Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/867

LYCURGUS. to indulge in unlimited leisure themselves. But the number of these miserable creatures was large. (Mull. Dor. iii. 3, § 6.) At Plataeae every Spartan was accompanied by seven Helots ; and they were by no means so different in race, language, and accomplishments, either from one another or from their masters, as were the slaves of Athens or Rome, bought from various barbarous countries, a motley mass, that was easily kept down. Such slaves were very rare at Sparta. (Miill. Dor. iii, 3. § 2.) The Helots assumed the appearance of a regular class in the state, and became both useful and formidable to their masters : their moral claims for enfranchisement were much stronger than those of the Athenian slaves. The resistance of their ancestors to the invading Dorians was forgotten in course of time, and in the same proportion the in- justice of their degraded state became more and more flagrant and insupportable ; therefore the Helots yielded only a reluctant obedience so long as it could be enforced. They kept a vigilant look-out for the misfortunes of their masters, ever ready to shake off their yoke, and would gladly " have eaten the flesh of the Spartans raw." Hence we hear of constant revolts or attempts at revolts on the side of the oppressed, and of all possible devices for keeping them down on the side of the oppressors. No cruelty was too flagrant or too refined to accomplish this end. We need only advert to the hateful crypteia, an institution which authorised select bands of Spartan youths to range the country in all directions armed with daggers, and secretly to despatch those of the Helots who gave umbrage to their masters. (See Did. of Ant. s. V.) But when this quiet massacre worked too slow, wholesale slaughters were resorted to. Thu- cydides (iv. 80) relates an act of tyranny, the enormity of which is increased by the mystery that surrounds it. By a promise of manumission, the most impatient and dangerous of the Helots were induced to come forward to claim this high reward for their former services in war, and then were all secretly despatched, about 2000 in number. In the face of such a heinous cowardly crime, it is difficult to be persuaded by Miiller, who {Dor. iii. 3. ^ 3) attempts to make out that the slavery of the Helots was far milder than it is represented. If it had been, it would have been borne more patiently. But after the great earthquake in B. c. 465 we find that the Messenian Helots took advan- tage of the confusion at Sparta, seized upon the towns of Thuria and Aethaea, and fortified Ithome, where they long held out against all the power of Sparta. (Thuc. i. 100.) After the taking of Pylos, when the Spartans and Athenians concluded an alliance for fifty years, it was stipulated that if the Helots should revolt, the Athenians should assist the Spartans with all their forces. (Comp. Thuc. i. 118, v. 14, 23 ; Arist. Pol. ii. 6, § 2.) Similar apprehensions often occur in after-times. After the battle of Leuctra, many of the Perioici and all the Helots revolted to the Thebans. They kept up this character to the very last, when they joined the Romans in the war, which extinguished the independence of Sparta. It is unnecessary to go much into detail. Enough has been said to show, that as long as Sparta was determined to maintain her tyrannical ascendancy over her subject population, all her institutions must have united to accomplish this one end. And such, indeed, was the case. In the first place we LYCURGUS. 853 need wonder no more at the co-existence of the three political elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, which, although varying at times in their relative positions, were on the whole pre- served as integral parts of the constitution, none being entiiely crushed by the other ; and therefore caused the discrepancy of the ancients in calling the Spartan constitution either a monarchy, or an aristocracy, or a democracy. It was the fear of their common enemy that kept all those unani- mously together, who were within the precincts of the privileged class. The same forbearance was shown in Sparta by the people, who constitutionally possessed the sovereign power, as that which we see existing in Rome for a long period after the comitia of the tribes had unlimited power in en- acting and abolishing laws. As in Rome it was the danger of foreign wars which induced the people to resign into the hands of a select body, the senate, that prerogative which they constitutionally pos- sessed, so at Sparta the assembly of the people voluntarily withdrew from the immediate exercise of all the powers it might have assumed, because they saw that they must, and that they could with safety entrust the management of public affairs to a few men who were themselves as much interested as the whole people in supporting the dominion of Sparta. In comparison with these subjects, indeed, every Spartan was a noble, and thus the Spartan constitution might on this account be termed an aristocracy, as well as that of the early Roman republic, Arnold, in his 2nd Appendix to his Thucydides, considers this the ground on which the Spartan government was looked upon in Greece as the model aristocracy, and always took the lead of the aristocratical against the democratical party. But G. C. Lewis (in the Philol. Mus. vol, ii. p, bQ^ &c.) has satisfactorily refuted this supposition, and shown that the condition of slaves and perioici never came into consideration with ancient politi- cians in determining the nature of a government, but that only the body politic, which comprised the citizens of full right, was taken notice of. Thus, Plato says, that Sparta was an aristocracy, not by reason of the perioici, but of the gerontes : and when he, Isocrates, and others, call it demo- cratic, they allude to the power of the whole Spartan order in making laws and in electing magistrates, to the equality of education, to the public tables, &c., which are democratical institu- tions in relation to the body of Spartans, though they were aristocratical in respect of the perioici and helots {Phil. Mus. vol. ii. p. 60). This is very true ; but nevertheless it was their dominion over their subjects, which fostered originally among the Spartans that predilection for aristocratical in- stitutions in other parts of Greece, because they were accustomed to consider them as the support of order and quiet, in opposition to the restless spirit of democracy. If we go more into the details of the institutions of Sparta, we find in the military aspect of the whole body of citizens, or rather soldiers, another striking result of this operative cause at the bottom of the whole political system. The Spartans formed, as it were, an army of invaders in an enemy's country, their city was a camp, every man a soldier, and very properly called efKppovpos from his seven- teenth to his sixtieth year. The peaceful life in the city was subjected to more restraints and hard- ships than the life during a real campaign, for the 3i 3