Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/471

 €nAr. Xin KEVOLUTIOJfS OF SPARTA. 465 time when there was neither manufacture nor com- merce to furnish occupation for the poor, and when the riclj employed slaves in cultivating their immense do- mains. On the one hand were a few men who had every- thing, on the other a very great number who had abso- lutely nothing. In the life of Agis, and in that of Cle- omenes, Plutarch jjresents us with a picture of Spartan society. We there see an unbridled love of wealth ; everything is made secondary to this. Among a few there are luxury, effeminacy, and the desire endlessly to augment their fortunes. Beyond these there is a mis- erable crowd, indigent, without political rights, of no weight in the city, envious, full of hatred, and con demned by their condition to desire a revolution. When the oligarchy had thus pushed affairs to the last possible limits, revolution was inevitable, and the democracy, so long arrested and repressed, finally broke down the barriers. We can also easily believe that, nfter ages of compression, the democracy would not stop with political changes, but would arrive with the first bound at social reforms. The small number of Spartans by birth (there were, including all the different classes, no more than seven hundred) and the debasement of character, a result of long oppression, explain why the signal for changes did not come from the lower classes. It came from a king. Agis undertook to accomplish this inevitable revolution by leg.'d means, which increased for him the difficulties of the enterprise. lie presented to the sen- ate — that is to saj', to the rich men themselves — two bills for the abolition of debts and the partition of the lands. We cannot be too much surprised that the sen- ate did not reject these propositions. Agis had perhaps 30