unanimous voice of posterity attributed the origin of the distinctive laws of Sparta. By what means he induced the Doric aristocracy to submit to the iron discipline by which their entire lives were regulated, we have no means of ascertaining: but the system, having been once established, was perpetuated, partly from habit and a respect for antiquity, which was omnipotent at Sparta; and partly from a sense of its necessity for maintaining the privileges of the dominant race. To this source are to be traced all the peculiar institutions of Sparta; and particularly its celebrated πaidɛía, or training, which was in fact nothing else than a drill. The Spartans despised all literature: they were a sort of military quakers, combining ostentatious simplicity with a steady pursuit of the virtues of the soldier. As Mr. Grote remarks, they did not even learn to read.* We have a difficulty in conceiving an education which did not comprise reading and writing, and did not even include instruction in Homer, the corner-stone of Greek teaching. Such, however, was their system: it was a training of the body to endurance of hardships, and to the exercises of a military life; not a mental education. All experience proves the efficacy of military training and discipline, against either numbers or courage without organisation and practice. This the Spartans had the sagacity to see; and on account of their position, submitted to the privations necessary for the purpose. They may be compared in many respects with the Romans,-who however did more by organisation and civil government, and less by mere drill. The internal relations of the Romans were sounder; and although they started from a beginning as small as the Spartan state, they were soon able to operate upon a large scale, and their energy was turned more against foreign than domestic enemies. Their capacity, too, was higher, and the results consequently greater.† The Spartans were stiff, unsocial, dry, austere, illiterate; but their system generated a high spirit of military honour, courage and patriotism, and of mutual reliance; greater even than that of the other Greeks, and contrasting strongly with the military state of the Asiatics and barbarians, and with that imperfect Vol. ii. p. 517. Compare Schoemann, Jus Publ. Gr. p. 135. When it is said that Tyrtæus, the poet, was a schoolmaster at Sparta; in what sense is this word to be understood? See Grote, vol. ii. p. 569. † M. Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive,' tom. v. p. 247., calls the Spartansdes Romains avortés.' Compare Veget. de Re Mil. i. 1. upon the effects of the Roman discipline. 1850. Sparta: her successful Military System. 127 discipline which lashed the troops into the fight. The character of the Spartan is so unattractive, that there is a danger now of underrating it too much, as compared with the Athenian. The philosophers, however, fell into the opposite error. Their systematic minds were captivated with the orderliness of the Spartan constitution, and the public recognition of a system of training for all the citizens. They admired the means; and only censured the exclusive devotion of a good system to an unworthy end. We ought not to quit the subject of the Spartan constitution without noticing Mr. Grote's views upon the regulations attributed to Lycurgus by Plutarch and other writers, with respect to the equal division of lands in Lacedæmon. Mr. Grote has, we think, proved conclusively that these regulations never existed, and that it is an invention of philosophising writers of late times. The hypothesis had been previously advanced in Germany, but had been insufficiently supported, and had met with little success. The detailed argument of Mr. Grote seems to us to have decided the question. One of the first results of the firm establishment of the military system of Sparta was, its wars with the neighbouring Doric State of Messenia. These wars as to which our authentic information is very scanty-appear to have originated in some disputes at a border-temple, and certainly ended in the entire subjugation of Messenia, and its incorporation with Laconia. By this territorial acquisition, and by some encroachments on the northern states, Sparta became mistress of about two fifths of Peloponnesus. The Elean, Arcadian, and Achæan cities, however, as well as Argos, always remained substantially independent; and the latter State, mindful of her mythical renown, sullenly recognised the ascendency of Sparta in all the common affairs of Greece. But as the Spartans (according to the just remark of Aristotle) practised war as an art, and trained themselves to it professionally, at a time when the other Greeks had no systematic military discipline, their preeminence in the field was admitted by all the other States; and about the year 547 B. C., in the reign of Croesus, Sparta enjoyed, without dispute, the headship of the entire Hellenic body; which she retained until Athens became the leading state in Greece. Before Mr. Grote commences his account of the Athenian State, he reviews the history of the three neighbouring States of Corinth, Sicyon, and Megara; which affords him an opportunity of illustrating the manner in which the Greeks regarded the government of the Túpavvos, or despot, as compared with a popular form of government. In these, as in other Grecian States, the heroic royalty, founded on notions of a divine right, and transmitted in a hereditary line, had, after a time, been weakened and divided among the members of an oligarchy. The heroic king, as he is portrayed in Homer, had large and indefinite powers, both in peace and war; but he was in the habit of recognising some rights co-ordinate with his own in persons near his throne, and of discussing certain questions in a public council or assembly. The transition, therefore, from the primitive heroic royalty to the primitive oligarchy of a few heroic chieftains, was easy and natural. Out of the bosom of these oligarchies there arose in most of the Greek States, between 650 and 500 B. C., that class of rulers whom the Greeks called Túpavvot, or despots. The despot was in many cases a demagogue; that is, a leader who espoused the popular cause, and acquired his power by popular support,—but fighting his way to supremacy by his sword, and not acquiring his influence, as in later times, by his power of speech in the popular assembly. Other means were likewise resorted to by rich and powerful men to put down their brother-oligarchs, and establish their exclusive power. Sometimes a despot was enabled to found a dynasty, which lasted for a few generations; but in general the usurpation was of short duration; as it could be maintained only by constant vigilance, and a constant struggle against a reluctant people. Like an oriental despotism, it was founded on naked fear; but, unlike an oriental despotism, the people did not submit tamely to their master. 'Nothing,' Thales is supposed to have said, is so rare a sight as an aged despot.' Of all forms ' of government,' said Aristotle, oligarchy and despotism are the most short-lived.' It was a rare event for an absolute prince to die in his bed. 'Ad generum Cereris sine cæde et sanguine pauci Contempt of the laws and usages of the country, cruelty, lust and rapacity, were the recognised characteristics of the Greek despot. In general, his relation with his subjects was avowedly hostile; his person was only safe so long as it was protected by a body-guard; and he was perpetually in danger of being overpowered by open attack, or of being stabbed by the dagger of private vengeance. All Grecian antiquity, oligarchs and democrats, the philosophers and the vulgar, were united in their hatred of despots, and their approbation of tyrannicide. Plato, in his eloquent description of the despot's mind, and Aristotle in his exhaustive analysis of his policy, equally bear witness to the antisocial character of his rule. Many of the maxims of 1850. The Greek Despot. 129 policy in Machiavel's Prince, which have been stamped with the reprobation of the modern civilised world, are literally borrowed from Aristotle's account of the means by which a Greek despotism was preserved: with this difference, however, that what Aristotle describes as facts, Machiavel converts into precepts. Whatever might be the necessity of submission produced by successful usurpation, ancient Greece was unanimous in detesting the irresponsible rule of a single man, and in preferring some form of government in which several persons, either the few or the many, bore a part. Upon this state of feeling, Mr. Grote comments as follows: 'It is important to show that the monarchical institutions and monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout mediæval and modern Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by causes peculiar to those societies; whilst in the Hellenic societies such causes had no place; in order that we may approach Hellenic phenomena in the proper spirit, and with an impartial estimate of the feeling universal among Greeks towards the idea of a king. The primitive sentiment entertained towards the heroic king died out; passing first into indifference, next, after experience of the despots, into determined antipathy. To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas respecting government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the nature of insanity, and the Grecian communities like madmen without a keeper; while the greatest of all benefactors is the hereditary king who conquers them from without; and the second-best is the home despot, who seizes the acropolis, and puts his fellow citizens under coercion. There cannot be a more certain way of misinterpreting and distorting Grecian phenomena than to read them in this spirit; which reverses the maxims both of prudence and morality current in the ancient world. The hatred of hings as it stood among the Greeks, (whatever may be thought of a similar feeling now), was a prominent virtue, flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature. It was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity of universal legal restraint; it was a direct expression of that regulated sociality which required the control of individual passion from every one without exception, and most of all from him to whom power was confided. The conception which the Greeks formed of an unresponsible one, or of a king who could do no wrong, may be expressed in the pregnant words of Herodotus, "He subverts the customs of the country, he violates women, - he puts men to death without trial." No other conception of the probable tendencies of kingship was justified either by a general knowledge of human nature, or by political experience as it stood from Solon downward; no other feeling than abhorrence could be entertained for the character so conceived; no other than a man of unprincipled ambition would ever seek to invest himself with it. Our larger political experience has taught us to modify this opinion; by showing that under the conditions of monarchy, in the best governments of modern Europe, the enor VOL. XCI. NO. CLXXXIII. K mities described by Herodotus do not take place and that it is possible, by means of representative constitutions acting under a certain force of manners, customs, and historical recollections, to obviate many of the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaiming the duty of peremptory obedience to an hereditary and unresponsible king, who cannot be changed without extra constitutional force. But such larger observation was not open to Aristotle, the wisest as well as the most cautious of ancient theorists; nor, if it had been open, could he have applied with assurance its lessons to the governments of the single cities of Greece. The theory of a constitutional king, especially as it exists in England, would have appeared to him impracticable. To establish a king who will reign without governing; in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice of little or no effect; exempt from all responsibility, without making use of the exemption; receiving from every one unmeasured demonstrations of homage, which are never translated into act except within the bounds of a known law; surrounded with all the paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the hands of ministers marked out for his choice by indications which he is not at liberty to resist. . . . . . When the Greeks thought of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenceless community exposed to his oppressions; and their fear and hatred of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were associated; in the democracy of Athens more perhaps than in any other portion of Greece.' (Vol. iii. p. 15-19.) Agreeing entirely in Mr. Grote's historical representation of the Greek feeling with respect to despotic power, we think that he has in this passage extended it beyond its true limits. It appears to us that, in order to bring it into accordance with fact, despot or absolute prince ought to be substituted in this passage, for king. For the Greeks certainly made, both in practice and theory, a wide distinction between a Saoλeus or king, and a rúfavvo, or despot. The former was considered as reigning by an hereditary, in early times a divine title; and as exercising his power according to the established usages of the State; the latter was essentially an usurper, whose power was acquired by force and illegality. Omnes habentur et dicuntur tyranni,' (says Cornelius Nepos, in a passage quoted by Mr. Grote,) qui potestate sunt 'perpetuâ in eâ civitate, quæ libertate usa est.' Cromwell and Napoleon may serve as modern examples of the latter class of rulers; Charles I. and Louis XVI. of the former. The theoretical writers, accordingly, mark this distinction in the clearest manner. Thus Xenophon describes Socrates as teaching that a king governed willing subjects according to the laws of the state; whereas a despot ruled over unwilling subjects, and contrary to the laws |