Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/412

 396 HISTORY OF GREECE. this discussion a negative argument of the greatest weight. Jso krates, 1 too, speaks much about Sparta for good and for evil, mentions Lykurgus as having established a political constitution much like that of the earliest days of Athens, praises the gymnasia and the discipline, and compliments the Spartans upon the many centuries which they have gone through without violent sedition, extinction of debts, and redivision of the land, those " monstrous evils," as he terms them. Had he con- ceived Lykurgus as being himself the author of a complete redivision of land, he could hardly have avoided some allusion to it. It appears, then, that nftne of the authors down to Aristotle ascribe to Lykurgus a redivision of the lands, either of Sparta or of Laconia. The statement to this effect in Plutarch, given in great detail and with precise specification of number and produce, must have been borrowed from some author later than Aristotle ; and I think we may trace the source of it, when we study Plu- tarch's biography of Lykurgus in conjunction with that of Agis and Kleomenes. The statement is taken from authors of the century after Aristotle, either in, or shortly before, the age when both those kings tried extreme measures to renovate the sinking state : the former by a thorough change of system and property, yet proposed and accepted according to constitutional forms ; the latter by projects substantially similar, with violence to enforce them. The accumulation of landed property in few hands, the multiplication of poor, and the decline in the number of citizens* which are depicted as grave mischiefs by Aristotle, had become wealth of little service to the possessor: rbv TT^OVTOV uir^ovrov airspyuoaa- &at TTJ KOLVOTrjTt rdv deiirvuv, KOI TTJ Trepl TTJV dicurav evre^eia. Compare Plutarch. Apophthegm. Lacon. p. 226 E. The wealth, therefore, was not formally done away with in the opinion of Theophrastus : there was no positive equality of possessions. Both the Spartan kings dined at the public mess at the same pheidition (Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 30). Herakleide's Ponticus mentions nothing, either ahout equality of Spartan lots or fresh partition of lands, by Lykurgus (ad calccm Crngii, De Sparta- nornm Repub. p. 504), though he speaks about the Spartan lets and law of succession as well as about Lykurgus. 1 Isokrates, Panathen. Or. xii. pp. 266, 270, 278: oMf %-ieiJv anon tt>Jf y^f uvadaanuv ovd' u7^ oiidsv TUV uvijKfarvv KaKiiv