Sparta, built, according to
tradition, by Aristodemus the ancestor of the two royal families.(448) In
addition to this dwelling, they had frequently private houses of their
own,(449) and a tent was always built for them without the city, at the
public expense.(450)
In taking a review of all these statements, it appears to me that the
political sagacity was almost past belief, with which the ancient
constitution of Sparta protected the power, the dignity, and welfare of
the office of king, yet without suffering it to grow into a despotism, or
without placing the king in any one point either above or without the law.
Without endangering the liberty of the state, a royal race was maintained,
which, blending the pride of their own family with the national feelings,
produced, for a long succession of years, princes of a noble and patriotic
disposition. Thus it was in fact with the two Heraclide families, to which
Theopompus, Leonidas, Archidamus II., Agesilaus, Cleomenes III., and Agis
III. belonged; and the greater number of the later kings retained, up to
the last period, a genuine Spartan disposition, which we find expressed in
many nervous and pithy apophthegms.
10. It may be inferred that it was the case in all, as we know it to have
been in many Dorian states, with the exception of later colonies, that
they were governed by princes of the Heraclide family. In Argos, the
descendants of Temenus reigned until after the time of Phidon, and the
kingly office did not expire till after the Persian war;(451) in Corinth,
the successors of Aletes, and afterwards of Bacchis, reigned until about
the 8th Olympiad. How long the Ctesippidæ reigned in Epidaurus and
Cleonæ,(452) we are not informed. In Megara we find the name, but the name
only, of a king at a very late period.(453) In Messenia the Æpytidæ ruled
as kings until the subjugation of the country; and when Aristomenes was
compelled to quit it, he took refuge with Damagetus, the king of Ialysus,
in the island of Rhodes, of the Heraclide family of the Eratidæ.(454) Also
the Hippotadæ at Cnidos and Lipara,(455) the Bacchiadæ at Syracuse and
Corcyra,(456) the Phalantidæ at Tarentum,(457) probably had in early times
ruled as sovereign princes, as well as the Heraclidæ at Cos, who derived
their origin from Phidippus and Antiphus.(458) In Crete we find but little
mention of the Heraclidæ, the only exceptions being Althæmenes of Argos,
and Phæstus of Sicyon.(459) In this island the family of Teutamas had
reigned from a remote period: with regard to the time during which kings
existed in this country, it can only be conjectured from the circumstance
that a king named Etearchus reigned at Oaxus not long before the building
of Cyrene.(460) Cyrene, as has been already shown, was under the dominion
of a Minyean, its mother-city Thera, under that of an Ægide family.(461)
Delphi was also at an early period under the rule of kings.(462) Of the
aristocratic offices, which were substituted in the place of the royal
authority, we shall presently speak, when treating of the power of the
cosmi.
Chapter VII.
§ 1. Origin of the office of Ephor in the Spartan state. § 2.
Period of its creation. § 3. Civil jurisdiction of the Ephors. §
4. Increase in the powers of the Ephors. § 5. Their transaction of
business with the assembly of citizens, and with foreign powers. §
6. The power of the Ephors, owing to their ascendency over the
assembly of citizens. § 7. Miscellaneous facts concerning the
office of Ephor. § 8. Titles and duties of other magistrates at
Sparta.
1. Before we treat of the powers of the cosmi, it will be necessary to
inquire into an office, which is of the greatest importance in the history
of the Lacedæmonian constitution; for while the king, the council, and the
people, preserved upon the whole the same political power and the same
executive authority, the office of the ephors was the moving principle by
which, in process of time, this most perfect constitution was assailed,
and gradually overthrown. From this remark three questions arise: first,
what was the original nature of the office of ephor? secondly, what
changes did it experience in the lapse of time? and, thirdly, from what
causes did these changes originate?
There is an account frequently repeated by ancient writers, that
Theopompus, the grandson of Charilaus the Proclid, founded this office in
order to limit the authority of the Kings. “He handed down the royal power
to his descendants more durable, because he had diminished it.”(463) If,
however, the ephoralty was an institution of Theopompus, it is difficult
to account for the existence of the same office in other Doric states. In
Cyrene the ephors punished litigious people and impostors with
infamy:(464) the same office existed in the mother-city Thera,(465) which
island had been colonised from Laconia long before the time of Theopompus.
The Messenians also would hardly, upon the re-establishment of their
state, have received the ephoralty into their government,(466) if they had
thought it only an institution of some Spartan king. The ephors of the
Tarentine colony Heraclea may be more easily derived from Sparta and the
time of Theopompus.(467) It is however plain that Herodotus(468) and
Xenophon(469) placed the ephoralty among the institutions of Lycurgus,
with as much reason as other writers attributed it to Theopompus; and it
will probably be sufficient to state that the ephors were ancient Doric
magistrates.
The ephoralty, however, considered as an office opposed to the kings and
to the council, is not for this reason an institution less peculiar to the
Spartans; and in no Doric, nor even in any Grecian state, is there any
thing which exactly corresponds with it. It is evident, therefore, that it
must have gradually obtained this peculiar character by causes which
operated upon the Lacedæmonian state alone. Hence it appears, that the
supposed expression of Theopompus referred rather to the powers of the
ephors in later times, than to their original condition. At least
Cleomenes the Third was ignorant of this account of them; since, after the
abolition of these magistrates, he proposed, in a speech to the people,
that the ephors should again be what they were originally (when they were
elected in the first Messenian war), viz., the deputies and assistants of
the king. In this proposal indeed a very partial view is displayed; for
every magistrate must necessarily choose his own deputy; whereas the
democratic election of the ephors was, as we shall presently see, an
essential part of their office. From the accounts just adduced, we do not
however wish to infer any thing further, than how variable were the
opinions, and how little historical the statements, concerning the
original object of the ephoralty.
2. In the constitution of Lycurgus, as it has been hitherto developed, the
ephoralty of later times would not only have been a superfluous, but a
destructive addition. For in this the king, the council, and the people
constituted the chief authorities; and to suppose that any part would
require either check or assistance, would have been inconsistent with the
plans of the legislator. A counter-authority, such as the ephoralty, in
which the mistrust of the people was expressed in a tyrannical manner, was
far removed from the innocence and simplicity of the original
constitution, and could not have been introduced, until the connexion and
firmness arising from the first laws had been loosened and enfeebled. The
Roman office of tribune had, doubtless, a certain similarity in its first
origin with the ephoralty;(470) yet the former was more imperatively
required, as by it an entire people, the _plebs Romana_, obtained a
necessary and fair representation; whereas in Sparta the gerusia, although
chosen from the most distinguished citizens, belonged nevertheless to the
whole Spartan people, and the democratic influence of the popular assembly
served as the basis of the whole constitution.(471)
If then the extended political power of the ephors did not belong to the
constitution of Lycurgus, neither can we suppose that it originated in the
time of Theopompus. For the statement is worthy of credit, that Theopompus
and Polydorus added the following words to the rhetra above quoted: “_If
however the people should follow a crooked opinion, the councillors and
princes shall dissent._” Now in the first place, the ephors are here
wholly omitted, although in the Peloponnesian war they put the vote to the
people, and frequently made proposals in the assembly; and, secondly, the
tendency of this clause is manifestly to diminish the power of the people;
whereas it will be more clearly shown below, that the authority of the
ephors rested upon democratical principles.
It is evident that these supposed historical traditions, instead of
affording any clear explanation, lead to contradictions; and in order to
obtain any distinct knowledge of the history of the ephoralty, we must
proceed rather upon the evidence furnished by the nature of the office
itself, and the analogy of similar offices in other states.
3. For this reason we will first consider the judicial authority of the
ephors, a power which we know to have belonged also to the ephors of
Cyrene. Now Aristotle(472) describes their judicial powers by saying, that
they decided causes relating to contracts, while the council decided
causes of homicide.(473) The latter was therefore a supreme criminal
court, with power of life and death; the former a civil court, which gave
judgment concerning contracts and property. Its influence upon the
Spartans would appear to have been inconsiderable, from the opinions
entertained by them on the division of property and exchange of money,
perhaps less than it really was; but however this may be, the Periœci and
Helots, when they were in Sparta, were under its jurisdiction. Now we have
already shown, that it was a principle of the Lacedæmonian government so
to divide the jurisdiction amongst the different magistrates, that the
administration and jurisdiction belonged to the same officers.(474) Hence
a superintendence over sales and over the market must have been the
original duty of the ephors, forming the basis of their judicial
authority.(475) The market, as being the central point of exchange, was no
unimportant object of care:(476) every Spartan here brought a part of the
corn produced by his estate, in order to exchange it for other
commodities: it was in a certain manner disgraceful not to have the power
of buying and selling;(477) a privilege which was also interdicted to
youths: moreover, in the days of mourning for the king, the market was
shut up and scattered with chaff.(478) The day upon which Cinadon,
according to the description of Xenophon,(479) secretly endeavoured to
inflame the minds of the lower classes, was evidently a market-day, and
also, in my opinion, a great day of justice. A king, the ephors, the
councillors, and about forty Spartans (ὅμοιοι), were in the market-place,
all probably in a judicial capacity: besides whom, there were about four
thousand men, chiefly occupied in buying and selling, as is seen from the
fact that in one part of the market a large quantity of iron fabrics was
heaped up. The ephors were therefore ἔφοροι (inspectors) over the market,
and for this reason they met regularly in this place,(480) where was also
situated their office.
The number of the college of ephors (five),(481) which it had in common
with some other magistrates of Sparta,(482) appears, as I conjectured
above,(483) to imply a democratic election—a fact which is also stated by
the ancients. We know from Aristotle, that persons from the people,
without property or distinction, could fill this office:(484) in what
manner, indeed, is not quite manifest. Properly indeed, no magistrate in
Sparta was chosen by lot;(485) but it appears that election by choice and
by lot were combined.(486) In this case we see displayed a principle of
the ancient Greek states, which administered the criminal jurisdiction on
aristocratic principles, while civil causes were decided by the whole
community, or its representatives. At Athens, Solon gave the popular
courts a jurisdiction only in civil suits; all criminal cases were decided
by the timocratic Areopagus, and the aristocratic Ephetæ. In Heraclea on
the Pontus, the chief officers were chosen from a small number of the
citizens, the courts of justice from the rest of the people.(487) And in
Sparta also the civil judges were the deputies of the assembly—the
ἁλίαια,(488) which in Athens itself acted as a court of justice under the
name of ἡλίαια.
4. From the view of this office now taken, the continued extension of the
powers of the ephors may be more easily accounted for. It was the regular
course of events in the Grecian states, that the civil courts enlarged
their influence, while the power of the criminal courts was continually on
the decline. As in Athens, the Helæeea rose, as compared with the
Areopagus, so in Sparta the power of the ephors increased in comparison
with that of the gerusia.
In the first place, the jurisdiction of the ephors was extended(489)
chiefly by their privilege of instituting scrutinies (εὔθυναι) into the
official conduct of all magistrates, with the exception of the
councillors.(490) By this indeed we are not to understand, that all
magistrates, after the cessation of their office, rendered an account of
their proceedings, but only that the ephors could compel them to undergo a
trial, if there had been any thing suspicious in their administration; a
right, however, as it extended over the ephors of the preceding year,(491)
which restrained the power that it bestowed. But the ephors were not
compelled to wait for the natural expiration of an office, they could
suspend or deprive the officer by their judicial powers.(492) Now in this
respect the king was in the very same situation with the remaining
magistrates, and could, as well as the others, be brought before the
tribunal of the ephors. Even before the Persian war, Cleomenes was tried
before them for bribery.(493) The king was always bound to obey their
summons:(494) but the fact of his not being compelled to yield till the
third time, was used by Cleomenes III. as an argument to prove that the
power of the ephors was originally an usurpation.(495) At the same time,
their power extended in practice so far, that they could accuse the king,
as well as the other magistrates, in extreme cases, without consulting the
assembly, and could bring him to trial for life and death.(496) This
larger court consisted of all the councillors, of the ephors, who thus
came before it as accusers, besides having the right of sitting as judges,
of the other king, and probably of several magistrates, who had all equal
votes.(497) From this court there was no appeal; it had power to condemn
the king to death;(498) although, until later times, it was prevented by a
religious scruple from executing this sentence.(499) That its proceedings
were commonly carried on with great propriety and composure, is stated
upon the occasion of an instance to the contrary.(500) This great court of
magistrates we frequently find deciding concerning public crimes with
supreme authority,(501) and the ephors acting in it as accusers:(502) but
that the ephors had power of themselves to punish with death, I deny most
decidedly:(503) whether they had authority to banish, I even doubt.(504)
The inaccuracy of later writers has confounded the steps preparatory to
the sentence, with the sentence itself; a power of life and death in the
hands of the ephors would have been worse than tyranny. The ephors, when
they judged for themselves, were only able to impose fines, and to compel
an instantaneous payment.(505) Their power of punishing the kings in this
manner, or by a reprimand, was doubtless very extensive, and appears to
have been subject to no limitation. Agesilaus was fined by them for
endeavouring to make himself popular,(506) and Archidamus was censured for
having married too small a wife,(507) which implies the opinion, that the
community had a right to require their kings to keep up a robust
family.(508) The kings, however, were compelled to submit to this
treatment, in a state in which every magistrate exercised the full powers
of his office with a certain degree of severity. We find, however, that
the ephors had also jurisdiction in cases which were neither civil actions
nor the scrutinies of public officers; for example, they punished a man
for having brought money into the state;(509) another for indolence;(510)
a third from the singular reason that he was generally injured and
insulted:(511) and their share in the superintendence of public
education,(512) as well as over the celebration of the public games,(513)
gave them a jurisdiction in causes relating to these points. In cases of
this kind, however, we are ignorant how far they acted as a separate
board, and how far in connexion with other magistrates, for example, as
assessors of the kings.(514) They judged according to unwritten laws, as
Sparta knew no others. Aristotle calls this, deciding according to their
will and pleasure.(515)
5. Another more important circumstance, as affecting the extension of the
power of the ephors, was, that these officers (from what time we are not
informed) placed themselves in connexion with the popular assembly, so
that they had a right to transact business with it in preference to all
other magistrates. They had power to convene the people,(516) and put the
vote to them.(517) They must in early times have had the privilege of
proposing laws(518) (but doubtless not till after they had passed through
the gerusia), if the ephor Chilon is correctly called a legislator.(519)
They also possessed great authority in transactions with foreign nations.
They admitted ambassadors, and had also power to dismiss them from the
boundary,(520) likewise to expel suspected foreigners from the state,(521)
and therefore they were probably the chief managers of the Xenelasia. They
frequently carried on the negotiations with foreign ambassadors, with full
powers of treating;(522) and had great influence, especially of a
preparatory nature,(523) upon declarations of war, as well as armistices
and treaties of peace,(524) which the ephors, and particularly the first
among them, swore to and subscribed in presence of other persons.(525) To
them also was intrusted the right of dismissing ambassadors.(526) In time
of war they were empowered to send out troops (φρουρὰν φαίνειν(527)) on
whatever day seemed to them expedient;(528) and they even appear to have
had authority to determine the number of men.(529) The army they then
intrusted to the king, or some other general,(530) who received from them
instructions how to act;(531) sent back to the ephors for fresh
instructions;(532) were restrained by them through the attendance of
extraordinary plenipotentiaries;(533) were recalled by means of the
scytale;(534) summoned before a judicial tribunal;(535) and their first
duty after their return was to visit the office of the ephors.(536) These
officers also sent commands, with respect to discipline, to standing
armies abroad,(537) Now in these cases the ephors must have acted, not
upon their own authority, but as the agents of the public assembly;(538)
it was their duty to execute the decrees of the people, the mode being
left in some degree to their discretion. For this reason the assembly is
frequently mentioned, together with the ephors, in the same cases in which
on other occasions the ephors alone are represented as acting. The ephors
were often manifestly mediators between the generals and the assembly. In
the field the king was followed by two ephors, who belonged to the council
of war;(539) it is probable that they had the chief care of the
maintenance of the army, as well as the division of the plunder:(540)
those ephors who remained behind in Sparta received the booty in charge,
and paid it in to the public treasury.(541) We also find the ephors
deciding with regard to conquered cities, whether they should be dependent
or independent;(542) they suppressed the ten governors appointed by
Lysander, nominated harmosts,(543) &c.; all evidently in the name and
authority of that power, which it would have been against all principles
of a free constitution to intrust to the college of ephors.
6. Although we are prevented from obtaining an entirely clear view of this
subject, and particularly from pointing out all the collisions between the
authority of the ephors and other magistrates, by the secret nature of the
Spartan constitution,(544) it is yet evident that the powers of the ephors
were essentially founded upon the supreme authority of the popular
assembly, whose agents and plenipotentiaries they were. Every popular
assembly is necessarily an unskilful body, and little able to act both
with energy and moderation; least of all was the Spartan assembly capable
of transacting and executing any complicated business. For this reason it
intrusted to the ephors, who were chosen upon democratic principles from
among the people, a power similar to that which the public leaders or
demagogues of Athens exercised in so pernicious a manner. Plato and
Aristotle compare their authority with a tyranny:(545) and it is to be
remembered that in Greece tyrants continually rose from demagogues.
Accordingly the ephors reached the summit of their power when they began
to lead the public assembly: it is probable that this was first done by
the ephor Asteropus, who is one of the first persons to whom the extension
of the powers of that office is ascribed,(546) and who probably lived not
long before the time of Chilon. The extensive political influence of
Lacedæmon also contributed to give a greater importance to the ephoralty.
Chasms arose in the constitution of Lycurgus, which had been intended for
a simpler state of things, and were filled up by the ambition of these
magistrates. The transactions with foreign states required a small number
of skilful and clever men; the gerusia was too helpless, simple, and
antiquated for this purpose; and accordingly the sphere of its operations
appears to have been confined to domestic affairs. And lastly, as the
finances of Sparta became continually an object of greater and greater
importance, the influence of the officers necessarily increased, who had,
as it appears, at all times the management of the treasury.
7. There are some other facts which may be added respecting the official
proceedings of the ephors. They commenced their annual office with the
autumnal equinox, the beginning of the Lacedæmonian year.(547) The first
of them gave his name to the year, which was called after him in all
public transactions. They commenced their official duties with a species
of edict, by which the secret officers (κρυπτοὶ) were sent out: it appears
from this that they also exercised a superintendence over the discipline
of the Helots and Periœci.(548) In the same edict it was ordered “_to
shave the beard_,” “_and obey the laws_,”(549) the former being a
metaphorical, and indeed rather a singular expression for subjection and
obedience. They held their daily meetings in the ephors’ office, in which
they also ate together.(550) In this house foreigners and ambassadors were
introduced, and hospitably entertained.(551) Next to the Ephoreum stood a
temple of Fear, which the dictatorial power of these magistrates doubtless
inspired in the citizens.(552) Lastly, these officers also required a
religious foundation for their dignity. The ephors at certain periods saw
dreams in the temple of Pasiphaa at Thalamæ, and their visions were
politically interpreted: we know that a dream of this kind stimulated the
Spartans to return to their ancient equality.(553) Of their periodical
inspection of the heavens we have already spoken, when treating of the
kingly office:(554) and it is remarkable that this custom, which was
doubtless of great antiquity, occurs first in very late times, and was
used in support of the tyranny of the ephors over the kings. It is these
later times in particular which confirm the assertion made in the
beginning of the chapter, that the ephoralty was the moving element, the
principle of change, in the Spartan constitution, and, in the end, the
cause of its final dissolution; for the ephors, being brought by means of
their jurisdiction and their political duties into extensive intercourse
with foreign nations, were the first to give up the severe customs of
ancient Sparta, and to admit a greater luxury of manners. Even Aristotle
censures their relaxed mode of life.(555) It is still more to our purpose
that the decrees which undermined the constitution of Sparta originated
from these magistrates: it was the ephor Epitadeus who first carried
through the law permitting the free inheritance of property. For this
reason it was necessary for the royal heroes Agis and Cleomenes, when, in
a fruitless but glorious struggle with the degenerate age, they undertook
to restore the constitution of Lycurgus, to begin with the overthrow of
the ephors.(556)
8. The undefined and vague nature of the authority of the ephors(557) is
strongly opposed to the accurate designation of the duties of the other
annual officers. Although there were many officers of this description at
Sparta, we seldom find any mention of them, as they rarely overstepped the
legal bounds of their authority. Yet it is possible that the name
τέλη,(558) which is so frequently used for the presidents of the assembly,
and the high court for state offences, and which to a foreigner rather
concealed than explained the internal affairs of Sparta, comprehended
other magistrates, according to the circumstances of the case, besides the
kings, councillors, and ephors. The nomophylaces and bidiæi,(559) as well
as the ephors, had their offices in the market-place. The duties of the
former officers are declared by their name, of their number we know
nothing; of the latter there were five, and their business was to inspect
the gymnastic exercises.(560) The harmosyni were appointed to superintend
the manners of the women;(561) the buagi regulated a part of the
education; to the empelori belonged the market-police.(562)
The polemarchs also, in addition to their military functions, had a civil,
together with a certain judicial power. In some Laconian inscriptions,
belonging to the Roman time, many names of nomophylaces, buagi, and
σύσσιτοι of the magistrates are recorded; the meaning of the latter
distinction is obscure. The election of regular nomophylaces was an
occurrence somewhat unusual.(563) With regard to later times we may
further observe, that the ephoralty, which was abolished by Cleomenes, was
re-established under the Roman dominion;(564) and that the same king
instituted a college of πατρονόμοι in the place of the gerusia,(565)
although Pausanias again mentions gerontes; unless it is possible that the
two councils coexisted. An inscription of the second century of the
Christian era(566) mentions a σύνδικος at Sparta, a public advocate, and
δαμοσιομάστης, a public inquisitor, and interpreter of the laws of
Lycurgus, concerning whom, as well as others of the magistrates here
mentioned, we will say more hereafter.(567)
Chapter VIII.
§ 1. The Cosmi of Crete. § 2. Changes in their powers. § 3. The
Prytanes of Corinth and Rhodes. § 4. The Prytanes of ancient
Athens. § 5. The Artynæ of Argos; the Demiurgi in several states
of Peloponnesus.
1. The cosmi of Crete are compared by Aristotle, Ephorus and Cicero, with
the ephors of Lacedæmon.(568) We are first led to suspect the correctness
of this comparison by the fact, that the larger part of the extensive
power of the ephoralty did not exist in the ancient constitution of
Sparta, and consequently there could not have been any thing corresponding
with it in the sister constitution of Crete. This conjecture is still
further confirmed when we remember that the cosmi were chosen from
particular families, rather according to their rank than their personal
merits.(569) For to take away from the office of ephors their election
from among the people would be to give up its most essential
characteristic. If then we abandon this comparison, it will be necessary,
on account of the great similarity between the two constitutions, to find
some other analogous office, and it will then appear that the parallel
magistrates to the cosmi in the Spartan government were the kings; whom
indeed the cosmi appear to have succeeded, like the prytanes, artynæ, &c.,
in other states, the expiring monarchical dignity having been replaced by
an aristocratical magistrate.
This assertion is confirmed by whatever knowledge we have of the powers of
the cosmi, which indeed chiefly regards their influence in foreign
affairs. They were commanders in war, like the kings of Sparta.(570) They
conducted the negotiations with foreign ambassadors (although these last
sometimes spoke before the public assembly); and they affixed their
official name to the treaties, as well as to all decrees of the
state.(571) They provided for the ambassadors during their residence,(572)
and prepared for them the necessary documents.(573) They appear to have
themselves gone as ambassadors to neighbouring and friendly states.(574)
For the internal government and administration of the state they shared
the power of the senate, with which body they consulted on important
affairs.(575) The decrees passed in this council were then laid before the
public assembly for its decision, according to the manner above
stated.(576) On an occasion of the connexion of two Cretan cities by
ἱσοπολιτεία, the cosmi of the one state, who were resident in the other
city, went together into the house of meeting of the cosmi and of the
senate (as it appears) and sat among them in the public assembly.(577)
The common routine of business they appear to have conducted with a large
executive power;(578) they must, for example, have had a compulsive
authority, in order to force a person who had kidnapped citizens of a
foreign state, against the right of asylum, to restore them.(579) In
judicial matters they performed, in the times at least subsequent to
Alexander, certain duties which had a resemblance to the introduction of
the lawsuits by the Athenian magistrates.(580) They themselves, however,
were not only subject to certain punishments for omission of their duties,
but they could also be impeached, apparently during the continuance of
their office.(581) Upon the whole, without having equal dignity, they had
more power and more extensive duties than the Spartan kings; yet both were
limited by the large number of the college of cosmi, for it contained ten
members. The college had power to degrade individuals, although the office
was limited to a year, each individual being also permitted to tender his
resignation within that period.(582) The first of them gave his name to
the year; he was called protocosmus,(583) although he had probably no
distinct privileges. The senate was chosen from persons who had filled the
office of cosmus; it was not, however, so arranged that each cosmus, on
the cessation of his office, became a senator (as at Athens, after the
time of Solon, every archon, if no complaint was made against him, became
a member of the Areopagus), but the senators were selected from among the
former cosmi, after a fresh examination. For the number of the senators
was, doubtless, limited, and was not sufficiently great to comprehend all
the cosmi.
2. In the time of Aristotle the power of the cosmi had acquired a despotic
character. The number of the families from which they were chosen had
become less numerous; individual families had acquired an immediate
influence upon the government, and their disputes had created parties, in
which the whole nation took a share. The constitution had been thus
converted into a narrow oligarchy; the democratic element, the public
assembly, being too feeble to put an end to these dissensions. To this was
added, at a time when men had ceased to venerate ancient customs, a want
of written laws. When powerful families feared for the issue of a lawsuit,
they prevented the election of the cosmi, and an ἀκοσμία, as it was
called, arose,(584) in which the chief families and their dependents were
opposed to one another as enemies. This state of things had at that time
been introduced in several of the chief cities of Crete: at the time,
however, when the alliance between the Priansii and Hierapytnii (which is
still extant) was agreed to, the government appears to have been better
regulated, and the powers of the aristocracy to have been considerably
diminished. But before the time of Polybius a complete revolution had
taken place, by which the power of the aristocracy was abolished, and the
election of all magistrates founded on democratic principles;(585) a
revolution which gradually overthrew all the ancient institutions; so that
the writer just mentioned cannot discover the least resemblance between
the Spartan and Cretan governments, the original similarity of which
cannot be doubted. It is worthy of remark that cosmi, as far as we know,
were the chief magistrates in all the cities of Crete; and their
constitutions were in all essential points the same: a proof that these
cities, although originally founded by different tribes, were in their
political institutions determined by the governing, that is, the Doric
race.(586) In the time of Plato, Cnosus was still, as in the time of
Minos, considered the chief seat of ancient Cretan institutions; Ephorus,
on the other hand, observes that they had been less preserved in this town
than among the Lyctians, Gortynians, and other small cities.(587)
3. With the Cretan cosmi may be compared the magistrates named prytanes,
who in Corinth, as well as in other states, succeeded in the place of the
kings. The numerous house of the Bacchiadæ were not content that certain
individuals of their number should exercise the government as an
hereditary right for life, but wished to obtain a larger share in it, and
to give the enjoyment of the supreme power to a greater number. The only
difference, however, which existed between a prytanis and a king was, that
the former was elected, and only held his office for a year, by which he
was compelled to administer it according to the will of his house, into
the body of which he was soon to return. In this state, doubtless, there
was also a gerusia, but perhaps only consisting of Bacchiadæ. As the
Bacchiadæ only intermarried with persons of their own house, they formed
an aristocratic caste, whose government, which lasted for ninety years,
must have been exceedingly oppressive.(588) As Corcyra was founded from
Corinth before the commencement of the tyranny of the Cypselidæ, we find
that in the latter state annual prytanes, chosen apparently from among the
aristocracy, remained the supreme magistrates even in a democratic
age.(589)
The power of the prytanis, as has been already mentioned, came next in
order in that of king, and hence the ancient Charon of Lampsacus called
the Spartan kings _prytanes_;(590) which was also the proper name of one
of them. The early kings of Delphi were also, at least about 360 B.C.,
called prytanes;(591) in which state there was for a long time an
aristocratic government, similar to that which prevailed in the Homeric
age.(592) The number of the prytanes was in general only one or two.(593)
At Rhodes there were two in a year, each of whom had the precedence for
six months;(594) so that sometimes one, sometimes two prytanes are
mentioned: they managed the public affairs with great power in the
Prytaneum, in which building the archives of the city were preserved, and
foreign ambassadors received.(595) Yet their powers cannot have been
excessive in the free constitution, which Rhodes, at its most flourishing
period, enjoyed. For the senate, which was chosen on purely democratic
principles, as we shall see below, shared the management of all public
affairs with the prytanes; the people, however, exercised the supreme
power in the general assembly, voted by cheirotonia,(596) and does not
appear to have been even led in its deliberations by the magistrates
alone.(597) Yet the government of Rhodes was never, up to the time of the
Roman dominion, a complete democracy;(598) perhaps it approximated at the
period of the greatest power of these islanders to the _politeia_ of
Aristotle.(599) But the power of the prytanes, who were also the chief
magistrates in Ionian, and especially Æolian(600) states, was not
everywhere so wisely restrained; in Miletus their authority was nearly
despotic.(601) In all places the prytanes inherited from the kings the
celebration of public sacrifices, which they generally performed in
particular buildings in the market-place, on the common hearth of the
state. So the prytanis of Tenedos, to whom Pindar has composed an ode for
the sacrifice upon entrance into his office (εἰσιτήριον). In Cos a
divination from fire was probably connected with the sacrifices of the
prytanis.(602) These sacrifices, the public banquets, together with the
reception of foreign ambassadors, belonged at Athens to the fifty
prytanes, as was the case at Rhodes and Cos. But the political
signification of the name had, under the democratic government of Athens,
become entirely different from that which it bore in other more
aristocratic constitutions.
4. The striking dissimilarity in the duties of the prytanes in the
Athenian and in the early constitutions of Greece, and a conviction that
the democracy of Athens, although relatively modern, had so completely
brought into oblivion the former institutions, that they can be only
recognised in insulated traces and names which had lost their ancient
meaning, encourage me to offer some conjectures on the original nature of
the office held by the prytanes of Athens. There was at Athens a court of
justice in the prytaneum (ἐπὶ πρυτανείῳ), which, in the times of which we
have an historical account, only possessed the remnants of a formerly
extensive criminal jurisdiction.(603) Now that this had once been the
chief court in Athens is proved by the name _prytanea_, which were fees
deposited by the parties before each lawsuit, according to the amount of
value in question, and which served for the maintenance of the
judges.(604) The name proves that these monies had at one time been the
pay of the prytanes, in their judicial capacity, like the gifts in Homer
and Hesiod. Furthermore we know that the ancient financial office of the
colacretæ at one time, as their name testifies, collected their share of
the animals sacrificed (which exactly resembles the perquisites of the
kings at Sparta), and that they always continued to manage the banquets in
the Prytaneum, and at a later time collected the justice-fees, for
example, these very prytanea.(605) From the connexion between these
functions, which has not been entirely obliterated, it is manifest that
the ancient judicial prytanes formed a company or _syssition_, dined in
public, were fed at the public expense, and, with regard to their
revenues, had stept into the rights of the kings, whose share in the
sacrifices and justice-fees had formerly been collected by the colacretæ.
Although there appears to be nothing inconsistent in this account, it is
nevertheless singular that a whole court of justice bore the name of
prytanes, whereas in other states the number of these magistrates was
always very small; and hence we are led to conjecture that the prytanes,
as in other places, were merely the leaders and presidents of this supreme
court. It is, however, certain that in later times the phylobasileis
presided in the Prytaneum, four eupatridæ, who were at the head of the
four ancient tribes; and doubtless performed other duties than the sacred
functions which are ascribed to them;(606) like the phylarchs of
Epidamnus, whose extensive duties were in later times transferred to a
senate.(607) We must therefore suppose that these phylobasileis, who, in
consequence of political changes, had at an early period fallen into
oblivion, were once, under the name of prytanes, one of the highest
offices of the state. Now these four prytanes, or phylobasileis, were
assisted in their court by the ephetæ, who, as I have already
remarked,(608) were before the time of Solon identical with the court of
the Areopagus, when they had the management of the criminal jurisdiction,
and a superintendence over the manners of the citizens in an extended
sense of the word. Both these were also duties of the Doric gerusia, to
which the kings stood in nearly the same relation as the prytanes of
Athens to the areopagites or ephetæ. Their number was fifty-one, which
probably includes the basileus: there could not, however, have been fifty
previously to the new division of the tribes by Cleisthenes, before which
change their number was forty-eight, according to the four tribes, either
with or without the phylobasileis.
If this view of the subject is correct, there is a remarkable
correspondence, both in their respective numbers and constitutions,
between the criminal court and the first administrative office in the
ancient state of Athens. These latter were the naucrari. The naucrari, who
were also anciently forty-eight in number, and fifty after the new
division of the tribes, in early times managed the public revenue, and
therefore fitted out armies and fleets.(609) Now Herodotus also mentions
prytanes of the naucrari, who in early times directed the government of
Athens.(610) Unless we suppose the existence of two kinds of prytanes
(which does not appear suitable to the simplicity of ancient
institutions), the same persons must have presided over both colleges, and
have had an equal share in the jurisdiction and government. The regularity
of these institutions would appear surprising, if we were not certain that
the same order existed in all the ancient political establishments; at the
same time we must leave the relative powers of many officers, such, for
example, as those of the archons and prytanes, without any attempt at
elucidation.
5. More obscure even than the condition of the cosmi and prytanes are the
origin and powers of the ARTYNÆ at Argos.(611) They cannot have arisen at
a late period, for example, after the abolition of the royalty, since the
same office existed in their ancient colony, Epidaurus, whose constitution
resembled that of Argos only in the more ancient period. Since it did not
originate from the downfall of the royalty, its origin may, perhaps, have
been owing to a division of the regal authority, perhaps of the civil and
military functions. In Epidaurus the artynæ were presidents of a large
council of one hundred and eighty members:(612) in Argos they are
mentioned in connexion with a body of eighty persons, and a (democratic)
senate, of whose respective powers we are entirely ignorant.(613)
The present is a convenient occasion for mentioning the DEMIURGI, as
several grammarians state that they were in particular a Doric
magistracy,(614) perhaps, however, only judging from the form δαμιουργός.
These magistrates were, it is true, not uncommon in Peloponnesus,(615) but
they do not occur often in the Doric states. They existed among the Eleans
and Mantineans,(616) the Hermioneans,(617) in the Achæan league,(618) at
Argos also,(619) as well as in Thessaly;(620) officers named _epidemiurgi_
were sent by the Corinthians to manage the government of their colony
Potidæa.(621) The statements and interpretations of the grammarians afford
little instruction: among the Achæans at least, their chief duty was to
transact business with the people; which renders it probable, that at
Argos they were identical with the _leaders of the people_;(622) of whom,
as well as of some other public officers, whose functions admit of further
explanation, we will speak in the following chapter.
Chapter IX.
§ 1. Constitutions of Argos. § 2. Epidaurus, Ægina, Cos. § 3.
Rhodes. § 4. Corinth. § 5. Corcyra. § 6. Ambracia, Leucadia,
Epidamnus, Apollonia. § 7. Syracuse. § 8. Gela, Agrigentum. § 9.
Sicyon, Phlius. § 10. Megara. § 11. Byzantium, Chalcedon, Heraclea
Pontica. § 12. Cnidos, Melos, Thera. § 13. Cyrene. § 14. Tarentum.
§ 15. Heraclea Sciritis. § 16. Croton. § 17. And Delphi. § 18.
Aristocratic character of the constitution of Sparta.
1. It is my intention in the present chapter to collect and arrange the
various accounts respecting the alterations in the constitution of those
Doric states, which deviated more from their original condition than Crete
and Sparta: having been more affected by the general revolutions of the
Greek governments, and drawn with greater violence into the strong current
of political change.
And first, with regard to ARGOS, I will extract the following particulars
from former parts of this work. There were in this state three classes of
persons; the inhabitants of the city, who were for the most part Dorians,
distributed into four tribes; a class of Periœci, and also a class of
bondslaves, named gymnesii.(623) The kings, who were at first of the
Heraclide family, and afterwards of another dynasty, reigned until the
time of the Persian war;(624) there were also officers named artynæ, and a
senate possessing extensive powers. All these are traces which seem to
prove a considerable resemblance between the constitutions of Argos and
Sparta, at least they show that there was no essential difference. But
this similarity was put an end to by the destruction of a large portion of
the citizens, in the battle with Cleomenes, and the consequent admission
of many Periœci to the rights of citizenship.(625) Soon after this period,
we find Argos flourishing in population, industry, and wealth;(626) and in
the enjoyment of a democratic constitution.(627) The latter, however, was
ill adapted to acquire the ascendency in Peloponnesus, which Argos
endeavoured to obtain after the peace of Nicias. Hence the people
appointed a board of twelve men, with full powers to conclude treaties
with any Greek state that was willing to join their party; but in case of
Sparta or Athens proposing any such alliance, the question was to be first
referred to the whole people.(628) The state also, in order to form the
nucleus of an army, levied a body of well-armed men,(629) who were
selected from the higher ranks.(630) It was natural that these should
endanger the democracy; and after the battle of Mantinea (B.C. 418.) they
overthrew it, in concert with the Lacedæmonians, after having put the
demagogues to death.(631) Their dominion, however, only lasted for eight
months, as an insurrection and battle within the city deprived them of
their power, and reinstated the democracy.(632) Alcibiades the Athenian
completed this change by the expulsion of many oligarchs, who were still
remaining in the city;(633) afterwards he wished to overthrow the
democracy by means of his friends,(634) in consequence of which they were
all killed. Two parties, however, must have still continued to exist in
this state. Æneas the Tactician relates, that the rich purposing to attack
the people for the second time, and on a certain night having introduced
many soldiers into the city, the leaders of the people hastily summoned an
assembly, and ordered that every armed man should that night pass muster
in his tribe,(635) by which means the rich were prevented from uniting
themselves in a body. The _leaders of the people_ (δήμου προστάται(636))
are here manifestly democratic magistrates, who rose to power during the
contests between the opposite factions, and differed chiefly from the
demagogues of Athens, in that their authority was official, without which
they would not have been able to convene an assembly of the people. For
although the appellation of δήμου προστάτης in the Doric states, as well
as at Athens, sometimes denotes merely a person who by his character and
eloquence had placed himself at the head of the people; we shall produce
hereafter certain proofs, when we speak of Gela and Calymna, that it was
also the title of a public officer.(637)
When, during the peace of Artaxerxes, the Lacedæmonians had ceased to
possess any extensive share in the direction of public affairs in
Peloponnesus, a spirit of ungovernable licentiousness and ochlocracy arose
in those cities which had hitherto been under an oligarchical rule;
everywhere there were vexatious accusations, banishments, and
confiscations of property, especially of the property of such persons as
had filled public offices under the guidance of Sparta, though, even
during that period, (B.C. 374.) Argos had been a place of refuge for
banished democrats.(638) But after the battle of Leuctra, when the power
of Lacedæmon was completely broken, and Peloponnesus had for a certain
time lost its leader, the greatest anarchy began to prevail in Argos.
Demagogues stirred up the people so violently against all privileged or
distinguished persons, that the latter thought themselves driven to plot
the overthrow of the democracy.(639) The scheme was discovered, and the
people raged with the greatest ferocity against the real or supposed
conspirators. On this occasion, more than 1200 of the chief persons (many
upon mere suspicion) were put to death;(640) and at length the demagogues,
fearing to carry through the measures which themselves had originated,
suffered the same fate. This state of things was called by the name of
σκυταλισμὸς, or _club-law_; it appears to have been a time when the
strongest man was the most powerful. When the Athenians heard of these
transactions, they purified their market-place, thinking that the whole of
Greece was polluted by such atrocities:(641) it was probably at the same
time that the Argives themselves offered an expiatory sacrifice to the
mild Zeus (Ζεὺς Μειλίχιος), for the free blood which had been shed.(642)
Notwithstanding these proceedings, the rich and distinguished continued to
be persecuted at Argos with the greatest violence;(643) for which the
ostracism, a custom introduced from Athens,(644) together with other
democratic institutions,(645) was the chief instrument. In times such as
these, the chief and most noble features of the Doric character
necessarily disappeared; the unfortunate termination of nearly all
military undertakings(646) proves the decline of bravery. In so unsettled
a state of public affairs, sycophancy and violence became prevalent:(647)
notwithstanding which, their eagerness and attention to public speaking
produced no orator, whose fame was sufficient to descend to
posterity.(648)
2. In EPIDAURUS, on the other hand, the aristocracy continued in force,
and accordingly this city was as much attached to the Spartans, as Argos
was disinclined to them. Of the artynæ in this state, and of the senate of
180, as well as of the class of cultivators, and of the tribes, we have
spoken in former parts of this work.(649)
As long as ÆGINA remained an independent state, the government was held by
the hereditary aristocracy, whose titular dignity was probably increased
by the power derived from the possession of great wealth. The insurrection
of a democratic party remained fruitless. Ægina and Corinth are decisive
proofs, that under an aristocratical government an active and enterprising
spirit of commerce may arise and flourish.
The Epidaurian colony, Cos, without doubt, originally adopted the
constitution of its mother-state. Before the 75th (probably about the 73rd
or 74th) Olympiad, we find a tyrant appointed by the king of Persia
reigning in this island, Cadmus, the son of Scythes of Zancle;(650) after
some time, however, he quitted Cos, having established a senate, and given
back the state its freedom; yet the island appears to have immediately
afterwards fallen under the dominion of Artemisia.(651) At a later period,
the influence of Athens opened the way to democracy, but it was overthrown
by violent demagogues, who compelled the chief persons in self-defence to
combine against it.(652) The senate (βουλὴ or γερουσία) of the Coans, as
well as their prytanes, have been mentioned above;(653) the nominal
magistrates under the Roman dominion need not be here treated of.
3. In the Argive colony of RHODES, it may be supposed that an ancient
Doric constitution existed; for there were kings of the Heraclide family,
and probably also a council with the same powers as the Spartan gerusia.
The royalty expired after the 30th Olympiad (660 B.C.); but the ancient
family of the Eratidæ at Ialysus, retained a considerable share in the
government; probably exercising nearly the powers of a prytanis. Pindar
shows that the frame of justice belonged to this once royal family,(654)
when he says, “_Give, O father Zeus, to Diagoras favour both with citizens
and with strangers, since he walks constantly in the way opposed to
violence, knowing well what the just minds of noble ancestors have
inspired in him. Destroy not the common progeny of Callianax. At the
solemnities for the victory of the Eratidæ, the whole city rejoices in
banquets. Yet in a moment of time many winds meet from many quarters._”
Pindar thus early (464 B.C.) predicts the dangers that then awaited the
ancient family, to which Rhodes owed so much, from the growing influence
of Athens;(655) throughout the whole ode he cautions the citizens against
precipitate innovation, and prays for the continuance of the ancient
firmly-seated constitution.(656) Both prophecies were fulfilled. The sons
of Diagoras were condemned to death, and banished by the Athenians, as
heads of the aristocracy; but the hero Dorieus returned to his country
from Thurii, with Thurian ships, and fought with them against the enemies
of his family, as a faithful partisan of the Spartans. He was taken by the
Athenians in the year 405 B.C., who, when about to condemn him, were moved
by the appearance of the noble son of Diagoras (whose boldness of spirit
corresponded with the size and beauty peculiar to his family), to release
him from imprisonment and death.(657) The ancient fortune of the Rhodians,
which was owing to their strict adherence to the Doric customs, and to
their great commercial activity, was interrupted by the troubles of the
Peloponnesian war, in which the alternation of the Athenian and
Lacedæmonian influence by turns introduced democracy and aristocracy. At
the time of the Sicilian expedition, Rhodes was under the power of
Athens;(658) but the Spartans having in 412 B.C. obtained the superiority
in this island,(659) and Dorieus having been recalled by them (413 B.C.)
in order to suppress internal dissensions, the governing power again
reverted to the nobles: these latter having been compelled to unite
against the people by the demagogues, who, while they distributed the
public money among the people in the shape of salaries, had not repaid the
sums due to the trierarchs, and at the same time vexed them by continual
lawsuits.(660) Soon after this period (408 B.C.),(661) the large city of
Rhodes was founded, by collecting to one spot the inhabitants of the three
small cities of the island, Lindus, Ialysus, and Camirus. But in 396 B.C.
Rhodes was again recovered by Conon to Athens, and became
democratical;(662) yet in five years (391 B.C.) the Spartan party was
again victorious;(663) and the Social War finally put an end to the
influence of the Athenians. From this time the interference of the Carian
rulers, Mausolus and Artemisia, commenced, by which the oligarchy was
greatly raised, and the democratical party driven out; to restore which,
and to regard rather the cause of popular freedom in Greece, than the
injuries received from the Rhodians, was the advice of Demosthenes to the
Athenians.(664) At that time a Carian garrison was in the Acropolis of
Rhodes. Out of these troubles and dissensions a constitution arose, in
which, as far as we are able to ascertain, democracy prevailed, although
the small number and extensive powers of the prytanes prove that it was
not unmixed with aristocratical elements. According to the description
which Cicero puts in the mouth of the younger Scipio, at this time all the
memb
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