Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/255

CHANGE IN SPARTAN HABITS. 23b between 405 and 394 B. c., she possessed a large public revenue, derived from the tribute of the dependent cities. In 432 B. c Sparta is not merely cautious but backward ; especially averse to any action at a distance from home.i In 404 B. c., after the close of the war, she becomes aggressive, intermeddling, and ready for dealing with enemies, or making acquisitions remote as well as near. 2 In 432 B. c., her unsocial and exclusive manners, against Ihe rest of Greece, with her constant expulsion of other Greeks from hsr own city, stand prominent among her attributes ; 3 while at the end of the war, her foreign relations had acquired such great development as to become the principal matter of attention for her leading citizens as well as for her magistrates ; so that the influx of strangers into Sparta, and the efflux of Spartans into other parts of Greece became constant and inevitable. Hence the strictness of the Lykurgean discipline gave way on many points, and the principal Spartans especially struggled by various shifts to evade its obligations. It was to these leading men that the great prizes fell, enabling them to enrich themselves at the expense either of foreign subjects or of the public treasury, and tending more and more to aggravate that inequality of wealth among the Spartans which Aristotle so emphatically notices in his tune ; 4 since the smaller citizens had no similar opportunities opened to them, nor any industry of their own, to guard their properties against gradual subdivision and absorption, and to keep them in a permanent state of ability to furnish that contribution to the mess-table, for themselves and their sons, which formed the groundwork of Spartan political franchise. Moreover, the spec- ^TrapTiuTaif ovre yap ev rti KOIV& TJ}( Tro/leuf eariv ovdev, T^ovg uvayKa&fiEvovf Qepeiv ela<j>epovai TE /ca/ctif, etc. Contrast what Plato says in his dialogue of Alkibiades, i, c. 39, p. 122 E. about the great quantity of gold and silver then at Sparta. The dialogue must bear date at some period between 400-371 B. c. 1 See the speeches of the Corinthian envoys and of King Archidamus at Sparta (Thucyd. i, 70-84 ; compare also viii, 24-96). 2 Sec the criticisms upon Sparta, about 395 B. c. and 372 B. c. (Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 5, 11-15 ; vi, 3, 8-11). 3 Thucyd. i, 77. "A/u/crot yap rd rs ai9' v/j.uf avroilf voftipa roZf aP./lotf e^ere, etc. About the S-ivrj^aaiat of the Spartans see the speech of Peri kles in Thucyd. i, 138. 4 Aristotel. Politic, ii, 6, 10.