Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/357

 CONTRADICTORY ACCOUNTS. 341 O. Muller, 1 after glancing at the strange and improbable cir cumstances handed down to us respecting Lykurgus, observes, " that we have absolutely no account of him as an individual person." This remark is perfectly just : but another remark, made by the same distinguished author, respecting the Lykurgean system of laws, appears to me erroneous, and requires more especially to be noticed, inasmuch as the corollaries deduced from it pervade a large portion of his valuable History of the Dorians. He affirms that the laws of Sparta were considered the true Doric institutions, and that their origin was identical with that of the people : Sparta is, in his view, the full type of Dorian principles, tendencies, and sentiments, and is so treated throughout his entire work. 2 But such an opinion is at once gratuitous (for the passage of Pindar cited in support of it is scarcely of any value) and contrary to the whole tenor of ancient evidence. The insti- tutions of Sparta were not Dorian, but peculiar to herself; 3 dis- tinguishing her not less from Argos, Corinth, Megara, Epidaurus, Sikyon, Korkyra, or Knidus, than from Athens or Thebes. Krete was the only other portion of Greece in which there prevailed institutions in many respects analogous, yet still dissimilar in those two attributes which form the real mark and pinch of Spar- tan legislation, namely, the military discipline and the rigorous private training. There were doubtless Dorians in Krete, but we have no proof that these peculiar institutions belonged to satisfactory ascertainment, (respecting facts and persons of the ninth and tenth centuries before the Christian era,) existing among Greeks of the fifth and succeeding centuries ; an assumption which I hold to be incorrect. And all we gain is, an illusory unanimity produced, by gratuitously putting words into the mouth of one of our witnesses. If we can prove Herodotus to have been erroneously informed, it is right to do so ; but we have no ground for altering his deposition. It affords a clear proof that there were very different stories as to the mere question, to which of the two lines of Herakleids the Spartan lawgiver belonged, and that there was an enormous difference as to the time in which he lived. 1 History of the Dorians, i. 7, 6. 2 History of the Dorians, iii. 1, 8. Alf. Ivopstadt recognizes this as an error in Mailer's work : see his recent valuable Dissertation " De Eerum Laconicarum Ccnstitutionis LjTurgea; Origine et Indole," Gryphioe, 1849, sect. 3, p. 18. 3 Among the many other evidences to this point, see Aristotle, Ethic. 7 9 ; Xenophon, Republ. Laced. 10, 8.