If this be true, the equality of the people was so far secured, that none was richer than his neighbour in land, or stock, or slaves; while every man was so little engrossed by the occupations of agriculture or trade, as to have his time and his energy left free to meet the wars and the demands of his country. The conquest of Laconia was by no means completed in the time of Lycurgus; indeed, it is supposed that the vigor and the unanimity he established in Sparta were the main instruments in the subjugation of the whole surrounding country. But it is impossible to proceed farther in our account of the Spartans without some definite ideas of the relations between them and the people they had hitherto subdued. Of these, there were two great classes. One was that of the Laconians, who, under whatever name they had been overthrown, were the lords of the country before the coming of the Dorians. They continued to enjoy a certain degree of personal freedom; but held their land under lease from the Spartan state, in which they had no participation as citizens. Some of them, perhaps, were Dorians themselves, but of an inferior caste," and reduced, in every respect, to the same condition as if they, too, had been amongst the conquered. Below all these were the Helots, a multitude of bondsmen, whose servi 66 It is certain that there were many divisions amongst the Spartans proper, such as the Νεωδαμώδες and the 'Yoμeloves, of which there are various explanations. In Xen., Hell., III. 3. 6, they are both men tioned as joining heartily with the slaves (eiλóra) and the Laconians (περιοίκοι) in the same fierce resentment. See Hermann, Pol. Antiq. Greece, Sect. 24, 48; and Grote's Hist., Ch. VI. part 2. tude apparently began before the conquest, but whose hardships were then probably increased by the introduction of new masters, to whom their former owners, as well as they themselves, were obliged to yield. Considered as public property in the use of one or another employer, the Helot was thus doubly enslaved.67 He served the Laconian or the Spartan indiscriminately; but he was always considered the slave of the state, as well as of the citizen or the subject who could provide him with toil and sustenance. Sometimes rewarded by his liberty for the labors 6 he was bound to render, he was more commonly shut out from the hope of liberation; being not only subjected to every degree of ignominy, but to persecution and destruction of which the details are too horrible to be told.69 Both the Helot and the Laconian were held to duty in the Spartan armies, as to any service which might be exacted from them; and though the Helots' chains were the heavier, it was natural for either class to feel such hatred towards their oppressors as to speak of them as enemies they would be glad to eat alive.70 Lycurgus was unable 67 Really, as Cornelius Nepos calls them, but a 66 genus quoddam hominum." Paus., III. The name of this historian, who was a contemporary of Cicero, is attached to several doubtful biographies relating chiefly to the great men of Greece. 68 He could be emancipated only by the state; as in Thucyd., V. 34. Cf. Müller, Dor., Vol. II. pp. 43, 64. 69 The famous, rather the in famous, Crypteia. Plut., Lyc., 28. So the fearful story in Thucyd., IV. 80. There were other slaves in Greece, corresponding to the Helots, from the earliest times, such as the Mnoia of Crete, the Thetes of Attica, the Gymnesii of Argos, the Penesta of Thessaly, etc. 70 Xen., Hell., III. 3. 6. Between the few and the many, as Thucydides (IV. 126) describes the to avoid the course of those reformers who do not close the source of the evils against which they contend. He believed, it seems, he could harmonize the Spartan people and corroborate their domination in Laconia, without removing the divisions between them and their subjects, which had been partly the cause of their own dissensions, and almost wholly the cause of their dangers. It was apparent that Lycurgus intended to inspire his nation with a spirit in which self-esteem and self-devotion were strangely blended. In the sight of the subject or the stranger, the Spartan was a different being from what he seemed in the sight of his countrymen and their institutions. The Laconian and the Helot were the inferior creatures that have been just delineated. The stranger was forbidden entrance or welcome;" and in the same design, the Spartan was forbidden to wander into foreign lands, where, as he believed, he would meet with the insolence and the degradation from which he was protected at home. But the Spartan was held to even greater submission than the alien or the slave before the laws. Whatever in them was accounted bravest, that he did; whatever by them was considered mildest, that he abandoned. The husband stole his bride by force, and visited her by stealth, for fear of seeming to be happy in himself or her. The child was taken Spartans and their subjects, it could not be otherwise. 71 Pastoret, Légis. des Lacéd., Ch. VII. Only two foreigners were known to have been admitted Spartan citizens down to much later times. Herod., IX. 35. from its parents at the age of seven, to be educated according to a common system, from which none were excepted besides the heirs to the double throne. The older boys were set to watch the younger ones; the men of forty were superior to the men of thirty; and from the hour of birth to that of death, the Spartan was as much accustomed to obey his elders as he was to rule over his inferiors. 72 The men ate their meals together in public; they went together to the training-ground or to the field; and while they learned to be warriors and masters, their inferiors were obliged to be their laborers and slaves. It would have been criminal, indeed, for a Spartan to sit by his hearthstone, or to watch the fruits which were growing on his lands. Even the women were forbidden to pursue the household occupations which they would, perhaps, have made too winning, and were brought forth into nearly the same games or exercises as those in which their sons and brothers were engaged. In fact, modesty was treason to the severity of character which it was the will of the early lawgiver to command. 73 There is no need, however, in this place, of recounting the ordinances which Lycurgus appointed, each in its separate relation to the objects he entertained; although their number and their stringency of spirit 72 Even the magistrates, as the government, were under the control of the Nomophylaces, the guardians of the laws, TOKOTTOÛνTES, as Xenophon says, Econ., IX. 14. They were not, however, peculiar to Sparta. 73 See Xen., Lac. Resp., Cap. I., and his complaint in Cap. III., that the Spartan women in his times were more immodest than the men. It is only possible to allude to the barbarous customs by which the ties between husband and wife were often broken. would throw some stronger light upon the difficulty he was obliged to encounter, and the manner in which he finally prevailed. Only let it be remembered that stern feelings were aroused and hard blows were dealt against him, as well as that he did not triumph in a month or in a year. His errors are plain. He would have made his people free, yet he increased the authority of the few amongst them, and allowed them all no other powers than the muscular strength and outward fortitude of which he was content that their virtues as citizens should be composed. It would be a great mistake, however, to believe that he intended to make them mere warriors. He He gave them their discipline, not that they might prevail against their neighbours, but that they might be secure against their subjects and united among themselves. If he conceived of any conquest, it was that of Laconia, not yet entirely subdued; he, at least, had no aims on Peloponnesus or on Greece; and when he made his people promise to obey his unwritten laws while he was absent, and departed, himself, to die in exile, 75 he left them, as he desired, at peace with all beyond their mountain land. 76 It was sufficient to 74 Plut., Lyc., 11; Sol., 16. I. 65. 76 If Plutarch's account were a little more trustworthy, it would be easy to put the ideas he ascribes to Lycurgus concerning the highest duty of his countrymen (Lyc., 31) with the truce Lycurgus obtained at the Olympic games (Ibid., 2, 3), 19 VOL. I. with his love for Homer (Ibid., 4), and his prohibition against the pursuit of a flying enemy (Ibid., 11), in such a manner that the milder qualities of the lawgiver might have their place in our memories. See Van Limburg-Brouwer, Civ. Mor. et Rel. des Grecs, Tom. II. ptie. 2, p. 393. |