therefore thought, that in dying thus he should crown and complete all the services which he had rendered his fellow citizens during his life; since his death would engage them to a perpetual observation of his institutions, which they had sworn to observe inviolably till his return. Although I represent Lycurgus's sentiments upon his own death in the light wherein Plutarch has transmitted them to us, I am very far from approving them: And I make the same declaration with respect to several other facts of the like nature, which I sometimes relate without making any reflections upon them, though I think them very unworthy of approbation. The pretended wise men of the heathens had, as well concerning this article as several others, but very faint and imperfect notions; or, to speak more properly, remained in great darkness and error. They laid down this admirable principle, which we meet with in many of their writings, *That man, placed in the world as in a certain post by his general, cannot abandon it without the express command of him upon whom he depends, that is, of God himself. At other times, they looked upon man, as a criminal condemned to a melancholy prison, from whence indeed he might desire to be released, but could not lawfully attempt to be so, but by the course of justice, and the order of the magistrate; and not by breaking his chains, and forcing the gates of his prison. These notions are beautiful, because they are true: But the application they made of them was wrong, namely, as they took that * Vetat Pythagoras, injussu imperatoris, id est Dei, de præsidio & statione vitæ decedere. Cic. de senect. n. 73. Cato sic abiit è vitâ, ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet. Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis Deus injussu hinc nos suo demigrare. Cum verò causam justam Deus ipse dederit, ut tunc Socrati, nunc Catoni, sæpe multis; no ille, medius fidius, vir sapiens, lætus ex his tenebris in lucem illam excesserit. Nec tamen illa vincula carceris ruperit; leges enim vetant: sed, tanquam à magistratu aut ab aliquâ potestate legitimâ, sic à Deo evocatus atque emissus, exierit. Id. 1. Tusc. Quæst. n. 74. for an express order of the Deity, which was the pure effect of their own weakness or pride, by which they were led to put themselves to death, either that they might deliver themselves from the pains and troubles of this life, or inmortalize their names, as was the case with Lycurgus, Cato, and a number of others. Reflections upon the Government of Sparta, and upon the Laws of Lycurgus. 1. Things commendable in the Laws of Lycurgus. There must needs have been, (to judge only by the event) a great fund of wisdom and prudence in the laws of Lycurgus; since, as long as they were observed in Sparta (which was above five hundred years) it was a most flourishing and powerful city. It was not so much (says Plutarch speaking of the laws of Sparta) the government and polity of a city, as the conduct and regular behaviour of a wise man, who passes his whole life in the excrcise of virtue : Or rather, continues the same author, as the poets feign, that Hercules, only with his lion's skin and club, went from country to country to purge the world of robbers and tyrants; so Sparta, with a slip of parchment and an old coat, gave laws to all Greece, which willingly submitted to her dominion; suppressed tyrannies and unjust authority in cities; put an end to wars, as she thought fit, and appeased insurrections; and all this generally without moving a shield or a sword, and only by sending a simple *This was what the Spartans called scytale, a thong of leather or parchment, which they twisted round a staff in such a manner, that there was no vacancy or void space left upon it. They wrote upon this thong, and when they had written, they untwisted it; and sent it to the general, for whom it was intended. This general, who had another stick of the same size with that on which the thong was twisted and written upon, wrapt it round that staff in the same manner, and by that means found out the connexion and the right placing of the letters, which otherwise were so displaced and out of order, that there was no possibility of their being read. Plut. in vit. Lys. p. 444. ambassador amongst them, who no sooner appeared, than all the people submitted, and flocked about him like so many bees about their monarch: So much respect did the justice and good government of this city imprint upon the minds of all their neighbours. He nature of the Spartan go We find at the end of Lycurgus's life one single I. The reflection made by Plutarch, which of itself comprehends a great encomium upon that legislator. there says, that Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and all those vernment. who have treated of the establishment of a political state or government, took their plans from the republick of Lycurgus; with this difference, that they confined themselves wholly to words and theory; but Lycurgus, without dwelling upon ideas and speculative projects, did really and effectually institute an inimitable polity, and form a whole city of philosophers. In order to succeed in this undertaking, and to establish the most perfect form of a commonwealth that could be, he melted down as it were, and blended together what he found best in every kind of government, and most conducive to the publick good; thus tempering one species with another, and ba lancing the inconveniences to which each of them in particular is subject, with the advantages that result from their being united together. Sparta had something of the monarchical form of government, in the authority of her kings: The council of thirty, otherwise called the senate, was a true aristocracy; and the power vested in the people of nominating the senators, and of giving sanction to the laws, resembled a democratical government. The creation of the Ephori afterwards served to rectify what was amiss in those previous establishments, and to supply what was defective. Plato, in more places than one, admires Lycurgus's wisdoni, in his institution of the senate, which was equally advantageous both to the kings and the people; * because by this means, * Νόμο. ἐπειδὴ κύριθ. ἐγένετο βασιλεὺς τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλ ̓ ἐκ ἄνε Beatos tocarros sów. Plat. Epist. viii. 2. Equal division of the lands: Gold and silver ba nished from Sparta. the law became the only supreme mistress of the kings, and the kings never became tyrants over the law. The design formed by Lycurgus of making an equal distribution of the lands among the citizens, and of entirely banishing from Sparta all luxury, avarice, law-suits, and dissensions, by abolishing the use of gold and silver, would appear to us a scheme of a commonwealth finely conceived in speculation, but utterly impracticable in execution, did not history assure us, that Sparta actually subsisted in that condition for many ages. When I place the transaction I am now speaking of among the laudable parts of Lycurgus's laws, I do not pretend it to be absolutely unexceptionable; for I think it can scarce be reconciled with that general law of nature, which forbids the taking away one man's property to give it to another; and yet this is what was really done upon this occasion. Therefore in this aflair of dividing the lands, I consider only so much of it, as was truly commendable in itself, and worthy of admiration. Can we possibly conceive, that a man could persuade the richest and most opulent inhabitants of a city to resign all their revenues and estates, in order to level and confound themselves with the poorest of the people; to subject themselves to a new way of living, both severe in itself, and full of restraint; in a word, to debar themselves of the use of every thing, wherein the happiness and comfort of life is thought to consist? And yet this is what Lycurgus actually effected in Sparta. Such an institution as this would have been less wonderful, had it subsisted only during the life of the legislator; but we know, that it lasted many ages after his decease. Xenophon, in the encomium he has left us of Agesilaus, and Cicero, in one of his orations, observe, that Lacedæmon was the only city in the world that preserved her discipline and laws for so considerable a term of years unaltered and in violate. Soli, said the latter, speaking of the Lacedæmonians, toto orbe terrarum septingentos jam annos ampliùs unis moribus & nunquam mutatis legibus vivunt. I believe though, that in Cicero's time the discipline of Sparta, as well as her power, was very much relaxed and diminished: But, however, all historians agree, that it was maintained in all its vigour till the reign of Agis, under whom Lysander, though incapable himself of being blinded or corrupted with gold, filled his country with luxury and the love of riches, by bringing into it immense sums of gold and silver, which were the fruits of his victories, and thereby subverting the laws of Lycurgus. But the introduction of gold and silver money was not the first wound given by the Lacedæmonians to the institutions of their legislator. It was the consequence of the violation of another law still more fundamental. Ambition was the vice, that preceded, and made way for avarice. The desire of conquests drew on that of riches, without which they could not propose to extend their dominions. The main design of Lycurgus, in the establishing his laws, and especially that which prohibited the use of gold and silver, was, as Polybius and Plutarch have judiciously observed, to curb and restrain the ambition of his citizens; to disable them from making conquests, and in a manner to force them to confine themselves within the narrow bounds of their own country, without carrying their views and pretensions any further. Indeed the government, which he established, was sufficient to defend the frontiers of Sparta, but was not calculated for the raising her to a dominion over other cities. The design then of Lycurgus was not to make the Spartans conquerors. To remove such thoughts from his fellow citizens, he expressly forbid them, though they inhabited a country surrounded with the sea, to meddle with maritime affairs; to have 2 Pro Flac. num. Ixiii. a Polyb. I. vi. p. 491. |