The Population and Policy of Sparta in the Fifth Century Author(s): G. B. Grundy Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 28 (1908), pp. 77-96 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/624558 . Accessed: 25/03/2013 15:01 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 141.161.91.14 on Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:01:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE POPULATION AND POLICY OF SPARTA IN THE FIFTH CENTURY. IT is, perhaps, somewhat venturesome to attempt to say anything upon a subject which demands full treatment from anyone who would write a History of Greece, and which has, therefore, been discussed at considerable length by many great historians. Still the research of the last twenty years has led to such material modifications of the views which formerly prevailed as to the exact significance of various important factors in the history of the Greek race, that the learned world has become emancipated from the tyranny of stereotyped tradition, and has ceased to regard deviation from the accustomed views as necessarily fanciful and untrue. The present writer is therefore encouraged to state his conclusions, strange and novel as they may appear at first reading, by the assured feeling that they will be addressed to many who will not reject them out of hand by reason of a certain strangeness and novelty, but will form a judgment as to their truth or otherwise on an examination of the premisses and of the validity of the logical arguments drawn therefrom. There are certain chapters in Greek history, which, in the form in which they are commonly presented to the student, convey an impression of irrationality-of a story taken from the history of a world in which the ordinary laws of cause and effect do not hold good. No one of these chapters leaves the student with a more unsatisfactory feeling that he has not arrived at the truth than that which relates to the position and policy of Sparta with reference to external politics. Lacedaemon was an enigma to its contemporaries. To that fact may be attributed the difficulty which has always existed with regard to its true presentment, and the very varied judgments which have been formed and expressed as to the motives and morale of its policy and actions. Sparta's conduct on various occasions has been subjected to the severest criticism not merely in modern but in ancient times; yet a consideration of the whole long story of this unique state is apt to leave behind it the feeling that its critics have judged it too severely, and have above all blamed it for not doing that which was not in its power to do. There is such an extra- ordinary consistency in that 'unambitious,' 'vacillating,' 'dilatory' policy, which even her friends and admirers condemned in the fifth century before Christ, and less passionate critics have condemned in the nineteenth century This content downloaded from 141.161.91.14 on Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:01:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 78 G. B. GRUNDY after Christ, that a thoughtful student of history may well feel some doubt as to whether that policy was dictated by an innate, unintelligent, selfish conservatism, or was due to motives of such a compelling character as rigidly to condition the relations of Sparta with the outside world. The statistics with regard to the population of Ancient Greece, which have been collected in Dr. Julius Beloch's work on the population of the Ancient World, have a significance which has been recognised but not always fully appreciated in relation to the history of some of the Greek States. But Dr. Beloch has not said the last word on the subject. He has failed to estimate the importance of the evidence which Greece at the present day affords. He tends also to discredit certain statements of numbers, from which larger estimates of the population of Greece in ancient times might be deduced than would be the case were the calculations founded on certain other existent data. The reasons which he gives for the rejection of this evidence are by no means conclusive, and betray at times a failure to appreciate certain factors in that Greek military history from which these data are largely drawn. The cultivated, and, indeed, cultivable area in Greece at the present day is undoubtedly smaller than it was in the flourishing days of the fifth century. Pausanias notices the ruin of the hillside cultivation, of which the traces are still apparent in many parts of Greece; and in a climate such as that of the Eastern Mediterranean this form of cultivation, if once allowed to go to ruin, is almost beyond the possibility of reconstitution, owing to the soil being washed down into the valleys by the heavy rains of the Autumn and Spring. There is perhaps no country in the civilised world which has had a more distressful economic history during the last two thousand years. Devastation and misgovernment have alike played havoc with the productiveness of a land whose cultivable area was, under the most favourable circumstances, but a little more than one-fifth of its whole extent. From returns published by the Greek Government in 1893 it appears that the total area in Greece which is capable of yielding food products other than cattle amounts to only twenty-two per cent. of the whole area of the country; and of this a very large proportion is in the one district of Thessaly. Moreover, the area actually cultivated in that year amounted to only fifteen per cent. of the surface of Greece. It is also stated-and this is a significant statement for our present purpose-that, were that seven per cent. of area, which is the difference between those two amounts, under cultivation at the present day, the necessity for the import of foreign grain would cease, and this in spite of the fact that large areas of land in the Peloponnese which are capable of yielding food products are sacrificed to the growth of the currant crop. But it is further reckoned that were the 72,000 acres of cornland which at present lie fallow in Thessaly brought under cultivation, the deficit of home food products would'be supplied; and this acreage is but a fraction of the seven per cent. to which reference has been made. It would therefore appear that at the present day, in spite of the cultivable area being in all probability appreciably smaller than it was in the fifth century before Christ, it would, if This content downloaded from 141.161.91.14 on Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:01:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions POLICY OF SPARTA IN THE FIFTH CENTURY 79 brought under cultivation, be enough and even more than enough to meet the needs of the present population in respect to food supply. When we turn to the evidence of the circumstances as they existed in the fifth century we find a state of things which contrasts strongly in certain important respects with that existent at the present day. 'The population of the country at that time was larger, probably far larger, than the country could support. All the states from Boeotia southwards seem to have been more or less dependent on foreign corn. This dependence was of old standing. It had existed in Boeotia, and, if in Boeotia, almost certainly in the less fertile districts of Greece, so early as the days of Hesiod.1 Aegina and Peloponnese were importing corn from the Pontus early in the fifth century.2 Later in the same century Peloponnese was importing corn from Sicily.3 The evidence with regard to the import of corn into Attica is so well known that it need not be produced in detail for the purposes of this paper. One passage is, however, worthy of special consideration, because it shows the magnitude of the deficiency in the case of this particular state. In the middle of the fourth century Attica was importing 400,000 medimnoi of corn annually from the Pontus alone, and ,800,000 annually from all parts.4 The passage from which these figures are derived seems to assume that this corn was intended for consumption within Attica itself, and not for re-export. If so, taking 7 medimnoi (and this is a liberal computation) as the annual consumption per head, it points to the fact that 114,000 of the population of Attica in the middle of the fourth century were dependent for food on imported corn, and this at a time when the population had very considerably decreased from what it had been .at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Taking these broad facts drawn from ancient and modern evidence into consideration, it seems impossible to accept Dr.