82 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



aristocracy on the basis of the segregation of ability 

 and character into stable classes possessing definite 

 privileges and responsibilities was certainly as much 

 outside the intention of the Roman democratic legis- 

 lator as it was probably beyond his power. The 

 long centuries of barbarism and the squalor and tur- 

 moil of the Dark Ages were part of the price which 

 humanity had to pay for a notable failure to solve 

 the problem. 



Sparta also has an instructive tale to tell, a variant 

 on the problem as it appeared in Imperial Rome ; but 

 in many ways a smaller state gives a more satisfactory 

 example to those who are impatient to connect cause 

 and effect. The Lacedaemonian republic was a primi- 

 tively organized state, of matriarchal form, even at a 

 late period, in which property descended through the 

 women. Consequently it was easier for the female 

 element to obtain control than it was in Rome, where 

 the power of the father was supreme. In the prime 

 of her national life, the constant absence of large bodies 

 of fighting men left the government of Sparta largely 

 in the ineffective hands of old men and boys. So at 

 a certain period of her history, the women, being pro- 

 bably greatly in numerical excess, secured the right to 

 assist at the public meals, which was equivalent to a 

 participation on equal terms in the political life of the 

 country. There is no complaint as to their methods 

 of administration ; no doubt they were most efficient 

 and self-sacrificing governors. But the net result 

 seems to have been that the cradles were left empty 

 and the firesides were deserted, until in a hundred 

 years the Spartan nation had virtually ceased to exist, 



