Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/426

 410 HISTORY OF GREECE. possessing a lot of land about adequate to the frugal maintenance of six persons, of adoptions and marriages of heiresses arranged , in his reference to the ephor Epitadeus, and the new law carried by that ephor), that the number of Spartan lots, nearly equal and rigorously indi- visible, remained with little or no change from the time of the original division, down to the return of Lysander, after his victorious close of the Peloponnesian war. Both acknowledge that they cannot understand bj what regulations this long unalterability, so improbable in itself, was main- tained : but both affirm the fact positively. The period will be more than four hundred years if the original division be referred to Lykurgus : moro than three hundred years, if the nine thousand lots are understood to date from the Messenian war. If this alleged fact be really a fact, it is something almost without a parallel in the history of mankind : and before we consent to believe it, we ought at least to be satisfied that there is considerable show of positive evi- dence in its favor, and not much against it. But on examining Manso and Mtiller, it will be seen that not only is there very slender evidence in its favor, there is a decided balance of evidence against it. The evidence produced to prove the indivisibility of the Spartan lot, is a passage of Herakleides Ponticus, c. 2 (ad. calc. Cragii, p. 504), TTU^CIV 6e yrjv AaKc6at/j.ovioif alaxpbv vevofuarat, rijf upxaias fioipaf uvavefieatiai ("or vevenfi<r&ai) ovdev efe<m. The first portion of this assertion is confirmed by, and probably borrowed from, Aristotle, who says the same thing, nearly in the same words : the second portion of the sentence ought, according to all reasonable rules of construction, to be understood with reference to the first part ; that is, to the sale of the original lot " To sell land, is held disgraceful among the Lacedaemonians, nor is it permitted to sever off any portion of the original lot," i. e.for sale. Herakleides is not here speaking of the law of succession to property at Lacedaeinon, nor can we infer from his words that the whole lot was transmitted entire to one son. No evidence except this very irrelevant sentence is produced by Miiller and Manso to justify their positive assertion, that the Spartan lot of land was indivisible in respect to inheritance. Having thus determined the indivisible transmission of lots to one son of a family, Manso and Miiller presume, without any proof, that that son must be the eldest : and Miiller proceeds to state something equally unsupported by proof: "The extent of his rights, however, was perhaps no farther than that he was considered master of the house and property ; while the other members of the family had an equal right to the enjoyment of it The master of the family was, therefore, obliged to contribute for all these to the syssitia, without which contribution no one was admitted." pp. 199, 200. All this is completely gratuitous, and will be found to produce as many difficulties in one way as it removes in another. The next law as to the transmission of property, which Manso states to ave prevailed, is, that all daughters ivere to marry without receiving any