Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/466

 460 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. Royalty had a natural tendency to take part with the lower class. Lycurgus, who was not king, became the chief of the aristocracy, and at the same blow weak- ened royalty, and brought the people under the yoke. The declamations of a few of the ancients, and of many of the moderns, on the wisdom of Spartan in- stitutions, on the unchangeable good fortune which the Spartans enjoyed, on their equality, and on their living in common, ought not to blind us. Of all the cities that ever were upon the earth, Sparta is perhaps the one where the aristocracy reigned the most oppressive- ly, and where equality was the least known. It is use- less to talk of the division of the land. If that division ever took place, it is at least quite certain that it was not kept up; for, in Aristotle's time, "some possessed immense domains; others had nothing, or almost noth- ing. One could reckon hardly a thousand proprietors in all Laconia."1 If we leave out the Helots and the Laconians, and examine only Spartan society, we shall find a hierarchy of classes superposed one above the other. First, there are the Neodamodes, who appear to be former slaves freed;2 then come the Epeunactae, who had been ad- mitted to fill up the gaps made by war among the Spartans;3 in a rank a little above figured the Motha- ces, who, very similar to domestic clients, lived with their masters, composed their cortege, shared their oc- cupations, their labors, and their festivals, and fought by their side;4 then came the class of bastards, who, though descended from true Spartans, were separated

1 Aristotle, Politics, II. 6, 10 and 11. 2 Myron of Priene, in Athenaeus, VI. 3 Theopompus, in Athenaeus, VI. 4 Athenaeus, VI. 102. Plutarch, Cleomenes, 8, Aelian, XII 43.