Читать книгу Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks - Edward Wortley Montagu - Страница 16

[print edition page 11]

CHAPTER I

Of the Republick of Sparta

All the free states of Greece were at first monarchial,a and seem to owe their liberty rather to the injudicious oppressions of their respective Kings, than to any natural propensity in the people to alter their form of Government. But as they had smarted so severely under an excess of power lodged in the hands of one man, they were too apt to run into the other extreme, Democracy; a state of government the most subject of all others to disunion and faction.

Of all the Grecian states, that of Sparta seems to have been the most unhappy, before their government was new-modelled by Lycurgus. The authority of their Kings and their laws (as Plutarch informs us) were [16] alike trampled upon and despised. Nothing could restrain the insolence of the headstrong encroaching populace; and the whole government sunk into Anarchy and confusion. From this deplorable situation the wisdom and virtue of one great man raised his country to that height of power, which was the envy and the terror of her neighbours. A convincing proof how far the influence of one great and good man will operate towards reforming

[print edition page 12]

the most bold licentious people, when he has once thoroughly acquired their esteem and confidence! Upon this principle Lycurgus founded his plan of totally altering and new-moulding the constitution of his country. A design, all circumstances considered, the most daring, and the most happily executed, of any yet immortalised in history.a

Lycurgus succeeded to the moiety2 of the crown of Sparta at the death of his elder brother; but his brother’s widow declaring herself with child, and that child proving to be a son, he immediately resigned the regal dignity to the new-born infant, and governed as protector and guardian of the young prince during his minority. The generous and disinterested behaviour of Lycurgus upon this occasion endeared him greatly to the people; who had already experienced [17] the happy effect of his wise and equitable administration. But to avoid the malice of the Queen-mother and her faction, who accused him of designs upon the crown, he prudently quitted both the government and his country. In his travels during this voluntary exile, he drew up and thoroughly digested his great scheme of reformation. He visited all those states which at that time were most eminent for the wisdom of their laws, or the form of their constitution. He carefully observed all the different institutions, and the good or bad effects which they respectively produced on the manners of each people. He took care to avoid what he judged to be defects; but selected whatever he found calculated to promote the happiness of a people; and with these materials he formed his so much celebrated plan of legislation, which he very soon had an opportunity of reducing to practice. For the Spartans, thoroughly sensible of the difference between the administration of Lycurgus and that of their Kings, not only earnestly wished for his presence, but sent repeated deputations to intreat him to return, and free them from those numerous disorders under which their country at that time laboured. As the request of the people was unanimous, and the Kings no ways opposed his return, he judged it the critical time for [18] the execution of his scheme. For he found affairs at home in the distracted situation they had been represented, and the whole body of the people in a disposition proper for his purpose.

[print edition page 13]

Lycurgus began his reform with a change in the constitution, which at that time consisted of a confused medley of hereditary monarchy divided between two families, and a disorderly Democracy, utterly destitute of the balance of a third intermediate power, a circumstance so essential to the duration of all mixed governments.4 To remedy this evil, he established a senate with such a degree of power, as might fix them the inexpugnable barrier of the constitution against the encroachments either of Kings or people. The Crown of Sparta had been long divided between two families descended originally from the same ancestor, who jointly enjoyed the succession. But though Lycurgus was sensible that all the mischiefs which had happened to the state, arose from this absurd division of the regal power, yet he made no alteration as to the succession of the two families. Any innovation in so nice a point might have proved an endless source of civil commotions, from the pretensions of that line which should happen to be excluded. He therefore left them the [19] title and the insignia of royalty, but limited their authority, which he confined to the business of war and religion. To the people he gave the privilege of electing the senators, and giving their sanction to those laws which the Kings and senate should approve.

When Lycurgus had regulated the government, he undertook a task more arduous than any of the fabled labours of Hercules.5 This was to new-mould his countrymen, by extirpating all the destructive passions,

[print edition page 14]

and raising them above every weakness and infirmity of human nature. A scheme which all the great Philosophers had taught in theory, but none except Lycurgus was ever able to reduce to practice.

As he found the two extremes, of great wealth and great indigence, were the source of infinite mischiefs in a free state, he divided the lands of the whole territory into equal lots, proportioned to the number of the inhabitants. He appointed publick tables, at which he enjoined all the citizens to eat together without distinction;6 and he subjected every man, even the Kings themselves, to a fine,a if they should violate this law by [20] eating at their own houses. Their diet was plain, simple, and regulated by the law, and distributed amongst the guests in equal portions. Every member was obliged monthly to contribute his quota for the provision of his respective table. The conversation allowed at these publick repasts turned wholly upon such subjects as tended most to improve the minds of the younger sort in the principles of wisdom and virtue. Hence, as Xenophon observes, they were schools not only for temperance and sobriety, but also for instruction.7 Thus Lycurgus introduced a perfect equality amongst his countrymen. The highest and the lowest fared alike as to diet, were all lodged and cloathed alike, without the least variation either in fashion or materials.

When by these means he had exterminated every species of luxury, he next removed all temptation to the acquisition of wealth, that fatal source of the innumerable evils which prevailed in every other country. He effected this with his usual policy, by forbidding the currency of gold and silver money, and substituting an iron coinage of great weight and little value, which continued the only current coin through the whole Spartan dominions for several ages. [21]

To bar up the entrance of Wealth, and guard his citizens against the contagion of Corruption, he absolutely prohibited navigation and

[print edition page 15]

commerce, though his country contained a large extent of sea-coast, furnished with excellent harbours. He allowed as little intercourse as possible with foreigners, nor suffered any of his countrymen to visit the neighbouring states, unless when the publick business required it, lest they should be infected with their vices. Agriculture, and such mechanick trades as were absolutely necessary for their subsistence, he confined to their slaves the Ilotes;9 but he banished all those arts which tended either to debase the mind, or enervate the body. Musick he encouraged, and poetry he admitted, but both subject to the inspection of the magistrates.a Thus, by the equal partition of the lands, and the abolition of gold and silver money, he at once preserved his country from luxury, avarice, and all those evils which arise from an irregular indulgence of the passions, as well as all contentions about property, with their consequence, vexatious law-suits.

To insure the observance of his laws to the latest posterity, he next formed proper [22] regulations for the education of their children, which he esteemed one of the greatest duties of a legislator. His grand maxim was,

That children were the property of the state, to whom alone their education was to be intrusted.

In their first infancy, the nurses were instructed to indulge them neither in their diet, nor in those little froward humours which are so peculiar to that age; to inure them to bear cold and fasting; to conquer their first fears by accustoming them to solitude and darkness; and to prepare them for that stricter state of discipline, to which they were soon to be initiated.

When arrived at the age of seven years, they were taken from the nurses, and placed in their proper classes. The diet and cloathing of all were the same, just sufficient to support nature, and defend them from the inclemency of the seasons; and they all lodged alike in the same dormitory on beds of reeds, to which for the sake of warmth they were allowed

[print edition page 16]

in winter to add the down of thistles. Their sports and exercises were such as contributed to render their limbs supple, and their bodies compact and firm. They were accustomed to run up the steepest rocks barefoot; and swimming, dancing, hunting, boxing, and wrestling, were their constant diversions. Lycurgus was equally solicitous in training up the youth to a habit [23] of passive courage as well as active. They were taught to despise pain no less than danger, and to bear the severest scourgings with the most invincible constancy and resolution. For to flinch under the strokes, or to exhibit the least sign of any sense of pain, was deemed highly infamous.

Nor were the minds of the Spartan youth cultivated with less care. Their learning, as Plutarch informs us, was sufficient for their occasions, for Lycurgus admitted nothing but what was truly useful. They carefully instilled into their tender minds the great duties of religion, and the sacred indispensable obligation of an oath, and trained them up in the best of sciences, the principles of wisdom and virtue. The love of their Country seemed to be almost innate; and this leading maxim,

That every Spartan was the property of his country, and had no right over himself,

was by the force of education incorporated into their very nature.

When they arrived to manhood they were inrolled in their militia, and allowed to be present in their publick assemblies: Privileges which only subjected them to a different discipline. For the employments and way of living of the citizens of Sparta were fixed, and settled by as strict regulations as in an army upon actual service. When [24] they took the field, indeed, the rigour of their discipline with respect to diet and the ornament of their persons was much softened, so that the Spartans were the only people in the universe, to whom the toils of war afforded ease and relaxation. In fact, Lycurgus’s plan of civil government was evidently designed to preserve his country free and independent, and to form the minds of his citizens for the enjoyment of that rational and manly happiness which can find no place in a breast enslaved by the pleasures of the senses, or ruffled by the passions; and the military regulations which he established, were as plainly calculated for the protection of his country

[print edition page 17]

from the encroachments of her ambitious neighbours.a For he left no alternative to his people but death or victory; and he laid them under a necessity of observing those regulations, by substituting the valour of the inhabitants in the place of walls and fortifications for the defence of their city.

If we reflect that human nature is at all times and in all places the same, it seems to the last degree astonishing, how Lycurgus could be able to introduce such a self-denying plan of discipline amongst a disorderly licentious people: A scheme, which not only [25] levelled at once all distinction, as to property, between the richest and the poorest individual, but compelled the greatest persons in the state to submit to a regimen which allowed only the bare necessaries of life, excluding every thing which in the opinion of mankind seems essential to its comforts and enjoyments. I observed before, that he had secured the esteem and confidence of his countrymen; and there was, besides, at that time a very lucky concurrence of circumstances in his favour. The two Kings were men of little spirit, and less abilities, and the people were glad to exchange their disorderly state for any settled form of government. By his establishment of a Senate, consisting of thirty persons who held their seats for life, and to whom he committed the supreme power in civil affairs, he brought the principal nobility into his scheme, as they naturally expected a share in a government which they plainly saw inclined so much to an Aristocracy. Even the two Kings very readily accepted seats in his senate, to secure some degree of authority. He awed the people into obedience by the sanction he procured for his scheme from the oracle at Delphos,11 whose decisions were, at that time, revered by all Greece as divine and

[print edition page 18]

infallible. But the greatest difficulty he had to encounter, was, to procure [26] the equal partition of the lands. The very first proposal met with so violent an opposition from the men of fortune, that a fray13 ensued, in which Lycurgus lost one of his eyes. But the people, struck with the sight of the blood of this admired legislator, seized the offender, one Alcander, a young man of a hot, but not disingenuous disposition, and gave him up to Lycurgus to be punished, at discretion. But the humane and generous behaviour of Lycurgus quickly made a convert of Alcander, and wrought such a change, that from an enemy he became his greatest admirer and advocate with the people.

Plutarch and the rest of the Greek historians leave us greatly in the dark as to the means by which Lycurgus was able to make so bitter a pill, as the division of property, go down with the wealthy part of his countrymen. They tell us indeed, that he carried his point by the gentle method of reasoning and persuasion, joined to that religious awe which the divine sanction of the oracle impressed so deeply on the minds of the citizens. But the cause, in my opinion, does not seem equal to the effect. For the furious opposition which the rich made to the very first motion for such a distribution of property, evinces plainly, that they looked upon the responses of the oracle as mere priest-craft, and treated it as the esprits-forts have done reli-[27]gion in modern times;14 I mean, as a state-engine fit only to be played off upon the common people. It seems most probable, in my opinion, that as he effected the change in the constitution by the distribution of the supreme power amongst the principal persons, when he formed his senate; so the equal partition of property was the bait thrown out to bring over the body of the people intirely to his interest. I should rather think that he compelled the rich to submit to so grating

[print edition page 19]

a measure, by the assistance of the poorer citizens, who were vastly the majority.

As soon as Lycurgus had thoroughly settled his new policy, and by his care and assiduity imprinted his laws so deeply in the minds and manners of his countrymen, that he judged the constitution able to support itself, and stand upon its own bottom, his last scheme was, to fix and perpetuate its duration down to the latest posterity, as far as human prudence and human means could effect it. To bring his scheme to bear, he had again recourse to the same pious artifice which had succeeded so well in the beginning. He told the people in a general assembly, that he could not possibly put the finishing stroke to his new establishment, which was the most essential point, till he had again consulted the oracle. As they all expressed the greatest eagerness for his undertaking the journey, he [28] laid hold of so fair an opportunity to bind the Kings, senate, and people, by the most solemn oaths, to the strict observance of his new form of government, and not to attempt the least alteration in any one particular till his return from Delphos. He had now completed the great design which he had long in view, and bid an eternal adieu to his country. The question he put to the oracle was, “Whether the laws he had already established, were rightly formed to make and preserve his countrymen virtuous and happy?” The answer he received was just as favourable as he desired. It was, “That his laws were excellently well calculated for that purpose; and that Sparta should continue to be the most renowned city in the world, as long as her citizens persisted in the observance of the laws of Lycurgus.” He transmitted both the question and the answer home to Sparta in writing, and devoted the remainder of his life to voluntary banishment. The accounts in history of the end of this great man are very uncertain. Plutarch affirms, that as his resolution was never to release his countrymen from the obligation of the oath he had laid them under, he put a voluntary end to his life at Delphos by fasting. Plutarch extols the death of Lycurgus in very pompous terms, as a most unexampled instance of heroic patriotism, since he bequeathed, as he [29] terms it, his death to his country, as the perpetual guardian to that happiness, which he had procured for them during his life-time. Yet the same historian acknowledges another tradition, that Lycurgus ended his days in the island of Crete, and desired, as

[print edition page 20]

his last request, that his body should be burnt, and his ashes thrown into the sea;a lest, if his remains should at any time be carried back to Sparta, his countrymen might look upon themselves as released from their oath as much as if he had returned alive, and be induced to alter his form of government. I own, I prefer this latter account, as more agreeable to the genius and policy of that wise and truly disinterested legislator.

The Spartans, as Plutarch asserts, held the first rank in Greece for discipline and reputation full five hundred years, by strictly adhering to the laws of Lycurgus; which not one of their Kings ever infringed for fourteen successions quite down to the reign of the first Agis. For he will not allow the creation of those magistrates called the Ephori to be any innovation in the constitution, since he affirms it to have been, “not a relaxation, but an extension, of the civil polity.”b But notwithstanding the gloss thrown over the institution of the Ephori by this nice distinction [30] of Plutarch’s, it certainly induced as fatal a change into the Spartan constitution, as the Tribuneship of the people, which was formed upon that model, did afterwards into the Roman. For instead of enlarging and strengthening the aristocratical power, as Plutarch asserts, they gradually usurped the whole government, and formed themselves into a most tyrannical Oligarchy.

The Ephori (a Greek word signifying inspectors or overseers) were five in number, and elected annually by the people out of their own body. The exact time of the origin of this institution, and of the authority annexed to their office, is quite uncertain. Herodotus ascribes it to Lycurgus; Xenophon to Lycurgus jointly with the principal citizens of Sparta. Aristotle and Plutarch fix it under the reign of Theopompus and Polydorus, and attribute the institution expressly to the former of those princes, about 130 years after the death of Lycurgus.15 I cannot but subscribe to this opinion as the most probable, because the first political contest we meet with

[print edition page 21]

at Sparta happened under the reign of those princes, when the people endeavoured to extend their privileges beyond the limits prescribed by Lycurgus. But as the joint opposition of the Kings and senate was equally warm, the creation of this magistracy out of the body of the people, seems to [31] have been the step taken at that time to compromise the affair, and restore the publick tranquillity: A measure which the Roman senate copied afterwards, in the erection of the Tribuneship, when their people mutinied, and made that memorable secession to the mons sacer.18 I am confirmed in this opinion by the relation which Aristotle gives us of a remarkable dispute between Theopompus and his wife upon that occasion.a The Queen, much dissatisfied with the institution of the Ephori, reproached her husband greatly for submitting to such a diminution of the regal authority, and asked him if he was not ashamed to transmit the crown to his posterity so much weaker and worse circumstanced, than he received it from his father. His answer, which is recorded amongst the laconic bons mots,19 was,

No, for I transmit it more lasting.b

But the event shewed that the lady was a better politician, as well as truer prophet, than her husband. Indeed the nature of their office, the circumstances of their election, and the authority they assumed, are convincing proofs that their office was first extorted, and their power afterwards gradually extended, by the violence of the people, irritated too probably by the oppres-[32]sive behaviour of the Kings and senate. For

[print edition page 22]

whether their power extended no farther than to decide, when the two Kings differed in opinion, and to over-rule in favour of him whose sentiments should be most conducive to the publick interest, as we are told by Plutarch in the life of Agis;22 or whether they were at first only select friends, whom the Kings appointed as deputies in their absence, when they were both compelled to take the field together in their long wars with the Messenians, as the same author tells us by the mouth of his hero Cleomenes,23 is a point, which history does not afford us light enough to determine. This however is certain, from the concurrent voice of all the antient historians, that at last they not only seized upon every branch of the administration, but assumed the power of imprisoning, deposing, and even putting their Kings to death by their own authority. The Kings too, in return, sometimes bribed, sometimes deposed or murdered the Ephori, and employed their whole interest to procure such persons to be elected, as they judged would be most tractable. I look therefore upon the creation of the Ephori as a breach in the Spartan constitution, which proved the first inlet to faction and corruption. For that these evils took rise from the institution of the Ephori, is evident [33] from the testimony of Aristotle, “who thought it extremely impolitick to elect magistrates, vested with the supreme power in the state, out of the body of the people; because it often happened, that men extremely indigent were raised in this manner to the helm, whom their very poverty tempted to become venal. For the Ephori, as he affirms, had not only been frequently guilty of bribery before his time, but, even at the very time he wrote, some of those magistrates, corrupted by money, used their utmost endeavours, at the publick repasts, to accomplish the destruction of the whole city. He adds too, that as their power was so great as to amount to a perfect tyranny, the Kings themselves were necessitated to court their favour by such methods as greatly hurt the constitution, which from an Aristocracy, degenerated into an absolute Democracy. For that magistracy alone had engrossed the whole government.”a

[print edition page 23]

From these remarks of the judicious Aristotle, it is evident that the Ephori had totally destroyed the balance of power established by Lycurgus. From the tyranny therefore of this magistracy proceeded those convulsions which so frequently shook the state of Sparta, and at last gradually brought on its [34] total subversion. But though this fatal alteration in the Spartan constitution must be imputed to the intrigues of the Ephori and their faction, yet it could never, in my opinion, have been effected, without a previous degeneracy in their manners; which must have been the consequence of some deviation from the maxims of Lycurgus.

It appears evidently from the testimony of Polybius and Plutarch, that the great scheme of the Spartan legislator was, to provide for the lasting security of his country against all foreign invasions, and to perpetuate the blessings of liberty and independency to the people. By the generous plan of discipline which he established, he rendered his countrymen invincible at home. By banishing gold and silver, and prohibiting commerce and the use of shipping, he proposed to confine the Spartans within the limits of their own territories; and by taking away the means, to repress all desires of making conquests upon their neighbours. But the same love of glory and of their country which made them so terrible in the field, quickly produced ambition and a lust of domination; and ambition as naturally opened the way for avarice and corruption. For Polybius truly observes, that as long as they extended [35] their views no farther than the dominion over their neighbouring states, the produce of their own country was sufficient for what supplies they had occasion for in such short excursions.a But when, in direct violation of the laws of Lycurgus, they began to undertake more distant expeditions both by sea and land, they quickly felt the want of a publick fund to defray their extraordinary expences. For they found by experience, that neither their iron money, nor their method of trucking25 the annual produce of their own lands for such commodities as they wanted (which was the only traffick allowed by

[print edition page 24]

the laws of Lycurgus) could possibly answer their demands upon those occasions. Hence their ambition, as the same historian remarks, laid them under the scandalous necessity of paying servile court to the Persian monarchs for pecuniary supplies and subsidies, to impose heavy tributes upon the conquered islands, and to exact money from the other Grecian states, as occasions required.

Historians unanimously agree, that wealth, with its attendants luxury and corruption, gained admission at Sparta in the reign of the first Agis. Lysander, like a Hero and a Politician; a man of the greatest abilities and the greatest dishonesty that Sparta ever produced; rapacious after money, which at the same time he despised, and a slave only to [36] ambition, was the author of an innovation so fatal to the manners of his countrymen. After he had enabled his country to give law to all Greece by his conquest of Athens,27 he sent home that immense mass of wealth, which the plunder of so many states had put into his possession. The most sensible men amongst the Spartans, dreading the fatal consequences of this capital breach of the institutions of their legislator, protested strongly before the Ephori against the introduction of gold and silver, as pests destructive to the publick. The Ephori referred it to the decision of the senate, who, dazzled with the lustre of that money, to which ’till that time they had been utter strangers, decreed, “That gold and silver money might be admitted for the service of the state; but made it death, if any should ever be found in the possession of a private person.” This decision Plutarch censures as weak and sophistical.a As if Lycurgus was only afraid simply of money, and not of that dangerous love of money which is generally its concomitant; a passion which is so far from being rooted out by the restraint laid upon private persons, that it was rather inflamed by the esteem and value which was set upon money by the publick. Thus, as he justly remarks, whilst [37] they barred up the houses of private citizens against the entrance of Wealth by the

[print edition page 25]

terror and safeguard of the Law, they left their minds more exposed to the love of money and the influence of corruption, by raising an universal admiration and desire of it, as something great and respectable. The truth of this remark appears by the instance given us by Plutarch, of one Thorax, a great friend of Lysander’s, who was put to death by the Ephori, upon proof that a quantity of silver had been actually found in his possession.29

From that time Sparta became venal, and grew extremely fond of subsidies from foreign powers. Agesilaus, who succeeded Agis, and was one of the greatest of their Kings, behaved in the latter part of his life more like a captain of a band of mercenaries, than a King of Sparta. He received a large subsidy from Tachos, at that time King of Egypt, and entered into his service with a body of troops which he had raised for that purpose. But when Nectanabis, who had rebelled against his uncle Tachos, offered him more advantageous terms, he quitted the unfortunate Monarch and went over to his rebellious nephew, pleading the interest of his country in excuse for so treacherous and infamous an action.a So great a change had [38] the introduction of money already made in the manners of the leading Spartans!

Plutarch dates the first origin of corruption, that disease of the body politick, and consequently the decline of Sparta, from that memorable period, when the Spartans having subverted the domination of Athens, glutted themselves (as he terms it) with gold and silver.b For when once the love of money had crept into their city, and avarice and the most sordid meanness grew up with the possession, as luxury, effeminacy, and dissipation did with the enjoyment of wealth, Sparta was deprived of many of her ancient glories and advantages, and sunk greatly both in power and reputation, till the reign of Agis and Leonidas.c But as

[print edition page 26]

the original allotments of land were yet preserved (the number of which Lycurgus had fixed and decreed to be kept up by a particular law) and were transmitted down from father to son by hereditary succession, the same constitutional order and equality still remaining, raised up the state again, however, from other political lapses.

Under the reigns of those two Kings happened the mortal blow, which subverted the very foundation of their constitution. Epi-[39]tadeus, one of the Ephori, upon a quarrel with his son, carried his resentment so far as to procure a law which permitted everyone to alienate their hereditary lands, either by gift or sale, during their life-time, or by will at their decease. This law produced a fatal alteration in the landed property. For as Leonidas, one of their Kings, who had lived a long time at the court of Seleucus, and married a lady of that country, had introduced the pomp and luxury of the East at his return to Sparta, the old institutions of Lycurgus, which had fallen into disuse, were by his example soon treated with contempt.a Hence the necessity of the luxurious, and the extortion of the avaricious, threw the whole property into so few hands, that out of seven hundred, the number to which the ancient Spartan families were then reduced, about one hundred only were in possession of their respective hereditary lands allotted by Lycurgus.b The rest, as Plutarch observes, lived an idle life in the city, an indigent abject herd, alike destitute of fortune and employment; in their wars abroad, indolent dispirited dastards;33 at home ever ripe for sedition and insurrections, and greedily catching at every opportunity of embroiling [40] affairs, in hopes of such a change as might enable them to retrieve their fortunes. Evils, which the extremes of wealth and indigence are ever productive of in free countries.

Young Agis, the third of that name, and the most virtuous and accomplished King that ever sat upon the throne of Sparta since the reign of

[print edition page 27]

the great Agesilaus, undertook the reform of the state, and attempted to re-establish the old Lycurgic constitution, as the only means of extricating his country out of her distresses, and raising her to her former dignity and lustre. An enterprize attended not only with the greatest difficulties, but, as the times were so corrupt, with the greatest danger.a He began with trying the efficacy of example, and though he had been bred in all the pleasures and delicacy which affluence could procure, or the fondness of his mother and grandmother, who were the wealthiest people in Sparta, could indulge him in, yet he at once changed his way of life as well as his dress, and conformed to the strictest discipline of Lycurgus in every particular. This generous36 victory over his passions,b the most difficult and most glorious of all others, had so great an effect [41] amongst the younger Spartans, that they came into his measures with more alacrity and zeal than he could possibly have hoped for. Encouraged by this success, Agis brought over some of the principal Spartans, amongst whom was his uncle Agesilaus, whose influence he made use of to persuade his mother, who was sister to Agesilaus, to join his party.c For her wealth, and the great number of her friends, dependants, and debtors, made her extremely powerful, and gave her great weight in all public transactions.

His mother, terrified at first at her son’s rashness, condemned the whole as the visionary scheme of a young man, who was attempting a measure not only prejudicial to the state, but quite impracticable. But when the reasonings of Agesilaus had convinced her that it would not only be of the greatest utility to the publick, but might be effected with great ease and safety, and the King himself intreated her to contribute her wealth and interest to promote an enterprize which would redound so much to

[print edition page 28]

his glory and reputation; she and the rest of her fe-[42]male friends at last changed their sentiments.a Fired then with the same glorious emulation, and stimulated to virtue, as it were by some divine impulse, they not only voluntarily spurred on Agis, but summoned and encouraged all their friends, and incited the other ladies to engage in so generous an enterprize. For they were conscious (as Plutarch observes) of the great ascendency which the Spartan women had always over their husbands,b who gave their wives a much greater share in the publick administration, than their wives allowed them in the management [43] of their domestick affairs. A circumstance which at that time had drawn almost all the wealth of Sparta into the hands of the women, and proved a terrible, and almost unsurmountable obstacle to Agis. For the Ladies had violently opposed a scheme of reformation, which not only tended to deprive them of those pleasures and trifling ornaments, which, from their ignorance of what was truly good and laudable, they absurdly looked upon as their supreme happiness, but to rob them of that respect and authority which

[print edition page 29]

they derived from their superior wealth. Such of them therefore as were unwilling to give up these advantages, applied to Leonidas, and intreated him, as he was the more respectable man for his age and experience, to check his young hot-headed colleague, and quash whatever attempts he should make to carry his designs into execution. The older Spartans were no less averse to a reformation of that nature. For as they were deeply immersed in corruption, they trembled at the very name of Lycurgus, as much as runaway slaves, when retaken, do at the sight of their masters.

Leonidas was extremely ready to side with and assist the rich, but durst not openly oppose Agis, for fear of the people, who were eager for such a revolution. He attempted [44] therefore to counteract all his attempts underhand, and insinuated to the magistrates, that Agis aimed at setting up a tyranny, by bribing the poor with the fortunes of the rich; and proposed the partition of lands and the abolition of debts as the means of purchasing guards for himself only, not citizens, as he pretended, for Sparta.

Agis however pursued his design, and having procured his friend Lysander to be elected one of the Ephori, immediately laid his scheme before the senate. The chief heads of his plan were:

That all debts should be totally remitted; that the whole land should be divided into a certain number of lots; and that the ancient discipline and customs of Lycurgus should be revived.

Warm debates were occasioned in the senate by this proposal, which at last was rejected by a majority of one only.a Lysander in the mean time convoked an assembly of the people, where after he had harangued, Mandroclidas and Agesilaus beseeched them not to suffer the majesty of Sparta to be any longer trampled upon for the sake of a few luxurious overgrown citizens, who imposed upon them at pleasure.b They reminded them not only of the responses of ancient [45] oracles, which enjoined them to beware of avarice, as the pest of Sparta, but also of

[print edition page 30]

those so lately given by the oracle at Pasiphae, which, as they assured the people, commanded the Spartans to return to that perfect equality of possessions, which was settled by the law first instituted by Lycurgus.a Agis spoke last in this assembly; and, to enforce the whole by example, told them in a very few words,

That he offered a most ample contribution towards the establishment of that polity, of which he himself was the author. That he now resigned his whole patrimony into the common stock, which consisted not only of rich arable and pasture land, but of 600 talents besides in coined money. He added, that his mother, grandmother, friends and relations, who were the most wealthy of all the citizens of Sparta, were ready to do the same.47

The people, struck with the magnanimity and generosity of Agis, received his offer with the loudest applause, and extolled him, as the only King who for three hundred years past had been worthy of the throne of Sparta. This provoked Leonidas to fly out [46] into the most open and violent opposition, from the double motive of avarice and envy. For he was sensible, that if this scheme took place, he should not only be compelled to follow their example, but that the surrender of his estate would then come from him with so ill a grace, that the honour of the whole measure would be attributed solely to his colleague. Lysander, finding Leonidas and his party too powerful in the senate, determined to prosecute and expel him for the breach of a very old law, which forbid48 any of the royal family to intermarry with foreigners, or to bring up any children which they might have by such marriage, and inflicted the penalty of death upon any one who should leave Sparta to reside in foreign countries.

After Lysander had taken care that Leonidas should be informed of the crime laid to his charge, he with the rest of the Ephori, who were

[print edition page 31]

of his party, addressed themselves to the ceremony of observing a sign from heaven.a A piece of state-craft most probably introduced formerly by the Ephori [47] to keep the Kings in awe, and perfectly well adapted to the superstition of the people. Lysander affirming that they had seen the usual sign, which declared that Leonidas had sinned against the Gods, summoned him to his trial, and produced evidence sufficient to convict him. At the same time he spirited up Cleombrotus, who had married the daughter of Leonidas, and was of the royal blood, to put in his claim to the succession. Leonidas, terrified at these daring measures, fled, and took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva: he was deposed therefore for non-appearance, and his crown given to his son-in-law Cleombrotus.

But as soon as the term of Lysander’s magistracy expired, the new Ephori, who were elected by the prevailing interest of the opposite party, immediately undertook the protection of Leonidas. They summoned Lysander and his friends to answer for their decrees for cancelling debts, and dividing the lands, as contrary to the laws, and treasonable innovations; for so they termed all attempts to restore the ancient constitution [48] of Lycurgus. Alarmed at this, Lysander persuaded the two Kings to join in opposing the Ephori; who, as he plainly proved, assumed an authority which they had not the least right to, as long as the Kings acted together in concert. The Kings, convinced by his reasons, armed a great number of the youth, released all who were prisoners for debt, and thus attended went into the Forum, where they deposed the Ephori, and procured their own friends to be elected into that office, of whom Agesilaus the uncle of Agis was one. By the care and humanity of Agis, no blood was spilt on this memorable occasion. He even protected his antagonist Leonidas against the designs which Agesilaus had formed upon his life, and sent him under a safe convoy to Tegea.

[print edition page 32]

After this bold stroke, all opposition sunk before them, and every thing succeeded to their wishes; when the single avarice of Agesilaus, that most baneful pest, as Plutarch terms it, which had subverted a constitution the most excellent, and the most worthy of Sparta that had ever yet been established, overset the whole enterprise. By the character which Plutarch gives of Agesilaus,a he appears to have been artful and eloquent, but at the same time effemi-[49]nate, corrupt in his manners, avaritious, and so bad a man, that he engaged in this projected revolution with no other view but that of extricating himself from an immense load of debt, which he had most probably contracted to support his luxury. As soon therefore as the two Kings, who were both young men, agreed to proceed upon the abolition of debts, and the partition of lands, Agesilaus artfully persuaded them not to attempt both at once, for fear of exciting some terrible commotion in the city. He assured them farther, that if the rich should once be reconciled to the law for cancelling the debts, the law for dividing the lands would go down with them quietly and without the least obstruction. The Kings assented to his opinion, and Lysander himself was brought over to it, deceived by the same specious, though pernicious reasoning: calling in therefore all the bills, bonds, and pecuniary obligations, they piled them up, and burnt them all publickly in the Forum, to the great mortification of the moneyed men, and the usurers. But Agesilaus in the joy of his heart could not refrain from joking upon the occasion, and told them with a sneer, That whatever they might think of the matter, it was the bright-[50]est and most chearful flame, and the purest bonfire, he had ever beheld in his life-time.b Agesilaus had now carried his point, and his conduct proves, that the Spartans had learnt the art of turning publick measures into private jobs,51 as well as their politer neighbours. For though the people call loudly for the partition of the lands, and the Kings gave orders for it to be done immediately, Agesilaus contrived to throw new obstacles in the way, and protracted the time by

[print edition page 33]

various pretences till Agis was obliged to march with the Spartan auxiliaries to assist their allies the Achaeans.54 For he was in possession of a most fertile and extensive landed estate at the very time when he owed more than he was worth; and as he had got rid of all his incumbrances at once by the first decree, and never intended to part with a single foot of his land, it was by no means his interest to promote the execution of the second.

The Spartan troops were mostly indigent young men, who, elate with their freedom from the bonds of usury, and big with the hopes of a share in the lands at their return, followed Agis with the greatest vigour and alacrity, and behaved so well in their march, that they reminded the admiring Greeks of the excellent discipline and decorum for which the Spartans were formerly so famous under the most renowned of their [51] ancient leaders. But whilst Agis was in the field, affairs at home took a very unhappy turn in his disfavour. The tyrannical behaviour of Agesilaus, who fleeced the people with insupportable exactions, and stuck at no measure, however infamous or criminal, which would bring in money, produced another revolution in favour of Leonidas. For the people, enraged at being tricked out of the promised partition of the lands, which they imputed to Agis and Cleombrotus, and detesting the rapaciousness of Agesilaus, readily joined that party which conspired to restore Leonidas. Agis finding affairs in this desperate situation at his return, gave up all for lost, and took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva, as Cleombrotus had done in the temple of Neptune.

Though Cleombrotus was the chief object of Leonidas’s resentment, yet he spared his life at the intercession of his daughter Chelonis, the wife of Cleombrotus; but condemned him to perpetual exile. The generous Chelonis gave a signal instance, upon this occasion, of that heroic virtue, for which the Spartan ladies were once so remarkably eminent. When her father was expelled by the intrigues of Lysander, she followed him into exile, and refused to share his crown with Cleombrotus. In this calamitous reverse of fortune, she was deaf to [52] all intreaties, and rather chose to partake of the miseries of banishment with her husband, than all the

[print edition page 34]

pleasures and grandeur of Sparta with her father. Plutarch pays the ladies a fine compliment upon this occasion, when he says,

That unless Cleombrotus should have been wholly corrupted by false ambition, he must have deemed himself more truly happy in a state of banishment with such a wife, than he could have been upon a throne without her.a

But though Cleombrotus escaped death, yet nothing but the blood of Agis could satisfy the vindictive rage of the ungrateful Leonidas, who, in the former revolution, owed his life to that unfortunate Prince’s generosity. After many ineffectual attempts to entice Agis from his asylum, three of his intimate friends in whom he most confided, who used to accompany and guard him to the baths and back again to the temple, betrayed him to his enemies. Amphares, the chief of these, and the contriver of the plot, was one of the new Ephori created after the deposition of Agesilaus. This wretch had lately borrowed a quantity of valuable plate, and a number of magnificent vestments of Agis’s mother Agesistrata, and determined to make them his own by the [53] destruction of Agis and his family; at their return therefore in their usual friendly manner from the baths, he first attacked Agis by virtue of his office, whilst Demochares and Arcesilaus, the other two, seized and dragged him to the publick prison. Agis supported all these indignities with the utmost magnanimity: and when the Ephori questioned him, whether Agesilaus and Lysander did not constrain him to do what he had done, and whether he did not repent of the steps he had taken; he undauntedly took the whole upon himself, and told them that he gloried in his scheme, which was the result of his emulation to follow the example of the great Lycurgus. Stung with this answer, the Ephori condemned him to die by their own authority, and ordered the officers to carry him to the place in the prison where the malefactors were strangled. But when the officers and even the mercenary soldiers of Leonidas refused to be concerned in so infamous and unprecedented an action as laying hands upon their King, Demochares threatening and abusing them greatly for their disobedience, seized Agis with his own hands, and

[print edition page 35]

dragged him to the execution-room, where he was ordered to be dispatched immediately. Agis submitted to his fate with equal intrepidity and resignation, reproving one of the executioners who deplor-[54]ed his calamities, and declaring himself infinitely happier than his murderers. The unfeeling and treacherous Amphares attended the execution, and as soon as Agis was dead, he admitted his mother and grandmother into the prison, who came to interceed that Agis might be allowed to make his defence before the people. The wretch assured the mother, with an insulting sneer, that her son should suffer no heavier punishment than he had done already; and immediately ordered her mother Archidamia, who was extremely old, to execution. As soon as she was dead, he bid Agesistrata enter the room, where, at the sight of the dead bodies, she could not refrain from kissing her son, and crying out, that his too great lenity and good-nature had been their ruin. The savage Amphares, laying hold of those words, told her, that as she approved of her son’s actions she should share his fate. Agesistrata met death with the resolution of an old Spartan Heroine, praying only that this whole affair might not prove prejudicial to her country.

Thus fell the gallant Agis in the cause of liberty and publick virtue, by the perfidy of his mercenary friends, and the violence of a corrupt and most profligate faction. I have given a more particular detail of the catastrophe of this unfortunate Prince as trans-[55]mitted to us by Plutarch, because it furnishes convincing proofs, how greatly the introduction of wealth had corrupted and debased the once upright and generous spirit of the Spartans.

Archidamus, the brother of Agis, eluded the search made for him by Leonidas, and escaped the massacre by flying from Sparta. But Leonidas compelled his wife Agiatis, who was a young lady of the greatest beauty in all Greece, and sole heiress to a vast estate, to marry his own son Cleomenes, though Agiatis had but just lain-in of a son, and the match was entirely contrary to her inclinations. This event however produced a very different effect from what Leonidas intended, and after his death proved the ruin of his party, and revenged the murder of Agis.a

[print edition page 36]

For Cleomenes, who was very young, and extremely fond of his wife, would shed sympathising tears whenever she related the melancholy fate of Agis, and occasionally desire her to explain his intentions, and the nature of his scheme, to which he would listen with the greatest attention. From that time he determined to follow so glorious an example, but kept the resolution secret in his own breast till the means and opportunity should offer. He was sensible [56] that an attempt of that nature would be utterly impracticable whilst his father lived; who, like the rest of the leading citizens, had wholly given himself up to a life of ease and luxury. Warned too by the fate of Agis, he knew how extremely dangerous it was even once to mention the old frugality and simplicity of manners, which depended upon the observance of the discipline and institutions of Lycurgus. But as soon as ever he succeeded to the Crown at the death of his father, and found himself the sole reigning King of Sparta without a colleague, he immediately applied his whole care and study to accomplish that great change which he had before projected. For he observed the manners of the Spartans in general were grown extremely corrupt and dissolute; the rich sacrificing the publick interest to their own private avarice and luxury; the poor, from their extreme indigence, averse to the toils of war, careless and negligent of education and discipline; whilst the Ephori had engrossed the whole royal power, and left him in reality nothing but the empty title: Circumstances greatly mortifying to an aspiring young Monarch, who panted eagerly after glory, and impatiently wished to retrieve the lost reputation of his countrymen. [57]

He began by sounding his most intimate friend, one Xenares, at a distance only, enquiring what sort of man Agis was, and which way, and by whose advice, he was drawn into those unfortunate measures. Xenares, who attributed all his questions to the curiosity natural to a young man, very readily told him the whole story, and explained ingenuously every particular of the affair as it really happened. But when he remarked that Cleomenes often returned to the charge, and every time with greater eagerness, more and more admiring and applauding the scheme and character of Agis, he immediately saw through his design. After reproving him, therefore, severely for talking and behaving thus like a madman, Xenares broke off all friendship and intercourse with him, though he had

[print edition page 37]

too much honour to betray his friend’s secret. Cleomenes, not in the least discouraged at this repulse, but concluding that he should meet with the same reception from the rest of the wealthy and powerful citizens, determined to trust none of them, but to take upon himself the whole care and management of his scheme.a However, as he was sensible that the execution of it would be much more feasible, when his country was involved in war, than in a state [58] of profound peace, he waited for a proper opportunity; which the Achaeans quickly furnished him with. For Aratus, the great projector of the famous Achaean league, into which he had already brought many of the Grecian states, holding Cleomenes extremely cheap, as a raw unexperienced boy, thought this a favourable opportunity of trying how the Spartans stood affected towards that Union. Without the least previous notice, therefore, he suddenly invaded such of the Arcadians as were in alliance with Sparta, and committed great devastations in that part of the country which lay in the neighbourhood of Achaia.

The Ephori, alarmed at this unexpected attack, sent Cleomenes at the head of the Spartan forces to oppose the invasion. The young Hero behaved well, and frequently baffled that old experienced commander. But his countrymen growing weary of the war, and refusing to concur in the measures he proposed for carrying it on, he recalled Archidamus the brother of Agis from banishment, who had a strict hereditary right to the other moiety of the kingdom; imagining that when the throne was properly filled according to law, and the regal power preserved entire by the Union of the two Kings, it would restore the balance of government, and weaken the authority of [59] the Ephori. But the faction which had murdered Agis, justly dreading the resentment of Archidamus for so atrocious a crime, took care privately to assassinate him upon his return.

Cleomenes now more than ever intent upon bringing his great project to bear, bribed the Ephori with large sums to intrust him with the management of the war.b His mother Cratesiclea not only supplied him with money upon this occasion, but married one Megistonus, a man of the

[print edition page 38]

greatest weight and authority in the city, purposely to bring him over to her son’s interest. Cleomenes taking the field, totally defeated the army of Aratus, and killed Lydiadas the Megalopolitan General. This victory, which was entirely owing to the conduct of Cleomenes, not only raised the courage of his soldiers, but gave them so high an opinion of his abilities, that he seems to have been recalled by his enemies, jealous most probably of his growing interest with the army. For Plutarch, who is not very methodical in his relations, informs us, that after this affair, Cleomenes convinced his father-in-law, Megistonus, of the necessity of taking off the Ephori, and reducing59 the citizens to their [60] ancient equality according to the institutions of Lycurgus, as the only means of restoring Sparta to her former sovereignty over Greece.a This scheme therefore must have been privately settled at Sparta. For we are next told, that Cleomenes again took the field, carrying with him such of the citizens as he suspected were most likely to oppose him. He took some cities from the Achaeans that campaign, and made himself master of some important places, but harrassed his troops so much with many marches and countermarches, that most of the Spartans remained behind in Arcadia at their own request, whilst he marched back to Sparta with his mercenary forces, and such of his friends as he could most confide in. He timed his march so well that he entered Sparta whilst the Ephori were at supper, and dispatched Euryclidas before with three or four of his most trusty friends and a few soldiers to perform the execution. For Cleomenes well knew that Agis owed his ruin to his too cautious timidity, and his too great lenity and moderation. Whilst Euryclidas therefore amused the Ephori with a pretended message from Cleomenes, the rest fell upon them sword in hand, and killed four upon the spot, with above ten persons more who came to their assistance. Agesilaus the survivor of them fell, and counterfeiting him-[61]self dead, gained an opportunity of escaping. Next morning as soon as it was light, Cleomenes proscribed and banished fourscore of the most dangerous citizens, and removed all the chairs of

[print edition page 39]

the Ephori out of the Forum, except one, which he reserved for his own seat of judicature. He then convoked an assembly of the people, to whom he apologized for his late actions. He shewed them, in a very artful and elaborate speech, “the nature and just extent of the power of the Ephori, the fatal consequences of the authority they had usurped of governing the state by their own arbitrary will, and of deposing and putting their Kings to death without allowing them a legal hearing in their own defence. He urged the example of Lycurgus himself, who came armed into the Forum when he first proposed his laws, as a proof that it was impossible to root out those pests of the commonwealth, which had been imported from other countries, luxury, the parent of that vain expence which ruins such numbers in debt, usury, and those more ancient evils, wealth and poverty, without violence and bloodshed: That he should have thought himself happy, if like an able physician, he could have radically cured the diseases of his country without pain: but that [62] necessity had compelled him to do what he had already done, in order to procure an equal partition of the lands, and the abolition of their debts, as well as to enable him to fill up the number of the citizens with a select number of the bravest foreigners, that Sparta might be no longer exposed to the depredations of her enemies for want of hands to defend her.”a

To convince the people of the sincerity of his intentions, he first gave up his whole fortune to the publick stock; Megistonus, his father-in-law, with his other friends, and all the rest of the citizens, followed his example. In the division of the lands, he generously set apart equal portions for all those citizens he had banished, and promised to recall them as soon as the publick tranquillity was restored. He next revived the ancient method of education, the gymnastick exercises, publick meals, and all other institutions of Lycurgus; and lest the people, unaccustomed to the denomination of a single King, should suspect that he aimed at establishing a tyranny, he associated his brother Euclidas with him in the kingdom. By training up the youth in the old military discipline, and arming them in a new and better manner, he once more recovered the

[print edition page 40]

reputation of the Spartan militia, and raised his country to so [63] great a height of power, that Greece in a very short time saw Sparta giving law to all Peloponnesus.a

The Achaeans, humbled by repeated defeats, and begging peace of Cleomenes upon his own terms, the generous victor desired only to be appointed general of their famous league, and offered upon that condition to restore all the cities and prisoners he had taken. The Achaeans gladly consenting to such easy terms, Cleomenes released and sent home all the persons of rank amongst his prisoners, but was obliged by sickness to defer the day appointed for the convention, ’till his return from Sparta. This unhappy delay was fatal to Greece.b For Aratus, who had enjoyed that honour thirty-three years, could not bear the thought of having it wrested from him by so young a Prince, whose glory he envied as much as he dreaded his valour. Finding therefore all other methods ineffectual, he had recourse to the desperate remedy of calling in the Macedonians to his assistance, and sacrificed the liberty of his own country, as well as that of Greece, to his own private pique and jealousy. Thus the most publick-spirited assertor of liberty, and the most implacable [64] enemy to all tyrants in general, brought back those very people into the heart of Greece, whom he had driven out formerly purely from his hatred to tyranny, and sullied a glorious life with a blot never to be erased, from the detestable motives of envy and revenge. A melancholy proof, as Plutarch moralizes upon the occasion, of the weakness of human nature, which with an assemblage of the most excellent qualities is unable to exhibit the model of a virtue completely perfect. A circumstance which ought to excite our compassion towards those blemishes, which we unavoidably meet with in the most exalted characters.

Cleomenes supported this unequal war against the Achaeans and the whole power of Macedon with the greatest vigour, and by his success gave many convincing proofs of his abilities; but venturing a decisive battle at Sallasia, he was totally defeated by the superior number of his enemies,

[print edition page 41]

and the treachery of Damoteles, an officer in whom he greatly confided, who was bribed to betray him by Antigonus. Out of six thousand Spartans, two hundred only escaped, the rest with their king Euclidas were left dead on the field of battle.64 Cleomenes retired to Sparta, and from thence passed over to Ptolemy Euergetes king of Egypt, with whom he [65] was then in alliance, to claim the assistance he had formerly promised. But the death of that Monarch, which followed soon after, deprived him of all hopes of succour from that quarter. The Spartan manners were as odious to his successor Ptolemy Philopator, a weak and dissolute prince, as the Spartan virtue was terrible to his debauched effeminate courtiers. Whenever Cleomenes appeared at court, the general whisper ran, that he came as a lion in the midst of sheep; a light in which a brave man must necessarily appear to a herd of such servile dastards. Confined at last by the jealousy of Ptolemy, who was kept in a perpetual alarm by the insinuations of his iniquitous minister Sosybius, he with about twelve more of his generous Spartan friends broke out of prison, determined upon death or liberty. In their progress through the streets, they first slew one Ptolemy, a great favourite of the King’s, who had been their secret enemy; and meeting the governor of the city, who came at the first noise of the tumult, they routed his guards and attendants, dragged him out of his chariot, and killed him. After this they ranged uncontrouled through the whole city of Alexandria, the inhabitants flying every where before them, and not a man daring either to assist or oppose them. Such terror could thirteen brave men only strike into one of the [66] most populous cities in the universe, where the citizens were bred up in luxury, and strangers to the use of arms! Cleomenes, despairing of assistance from the citizens, whom he had in vain summoned to assert their liberty, declared such abject cowards fit only to be governed by women. Scorning therefore to fall by the hands of the despicable Egyptians, he with the rest of the Spartans fell desperately by their own swords, according to the heroism of those ages.a

[print edition page 42]

The liberty and happiness of Sparta expired with Cleomenes.a For the remains of the Spartan history furnish us with very little after his death, besides the calamities and miseries of that unhappy state, arising from their intestine divisions. Machanidas, by the aid of one of the factions which at that time rent that miserable republick, usurped the throne, and established an absolute tyranny. One Nabis, a tyrant, compared to whom even Nero himself may be termed merciful, succeeded at the death of Machanidas, who fell in battle by the hand of the great Philopaemen. The Aetolians treacherously murdered Nabis, and endeavoured to seize the dominion of Sparta; but they were prevented by Philopaemen, who partly by [67] force, partly by persuasion, brought the Spartans into the Achaean league, and afterwards totally abolished the institutions of Lycurgus.b A most inhuman and most iniquitous action, as Plutarch terms it, which must brand the character of that hero with eternal infamy. As if he was sensible that as long as the discipline of Lycurgus subsisted, the minds of the Spartan youth could never be thoroughly tamed, or effectually broke to the yoke of foreign government. Wearied out at last by repeated oppressions, the Spartans applied to the Romans for redress of all their grievances; and their complaints produced that war which ended in the dissolution of the Achaean league, and the subjection of Greece to the Roman domination.

I have entered into a more minute detail of the Spartan constitution, as settled by Lycurgus, than I at first proposed; because the maxims of that celebrated lawgiver are so directly opposite to those which our modern politicians lay down as the basis of the strength and power of a nation.

Lycurgus found his country in the most terrible of all situations, a state of anarchy and confusion. The rich, insolent and oppressive; the poor groaning under a load of debt, mutinous from despair, and ready to [68] cut the throats of their usurious oppressors. To remedy these evils, did this wise politician encourage navigation, strike out new branches

[print edition page 43]

of commerce, and make the most of those excellent harbours and other natural advantages which the maritime situation of his country afforded? Did he introduce and promote arts and sciences, that by acquiring and diffusing new wealth amongst his countrymen, he might make his nation, in the language of our political writers, secure, powerful, and happy?68 Just the reverse. After he had new-modelled the constitution, and settled the just balance between the powers of government, he abolished all debts, divided the whole land amongst his countrymen by equal lots, and put an end to all dissentions about property, by introducing a perfect equality. He extirpated luxury and a lust of wealth, which he looked upon as the pests of every free country, by prohibiting the use of gold and silver; and barred up the entrance against their return by interdicting navigation and commerce, and expelling all arts, but what were immediately necessary to their subsistence. As he was sensible that just and virtuous manners are the best support of the internal peace and happiness of every kingdom, he established a most excellent plan of education for training up his countrymen, from their very infancy, in the strict-[69]est observance of their religion and laws, and the habitual practice of those virtues which can alone secure the blessings of liberty, and perpetuate their duration. To protect his country from external invasions, he formed the whole body of the people, without distinction, into one well armed, well disciplined national militia, whose leading principle was the love of their country, and who esteemed death in its defence, the most exalted height of glory to which a Spartan was capable of attaining. Nor were these elevated sentiments confined solely to the men; the colder breasts of the women caught fire at the glorious flame, and glowed even with superior ardour. For when their troops marched against an enemy, “to bring back their shields, or to be brought home

[print edition page 44]

upon them,”a was the last command which the Spartan mothers gave their sons at parting.

Such was the method which Lycurgus took to secure the independency and happiness of his country; and the event shewed, that his institutions were founded upon maxims of the truest and justest policy. For I [70] cannot help observing upon the occasion, that from the time of Lycurgus to the introduction of wealth by Lysander in the reign of the first Agis, a space of five hundred years, we meet with no mutiny amongst the people, upon account of the severity of his discipline, but on the contrary the most religious reverence for, and the most willing and chearful obedience to, the laws he established. As on the other hand, the wisdom of his military institutions is evident from this consideration; That the national militia alone of Sparta, a small insignificant country as to extent, situated in a nook only of the Morea,69 not only gave laws to Greece, but made the Persian monarchs tremble at their very name, though absolute masters of the richest and most extensive empire the world then knew.

I observe farther, that the introduction of wealth by Lysander, after the conquest of Athens, brought back all those vices and dissentions which the prohibition of the use of money had formerly banished; and that all historians assign that open violation of the laws of Lycurgus, as the period from which the decadence of Sparta is to be properly dated. I observe too, with Plutarch, that though the manners of the Spartans were greatly corrupted by the introduction of wealth, yet that the landed interest (as I may term it) which subsisted as long as the [71] original allotments of land remained unalienable, still preserved their state; notwithstanding the many abuses which had crept into their constitution. But that as soon as ever the landed

[print edition page 45]

estates became alienable by law, the moneyed interest prevailed, and at last totally swallowed up the landed, which the historians remark as the death’s-wound of their constitution.71 For the martial virtue of the citizens not only sunk with the loss of their estates, but their number, and consequently the strength of the state, diminished in the same proportion. Aristotle, who wrote about sixty years after the death of Lysander, in his examen of the Spartan Republick, quite condemns that law which permitted the alienation of their lands.a For he affirms, that the same quantity of land, which, whilst equally divided, supplied a militia of fifteen hundred horse, and thirty thousand heavy armed foot, could not in his time furnish one thousand; so that the state was utterly ruined for want of men to defend it.b In the reign of Agis the third, about a hundred years after the time of Aristotle, the number of the old Spartan families was dwindled (as I remarked before) to seven hundred; out of which about one hundred rich [72] overgrown families had engrossed the whole land of Sparta, which Lycurgus had formerly divided into thirty-nine thousand shares, and assigned for the support of as many families. So true it is, that a landed interest diffused through a whole people is not only the real strength, but the surest bulwark of the liberty and independency, of a free country.

From the tragical fate of the third Agis we learn, that when abuses introduced by corruption are suffered by length of time to take root in the constitution, they will be termed by those whose interest it is to support

[print edition page 46]

them, essential parts of the constitution itself; and all attempts to remove them will ever be clamoured against by such men as attempt to subvert it: As the example of Cleomenes will teach us, that the publick virtue of one great man may not only save his falling country from ruin, but raise her to her former dignity and lustre, by bringing her back to those principles on which her constitution was originally founded. Though the violent remedies made use of by Cleomenes never ought to be applied, unless the disease is grown too desperate to admit of a cure by milder methods.

I shall endeavour to shew in its proper place, that the constitution established by Ly-[73]curgus, which seemed to Polybius to be rather of divine than of human institution,a and was so much celebrated by the most eminent philosophers of antiquity, is much inferior to the British constitution as settled at the Revolution.74 But I cannot quit this subject without recommending that excellent institution of Lycurgus, which provided for the education of the children of the whole community without distinction. An example which under proper regulations would be highly worthy of our imitation, since nothing could give a more effectual check to the reigning vices and follies of the present age, or contribute so much to a reformation of manners, as to form the minds of the rising generation by the principles of religion and virtue. Where the manners of a people are good, very few laws will be wanting; but when their manners are depraved, all the laws in the world will be insufficient to restrain the excesses of the human passions. For as Horace justly observes—

Quid leges sine moribus

Vanae proficiunt,

Ode 24. lib. 3.75