SECTION I. IDEA OF THE SPARTAN GOVERNMENT. LYCURGUS restored order and peace in Sparta, by the establishment of the senate. It consisted of 28 senátors, and the two kings presided in it. This august council, formed out of the wisest and most experienced men in the nation, served as a counterpoise to the two other authorities, that of the kings and that of the people; and whenever the one was for overbearing the other, the senate interposed, by joining the weakest, and thereby held the balance between both. At length, to prevent this body itself from abusing its power, which was very great, a kind of curb was annexed to it, by the nomination of five Ephori, who were elected out of the people, whose office lasted only one year, and who had authority not only over the senators, but the kings themselves. The power of the kings was extremely liinited, especially in the city, and in time of peace. In war they had the command of the fleets and armies, and at that time greater authority. * However, they had even then a kind of inspectors and commissioners assigned them, who served as a necessary council, and were generally chosen for that office, from their being out of favour with them, in order that there should be no connivance on their side, and the republic be the better served. There was almost continually some secret misunderstanding between the two kings; whether it proceeded from a natural jealousy between the two branches, or was the effect of the Spartan policy, to which their too great union might have given umbrage. The Ephori had a greater authority at Sparta than the tribunes of the Roman people. They presided in the election of the magistrates, and could call them to an account for their administration. Their power extended even to the persons of their kings, and of the princes of the blood royal, whom they had a right to imprison, which they actually used in regard to Pausanias. When they sat upon their seats in the tribunal, they did not rise up when the kings entered, which was a mark of respect paid them by all the other imagistrates, and seemed to imply a kind of superiority in the Ephori, from their representing the people; and it is observed of Agesilaus, that when he was seated upon his throne to dispense justice, and the Ephori came in, he never failed to rise up to do them honour. It is very probable, that before him, it was not usual for the kings to behave in that manner, Plutarch relating this behaviour of Agesilaus as peculiar to him. All public business was proposed and examined in the senate, and resolutions passed accordingly in the same place. But the decrees of the senate were not of force, unless ratified by the people. There must have been exceeding wisdom in the laws established by Lycurgus, for the government of Sparta, because, as long as they were exactly observed, no commotions or seditions of the people were ever known in the city, no change in the form of government was ever proposed, no private person usurped authority by violence, or made himself tyrant; the people never thought of depriving the two families, in which it had always been, of the sovereignty, nor did any of the kings ever attempt to assume more power than the laws admitted. This reflection, which both * Arist. de rep. l. ii. p. 331. Plat. in Agesil. p. 597. Xenophon and Polybius make, shows the idea they had of the wisdom of Lycurgus, in point of his policy, and the opinion we ought to have of it. In effect, no other city of Greece had this advantage, and all of them experienced many changes and vicissitudes for want of the like laws to perpetuate their form of government. The reason of this constancy and stability of the Lacedæmonians in their government and conduct is, that in Sparta the laws governed absolutely, and with sovereign authority; whereas the greatest part of the other Grecian cities, abandoned to the caprice of private men, to despotic power, to an arbitrary and irregular sway, experienced the truth of Plato's saying, that that city is miserable, where the magistrates command the laws, and not the laws the magistrates. The example of Argos and Messene, which I have already related, would alone suffice to show how just and true that reflection is. † After their return from the Trojan war, the Greeks, distinguished by the name of Dorians, established themselves in three cities of Peloponnesus, Lacedæmon, Argos, and Messene, and swore alliance and protection of each other. These three cities, governed alike by monarchical power, had the same advantages, except in the fertility of the lands where they were situated, in which the two latter carried it extremely. Argos and Messene however did not long preserve their superiority. The haughtiness of the kings, and the disobedience of the people, occasioned their fall from the flourishing condition in which they had been at first; and their example proved, says Plutarch after Plato, that it was the peculiar favour of the gods which gave the Spartans such a man as Lycurgus, capable of prescribing so wise and reasonable a plan of government. To support it without change, particular care was taken to educate the youth according to the laws and manners of the country, in order that they might become a second nature in them, by being early ingrafted into them, and confirmed by long habitude. The hard and sober manner in which they were brought up, inspired them during the rest of their lives with a natural taste for frugality and temperance, that distinguished them from all other people, and wonderfully adapted them to support the fatigues of war. Plato observes, that this salutary custom had banished from Sparta, and all the territory in its dependance, drunkenness, debauchery, and all their consequential disorders; insomuch that it was a crime punishable by law to drink wine to excess even in the Bacchannalia, which every where else were days of licence, wherein whole cities gave themselves up to the last excesses. They also accustomed the children from their earliest infancy to an entire submission to the laws, magistrates, and all in authority; and their education, properly speaking, was no more than an apprenticeship of obedience. It was for this reason Agesilaus advised Xenophon to send his children to Sparta, as to an excellent school, where they might learn the greatest and most noble of all sciences, "to obey and to command," for the one naturally leads on to the other. It was not only the mean, the poor, and the ordinary citizens, who were subjected in this *Plat. 1. iv. de leg. p. 715. Plat. 1. iii. de leg. p. 683-635. Plut. in Lycurg. p. 43. † Plat. 1. i. de leg. p. 657. || Ωςε την παιδείαν είναι μελετην ευπείθειας. Plut. in Lycurg. p. 58. § Μαθησομένες των μαθημάτων το καλλιςον, άρχεσθαι και αρχειν. Plut. in Agesil. p. 606. manner to the laws; but the rich, the powerful, the magistrates, and even kings; and they did not distinguish themselves from the others in any thing but more exact obedience; convinced that such behaviour was the surest means to their being obeyed and respected themselves by their inferiors. * Hence came the so much celebrated answers of Demaratus. Xerxes could not comprehend how the Lacedæmonians, who had no master to controul them, should be capable to confront dangers and death. "They "are free and independent of all men," replied Demaratus, "but the "law is above them, and commands them: and that law ordains that they "must conquer or die." † Upon another occasion, when somebody expressed their suprise, that being king he should suffer himself to be banished; 66 it is," said he, "because at Sparta the laws are stronger than the "kings." This appears evidently in the ready obedience of Agesilaus to the orders of the Ephori, when recalled by them to the support of his country; a delicate occasion for a king and conqueror; but to him it seemed more glorious to obey his country and the laws, than to command numerous armies, or even to conquer Asia. SECTION II. LOVE OF POVERTY INSTITUTED AT SPARTA. TO this entire submission to the laws of the state, Lycurgus added another principle of government no less admirable, which was to remove from Sparta all luxury, profusion, and magnificence to decry riches absolutely, to make poverty honourable, and at the same time necessary, by substituting a species of iron money for gold and silver coin, which till then had been current. I have explained elsewhere the measures that were used to make so difficult an undertaking succeed, and shall confine myself here to examining what judgment should be passed on it as it af fects a government. The poverty to which Lycurgus reduced Sparta, and which seemed to prohibit all conquest, and to deprive it of all means to augment its force and grandeur, was well adapted to rendering it powerful and flourishing. Such a constitution of government, which till then had no example, nor has since been imitated by any state, argues a great fund of prudence and policy in a legislator: and the medium conceived afterwards under Lysander, in continuing individuals in their poverty, and restoring to the public the use of gold and silver coin, was it not a wise amendment of what was too strained and excessive in that law of Lycurgus of which we are speaking? It seems if we consult only the common views of human prudence, that it is just to reason in this manner; but the event, which is an infallible evidence and arbiter in this place, obliges me to be of a quite different opinion. Whilst Sparta remained poor, and persisted in the contempt of gold and silver, which continued for several ages, she was powerful and glorious, and the commencement of her decline may be dated from the time when she began to break through the severe prohibition of Lycurgus against the use of gold and silver money, * Herod. 1. vii. c. 145, 146. + Plut. in Apoph. Lacon. p. 210. Idem. in Agesil. p. 603, 604. Multo gloriosius duxit, si institutis patriæ paruisset, quam si hello superasset Asiam. Cornel. Nep. in Agesil. c. iv. The education which he instituted for the young Lacedæmonians, the hard and sober life which he recommended with so much care, the painful and violent exercises of the body prescribed by him, the abstraction from all other application and employment; in a word, all his laws and institutions show, that his view was to form a people of soldiers, solely devoted to arms and military functions. I do not pretend to justify absolutely this scheme, which had its great inconveniences, and I have expressed my thoughts of it elsewhere. But admitting it good, we must confess that legislator showed great wisdom in the means he took for its execution. The almost inevitable danger of a people solely trained up for war, who have always arms in their hands, and what is most to be feared, is injustice, violence, ambition, the desire of increasing their power, of taking advantage of their neighbour's weakness, of oppressing them by force, of invading their land under false pretexts, which the lust of dominion never fails to suggest, and of extending their bounds as far as possible; all vices and extremes, which are horrid in private persons, and the ordinary commerce of life, but which men have thought fit to applaud as grandeur and glory in the persons of princes and conquerors. The great care of Lycurgus was to defend his people against this dangerous temptation. Without mentioning the other means he made use of he employed two which could not fail of producing their effect. * The first was to prohibit all navigation and war at sea to his citizens. The situation of his city, and the fear lest commerce, the usual source of luxury and depravation, should corrupt the purity of the Spartan manners, might have a share in this decree. But his principal motive was to put it out of his citizens power to project conquests, which a people shut up within the narrow bounds of a peninsula, could not carry very far without being masters at sea. The second means, still more efficacious, was to forbid all use of gold or silver money, and to introduce a species of iron coin in its stead, which was of great weight and small value, and could only be current at home. How with such money should foreign troops be raised and paid, fleets fitted out, and numerous armies kept up either by land or sea? So that the design of Lycurgus in rendering his city warlike, and putting arms into their hands, was not, as † Polybius observes, and Plutarch after him, to make them illustrious conquerors, who might carry war into remote regions, and subject great numbers of people. His sole end was, that, shut up within the extent of the lands and dominions left them by their ancestors, they should have no thoughts but of maintaining themselves in peace, and defending themselves successfully against such of their neighbours as should have the rashness to invade them; and for this they had occasion for neither gold nor silver, finding in their own country, and still more in their sober and temperate manner of life, all that was suf ficient for the support of their armies, when they did not quit their own, or the lands of their neighbours. Now, says Polybius, this plan once admitted, it must be allowed that there is nothing more wise nor more happily conceived than the institutions of Lycurgus, for the maintaining a people in the possession of their liberty, and to secure to them the enjoyment of peace and tranquility. In effect let us imagine a little republic, like that of Sparta, of which all the citizens are inured to labour, accustomed to live on a little, warlike, cour * 'ATTIGYETO DE AUTOIS VAUTAIS DIVAI, NAi varpayer. Plut. in iustit. Lacon. p. 259. † Polyb. I. vi. p. 491. Plut. in Lycurg, p. 59. ageous, intrepid; and that the fundamental principle of this small republic, is to do no wrong to any one, nor to disturb its neighbours, nor invade their lands or interests, but, on the contrary, to declare in favour of the oppressed against the injustice and violence of oppressors; is it not certain that such a republic, surrounded by a great number of states of equal extent, would be generally respected by all the neighbouring people, would become the supreme arbiter of all their quarrels, and exercise an empire over them, by so much the more glorious and lasting as it would be voluntary, and founded solely in the opinion those neighbours would have of its virtue, justice and valour? * This was the end Lycurgus proposed to himself. Convinced that the happiness of a city, like that of a private person, depends upon virtue, and upon being well within itself, he regulated Sparta so as it might always suffice to its own happiness, and act upon principles of wisdom and equity. From thence arose that universal esteem of the neighbouring people and even of strangers for the Lacedæmonians, who asked of them neither money, ships, nor troops, but only that they would lend them a Spartan to command their armies; and when they had obtained their request, they paid him entire obedience, with every kind of honour and respect. In this manner the Sicilians obeyed Gylippus, the Chalcidians, Brasidas, and alt the Greeks of Asia, Lysander, Callacratidas, and Agesilaus; † regarding the city of Sparta as a model for all others in the arts of living and governing. The epocha of the declension of Sparta, begins with the open violation of Lycurgus' laws. I do not pretend that they had always been exactly observed till that time, which was far from the case; but the spirit and genius of those laws had almost always prevailed with the majority of the persons who governed. No sooner had the ambition of reigning over all Greece inspired them with the design of having naval armies and foreign troops, and that money was necessary for the support of those forces, than Sparta forgetting her ancient maxims, saw herself reduced to have recourse to the barbarians, which till then she had detested, and basely to make her court to the kings of Persia, whom she had formerly vanquished with so much glory: and that only to draw from them some aids of money and troops against their own brethren, that is to say, against people born and settled in Greece like themselves. Thus had they the imprudence and misfortune to recal with gold and silver into Sparta all the vices and crimes which the iron money had banished, and to prepare the way for the changes which ensued, and were the cause of their ruin. And this infinitely exalts the wisdom of Lycurgus, in having foreseen, at such a distance, what might strike at the happiness of his citizens, and provided salutary remedies against it in the form of government he established at Sparta. Another legislator, who had preceded him several ages, has a right to share this glory with him. SECTION III. LAWS ESTABLISHED BY MINOS IN CRETE. ALL the world knows, that Lycurgus had formed the plan of most of his laws upon the model of those observed in the island of Crete, where * Plut. p. 58. † Προς συμπασαν την των Σπαρτιατων πολιν, ωσπερ παιδαγωγον η διδασκαλου ευχήμονος βια και τεταγμένης αποβλέποντες. |