lawgiver, before attempting to become acquainted with his laws. The spirit to which they bear witness may not, indeed, have been altogether his own; for none more than the reformer or the lawgiver are obliged to sacrifice their own desires to the various interests with which they have to deal. Lycurgus was probably a man of great severity towards himself, so that the claim of his people was unanswerable; and of equal severity towards others, so that his claim of order and obedience from them would be insisted on, as far as it could be carried. But to all appearances, he was also one to respect the traditions and the customs of his race, yielding to these and to the pride which upheld them the consideration he would not feel for the passions of his own generation. No point in his history is better known than the solemnity with which he entered on his labors. Addressing himself to the oracle at Delphi, in which the faith of Sparta was most profound, he is even said to have brought away his laws, as if they had been delivered him by divine assistance in the temple.57 Under these impressions, to which he was as sensible as any of his people, Lycurgus returned to execute the charge he had received. If we can trust the glimmering light in which we see him and his times, the objects of his reform or his legislation were plain before him. The kings and the nobles were aspiring to tyranny; the Spartan people to what may be called democracy; while all were still tenacious of their

57 Herod., I. 65. Plut., Lyc., 5, 6.

superiority to the races their ancestors had overcome. Lycurgus had no heart to desire justice from them towards their dependants; but it was his especial work to pacify, to unite, and to control them in their relations amongst themselves.58

The kings of Sparta were possessed, at this period, of an authority which, as may be imagined, was very far from being so absolute as that of the old heroic monarchies.59 It was not only shared between two, but was also diminished in proportion to the influence which the nobles had undoubtedly gained in and since the period of migrations and conquests. The power which the kings still possessed arose from none of their functions, sacerdotal, judicial, or military, so much as from the reverence for their Heracleid blood, and, in a less degree, from the outward honors they enjoyed in life and after death.60 They were also the two principal members of the Boule, or senate, which was composed, besides, of twentyeight nobles, apparently endeavouring, in the time of Lycurgus, to depose or to weaken the royal authority, in order to increase their own. The senate, already intrusted with the chief powers of government, was threatening, perhaps, to become the government itself, unless the kings should be able to strengthen themselves against encroachment, or the lower Spar

58 See Diod. Sic., Reliq., VII. 14, ed. Müller, for the account of the purposes which the oracle inspired in Lycurgus.

59 Arist., Pol., III. 9. 2; where the military powers of the king are 18

VOL. I.

particularly emphasized. This, however, is an account of a much later day.

60 Herod., VI. 56 et seq., 66. Müller's Dorians, Vol. II. pp. 106

et seq.

61

tans succeed in making their assembly, the Ecclesia, more powerful. If claims were then urged, as it seems, on every side, intrigues and hostilities would soon ensue, especially amongst a nation so savage and unimproved. It is not yet the moment to describe the condition of the conquered.

Such were the institutions which Lycurgus had before him to reform, and, at the same time, to fortify. It is by no means certain that we know the changes he wrought; but the energies he infused into his state and his people appear, undeniably, to have resulted from his reforms. He seems to have left the kings nearly as he found them, incapable of tyranny, but hedged on all sides against degradation. The senate was opened to every class amongst the Spartans who had reached the age of sixty years; and to it was then intrusted nearly the same authority it had previously obtained, in the proposal of laws, the judgment of criminal cases, "the power of life and death, of honor and of dishonor, and, in a word, of all important things." 62 If to the natural effect upon every temper of admission to a chosen body be added the preparation which the Spartan of threescore years had undergone before he could occupy his seat, it will not appear that Lycurgus, in opening its doors,

61 On the organization of the state in Obæ and Tribes, see Thirlwall's History of Greece, Appendix I.

62 Κύριον ὄντα καὶ θανάτου καὶ ἀτιμίας καὶ ὅλως τῶν μεγίστων. Plut., Lyc., 26. Cf. Xen., Lac.

Resp., Cap. X., and the description by Demosthenes of a Spartan senator:— Επειδάν τις, κ. τ. λ., δεσπότης ἐστὶ τῶν πολλῶν; he is a lord over the multitude. Adv. Leptinem, 107.

meant to transform, but rather to establish, the senate, so that it would never need to be transformed. He made every Spartan of unblemished name eligible, and gave the election to all his fellow-citizens; but upon the candidate he set the seal of gray hairs, and put the voters under the general restraints his laws imposed. Nor was the assembly, though it may have received some new privileges, allowed to become more democratical.63 No one was to have any voice in its deliberations before the age of thirty, nor then, as an orator, unless in office or under permission; and no other proceedings were to be allowed but elections to certain magistracies and decisions on the laws brought into the assembly from the senate. It was also within the province of the assembly to determine upon peace and war; but its votes were then the acclamations of soldiers, willing or unwilling to be led to conflict, rather than the resolutions of men who accepted or refused a war from consideration or conviction. The three, the assembly, the senate, and the royalty, were together confirmed as the constitution of a rigid and a disciplined people.

In thus tempering political institutions, the reforms of Lycurgus were but begun. It is from this point, indeed, that he appears, not merely as the reformer, but as the lawgiver, in whose judgment there

63 See Müller's Dorians, Vol. II. magistrates of Sparta were united pp. 90 et seq. in a sort of council; in the other, the Spartans met with their allies and their soldiers to decide upon what may be called international affairs.

64 It is here possible only to allude to the small assembly of later times, or the large assembly, perhaps, of still later date. In the one, the

was something to be added to the ancient customs of the race to which he belonged. Yet it is more than ever difficult to bring these wider labors within the scope of accurate history. In order to complete the union laid in the securer organization of the state, as such, it was necessary to make some further provisions for the independence of the Spartans, particularly of many who, through the common changes of society, had become impoverished and downhearted. It was equally necessary to check the accumulation of wealth and the increase of pride amongst the more fortunate. Either class was dangerous to the freedom which Lycurgus desired; the latter, through its tendency to oppression, the former, through a still stronger tendency to turbulence, if not to degeneration; and care was also to be taken that the subjects did. not grow rich, while the rulers, or many of their number, were becoming poor. In view of these contingencies, Lycurgus is said to have ordered a division of the Spartan territories. But so uncertain are the limits of these, and so doubtful is the account which remains of their distribution, that the only fact to be admitted, even conjecturally, is, that the Spartans received each an equal portion of land, sufficient for his own necessities and for those of his dependants.65

65 The chief authority concerning this division of the Spartan lands is Plutarch, who says that 30,000 portions were assigned to the Laconians (of whom more presently), 9,000 being given to the Spartans. Lyc., 8. The only possible way to reconcile these numbers with

the narrowness of the Spartan territory at that time is to suppose that the 30,000 lots were subdivisions of the 9,000, and that the Laconians held each a part of a Spartan's estate, in lease or in fee,-not, however, from the Spartan, but the state.