Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/465

 <3HAP. XIII. EEVOLUTIONS OF SPAKTA. 459 struggles that took place there have been concealed and forgotten ; but we know enough of them, at least, to say, that if the history of Sparta differs materially from that of other cities, it has none the less passed through the same series of revolutions. The Dorians were already united into a people when they overran Peloponnesus. What had caused them to leave their country? "Was it the invasion of a for- •eigii nation? or was it an internal revolution? "We <lo not know. But it appears certain that, at this stage in the life of the Dorians, the old rule of the gens had already disappeared. We no longer distinguish among them this ancient organization of the family ; we no longer find traces of the patriarchal government, or vestiges of the religious nobility, or of hereditary client- ship ; we see only warriors, all equal, under a king. It is probable, therefore, that a first social revolution had already taken place, either in Doris or on the road which conducted this people to Sparta. If we com- pare Dorian society of the ninth century with Ionian society of the same epoch, we perceive that the former was much farther advanced than the other in the series of changes. The Ionian race entered later upon the revolutionary road, but passed over it quicker. Though the Dorians, on their aiTival at Sparta, no longer had the government of the gens, they had not -been able so completely to free themselves from it as not to retain some of its institutions, — as, for example, the right of primogeniture and the inalienability of the pat- rimony. These institutions could not fail to establish an aristocracy in Spartan society. All the traditions show us that, at the time when Lycurgus appeared, there were two classes among the Spartans, and that they were hostile to each other.