PLUTARCH'S STORY OF xTITADELS. 405 rich from the Achaeans, I should have been glad to record it ; but, finding no such evidence, I cannot think it necessary to presume the fact, simply in order to account for the story in Plutarch.i The various items in that story all hang together, and must be understood as forming parts of the same comprehensive fact, or comprehensive fancy. The fixed total of nine thousand Spartan, and thirty thousand Laconian lots, 2 the equality between them, 1 I read with much sat ; sfrction, in M. Kopstadt's Dissertation, that the gen eral conclusion which I have endeavored to establish respecting the alleged Lykurgean redivision of property, appears to him successfully proved. (Dissert. De Eerum Laconic. Const, sect. 18, p. 138.) He supposes, with perfect truth, that, at the time when the first edition of these volumes was published, I was ignorant of the fact, that Lachmann and Kortflm had both called in question the reality of the Lykurgean redivision. In regard to Professor Kortiim, the fact was first brought to my knowledge, by his notice of these two volumes, in the Heidelberger Juhrbiicher, 1846, No. 41, p. 649. Since the first edition, I have read the treatise of Lachmann (Die Spar tanische Staats Verfassung in ihrer Entwicklung und ihrcm Verfalle, sect. 10, p. 170) wherein the redivision ascribed to Lykurgus is canvassed. He, too, attributes the origin of the tale, as a portion of history, to the social and po- litical feelings current in the days of Agis the Third, and Kleomenes the Third. He notices, also, that it is in contradiction with Plato and Isokrates. Bnt a large proportion of the arguments which he brings to disprove it, are con- nected with ideas of his own respecting the social and political constitution of Sparta, which I think either untrue or uncertified. Moreover, he believes in the inalienability as well as the indivisibility of the separate lots of land, which I believe to be just as little correct as their supposed equality. Kopstadt (p. 139) thinks that I have gone too far in rejecting every middle opinion. He thinks that Lykurgus must have done something, though much less than what is affirmed, tending to realize equality of individual property. I shall not say that this is impossible. If we had ampler evidence, per- haps such facts might appear. But as the evidence stands now, there is nothing whatever to show it. 2s T or are we entitled (in my judgment) to presume that it was so, in the absence of evidence, simply in order to make out that the Lykurgean mythe is only an exaggeration, and not entire fiction.
- Aristotle (Polit. ii. 6,11) remarks that the territory of the Spartans
would maintain fifteen hundred horsemen and thirty thousand hoplites, while the number of citizens was, in point of fact, less than one thousand. Dr. Thirlwall seems to prefer the reading of Gottling, three thousand instead
