376 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



antagonism with Corinth, had, probably in the course of this 

 antagonism, become consolidated into an independent state. 

 At the opening of the historic period the like had happened 

 in Sikyon and other places. Sparta, too, &quot; always maintained, 

 down to the times of the despot Nabis, its primitive aspect 

 of a group of adjacent hill-villages rather than a regular city.&quot; 

 Though in Sparta kingship had survived under an anomalous 

 form, yet the joint representatives of the primitive king, still 

 reverenced because the tradition of their divine descent was 

 preserved, had become little more than members of the 

 governing oligarchy, retaining certain prerogatives. And 

 though it is true that in its earliest historically-known stage, 

 the Spartan oligarchy did not present the form which would 

 spontaneously arise from the union of chiefs of clans for co 

 operation in war though it had become elective within a 

 limited class of persons ; yet the fact that an age of not less 

 than sixty \vas a qualification, harmonizes with the belief that 

 it at first consisted of the heads of the respective groups, who 

 were always the eldest sons of the eldest ; and that these 

 groups with their heads, described as having been in pre- 

 Lykurgean times, &quot;the most lawless of all the Greeks,&quot; 

 became united by that continuous militant life which dis 

 tinguished them.* 



* As bearing on historical interpretations at large, and especially on inter 

 pretations to be made in this work, let me point out further reasons than 

 those given by Grote and others for rejecting the tradition that the Spartan 

 constitution was the work of Lvkurgus. The universal tendency to ascribe 

 an effect to the most conspicuous proximate cause, is especially strong where 

 tlie effect is one of which the causation is involved. Our own time has fur- 

 nidlied an illustration in the ascription of Corn-law Repeal to Sir Robert 

 Peel, and after him to Messrs. Cobdcn and Bright : leaving Colonel Thomp 

 son un-named. In the next generation tie man who for a time carried on 

 the fight single-handed, and forged sundry of the weapons used by the vic 

 tors, will be unheard of in connexion with it. It is not enough, however, to 

 suspect that Lykurgus was simply the finisher of other men s work. Wo 

 may reasonably suspect that the work was that of no man, but simply that 

 of the needs and the conditions. This may be seen in the institution of the 

 public mess. If we ask what will happen with a small people who, for gene 

 rations spreading as conquerors, have a contempt for all industry, and who, 



