Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/362

 34G HISTORY OF GREECE. Spartan political constitution as fixed by Lykurgus ; but a cen- tury afterwards (so Plutarch's account runs), under the kings Polydorus and Theopompus, two important alterations were made. A rider was then attached to the old Lykurgean Rhetra, by which it was provided that, " in case the people decided crookedly, the senate, with the kings, should reverse their decisions:" 1 while the people evdeiaif prjrpaK; a v Tanape ifto/ievovf where the parti oiple last occurring applies not to the people alone, but to all the three. The Ehetra of Lykurgus emanated from the Delphian god ; but the kings, senatei and people all bound themselves, both to each other and to the gods, to obey it. The explanations given of the phrase by Nitzsch and Schomann (in Dr. Thirlwall's note, ch. viii. p. 334 ) seem to me less satisfactory than what ap- pears in C. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthiimer, s. 23). Nitzsch (Histor. Homer, sect. xiv. pp. 50-55) does not take sufficient account of the distinction between the meaning of (>r)Tpa in the early and in the later times. In the time of the Ephor Epitadeus, or of Agis the Third, he is right in saying that ftijrpa is equivalent to scitum, still, however, with an idea of greater solemnity and unchangeability than is implied in the word voyuof, analogous to what is understood by a fundamental or organic enactment in modern ideas. The old ideas, of a mandate from the Delphian god, and a compact between the kings and the citizens, which had once been connected with the word, gradually dropped away from it. There is no contradiction in Plutarch, therefore, such as that to which Nitzsch alludes (p. 54). Kopstadt's Dissertation (pp. 22, 30) touches on the same subject. I agree with Kopstadt (Dissert, pp. 28-30), in thinking it probable that Plutarch copied the words of the old Lykurgean constitutional Ehetra, from the ac count given by Aristotle of the Spartan polity. King Theopompus probably brought from the Delphian oracle the impor- tant rider which he tacked to the mandate as originally brought by Lykurgus ol fiaaifaie QeoirofiTTOf KOI Tiokiidupot; rude TT) prjTpp Trapeveypaijiav. The authority of the oracle, together with their own influence, would enable them to get these words accepted by the people. 1 A.L $ KpcafivyEVEai; KOI up^cr/erae uKoaTUT- ijpaf tlfiEv. (Plutarch, ib.) Plutarch tells us that the primitive Rhotra, anterior to this addition, spe- cially enjoined the assembled citizens either to adopt or reject, without change, the Rhetra proposed by the kings and senate, and that the rider was in- troduced because the assembly had disobeyed this injunction, and adopted amendments of its own. It is this latter sense which he puts on the word OKohiuv. Urlichs (Ueber Lye. Rhetr. p. 232) and Nitzsch (Hist. Homer, p. 54) follow him, and the latter even construes the epithet Evdeiaif prjrpaii; tiraira[j.ipo[tvove of Tyrtaeus in a corresponding sense : he says, " Populus iis (rhetris) ev&eiaie, i. e. nihil in/lexis, suffragari jubetur: nam lex cnjus Tyrtaeus admonet, ita sanxerat si populus rogationem wjlexam (i. . non