The History of Ancient Greece: 3rd millennium B.C. - 323 B.C.. John Bagnell Bury
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wealth can, such a change is always a step in the direction of democracy.
On the other hand, the poorer freemen at first suffered. How heavily the transition from the old systems of exchange to the use of money bore upon them, we shall find illustrated when we come to the special history of Athens. But their distress and discontent drove them into striving for full political equality, and in many cases they strove with success. The second half of the seventh century is marked in many parts of Greece by struggles between the classes; and the wiser and better of the nobles began themselves to see the necessity of extending political privileges to their fellow-citizens. The centralisation in towns, owing to the growth of industries and the declining importance of agriculture, created a new town population and doubtless helped on the democratic movement.
In this agitated period lived a poet of great genius, Archilochus of Paros. It has been truly said that Archilochus is the first Greek “of flesh and blood” whom we can grasp through the mists of antiquity. Son of a noble by a slave mother he tried his luck among the adventurers who went forth to colonise Siris in Italy, but he returned having won an experience of sea-faring, which taught him to sing of the “bitter gifts of Poseidon” and the mariner’s prayers for “sweet home”. Then he took part in a Parian colonisation of Thasos, and was involved in party struggles which rent the island. It must have been at Thasos that he witnessed an eclipse of the sun at noontide, which he describes; and this gives us, as a date in the Thasian period of his life, the 6th of April, 648 BC—the first exact date we have bearing on the history of Greece. All the evils of all Hellas are here, he exclaims; and “Thasos is not a fair place nor a desirable, like the land round the stream of Siris”. He announces that he is “the servant of the lord of battle and skilled in the delicious gift of the Muses”. But when he fought in a war which the Thasians waged with the Thracians of the opposite coast, he ran for his life and dropped his shield; “never mind, he said, I will get me another as good”. Poor, with a stain on his birth, tossed about the world, soured by adversity, Archilochus in his poetry gave full expression to his feelings, and used it to utter his passionate hatred against his enemies, such as the Parian Lycambes, for instance, who refused him his daughter Neobule. Had fortune favoured him, he would have been a noble of the nobles; ill-luck drove him to join the movement against aristocracy. His poems present a complete contrast to the epic style and even to Hesiod. He addressed himself to the people; sang to the flute, instead of the lyre; used colloquial language; and perfected iambic and trochaic measures for literary purposes. His influence may be judged from the fact that his poems were recited by the rhapsodes along with Homer and Hesiod.
The ills of Greece, which were reflected in the poems of Archilochus, were to lead to the development of equality and freedom. But success in the struggle would in most cases depend on military efficiency; and a revolution in the art of warfare, which was brought about at the same period, was therefore of immense importance. This takes us to the history of Sparta.
Growth of Sparta - Fall of the Aristocracies
SECT. 1. SPARTA AND HER CONSTITUTION
The Dorian settlers from the north, who took possession of the valley of the Eurotas, established themselves in a number of village communities throughout the land, and bore the name of Lacedaemonians. In the course of time, a city-state grew up in their midst and won dominion over the rest. The town was formed by the union of five villages which, after their union, still continued to preserve their identity, as separate units within the larger unity. The city was called Sparta, and took the dominant place in Laconia which had been formerly held by Amyclae. The other Lacedaemonian communities were called the perioeci, or “dwellers round about” the ruling city, and, though they were free and managed their local affairs, they had no political rights in the Spartan state. The chief burdens which fell on them were military service and the farming of the royal domains.
The Spartans were always noted for their conservative spirit. Hence we find in their constitution, which was remarkable in many ways, survivals of an old order of things which existed in the days of Homeric poetry, but has passed away in most places when trustworthy history begins. The most striking of these survivals was royalty; Sparta was nominally ruled by kings.
This conservative spirit of the Spartans rendered them anxious to believe, and others willing to accept the view, that their constitution had existed from very ancient times in just the same shape and feature which it displayed in the days of recorded history. We are, however, forced to suspect that this was not the case. There can be little doubt that the Spartan state developed up to the end of the seventh century on the same general lines as other Greek states, though with some remarkable peculiarities. There can be little doubt that, like most other states, it passed through the stages of royalty and aristocracy; and that the final form of the constitution was the result of a struggle between the nobles and the people. The remarkable thing was that throughout these changes hereditary kingship survived.
The machine of the Spartan constitution, as we know it when it was fully developed, had four parts: the Kings, the Council, the Assembly, and the Ephors. The first three are the original institutions, which were common, as we saw, to the whole Greek race; the Ephors were a later institution, and were peculiar to Sparta.
We saw that towards the end of the Homeric period the powers of the king were limited, and that this limited monarchy then died out, sometimes leaving a trace behind it, perhaps in the name of a magistracy—like the king-archon at Athens. In a few places it survived, and Sparta was one of them. But, if it survived here, its powers were limited in a twofold way. It was limited not only by the other institutions of the state, but by its own dual character. For there were two kings at Sparta, and had been since the memory of men. It seems possible that the origin of this double kingship lay in the coalition of two distinct communities, each of which had its own king. One tribe dwelt about Sparta, and its kings belonged to the clan of the Agidae. The other tribe, we may guess, was settled somewhere in southern Laconia, and its royal clan was that of the Eurypontidae. These two tribes must have united to form a large city-state at Sparta; and the terms of the union were that neither tribe should give up its king, but that two kings, with coequal authority, should rule over the joint community. The kingship passed from father to son in the two royal houses of the Agids and Eury- pontids; and if the Agid kings possessed a slight superiority in public estimation over their colleagues, this may have been due to the fact that the Eurypontids were the strangers who migrated to Sparta. According to a pedigree which was made out for them in later days, when the myth of the return of the Heraclidae had become current, both dynasties traced themselves back to Heracles.
It seems probable that it was partly because there were two kings, the one a check upon the other, that kingship was not abolished in Sparta, or reduced to a mere magistracy. But the powers of the kings were largely curtailed; and we may suppose that the limitations were introduced by degrees during that epoch in which throughout Greece generally, monarchies were giving way to aristocratic republics. Of the religious, military, and judicial functions, which belonged to them and to all other Greek kings, they lost some and retained others.
They were privileged to hold certain priesthoods; they offered solemn sacrifices for the city every month to Apollo; they prepared the necessary sacrifices before warlike expeditions and battles; they were priests, though not the sole priests, of the community.
They were the supreme commanders of the army. They had the right of making war upon whatever country they chose, and penalties were laid on any Spartan who presumed to hinder them. In the field they had unlimited right of life and death; and they had a bodyguard of a hundred men. It is clear that these large powers were always limited by the double nature of the kingship. But at a later period it was defined by law that only one of the kings, to be chosen on each occasion by the people, should lead the army in time of war, and moreover they were made responsible to the community for their conduct in their campaigns.
But while they enjoyed this supreme position as high-priests and leaders of the host, they could hardly be considered judges any longer.