The Growth of Spartan Policy Author(S): Guy Dickins Source: the Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol
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The Growth of Spartan Policy Author(s): Guy Dickins Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 32 (1912), pp. 1-42 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/624130 . Accessed: 28/03/2013 14:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 137.149.3.15 on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:24:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE GROWTH OF SPARTAN POLICY. THE relation of Sparta to the other Greek states in the early days of Greek history has been little examined and less understood. As a result two erroneous hypotheses have found their way into the stock-in-trade of the ancient historian. The first of these is that the development of Sparta was quite exceptional and unique among the Greek states; the second is that the foreign policy of Sparta was wholly opportunist, or, so far as a guiding principle can be traced, was mainly influenced by the domestic question of the helots.1 It is the object of this article to prove :- (I) That down to 550 Sparta underwent a political development closely analogous to that of the rest of Greece. (2) That from 650 onwards for nearly a century and a half the foreign policy of Sparta was dominated primarily by one consideration, and that not the population question, which did not arise at all until the beginning of the fifth century and only became of supreme importance in the fourth, but rather the issue of a conflict between the kings and the ephors lasting in an acute form for over fifty years and in a milder degree for almost the whole of Spartan history. I shall attempt to shew that the vacillations in Spartan policy are due to the vagaries of the conflict, which was acute in the days of Cleomenes and Pausanias, as in the later reigns of Agis III. and Cleomenes III., but latent and smouldering from the end of the second Messenian War onwards. The article falls naturally into four divisions:- A.-Sparta before 550. B.-The settlement of 550. C.U-Reaction under Cleomenes and Pausanias. D.-Passive resistance under Archidamus and Agis. A.-Before 550. The maze of legend and fiction and divergent tradition that bewilders any searcher among the tangles of early Spartan history is at first over- 1 Grundy, Thucydides, ch. viii., gives the prominently in Busolt, Die Lacedaimonier, most recent expression of this theory (at any pp. 26 foll. for the fifth century), which appears rate H.S.-VOL. XXXII B This content downloaded from 137.149.3.15 on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:24:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 2 GUY DICKINS powering, but before long he discovers that the great mass of variegated information is due simply to the fact that there is no sure tradition on which to build, and that consequently the mythopoeic and moralising tendencies of the fourth- and third-century antiquarians had an almost free and unrestricted range. Our first object must be to cut away this luxurious undergrowth and to disentangle the roots of fifth-century tradition that underlie it; not that fifth century information is necessarily more accurate, but because it reproduces genuine early traditions without the rationalising and amalgamating methods that come in with Ephorus. The earliest Greek tradition about Sparta and its constitution is quite simple. It was observed that Sparta presented features different from those of other Greek states, and accordingly the conclusion was drawn that the founders of the Spartan state had inculcated ideas different from those of other Greek founders. Thus Pindar 2 attributes Spartan peculiarities to the enactments of Aegimius, the king in Pindus from whose land the Dorians derived their mythical origin. Some of these principles appear without any explanation in the fragments of Tyrtaeus," and we are therefore justified in concluding that Sparta possessed traditional political precepts as early as the time of the second Messenian War. Hellanicus 4 too reproduces without qualification the theory that these Spartan rules of life were derived from their founders, the Heracleidae. Even Xenophon,5 at a time when other theories held the field, was prepared to accept the original tradition. But we find another version already prominent by the time of Herodotus.6 According to this story Sparta had not always enjoyed the same good government that was the admiration of later political philosophers, but had passed through a period of Kaxovola, from which she had been rescued only by stringent reforms. Two phases of this version found acceptance. According to one the Spartans received oracles from Delphi which induced them to change their constitution; according to the other they followed Cretan models. Herodotus associates both stories with the name of Lycurgus, but definitely adopts the Cretan variant, and makes Lycurgus uncle of Leobotas, the Agiad, who reigned about 900 B.c. in the traditional chronology. This variant Herodotus calls the Spartan variant. Its next appearance is in Ephorus,7 who makes a manful effort to harmonise all the stories, but Nieses has shewn I think conclusively, that it is the later and feebler variant, due without doubt to the desire for associating Lycurgus with the house of the Agiadae, as the more prominent house of recent years, instead of with the Eurypontidae. The other, or Delphian, variant is presumably that accepted by Simonides,9 who calls Lycurgus uncle and guardian of Charilaus, the Eurypontid, who reigned about 800 B.c., and 2 Pyth. i. 64. 6 i. 65, 66. a Meyer's view that these passages are fourth- 7 ap. Strab. x. 4. 16-22. century forgeries will be examined later. s Hermes, 1907, p. 440. * ap. Strab. viii. 5. 5. 9 ap. Plut. Lyc. 2 (the fifth-century historian 5 Resp. Lac. i. 2 and viii. 5. not the poet). This content downloaded from 137.149.3.15 on Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:24:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE GROWTH OF SPARTAN POLICY 3 by Thucydides,'o who puts the change of constitution at the same date. But it is remarkable that while Simonides, so far as we know, accepts Lycurgus without question as the author of the change, Herodotus like the oracle displays some doubt " as to Lycurgus' precise personality, while Thucydides, writing with Herodotus before him, rejects the name of Lycurgus altogether as not proven. Meyer 12 has well pointed out that the position of Lycurgus in the story is never completely assured before the fourth century, and is probably due to the machinations of king Pausanias. We need not pursue tradition further. Ephorus confuses the story by an amalgamation of all possible traditions; Xenophon adds the personality of Lycurgus to the earliest version. Plato,'3 Aristotle,'4 and the sources of Plutarch 5 are all more or less dependent on Ephorus. Only one new fact calls for comment, but that is of great importance. Aristotle 16 saw at Olympia a discus inscribed with the names of Lycurgus and Iphitus as supporters of the or Olympian truce, and the same discus was still pointed out to tourists.cXeLpla in the days of Pausanias.'7 The soundest early Greek tradition then accepts a change of constitution in the days of Charilaus about 800 B.c., but does not necessarily couple it with the name of Lycurgus; and this is not because Thucydides or Hellanicus or even Pindar was ignorant of the name of Lycurgus, since, as will be shewn later, the Lycurgus legend was certainly known in Sparta in 550, but because they were not prepared to associate his name with this particular change. Herodotus seems to have been the first who, knowing of the constitutional change and knowing of Lycurgus, boldly connected the two, and thus set a standard for the fourth century. Apparently he did not convince Thucydides. The passage in Thucydides is of great importance, and must be quoted in full.'s He says that Sparta got her constitution earlier than any other Greek state, i.e. earlier than the traditional reforms of Zaleucus at Locri in 660, but reached a complete settlement later than any other, i.e. her complete settle- ment came distinctly later than her original constitution. The latter he dates before 800, evidently referring to the general tradition about the reign of Charilaus. The date assigned by him to the complete settlement is a matter for argument. He may mean one of two things: (1) the settlement arranged in most Greek states during the eighth century between the nobles and the hereditary monarchy. In Sparta, as will be shewn later, this settle- ment took place between 720 and 700, later, therefore, than the traditional settlement in Athens in 752; or (2) the settlement between aristocracy and o10 18 rc' i. 18. ;I ydc laice8atlwv ~LueT&74)J' ICT~LOLJ 'v~v 11 i. 65. EVOLKOUV'7W1'aUTG)JJ AC.)plWj' o~ri TrraELo7OJ Wv S4Ev 12 F'orschungen, i.