Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/386

 870 HISTORY OF GREECE. residence in many separate and insignificant townships, scorns to be the expression of that proceeding which in his time was numbered among the most efficient precautions against refractory subjects, the Dioekisis, or breaking up of a town-aggregate into villages. We cannot assign to the statement any historical authority. 1 Moreover, the division of Laconia into six districts, together with its distribution into townships (or the distribution of settlers into preexisting townships), which Ephorus ascribed to the first Dorian kings, are all deductions from the primitive legendary account, which described the Dorian conquest as achieved by one stroke, and must all be dismissed, if we sup- pose it to have been achieved gradually. This gradual conquest is admitted by 0. Miiller, and by many of the ablest subsequent inquirers, who, nevertheless, seem to have the contrary suppo- sition involuntarily present to their minds when they criticize the early Spartan history, and always unconsciously imagine the Spartans as masters of all Laconia. We cannot even assert that Laconia was ever under one government before the consumma- tion of the successive conquests of Sparta. Of the assertion of O. Miiller repeated by Schumann 2 " that the difference of races was strictly preserved, and that 1 Dr. Arnold (in his Dissertation on the Spartan Constitution, appended to the first volume of his Thucydides, p. 643) places greater confidence in the historical value of this narrative of Isokrates than I am inclined to do. On the other hand, Mr. G. C. Lewis, in his Review of Dr. Arnold's Disser- tation (Philological Museum, vol. ii. p. 45), considers the " account of Iso- krates as completely inconsistent with that of Ephorus ;" which is saying rather more, perhaps, than the tenor of the two strictly warrants. In Mr. Lewis's excellent article, most of the difficult points respecting the Spartan constitution will be found raised and discussed in a manner highly instruc tivc. Another point in the statement of Isokrates is, that the Dorians, at the time of the original conquest of Laconia, were only two thousand in number (Or. xii. Panath. p. 286). Mr. Clinton rejects this estimate as too small, and observes, " I suspect that Isokrates. in describing the numbers of the Dorians at the original conquest, has adapted to the description the actual numbers of the Spartans in his own time.' (Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 408.) This seems to me a probable conjecture, and it illustrates as well the absence of data under which Isokrates or his informants labored, as th method which they took to supply the deficiency. f Schomann, Antiq. Juiisp. Grsecorum, iv. 1, 5, p. 1 12.