432 PEOFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE AGRARIAN LAWS OF LYCURGUS. 



discussing the matter (vol. ii. p. 532). His words are as follows:— "It appears 

 to me that the difficulties connected with this matter are best obviated by adopt- 

 ing a different canon of historical interpretation. We cannot accept as real the 

 Lycurgean land-division described in the life of the lawgiver ; but treating the 

 account as a fiction, two modes of proceeding are open to us. We may either 

 consider the fiction, as it now stands, to be the exaggeration and distortion of some 

 small fact, and then try to guess without any assistance what that small fact 

 was ; or we may regard it as a fiction from first to last — the expression of some 

 large idea and sentiment, so powerful in its action on men's minds at a given time, 

 as to induce them to make a place for it among the realities of the past. Now 

 the latter supposition, as applied to the times of Agis IV., best meets the case 

 before us." In regard to this new canon, I object, in the first place, to the lan- 

 guage which states that as altogether a guess, which is merely the acceptance of 

 a well-attested fact, the details of which only are a matter of exaggeration and 

 conjecture. The only guess in the present case which touches the nucleus of a 

 fact, is Mr Grote's, who, following the evil example of the Germans, has here 

 smuggled into the sober pages of history an ingenious but altogether baseless con- 

 jecture, for the solid foundation of old authority. In the next place, I would lay 

 it down as one of the most important principles to be borne in mind in the inter- 

 pretation of all tradition, written or unwritten, to use the emphatic language of 

 Professor Dunckee, that " historic fantasies are not wont to arise without 

 historic realities ;" and the bare fact that Agis and Cleomenes in the third ; 

 century before Christ based their famous but unfortunate schemes of reform in 

 Sparta on alleged Agrarian laws of Lycurgus made five hundred years before, is 

 to me a strong proof that such laws did once actually exist. A reforming king, 

 who, as a last resource, rouses the social conscience of a nation against the 

 usurpation of an aristocracy, or a bureaucracy, must appeal, not to a pious 

 dream or a brilliant imagination, but to a living record imprinted from genera- 

 tion to generation in the fleshly tables of the popular heart. Only by the touch 

 of what is living can a living virtue be imparted to the dead. 



