SPARTA.

The Spartans present so many peculiarities and are so unlike to any other people that I must divide what I have to say about them under separate heads. In regard to the Spartans before the Peloponnesian war I shall describe (I) their political surroundings, (II) their customs, (III) their constitution: for the period of the war and that which followed it, I shall give (IV) a general view of their commonwealth as it then stood.

I. The Spartans or SpartiatÆ were the strongest and most warlike of those Dorian tribes who at some time after the time of Homer and yet long before the beginning of history migrated from the rocky valley of Doris in northern Greece and invaded the Peloponnesus. They subsequently lived in the unwalled city of Sparta as a small nation of conquerors surrounded by the two subject populations of the Perioeci and the Helots, who peopled the country of Laconia. In 480 B.C., when the Spartans were at the height of their power, just after their king Leonidas and his three hundred had made their heroic defence at ThermopylÆ, Xerxes asked Demaratus, who had once been king of Sparta but had been deposed, to tell him how many warriors remained to the LacedÆmonians and how many of them were as brave as the three hundred; Demaratus replied: "O king, the number of the LacedÆmonians is great and their cities are many: thou shalt know what thou desirest to learn. There is in LacedÆmon a city Sparta, of about eight thousand fighting men, and all these are like to those that fought at ThermopylÆ: the other LacedÆmonians are not indeed equal to these, but yet they are brave58." As the Spartans of military age numbered eight thousand we may reckon that forty thousand was about the number of persons, including women and children, who belonged to Spartan families and formed the Spartan nation.

The Perioeci were "the other LacedÆmonians, not indeed equal to the SpartiatÆ, but yet brave men," and by them the cities of LacedÆmon except Sparta were inhabited. It seems that the Perioeci were decidedly more numerous than the SpartiatÆ: in the year after the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus the force, which was sent out to fight the Persian general Mardonius and which took part in the great battle of PlatÆa, consisted of five thousand Spartans, of thirty-five thousand light armed Helots, seven Helots being allotted as attendants to each Spartan, and of five thousand picked hoplites or heavy armed warriors from the Perioeci59. As these Perioeci were picked men, there were more to pick from: of the force of SpartiatÆ Grote remarks that "throughout the whole course of Grecian history we never hear of any number of Spartan citizens at all approaching to five thousand being put on foreign service at the same time60."

It is not certain whether the Perioeci were AchÆans or Dorians in origin. Whichever they were, our view of the Spartans and their government will be much the same. The Perioeci were not treated with distrust or systematic cruelty: they retained their personal freedom under the Spartan rule, they continued to inhabit the towns or cities of Laconia, and in each of their towns to manage their local affairs for themselves61: but they had no voice whatever in the politics of Sparta, which were controlled exclusively by the Spartans. Occasionally a man of ability from among the Perioeci was promoted to a position of trust: thus in the year 412 B.C. a man named Deiniadas, a Perioecus, commanded a squadron of ships in the war on the coasts of Asia Minor and of Lesbos62.

The Helots formed in the fifth century B.C. a large population of serfs who tilled the soil: they were the property of the Spartan state, which however placed the services of Helots at the disposal of the Spartans and Perioeci for the cultivation of their estates. The Helots, who were bound to the soil on any given estate were compelled every year to render a fixed quantity of produce to the owner: on the residue they and their families subsisted.63.

The name e???te? denotes captives taken in war64. It was believed by the Greeks that the Spartans, when first they made their conquest of Laconia, reduced some of those whom they conquered to the condition of Helots as above described: and the account given by them of the institutions of Lycurgus implies that the lawgiver foresaw some danger such as would arise from a large servile population. But if the Helots were dangerous in the age of Lycurgus, they became far more dangerous after the Spartans had conquered the Messenian country that lay to the west of Laconia and of the range of Taygetus. The Messenians were Dorians like the Spartans, and like them had conquered a large district of the Peloponnesus. Against these neighbours and kinsmen the Spartans waged two long wars, one probably in the eighth century B.C. and the other probably in the seventh65. In the second war they were completely successful, and at the end of it they reduced the Messenians, who had for some two or three centuries been a free and independent Dorian people, to the condition of Helots66. But to hold the territory was almost as hard as to win it: and to keep the Messenians enslaved was almost as hard as to enslave them. The territory is separated from Laconia by a chain of mountains, and the new serfs were more dangerous than the original Helots because they remembered their freedom. From the time of the conquest of Messenia the little Spartan nation stood in perpetual danger of a great servile revolt. When, in 464 B.C., a rebellion of the Helots actually occurred, it imperilled the existence of the state. The Spartans at one time despaired of putting it down without external aid, and, when the Athenians offered them the services of an armed force, accepted the offer. Subsequently, when their jealousy of Athens revived and they resolved to rely on their own unaided efforts, they had to spend all their strength for nine years before they compelled the Helots in their stronghold on Mount IthomÊ to capitulate on condition that they should depart from the Peloponnesus and never return67. Even after these brave men had gone into exile, there were plenty of Helots left to keep the Spartans in anxiety: and Thucydides in telling of the treacherous murder of the two thousand Helots in 424 B.C. remarks incidentally that "at all times most of the institutions of the LacedÆmonians were framed with a view to the Helots, to guard against their insurrections68."

II. The singular regulations under which the Spartans lived were designed to discipline all the males among their scanty numbers into a formidable military brotherhood. Possibly some of these regulations had already been established before they left their original abodes in Doris to migrate to the Peloponnesus: they were attributed to Lycurgus, a wise lawgiver, who is placed by the legends after the migration and some generations before the first Spartans of whom we have any historical knowledge: but the extreme strictness of their enforcement may have dated from the end of the second Messenian war, which reduced a whole people to servitude.

The earliest detailed account of the customs of the Spartans is given in a treatise on the Commonwealth of the LacedÆmonians, which has been attributed to Xenophon. Whoever the author may have been, it speaks of the Spartans as if they were almost irresistible in warfare: and hence it must be inferred that it was written before 371 B.C., when they suffered a severe and humiliating defeat at Leuctra in Boeotia. It gives a picture of Spartan customs whose chief outlines I shall try to reduce within the dimensions of a sketch.

The aim of the Spartan discipline was to ensure the greatest possible efficiency in the little band of warriors who formed the Spartan army. To this end it was first necessary that the race should be healthy: and as strong parents were likely to have strong offspring, the women no less than the men were trained in gymnastic exercises and contests69. The boys ceased at an early age to be under the sole authority of their own parents and were placed under the command of an officer of state whose title was pa?d????? or warden of the boys70, and were also compelled to obey any Spartan who had children of his own71. The training of the boys under their warden is not described in detail: but there is no doubt it consisted in gymnastics and in marching and dancing to music. The moral qualities which were insisted on were firstly personal courage and endurance, and secondly a modest demeanour in the young. The boys had to go barefoot, were allowed only one garment to wear throughout the year in heat and cold alike, and were kept on short rations of food: they were encouraged to steal food, but, if they were caught, were severely beaten for not having stolen cleverly72; and, if one of them complained to his father that another boy had beaten him, the father was thought to have disgraced himself if he did not give him a sound thrashing in addition73. The young men always walked silent with their eyes modestly fixed on the ground before them; and from this behaviour you could no more seduce them than you could a statue74. The great deference paid to age is merely hinted at in this treatise75 but it is well known from other sources.

When the youths grew up to be men they were compelled to dine at the common meal provided for them: and unless they paid their contributions to its cost they lost the rights of citizenship. Their military training no doubt still continued: for the operations of warfare which the author describes were such as to require every man in the army to be always familiar with them from recent recollection76. Every Spartan was not only compelled to concentrate his attention on military excellence, but was completely cut off from all commercial pursuits and even from agriculture77. Commerce and all useful arts were left to the Perioeci: the Spartan could practise none of them without degradation. His expenditure consisted in his contribution to the common meals and in the cost of maintaining a house for his wife and daughters and his sons till they were placed under the care of the warden of the boys. His income was derived from his lands which were tilled by Helots assigned to him by the State. The accumulation of wealth was severely discouraged: the possession of gold or silver was criminal and was punished with a fine: the currency was made of iron and was so cumbrous that no one could have much of it without the knowledge of all, since a quantity worth ten minÆ (£40 sterling) would demand large storage-room and a waggon to remove it78.

As every Spartan was a soldier all his life long from attaining manhood till he was too old for service, the organisation of the army must be counted among the important parts of the Spartan institutions. At a great battle fought and won by the Spartans in the year 418 B.C. the number of SpartiatÆ on service was about three thousand one hundred. The force was divided into six regiments of five or six hundred men, each containing four smaller divisions, and sixteen smallest divisions or companies, which last bore the name of ????t?a?, or bands of sworn soldiers. Each regiment had its commander and so had all its compartments down to the smallest: the commander gave his orders to the officers next below him, and they to the commanders of companies: and it was only from these last that the orders reached the soldiers79. The success of the whole system thus depended on the obedience of the lesser officers to their commander, and above all on the efficiency and good discipline of the companies or Enomoties.

The drill of each company was carried to the highest pitch of perfection: this at least is clear from the description of their evolutions given in the treatise from which I have so often quoted80. The number of men in a company seems to have been normally twenty-five, since two companies were sometimes called a fifty81: on some occasions it might be thirty-two or thirty-six. As it was usual at the beginning of a war to call out all the Spartans who were below a certain age82, it is probable that none but men of the same age were placed together in a company, since in the absence of such an arrangement the proclamation of war might have divided each company into two parts, one part going to fight and the other staying at home. And if each company consisted of equals in age we may conjecture that when a Spartan attained the age of manhood he was immediately sworn in as a member of a company, and with that company he remained throughout his life unless he had to be drafted into another company to fill a vacancy.

On the march one company led the way and the others followed in order. When an enemy came in sight, each regiment was able by means of evolutions of companies to form itself for battle in the dense array of the phalanx; and further by varying the evolutions the phalanx was made to face in any direction that was desired, and it was ensured that the front rank was composed entirely of the very best of the warriors83.

The Spartan soldiers seem to have had no defensive armour except a large brazen shield: their dress was of a bright red84 colour, and probably consisted of a single large plaid which could be fastened with a brooch at the shoulder85: for offensive weapons they had a long spear and short sword86. A regiment arranged in phalanx had a front rank of about sixty-four men as in the great battle in 418 B.C.: each of the ranks behind contained the same number, and there were in some cases as many as eight ranks87. For a body thus arranged the long spear for thrusting was obviously the best weapon: but the short sword was also needed whenever there was a close combat between man and man.

III. We have already seen88 that the Spartans in prehistoric times lived under a system of government which I have called dual heroic kingship: their political institutions were in most respects the same as those of the other Greeks in the heroic age, but they regularly had two kings reigning at the same time, each being head by descent of one of the two royal houses. After the establishment of the dual heroic kingship but still in the prehistoric age the Spartans introduced further modifications in their system of government: and since their descendants, whether rightly or wrongly, believed that the wise lawgiver Lycurgus had been the author of these changes, the modified system of government is known as the constitution of Lycurgus. This celebrated constitution is defined in a ??t?a or solemn compact said to have been dictated to Lycurgus by the Delphic priestess and accepted by the Spartans: Plutarch has preserved a document which professes to be the original text: and, though the pretensions of this document to extreme antiquity are probably unfounded, there is no doubt that it gives a truthful account of the government89. It orders Lycurgus "to found a temple of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, to divide the people into tribes (f??a?) and obes (?a?), to establish a senate of elders, thirty in number with the commanders (i.e. the kings), to hold assemblies at fixed times between Babyca and Knakion, and so to propose measures and take decisions on them: and that the commons (d???, d???, the whole of the SpartiatÆ) should have (? the decision?)90 and authority." Thus the constitution of Lycurgus retained all the three component parts of the system to which I have given the name of dual kingship, the two kings, the council of elders, and the assembly of the people: but it prescribed that the meetings of the king and elders and people were to be held no longer according to the caprice of the kings but at fixed times and between two places which were both in the town of Sparta or close to it: the council of elders was to consist of exactly thirty members, the two kings being included in that number: and the assembly of the people was to possess authority (???t??).

The powers that belonged severally to the kings to the elders and to the assembly are not defined. But the constitution was made in the age of the heroic monarchies and was derived from a dual heroic kingship by the introduction of slight alterations. We may accordingly assume that in the system of Lycurgus, as in the government that preceded it, the important right of initiating measures was intended to belong exclusively to the kings and elders, and that the "authority" reserved to the popular assembly was no more than a right of voting Aye or No on proposals which the kings and elders submitted to it. In making this assumption we shall moreover be in agreement with Plutarch91, who, either from such merely probable reasoning as we can use or on the authority of some writer who preceded him, states that the kings and elders alone had the initiative. In course of time however the assembly attempted to amend what was put before it or to initiate proposals of its own, and a second enactment (??t?a) was made to put a stop to its usurpations. From the stories of the wars with Messenia we learn that the command in war was one of the prerogatives of the kings.

The first historical Spartan is Theopompus, who was one of the two kings at some time between 750 B.C. and 650 B.C. In his reign three great events took place: (1) the Spartans waged war against their neighbours the Messenians, defeated them, and made either a partial or a complete conquest of their country, (2) the general assembly of Spartan people was explicitly declared subordinate to the council of elders, and (3) the office of the Ephors or Overseers was created.

(1) Somewhere about 650 B.C. the poet TyrtÆus was living at Sparta and wrote the lines:

?et??? as????, ?e??s? f??? Te?p?p?,
?? d?? ?ess???? e???e? e????????.

i.e. "To our king Theopompus beloved of the gods, to whom we owed our conquest of the broad plains of Messenia92." The subjugation of Messenia must have been a very difficult task: the country like the other natural divisions of Greece is protected by mountains and it was defended by a brave and numerous race of Dorians. TyrtÆus tells us that one of the wars against Messenia was carried on continuously for nineteen years93.

(2) We are informed by Plutarch94 that, long after the establishment of the Lycurgean constitution, the assembly of the SpartiatÆ took to a practice of distorting and perverting the resolutions laid before them by omitting or inserting clauses, and therefore the reigning kings Polydorus and Theopompus added to the constitution a new rule which enacted that "if the people chose crookedly, the elders and the kings should have the final decision95." Thus the general assembly was rendered incapable of insisting on measures of its own initiation: though it probably retained a right of veto on all measures which the council might propose and was consulted whenever the state had to decide whether it should undertake a great and important war96.

(3) Plato (quoted by Plutarch) says that though Lycurgus had established a constitution of mixed elements, yet the Spartans after his time finding that their oligarchy (the kings and the elders) was nevertheless too strong and was swelled and puffed up with power and pride, set up the office of the Ephors to be a bit in its mouth: and Aristotle says of Theopompus that he reduced the extent of the kingly power by the creation of the magistracy of the Ephors and adds "They say that his wife asked him whether he was not ashamed to transmit to his sons less kingly power than he had inherited, and he replied: 'Not in the least: for the power will be the more lasting97.'"

But I must pause for a moment: for there is a passage in Herodotus which in giving a rapid enumeration of the Lycurgean institutions counts the Ephors among them and is therefore in conflict with the statements of Plato and Aristotle. Herodotus was writing about 430 B.C., Plato 400-347 B.C., and Aristotle about 330 B.C.: so that Herodotus is the oldest of the three writers and, if other circumstances were equal, ought to be preferred to the others. But in this case other circumstances are not equal: for Plato and Aristotle make their statements deliberately and emphatically: Herodotus does not, but throws in his list of institutions as a sort of parenthesis, while he is thinking about many other things, and paying less attention to his parenthetic remark. These facts lead me to the opinion that Plato and Aristotle give us the true version of the oldest tradition and Herodotus does not: the opinion moreover is strengthened by the fact that Aristotle appeals to a story which must have been current long before his time and was probably older than the days of Herodotus; and it is further supported by the negative evidence of the ??t?a, which in defining the Lycurgean constitution says not a word about Ephors.

It is impossible to determine what was the original character of the magistracy of the Ephors: we do not know what were their functions, how they were appointed or elected, nor for what term they held office: but, from the passages which have just been referred to, it is certain that Plato and Aristotle believed that the power acquired by the Ephors diminished the power of the kings and the elders. The name Ephors or Overseers implies that they exercised some kind of supervision over the government or some part of it.

It cannot be doubted that the three important events of the reign of Theopompus were in some way connected with one another. In the midst of a great war for the conquest of Messenia, it might be especially inconvenient that the assembly of the SpartiatÆ should initiate proposals of its own: for the men who made up the assembly were the very same who formed the whole of the Spartan army. And again in the settlement of the affairs of Messenia it was not desirable that the kings and the council should be entirely uncontrolled, as they would have been after the assembly had been deprived of the power of initiating measures, if no Ephors had been appointed.

It is stated by Plutarch that the twenty-eight elders who with the kings formed the council were elected by the general assembly of the Spartans98: and the method of election which he describes is so extremely primitive that it probably belongs to the original constitution or dates from the times of Theopompus. When a councillor died the best man among those over sixty years of age was to be chosen to take his place. The people came together in assembly: certain selected men were shut up in a neighbouring building whence they could see nothing: the candidates were brought one by one before the assembly, but in an order which was unknown to the men in the building, and each as he entered was greeted with shouting: the men in the building decided that the cheering had been loudest for the man who came first, or the man who came second, or some other in the order: and the man, unknown to themselves, for whom they thus pronounced, was proclaimed as the new member of the council.

The parts then of the Spartan government from the time of Theopompus onwards were the kings, the council of elders, the Ephors, and the assembly of warriors. Until about 500 B.C. the chief power belonged to the kings or to the kings and the council of elders: the kings had the active management and direction of foreign affairs99.

About that time and soon afterwards we meet with several reigns that might account for a diminution of the kingly power. In one of the regal houses there were Cleomenes I. (519-491 B.C.) and Pleistarchus (480-458 B.C.): in the other Leotychidas (491-461 B.C.). Cleomenes contrived the unfair deposition of Demaratus, was half insane for some time before his death, and slew himself in a fit of madness. Pleistarchus was a little child at the death of his father Leonidas the hero of ThermopylÆ: his guardian was Pausanias, who tried to betray Sparta into the power of the Persian king. Leotychidas was brought into royal power, without any sound title, by the intrigues of Cleomenes. Whatever may have been the causes of the decline of the kingly prerogative, it is certain that between 500 B.C. and 467 B.C. the Ephors rose to supreme power at Sparta: they sat in judgement on king Cleomenes I. on an accusation of bribery, they imprisoned the regent Pausanias (about 467 B.C.) on suspicion of treason, and above all, in the year 479 B.C., it was on their own sole responsibility that they despatched the great armament to resist Mardonius in Boeotia100. The power which they then possessed they never lost till the decline of Sparta in the third century B.C., except perhaps during the reign of an unusually able king such as Agesilaus (398-361 B.C.).

It has already been remarked that in the period from Theopompus to about 500 B.C. we do not know how the Ephors were appointed or elected: in the time of Aristotle (about 330 B.C.) they were elected from the whole body of Spartan citizens, and no doubt by the whole body of Spartan citizens101. They must have been thus elected as early as the time of Cleomenes I.: for if they had been appointed by the kings or the council of elders they could not have gained that independence which they then displayed.

During the period of their greatness (beginning about 480 B.C.) the Ephors were a board of five102 magistrates elected annually. One of them gave his name to the year103: they received ambassadors and sometimes at least gave them an answer104: they could, as we have seen, send out an armament to a foreign war and fix what troops should go, and whenever it chanced that the assembly of the SpartiatÆ was called together an Ephor presided over it and took the votes105.

The kings in time of peace were dignitaries without power: at sacrificial feasts and athletic contests they took the seats of honour and after a sacrifice the skins of the victims were their perquisite: the state provided them with regular monthly allowances of food: they superintended religious matters, and settled what Spartan citizens should be the p???e??? or befrienders of visitors to Sparta from the various Greek states: and they had jurisdiction about marriages of heiresses, public ways, and adoption of children: but with these exceptions all control of home affairs had passed from the kings to the Ephors106. In time of war the kings were commanders of the Spartan armies, and the history of Agesilaus shows that in this capacity they might gain high distinction and influence: but the expeditions of the Spartans were usually accompanied by some of the Ephors107, who could afterwards report to their colleagues any action of the commander which displeased them.

Until the beginning of the Peloponnesian war in 432 B.C., it seems that the government, whether it was controlled by the kings, the council, or the Ephors, was faithfully conducted for the interests of the whole of the little community of the SpartiatÆ. We do not hear of the rulers living in luxury, nor of inequalities or discontents among the SpartiatÆ, nor of emancipations of Helots. Twice only in the course of several centuries we read that the Spartans made a new law108: in foreign policy they were unenterprising: and they seem to have devoted themselves to the cultivation of the military virtues enjoined by their traditions, and to looking after their interests at home, which consisted largely in keeping down, degrading and humiliating the Messenians and the other Helots.

IV. While the Spartans were waging their great war against the Athenians (432-404 B.C.) and afterwards when they were enjoying the advantages which their success procured for them, many alterations were gradually introduced in their customs and government. Helots were emancipated for service as soldiers: inequalities arose among the SpartiatÆ, some of them acquiring great fortunes as regulators (harmosts) in foreign cities, others sinking to poverty and losing their civic rights: and the Ephors used their time of office for the getting of wealth and enjoyment of luxury.

Helots had been employed as light-armed soldiers attending on the heavy-armed SpartiatÆ as early as the battle of PlatÆa in 479 B.C.: in the first years of the Peloponnesian war some of them had distinguished themselves in the field, and in the eighth year of the war (in the beginning of 424 B.C.) the Spartans, fearing they might be dangerous, thought of sending them on foreign service. This plan of removing them was not carried into effect: but a proclamation was put out that those Helots who were conscious of having done good service in the war might apply for their freedom: two thousand were selected and were emancipated with striking solemnities: but within a short time most of them disappeared, no one knew how, by secret assassination109. This first liberation of Helots ended in treachery and murder: but afterwards emancipations were frequently made in good faith. The men who were raised from serfdom did not become Perioeci but were known as ?e?da?de??, or "men resembling new commoners."

Bodies of NeodamodÊs are mentioned by Thucydides as existing in the years 421, 418, 413, 412 B.C.110: and in one of the occasions where he speaks of NeodamodÊs and Helots as serving together he explains the difference between the two by remarking that "the word NeodamodÊs signifies that freedom has been already acquired," thus proving for certain that a NeodamodÊs was an emancipated Helot111. After the end of the war the NeodamodÊs became more numerous: in the year 399 B.C. the Spartans sent out a thousand under Thimbron to Asia Minor at the request of the Asiatic Greek cities112.

In 398 or 397 B.C., before Agesilaus had reigned a whole year, a conspiracy against the Spartan government was set on foot by a man named Cinadon. Xenophon in his account of its detection says that Cinadon was a young man and vigorous in body and mind but was not one of the Equals (?? ??t?? t?? ?????). When the informer was questioned by the Ephors, he said Cinadon had expressed confidence that many of the Helots, the NeodamodÊs, the Inferiors (?? ?p?e???e?), and the Perioeci were in sympathy with his aims: for whenever men of these classes talked about the SpartiatÆ, they could not conceal that they would like to eat them raw113. The story shows that the Equals were the highest of all the classes at Sparta, and that the Inferiors, being distinct from the Helots, the NeodamodÊs and the Perioeci, were men who had been SpartiatÆ but had lost their position. The difference between the Equals and the Inferiors is but imperfectly known. Aristotle tells us that any Spartan who was unable to pay his share of the cost of the public mess-table was deprived of his rights as a citizen, and many had thus been disfranchised114. From this we may infer that anyone who sank into the ranks of the Inferiors lost not only his vote in the assembly, which was of little value, as the assemblies were not influential, but also his right of being trained as a Spartan: hence he would have but a poor chance of rising to military distinction or of obtaining any position of importance.

When the Peloponnesian war ended in 404 B.C., the cities of Asia and the Ægean sea came under the power of Sparta. To each city a harmost or regulator was sent to establish an oligarchical government consisting usually of a decarchy or board of ten citizens distinguished for servility towards the Spartans and readiness to punish any sign of patriotic spirit with death or banishment and confiscation. Besides the harmosts, military detachments were sent to enforce the wishes of the Spartans in their new possessions: both the harmosts and the military commanders were harsh governors, and some of them amassed large fortunes by extortion115. They took home the wealth that they had acquired and thus introduced the inequalities among the SpartiatÆ which were so conspicuous and so invidious in the time of Cinadon.

The supremacy which the Spartans acquired in 404 B.C. was lost again in 371 B.C. In that year an army with which they invaded Boeotia was severely defeated by the Thebans under Epaminondas; the victorious general marched into the Peloponnesus, deprived the Spartans of Messenia, and, summoning from all parts the descendants of Messenians who had gone into exile, established them as an independent people in the new city of MessenÊ on the site of the old stronghold of IthomÊ. At the same time he founded the Arcadian city of MegalÊ Polis (in Latin Megalopolis) to bar the way between the Spartans and their old allies the Eleians: and in the year 369 B.C. he ensured the permanence of his work by winning the decisive battle of Mantineia. The Spartans were reduced lower than they had been for two centuries: but adversity did not restore them to what they had been before the days of their prosperity. The number of men possessed of wealth, small already, steadily became smaller, so that in the reign of Agis IV. (about 243 B.C.) the whole number of the SpartiatÆ did not exceed seven hundred; of these only about a hundred were landowners, and the rest were reduced to poverty and distress116.

The office of the Ephors shared in the general deterioration of the Spartan commonwealth, and Aristotle (writing about 330 B.C.) speaks of it with some severity. We can indeed see from his remarks that access to the office was not obtained by bribery, for very poor citizens were frequently chosen: the election was conducted under a system which seemed to him very puerile, but which did not close the door to poverty. On the other hand the Ephors when in office frequently accepted bribes: and he says that on one occasion they did all that in them lay towards the ruin of the state. They often spent the wealth that they got by such dishonest means in leading a life of extreme self-indulgence, in strong contrast with the hardships which the poorer citizens endured117.

We may now sum up the results of our observations of the Spartans and their institutions. From the earliest times they devoted themselves to acquiring and cultivating those qualities which would enable them to excel as a people of conquerors and of slave-owners: but in doing this they lost most of the other virtues, and especially the qualities which make intelligent citizens. There were few political questions in which the Spartans took any interest: they did not make new laws; they had no commerce, no gold or silver except in the treasury of the state: the only subjects debated in their assemblies were questions of war, peace, alliances, disputed successions to the throne, and the like: so that the assembly did not meet save when such questions arose, or when one of the annual elections of Ephors came round. They did not even care what men were set over them as rulers: their method of electing Ephors was childish, and the elections are generally if not always passed over in silence by the historians. Nor is their indifference surprising: for their real ruler was, not the Ephors nor any living men, but their rigid system of custom and discipline: and under that system it mattered little which of them was in command and which had to obey, since nearly every Spartan was competent to issue such orders as custom and usage dictated, and every other Spartan was prepared to obey them.

If this estimate is a just one, it follows that the really important part of the Spartan institutions was not the political part but the disciplinary: that their discipline destroyed their capacity for political activity: that the Spartans from the age of Theopompus till the Peloponnesian war were rather a military order than a political body: and that they and their institutions cannot be very interesting or instructive to students of Politics, except as showing how a community, which was originally political, may lose the characteristics by which political communities are distinguished.

After the Peloponnesian war the Spartans got access to rich spoil at a distance from their own country and began to think less of their common interests as slave-owners at home, than of their individual hopes of plundering the inhabitants of the cities of Asia Minor. In consequence many of the Helots were emancipated to serve as soldiers in foreign war, and the intensity of the oppression of the rest was probably diminished: while on the other hand each individual Spartan acted no longer for the common good of the SpartiatÆ but for the sole good of himself, and the government was conducted in the interest not of the whole ruling caste but of that smaller number among them who had been successful in enriching themselves.

Note. I do not venture to follow Fynes Clinton (Fasti Hellenici vol. I. Appendix, chapter 6, page 337) in giving precise dates for the important reign of Theopompus and Polydorus and for the Messenian wars, because the passages which he quotes are taken from authors who lived after Myron of PrienÊ and who may have relied on his romances. There are however two genealogies of Spartan kings (Herodotus VII. 204 and VIII. 131) which compel us, unless we assume either that in one royal house the generations were extravagantly long or that in the other they were abnormally short, to place the beginning of the joint reign of the two kings not earlier than 730 B.C., and its end not later than 650 B.C. We shall probably be right in placing the first Messenian war somewhere before 700 B.C. and in the reign of Theopompus and Polydorus: the second war may be placed somewhere between 680 B.C. and 650 B.C.: but further precision seems to be unattainable.