events.(166) So little was ascertained respecting them, that Aristomenes, the great champion of Messenian independence, was placed by Myron in the first war, whereas Rhianus placed him in the second; and Pausanias, on grounds of probability, prefers the account of the poet to that of the prose historian:(167) though there is no valid ground for deciding in favour of either. Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, is placed before the Messenian wars; but there is a wide discrepancy as to his date. Thucydides fixes the constitutional reform of Lacedæmon, which may be considered as synonymous with the legislation of Lycurgus, at a little more than four hundred years before the end of the Peloponnesian war: that is, about 810 B.C.(168) The date of Eratosthenes places him at 884 B.C.; another date, mentioned by Clemens of Alexandria, at 926 B.C.(169) The majority of writers describe Lycurgus as the guardian of Charilaus, of the Proclid line; but Herodotus states that, according to the account of the Lacedæmonians themselves, Lycurgus remodelled their constitution when he was guardian of his nephew Labotas, who was of the Agid line.(170) According to the received chronology, Labotas began to reign about 995 B.C.

(166) See Müller, Dor. i. 7, § 8-11; Grote, vol. ii. p. 555–568. Niebuhr, in his Lectures on Ancient History, thus expresses himself respecting the Messenian wars: Down to the time of Croesus, a thick darkness envelops the affairs of Greece Proper; we can discern only some isolated points, such as the supremacy of Pheidon in Peloponnesus, but it is utterly impossible to fix them chronologically. An event of a similar nature is the subjugation of Messene by the Spartans; the fact itself is as certain as all the reported details about it are undeserving of credit. . . . We cannot believe that he [Myron] invented the whole; his account is probably based upon Messenian traditions, but no man can say how far they are trustworthy. In the romance of Myron, king Theopompus is slain. What was the fate of the several leaders, Euphaës, Androcles, and Antiochus, and how Ithome was defended-all these are points which it is impossible to relate; they are as little historical as the accounts of Romulus and Numa;' ib. p. 262, 265.

(167) Paus. iv. 6, § 2. Aristomenes is not an invention of Rhianus ; he is a mythical personage, who certainly once did exist, but is so completely disguised by popular tradition, that nothing, or only very little of his history is authentic;' Niebuhr, ib. p. 266.

(168) i. 18.

(169) See Clinton, F. H. vol. i. p. 140—5, on the date of Lycurgus. (170) i. 65.

Xenophon ascends to a still higher date; for he makes Lycurgus contemporary with the return of the Heraclidae.(17) The ac counts concerning his life and his legislation were, according to Plutarch, not less discordant than those concerning his time. (172) Hellanicus indeed was silent respecting his legislation, and attributed the Spartan constitution to Eurysthenes and Procles.(173) The tradition of his own countrymen, and the general voice of antiquity, regarded him as the author of the constitution of Sparta, as it existed in the historical age; but no certain knowledge of his actions seems to have been preserved. His life by Plutarch is nothing but a series of fictions, intended to account for the institutions of which he is assumed to be the author.(174) It resembles the history of Romulus, who, like him, performs the part of a universal founder;(175) and it is equally the result of late fiction unassisted by authentic traditionary materials.

(171) Rep. Lac. 10, § 8, cited by Plut. Lyc. i. Timæus, ap. Plut. ib., and Cicero, Rep. ii. 10, Brut. 10, resort to the contrivance of supposing that there were two Lycurguses; see Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. i. p. 202. Compare Mure, vol. iv. p. 88. The method of doubling or trebling the same person (says Niebuhr) leads to most perverse proceedings; but is nevertheless a very common expedient, which is constantly resorted to, which was unfortunately too often applied by the later among the ancient grammarians, and has been eagerly seized upon by the modern scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for the purpose of reconciling the most different accounts and traditions;' Lect. on Anc. Hist. vol. i. p. 191. This expedient is also disapproved of by Col. Mure, vol. iv. p. 89.

(173) Fragm. 91, ed. Didot.

(172) Plut. Lyc. i. (174) See Müller, Dor. i. 7, § 6. The whole history of Lycurgus, which we read in Plutarch, is no more historical than the life of Numa, which Plutarch has drawn up as a parallel to it; but I have still more faith in the historical existence of Lycurgus than in that of Numa. We will not doubt that Lycurgus was a law-giver, who came forward "under the sanction of the Delphic oracle; but the accounts of his life are at least highly doubtful, and the extent of his legislation is as doubtful as his personal history;' Niebuhr, ib. p. 258-9. Again, in p. 186, he remarks: If there had been a traditional history of Sparta, it could assuredly not have left the Spartan lawgiver in vague uncertainty; but, as matters now are, there exist the most different stories about him.' In P: 187 he remarks that the uncertainty respecting the time and actions of Lycurgus is such, that he cannot be considered as belonging to history.

(175) He is thus regarded by Xenophon, in his Essay on the Lacedæmonian Constitution. Haase, in his edition, p. 155, remarks: Xenophon, qui, ut est alienus ab illustrandâ et perscrutandâ veteris memoriæ obscuritate, non quem quæque lex auctorem, sed quem usum haberet quæsivit, omnes pariter Lycurgi tribuens sapientiæ.'

The ephors, a magistracy peculiarly characteristic of the Spartan state, are ascribed by Herodotus and Xenophon to the institution of Lycurgus.(176) Aristotle however and Plutarch attribute them to king Theopompus; and represent his act to have been dictated by a long-sighted desire of rendering the royal office more durable by diminishing its power. (177)

The helots, as the slaves of the Lacedæmonians were called, are stated to have derived their name from the town Helos, which rebelled in the time of Agis, the next king after Eurysthenes, and whose inhabitants were in consequence reduced to slavery.(17) This story, however, is probably a mere etymological legend, not founded on any trustworthy historical evidence.

It is to be observed that, as the Spartans discouraged literature, they had no native historians: nearly all the writers on Sparta were foreigners: (179) Dicæarchus, whose work on the Spartan constitution was annually read to the youths in the office of the ephors, was a native of the Sicilian Messene.(150) If there had been a class of native writers, who occupied themselves with the early history of their country, they would probably have elaborated the stories and legends respecting the early kings, in the same manner that the Roman historians, from Fabius downwards, constructed a history for their seven kings, and the first centuries of the republic, full of events, and explanations of the origins of institutions. If Sparta had possessed a literary class, we might have had an early Lacedæ

(176) τοὺς ἐφόρους καὶ γέροντας ἔστησε Λυκοῦργος, Herod. i. 65. He is followed by Xenophon, Plato, and others; see Clinton, vol. i. p. 338.

(177) Pol. v. 11; Lyc. 7. The same story is alluded to by Cic. Leg. iii. 7; Rep. ii. 33. The existence of the office of ephor is traced by clear evidence up to the time of king Ariston. The ephors who had been sitting with him when the news of the birth of his son Demaratus was brought to him, were produced as witnesses in the investigation concerning the legitimacy of the latter, about 491 B.C.; Herod. vi. 65.

(178) Ephor. fragm. 18. See Müller, Dor. iii. 3, § 1; Niebuhr, ib. p. 236; Grote, vol. ii. p. 496, who all reject the derivation of ews from Ελος.

(179) Müller, Dor. iv. 8, § 1. Manso, Sparta, vol. i. part ii. (180) Fragm. 21, ap. Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. ii. P. 241.

P. 70.

monian history, written under the influence of Lacedæmonian feeling, not less copious and minute, than the history of the Messenian wars, which, after the restoration of Messenia, was written under the influence of Messenian feeling.

§ 16 Phidon, king of Argos, who is reported to have extended both his power and his kingdom, and to have caused his influence to be felt over a large part of Greece, has, like Lycurgus, two dates, divided by a long interval from each other. He is placed at 895 and also at 748 B.C., a difference of 147 years. (181) He was celebrated as the author of the scale of weights and measures used in the Peloponnesus; (182) but whether this is more historical than many other origins of useful inventions must, with respect to so ancient a name, remain undetermined.

The time when the names of Spartan kings, and the years of their reigns, were first noted by contemporary registration, cannot be determined with certainty. Theopompus, who lived in the Second Messenian War, is mentioned by Tyrtæus ; which of his predecessors up to Eurysthenes and Procles are real men, and which are fictitious names, inserted in order to make a continuous genealogy ascending to Hercules, is doubtful.(183) The variations in the names and succession of the early kings show, however, that no list of paramount authority was received.

(181) See Clinton, vol. i. p. 247.

(182) Herod. vi. 127; Strab. viii. 3, § 33; Plin. H. N. vii. 57; Müller, Eginetica, p. 56. Compare above. vol. i. p. 452, n. 138, p. 509, n. 105, where the introduction of coined money is ascribed to Numa, and also to Servius. The establishment of weights and measures is also attributed to Servius. Mr. Grote says of Phidon: The few facts which we learn respecting this prince exhibit to us, for the first time, something like a real position of parties in the Peloponnesus, wherein the actual conflict of living, historical men and cities comes out in tolerable distinctness;' vol. ii. p. 419. Niebuhr considers Phidon as historical, and his personal history as quite certain; he likewise credits the statement that Phidon established common weights and measures for the whole of Peloponnesus; ib. p. 260.

(183) The views of O. Müller respecting the registers of the early Spartan kings are fully explained by him, in a review of Mr. Clinton's first volume, in the Göttingische gel. Anzeigen, 1837, vol. ii. P. 893-6.

Speaking of the lists of the Spartan kings, and the catalogue of the priestesses of Juno at Argos, he says: It is certain that these documents

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in antiquity; (184) although Charon of Lampsacus, a historian anterior to Herodotus, composed a chronological work on the kings of Sparta ;(185) which was probably founded on native accounts. The quadriennial register of Olympic victors seems

were proportionably old, since the most skilful inquirers-Hellanicus for the Argive and Eratosthenes for the Spartan lists-considered them sufficiently authentic, to serve as the basis of the chronology of entire periods. Nevertheless, we are compelled to assume that at the time when writing can be clearly proved to have been used in Greece—that is, in the eighth, or at the earliest the ninth century B.C.-these registers were compiled from the recollections of the oldest persons, by Spartans versed in their native history, and from various traces and conjectures by priests of Argos, who felt a pride in the antiquity of their temple. There were many such registers in temples; such as the lists of the kings and priests of Apollo at Sicyon, cited by the chronographers, the genealogy of the Butada in the temple of Minerva Polias at Athens, the interesting and important catalogue of the priests of Neptune, of the family of Antheade, at Halicarnassus, which has recently been brought to light. (Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 2655.) If however all these names had been recorded at the times to which they relate, or even from the Return of the Heraclidæ, there must have existed a practice in the art of writing, and a zeal for the preservation of remarkable facts, which cannot be reconciled with the meagreness and uncertainty of the Greek history in these centuries. We must, in that case, suppose the Greek history, at this early period, to have possessed contemporary annals, like Rome from the commencement of the republic. It is also certain that the Argive, as well as the Halicarnassian list (Boeckh, ib. vol. ii. p. 450) was full of unhistorical statements.'

O. Müller contests the view of Mr. Clinton that the lists of the early Spartan kings may have contained names alone, without numbers. He admits, however, the force of the objection that the descents in both the royal houses for all the early kings cannot have been from father to son, as they are represented, especially as collateral descents begin as soon as we arrive at the age of contemporary history. He remarks that in other lists of hereditary rulers in early times a similar direct descent occurs, as in the kings of Arcadia and the Bacchiada of Corinth. Hence he supposes that the lists of the names were without any statement of the genealogical relations, and that it was taken for granted that the descent was always from father to son, except in one case, when Zeuxidamus the Eurypontid followed immediately after his grandfather Theopompus, the conqueror of Messenia; a circumstance which may have been mentioned in the poems of Tyrtæus. This construction of the lists of the Spartan kings, is (he adds) at all events older than Herodotus; see vii. 204, viii. 131.

According to Niebuhr, Eratosthenes made up the lists of Spartan kings from traditionary names, but the dates which he added were fictitious; ib. p. 187. See also p. 257, where the lists of Spartan kings made by Eratosthenes are treated as unworthy of confidence. In p. 231 he says that the authentic history begins with the kings Eurypon and Agis. Compare p. 236.

(185) πρυτάνεις ἢ ἄρχοντες οἱ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων· ἔστι δὲ χρονικά. Suidas in Xápov. See Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. i. p. xviii. No fragment of it is preserved. Compare Mure, vol. iv. p. 76, 168.