Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/253

 SILENCE OF XKNOPHON. 231 have to thank for most of what we know, is prompted by his re- ligious imagination to relate many divine signs and warnings, but little matter of actual occurrence. Details are altogether withheld from us. We know neither how long a time was occupied in the building of the two cities, nor who furnished the cost ; though both the one and the other must have been considerable. Of the thou- sand new arrangements, incident to the winding up of many small townships, and the commencement of two large cities, we are una- ble to render any account. Yet there is no point of time wherein social phenomena are either so interesting or so instructive. In describing societies already established and ancient, we find the force of traditional routine almost omnipotent in its influence both on men's actions and on their feelings ; bad as well as good is pre- served in one concrete, since the dead weight of the past stifles all constructive intelligence, and leaves little room even for improving aspirations. But the forty small communities which coalesced into Megalopolis, and the Messenians and other settlers who en me for the first time together on the hill of Ithome, were in a state in which new exigencies of every kind pressed for immediate satisfaction. There was no file to aiford a precedent, nor any resource left except to submit all the problems to discussion by those whose character and judgment was most esteemed. "Whether the prob- lems were well- or ill-solved, there must have been now a genuine and earnest attempt to strike out as good a solution as the lights of the time and place permitted, with a certain latitude for conflict- ing views. Arrangements must have been made for the apportion- ment of houses and lands among the citizens, by purchase, or grant, or both together ; for the political and judicial constitution ; for religious and recreative ceremonies, for military defence, for mar- kets, for the security and transmission of property, etc. All these and many other social wants of a nascent community must now have been provided for, and it would have been highly interesting to know how. Unhappily the means are denied to us. We can record little more than the bare fact that these two youngest mem- bers of the Hellenic brotherhood of cities were born at the same time, and under the auspices of the same presiding genius, Epami- the Spartans to Athens for aid, with the favorable reception which they ob- tained, also the exploits of the Phliasians in their devoted attachment to Sparta.