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XXX. — On the Agrarian Laws of Lycurgus, and one of Mr Grate's Canons of 

 Historical Ci'iticism,. By Professor Blackie. 



(Read 4th January 1864.) 



The History of Greece, by Mr Grote, perhaps the most notable production of 

 modern English scholarship, is characterised, amongst many great virtues, by 

 what has always appeared to me, in a historian, a great fault — a tendency to 

 undervalue traditional authority, and to over-rate the importance of conjectural 

 ingenuity, in the reconstruction of the past. One of the most remarkable 

 instances of this tendency which has fallen specially under my view, is his treat- 

 ment of Lycurgus and his legislation, as it occurs near the end of his second 

 •volume. The fallacies which seem to me to lie in this treatment, it is the object 

 of this paper shortly to set forth. 



Mr Grote's views with respect to the Spartan laws and customs are sufficiently 

 indicated by his general proposition, vol. ii. p. 515, that " Lycurgus, or the indi- 

 vidual to whom this system was owing, whoever he was, is the founder of a war- 

 like brotherhood, rather than the lawgiver of a political community ;" and by his 

 special assertion (p. 524) that " the idea of Lycurgus as an equal partitioner of 

 lands, belongs to the century of Agis IV. and Cleomenes ;" that is, to the middle, 

 and towards the end of the third century before Christ, and is to be regarded 

 altogether as a political fiction, not as a historical fact. 



Now, by what method of inquiry does the learned gentleman arrive at this 

 conclusion ? His statement of his method, on the first blush, seems remarkably 

 fair and reasonable. On examining the witnesses for this alleged historical fact, 

 he has discovered that all the weighty authorities who live nearest to the event 

 are silent on the subject, or even directly contradict the current modern belief, 

 which can in fact be traced to only two of the most recent and least reliable 

 authorities. The canon implied in this method of historical criticism is no doubt, 

 taken broadly, perfectly just. But all such canons, in their application, are liable 

 to be seriously modified by various considerations. In the first place, with respect 

 to the fact here disputed, we must bear in mind that anything like authentic 

 cotemporary evidence is altogether out of the question ; and so far as nearness 

 to the time in which the alleged fact took place is concerned, Aristotle is a 

 witness not a whit more reliable than Polybius. According to the lowest calcu- 

 lation, that of Thucydides (i. 18), Lycurgus flourished 400 years before the end 

 of the Peloponesian war, that is about 800 years e.g. ; and if, as the historian asserts, 

 the Lycurgean laws remained in force during this period, their character at the 



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