Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/430

 414 HISTOKT OF GREECE. may have existed in the glowing retrospect of Agis, but are not acknowledged in the sober appreciation of Aristotle. That the citizens were far more numerous in early times, the philosopher tells us, and that the community had in his day greatly declined in power, we also know : in this sense, the times of Sparta had doubtless once been better. We may even concede that during the three centuries succeeding Lykurgus, when they were con- tinually acquiring new territory, and when Aristotle had been told that they had occasionally admitted new citizens, so that the aggregate number of citizens had once been ten thousand, we may concede that in these previous centuries the distribution of land had been less unequal, so that the disproportion between the great size of the territory and the small number of citizens was not so marked as it had become at the period which tha philosopher personally witnessed ; for the causes tending to aug- mented inequality were constant and uninterrupted in their work- ing. But this admission will still leave us far removed from the sketch drawn by Dr. Thirlwall, which depicts the Lykurgean Sparta as starting from a new agrarian scheme not far removed from equality of landed property, the citizens as spontaneously disposed to uphold this equality, by giving to unprovided men the benefit of adoptions and heiress-marriages, and the magis- trate as interfering to enforce this latter purpose, even in cases where the citizens were themselves unwilling. All our evidence exhibits to us both decided inequality of possessions and inclina- tions on the part of rich men, the reverse of those which Dr. Thirlwall indicates ; nor will the powers of interference which he I speak of this confused compilation still under the name of Herakleides Ponticus, by which it is commonly known: though Schneidewin, in the second chapter of his Prolegomena, has shown sufficient reason for believing that there is no authority for connecting it with the name of Herakleides. He tries to establish the work as consisting of Excerpta from the lost treatise of Aristotle's xepl Ilo^tTeiuv : which is well made out with regard to som parts, but not enough to justify his inference as to the whole. The article, wherein Welcker vindicates the ascribing of the work to an Excerptor of Herakleides, is unsatisfactory (Kleine Schriften, p. 451). Beyond this irrelevant passage of Herakleides Ponticus, no farther evidence is produced by Miiller and Manso to justify their positive assertion, that tht Spartan lot of land was indivisible in respect to inheritance.