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people; and still more unknown is the ensuing revolution, by which the first rupture was made in the chain of the Spartan institutions, one hundred and thirty years after they were bound together, in order to admit the Ephoralty, which soon became, itself, the largest and the heaviest link of all. The rights of the people were restored to them in the persons and the powers of the Ephors, who were chosen, five in number, from any class of full citizens, to direct the assembly, to hold the other magistrates and the kings responsible, and to assume, at last, an almost universal authority in the management of public and private affairs. They represent the changes of the constitution in which they found a place for themselves, that afterwards increased as if they had been set to gnaw away the old rigidity, and even the old vitality, of the Spartan laws. Their rise, and their downfall with the state beneath them, were connected at once with the highest development and the lowest debasement of freedom in the history of their country. Still the Spartans continued to be, not only the warlike, but the severe and the aristocratical people. In the years succeeding to their reformation, the attempts to erect

85 See Wachsmuth, Hist. Antiq. of the inferior classes at Sparta Greece, Sect. 42.

86 The name was of older date (Herod., I. 65); but the charges with which the office was now invested were altogether new. Arist., Pol., II. 6. 15. Plut., Lyc., 7. Mention ought to be made of the theory which refers the appointment of the Ephors to a time when some

were admitted to full citizenship.
See Thirlwall, Greece, Ch. IX.
Arnold, App. II. to Thucyd. Cf.
Wachsmuth, Hist. Ant., Sect. 66.

87 Müller, Dor., Vol. II. pp. 123, 128, 130, etc. Arist., Pol., II. 6. 14, etc. Herod., VI. 82, 85. Thucyd., I. 131. Xen., Resp. Lac., Capp. VIII., XV.

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democratical or tyrannical governments were everywhere combated by the spirit which Lycurgus had aroused.

* 89

Lysander is related to have drawn his sword and cried, "He who has this is in the right against all men.' When Agesilaus was asked how far the Spartan territories extended, he replied, "As far as this spear of mine can be hurled." 90 The boast of either reveals the character which was naturally formed under the laws we have here reviewed. Nevertheless, the wisest and purest philosopher of Greece was said to have spoken daily of their excellence.91 He saw, that, though there were evils in them, though they not only bore with, but commanded, deeds which to us are crimes, yet that, in an age of disorder and of passion, they were able to secure obedience to themselves and devotion like that at Thermopyla to the country they enshielded.

During the two or three centuries which Sparta was employing in the exercise of her laws and in the increase of her dominions, the other countries of Greece were not at rest. It seemed that the possibility of departing from the institutions and the habits of an earlier age had no sooner been perceived than the multitude was gathered, as upon the shore

88 See note 92 and text. Cf. Plut. (if the treatise be his), De Malign. Herod., ed. Reisk., Tom. IX. P. 411. Thucyd., I. 18. 89 Plut., Apophth., ed. Reisk., VI. 721.

90 Ibid., VI. 790. Cf. Thucyd., V. 105.

91 Socrates, ap. Plato, Crito.

of some great sea, to try their fortunes on waves yet uncrossed and in lands yet unknown. So far as it is right to describe the course of these political enterprises as if pursued according to any system, it may be marked as having been at first directed against the monarchies, and in favor of the nobilities, of the different states; in some, to the establishment of aristocratical or oligarchical governments; inclining, afterwards, in favor of principles that may be styled comparatively popular, so that, where single authorities were not constituted under the name of tyrannies, the order of the nobles governing was more or less enlarged by the rise of what appears to have been a middle class from out the masses of the people. The tyrannies require a more particular mention, as having been established by individuals, in defiance, indeed, of law or usage, but at the expense of the aristocratical principles that had prevailed rather than of the popular principles beginning to prevail; the tyrant being often the leader of the people, though for his own advantage."

But it was not only in the formation of new governments that the period following Lycurgus is distinguished in Grecian history. It was marked by an almost universal expansion of energy and of cultivation. No longer content to plough the narrow field

92 We shall have an instance to observe hereafter in Pisistratus. Perhaps the most favorable remark that can be made, where there is no space for description of the tyrannies, is that of Sir E. Bulwer Lytton : —

"Every more politic tyrant was a Louis XI., weakening the nobles, creating a middle class." Athens, Vol. I. p. 250. Cf. Wachsmuth's graver details, Hist. Ant., Ch. VI.

or to engage in the distant war, men sought new issues for the activity pent up within them. They grew more familiar with one another; they began their intercourse with foreign nations; they sent their colonies to Asia and Africa, and to nearly every shore of the Mediterranean. At the same time, the temple was more solemnly built, the citadel more painfully fortified; architecture became an art, magnificent and grave; while its more brilliant sisters of painting and of sculpture received an earnest, though still an awkward, welcome.93 The great games were thronged by increasing crowds, who came, in that time of fresher faith, not only to win or to behold the triumph, but to offer their vows to the god by whom the laurels were bestowed, and in whose worship the games were held. It is the sign of greater humanity, that women were among the lookers-on, in the Delian, if in no other festival.91

The individual voices which reach us bear witness to the same pervading restlessness of mind. Hesiod belongs rather to the preceding than the present period,95 and must, at all events, be regarded as one who, in his simpler verses, preserved the thoughts and habits of a lowly, unaspiring life, as, in his higher

93 See Müller's Anc. Art, pp. Hesiod depends upon the much 24-40, Eng. trans.

94 Thucyd., III. 104.

95 Herodotus (II. 53) makes him contemporary with Homer; but Vell. Paterculus says: "Circa CXX. annos distinctus ab Homeri ætate." I. 7. So that the age of

vexed question of the age of Homer. See note 41. Mr. Clinton says that Hesiod flourished A. C. 859-824. Fast. Hell., Vol. I. p. 362. Cf. Schoell, Littér. Grecq., Tom. I. pp. 102, 172.

efforts, he turned back towards the gods and heroes of the mysterious past, instead of joining in with the living currents of his times.96 Others were more active: but in the following centuries. Archilochus, wandering or driven from an uneasy home at Paros, consoled a spirit of bitterness 97 in fierce outpourings of iambic song. Arion, of Lesbos, touched by serener influences, but ardent in pursuit of inspiration, and of fame, attuned his lyre to the deep religious harmonies of the dithyramb. One like Alcæus, a Lesbian also, would enter the lists of open life and hurl his threatening odes in defiance of the faction, whether it were high or low, that he opposed; yet the bravery, as in his case, might be the privilege of the poet only, not of the man. Another, like Sappho, obeying, yet shrinking from, her own sorrows, would move the feelings with gentler strains than breathed amongst the commotions of men. She, too, belonged to Lesbos.99 The inspiration of poetry still lingered by the voiceful sea, to whose solemn cadences the strains of Homer, as he looked or listened, had been composed. All other energies, however, were shamed by those

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