428 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE AGRARIAN LAWS OF LYCURGUS, 



a very startling assertion to a reader coming fresh from the somewhat Utopian 

 descriptions of Spartan simplicity, equality, and fraternity, in the kindly pages of 

 old Plutarch. But this is not the only startling assertion about Spartan things and 

 Spartan persons that presents itself in the same important chapter ; for, whereas 

 Strabo informs us (x. p. 449) that there was a common proverb current in Greece, 

 " A horse from Thessaly, a woman from Sparta, and a man from the banks of the 

 fair flowing Arethusa," whereby the best article of the several kinds was expressed, 

 the Stagyrite, on the other hand, here allows the famous Spartan mothers no 

 characteristic qualities, but three of the worst, — great luxury, unbounded extra- 

 vagance, and, what no Athenian could tolerate for a moment, even in conception, 

 an unwomanly mastery over their husbands. These strong statements, coming 

 from a man generally so calm and cool and judicially impartial, naturally suggest 

 to the thoughtful student that the great father of Encyclopaedic science is be- 

 trayed for a moment into a little fit of amiable human weakness, and is speaking, 

 not as a philosopher altogether, but partly also as an Athenian. But more than 

 this. What Aristotle here says with such decision was no doubt strictly true, — 

 for it is not for us to pretend to find him nodding as to a matter of fact,— but it is 

 not the whole truth. We can only explain his strong, one-sided, and, as it appears 

 to the reader, extremely prejudiced language, by supposing, what is no doubt 

 the fact, that he is speaking only of the Spartans of his day, not of the days of 

 Leonidas or of Lycurgus, and is no more to be considered as giving a general 

 portraiture of Sparta and the Spartans, than a Thackeray of the time of Tacitus 

 would have had his sketches of Roman life under the Emperors taken for the 

 living counterfeits of the Catos, the SciPios, and the Fabii of the Punic wars. 

 And this view of the matter will appear the only natural and just one, so soon 

 as the reader has taken up the position and attitude of the great author of the 

 Politics, in this second book, as distinctly enunciated in the very first sentence of 

 this section of the work.* The intention of the work, the author declares, is to 

 ascertain tentatively, and by approximation at least, the best polity, or, as we 

 would phrase it, the ideal commou'^ealth ; but as it might appear impertinent to 

 attempt this if the best form of government had already been realised, the philoso- 

 pher thinks it only reasonable that he should preface the exposition of his ideal plan 

 by showing that the most bepraised commonwealths already existing, so far from 

 being perfect models, are bristling with glaring defects, which a passing glance 

 may readily discover. Aristotle, therefore, by the very conception of this book, 

 has put himself into the not very philosophical position of a systematic fault- 



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