Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/432

 416 HIS10RY OF GKKKCfc. To conceive correctly, then, the Lykurgean system, as far as obscurity and want of evidence will permit, it seems to me that there are two current misconceptions which it is essential to dis- card. One of these is, that the system included a repartition of landed property, upon principles of exact or approximative equality (distinct from that appropriation which belonged to the Dorian conquest and settlement), and provisions for perpetuating the number of distinct and equal lots. The other is, that it was first brought to bear when the Spartans were masters of all Laconia. The illusions created by the old legend, which depicts Laconia as all one country, and all conquered at one stroke, yet survive after the legend itself has been set aside as bad evidence : we cannot conceive Sparta as subsisting by itself without dominion over Laconia ; nor Amyklae, Pharis, and Geronthras, as really and truly independent of Sparta. Yet, if these towns were independent in the time of Lykurgus, much more confidently may the same independence be affirmed of the portions of Laconia which lie lower than Amyklte down the valley of the Eurotas, as well as of the eastern coast, which Herodotus expressly states to have been originally connected with Argos. Discarding, then, these two suppositions, we have to consider the Lykurgean system as brought to bear upon Sparta and its immediate circumjacent district, apart from the rest of Laco- nia, and as not meddling systematically with the partition of property, whatever that may have been, which the Dorian con- querors established at their original settlement. Lykurgus does not try to make the poor rich, nor the rich poor ; but he imposes upon both the same subjugating drill, 1 the same habits of life, gentlemanlike idleness, and unlettered strength, the same fare, clothing, labors, privations, endurance, punishments, and subordi- nation. It is a lesson instructive at least, however unsatisfactory, to political students, that, with all this equality of dealing, he ends in creating a community in whom not merely the love of preeminence, but even the love of money, stands powerfully and specially developed. 2 6afiaai(il3poTO, Simonides, apud Plutarch. Agcsilaus, c. 1 " Aristotcl. Polit. ii. 6. 9, 19, 23. rb QiMn/iov ri>