Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/365

 RETROSPECTIVE HYPOTHESES OF LATER SPARTANS. 343 something peculiar to Sparta, the origin of which receives no other explanation than a reference to the twin sons of Aristode- mus, Eurysthenes and Prokles. These two primitive ancestors are a type of the two lines of Spartan kings ; for they are said to have passed their lives in perpetual dissensions, which was the habitual state of the two contemporaneous kings at Sparta. While the coexistence of the pair of kings, equal in power and constantly thwarting each other, had often a baneful effect upon the course of public measures, it was, nevertheless, a security to the state against successful violence, 1 ending in the establishment of a des- potism, on the part of any ambitious individual among the regal line. During five successive centuries of Spartan history, from Poly- dorus and Theopompus downward, no such violence was attempted by any of the kings, 2 until the times of Agis the Third and Kleomenes the Third, 240 B. c. to 220 B. c. The importance of Greece had at this last-mentioned period irretrievably declined, and the independent political action which she once possessed had become subordinate to the more powerful force either of the /Etolian mountaineers (the rudest among her own sons) or to Epirotic, Macedonian, and Asiatic foreigners, preparatory to the final absorption by the Romans. But amongst all the Grecian states, Sparta had declined the most ; her ascendency was totally gone, and her peculiar training and discipline (to which she had chiefly owed it) had degenerated in every way. Under these untoward circumstances, two young kings, Agis and Kleomenes, the former a generous enthusiast, the latter more violent and ambitious, conceived the design of restoring the Lykurgean constitution in its supposed pristine purity, with the hope of reviving both the spirit of the people and the ascendency of the state. But the Lykurgean constitution had been, even in tie 1 Plato, Lcgg. iii- p. C91 ; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 20. 2 The conspiracy of Pausanias, after the repulse of Xerxes, was against the liberty of combined Hellas, to constitute himself satrap of Hellas under the Persian monarch, rather than against the established Lacedmonian government ; though undoubtedly one portion of his project was to excite the Helots to revolt, and Aristotle treats him as specially aiming to put down the power of the ephors (Polit. v. 5, 6 ; compare Thucyd. i. 128-134; Herodot. v. 32).