Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/414

 398 HISTORY OF GREECE. (without ground, I think) that it was forbidden to divide them,- became insufficient for numerous families, and seem to have been alienated in some indirect manner to the rich ; while every indus- trious occupation being both interdicted to a Spartan citizen and really inconsistent with his rigorous personal discipline, no other means of furnishing his quota, except the lot of land, was open to him. The difficulty felt with regard to these smaller lots of land may be judged of from the fact stated by Polybius, 1 that three or four Spartan brothers had often one and the same wife, the paternal land being just sufficient to furnish contributions for all to the public mess, and thus to keep alive the citizen-rights of all the sons. The tendency to diminution in the number of Spartan citizens seems to have gone on uninterruptedly from the time of the Persian war, and must have been aggravated by the founda- tion of Messene, with its independent territory around, after the battle of Leuktra, an event which robbed the Spartans of a large portion of their property. Apart from these special causes, more- over, it has been observed often as a statistical fact, that a close corporation of citizens, or any small number of families, inter- or as a universal rule ; he only says, that a man is better off who has only one son (Opp. Di. 374). And if Plato had been able to cite Lykurgus aa an authority for that system of an invariable number of separate K^pot, or lots, which he sets forth in his treatise De Legibns (p. 740), it is highly probable that he would have clone so. Still less can Aristotle have supposed that Lykurgus or the Spartan system either insured, or intended to insure, the maintenance of an unalterable number of distinct proprietary lots ; for he expressly notices that scheme as a peculiarity of Philolaus the Corinthian, in his laws for the Thebans (Polit. ii. 9, 7). 1 Polybius, Fragm. ap. Maii. Collect. Vett. Scrip, vol. ii. p. 384. Perhaps, as 0. Miiller remarks, this may mean only, that none except the eldest brother could afford to marry ; but the feelings of the Spartans in respect to marriage were, in many other points, so different from ours, that we are hardly authorized to reject the literal statement (History of the Dorians, iii. 10, 2), which, indeed, is both illustrated and rendered credible by the per- mission granted in the laws of Solon to an kmn^poc who had been claimed in marriage by a relative in his old age, > uv 6 icpaTuv KOI nvpiof yeyovbf KSTU. rbv vofiov ofrdf fir) dvvardf y Tr^rjaiu^etv i'irb TUV lyytaTO. rov uvip&( brv'aadai (Plutarch, Solon, c. 20). I may observe that of 0. Miiller's statements, respecting the lots of land at Sparta, several are unsupported and some incorrect.