Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/104

80 recalls the multiplicity of the Homeric kingship. The division of sovereignty probably led to that period of distress and anarchy which is the one almost certain fact of the earliest Spartan history; and the result was a reconstruction, attributed to Lycurgus, at a date which may be assumed to be not later than 800 B.C. This must have been the era when the Spartan institutions were fixed on a system compatible with the life of an organised State, and is at the same time the point from which the decay of the kingly power may be traced.

When Herodotus, who had himself been at Sparta, described the duties and privileges of the Spartan kings as they existed in the latter half of the fifth century, the monarchy still retained the triple powers which we have seen outlined in the Homeric poems, and gathered into a single conception in the Roman kings. It will be as well to quote the very words of Herodotus, for they give us a life-like picture of an ancient moss-grown monarchy.

"The prerogatives which the Spartans have allowed their kings are the following. In the first place, two priesthoods, those of Zeus of Lakedaimôn and celestial Zeus; also the right of making war on whatsoever country they please, without hindrance from any of the other Spartans on pain of exile; in the field the privilege of marching first in the advance and last in the retreat, and of having a hundred picked men for their