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Land tenure and Inheritance in Classical Sparta*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephen Hodkinson
Stephen Hodkinson
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

‘The problem of Spartan land tenure is one of the most vexed in the obscure field of Spartan institutions.’ Walbank's remark is as true today as when it was written nearly thirty years ago. Controversy surrounding this subject has a long tradition going back to the nineteenth century and the last thirty years have witnessed no diminution in the level of disagreement, as is demonstrated by a comparison of the differing approaches in the recent works by Cartledge, Cozzoli, David and Marasco. Although another study runs the risk of merely adding one more hypothesis to the general state of uncertainty, a fundamental reassessment of the question is required, not least because of its significance for the historian's interpretation of the overall character of Spartiate society. Through the introduction of a new perspective it may be possible to advance our understanding of the subject.

In Section I of this essay I shall attempt to review several influential scholarly theories and to examine their feasibility and the reliability of the evidence upon which they are based. Section II will begin to construct a more plausible alternative account which is based upon more trustworthy evidence. Finally, Section III will discuss a comparatively underemphasised aspect of the topic, the property rights of Spartiate women, which suggests a rather different interpretation of the character of land tenure and inheritance from those more usually adopted.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , December 1986 , pp. 378 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius i (Oxford, 1957), 728Google Scholar.

2 Cartledge, , SL 165ffGoogle Scholar.; Cozzoli, 1ff; David, , SER 46ffGoogle Scholar.;Marasco, , Commento 204ffGoogle Scholar. For an example of 19th-century controversy, Grote ii. 530ff., with refs. to earlier views. For refs. to other discussions, cf. Walbank, ibid. 731; Michell, H., Sparta (Cambridge, 1964), 205ffGoogle Scholar.; Oliva, P., Sparta and her Social Problems (Prague, 1971), 32ff., 48ff. and 188ffGoogle Scholar.

3 E.g. Michell, ibid. 205ff.; Oliva, ibid. 36ff.; Forrest, W. G., A History of Sparta 950–192 B.C., 2nd ed. (London, 1980), 135ffGoogle Scholar.; Figueira, T. J., ‘Mess Contributions and Subsistence at Sparta’, TAPA 114 (1984), 87ffGoogle Scholar., at 96f. Both Michell and Oliva, however, waver somewhat in their accounts, saying that a man's klēros must often have been passed on by the state to his eldest son.

4 E.g. Ziehen, L., ‘Das spartanische Bevölkerungsproblem’, Hermes 68(1933), 218ffGoogle Scholar.; Asheri, SLE; id. LDP.

5 E.g. Busolt, G. and Swoboda, H., Griechische Staatskunde, 3rd ed., ii (Munich, 1926), 633ffGoogle Scholar.; Hooker, J. T., The Ancient Spartans (London, 1980), 116ffGoogle Scholar.; David, , SER 46ffGoogle Scholar.

6 Dilts, M. R., Heraclidis Lembi Excerpta Politiarum, GRBS Monographs 5 (1971)Google Scholar; see also the works cited by Tigerstedt, E. N., The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity (Stockholm, 1965–1978), i.566 n. 412Google Scholar.

7 Cf. also Plut. Mor. 238e–f, which refers to ‘the anciently established portion, which it is illegal to sell’.

8 E.g. Pareti, L., Storia di Sparta arcaica (Florence, 1917), 197ffGoogle Scholar.; David, , SER 46ffGoogle Scholar.

9 6.45.1–3; cf. 6.48.3, where this equality is attributed to Lykourgos.

10 This procedure, denounced by Grote (ii.555f. note) in the last century, is most obvious with regard to belief in the indivisibility of the Spartiate klēros. Some examples: (i) Michell, op. cit. (n. 2) accepts the evidence of Plut. Lyk. 16 on pp. 207ff., without mentioning Aristotle's account, which is not introduced until p. 219. Aristotle's crucial comment on the divisibility of Spartiate estates (Politics 1270b4–6) is not quoted until p. 229 and is then ignored in the subsequent discussion; (ii) Hooker, op. cit. (n. 5) pronounces on p. 116 that estates were indivisible, does not quote Aristotle until pp. 142f. and then ends the quotation one sentence before the comment upon divisibility; (iii) David, , SER conducts his discussion (46ff.)Google Scholar without a reference to Aristotle in the main text, mentioning his testimony only in later sections (68f., 102ff.) as evidence for the new system supposedly introduced by the law of Epitadeus. His earlier discussion (50ff.) of a number of other fourth-century sources does not include any precise evidence about the nature of land tenure and inheritance.

11 In addition to those cited above, cf. Plut. Comp. Lyk.—Num. 2.6; Solon 16.1–2; Kleom. 18.2; Mor. 226b; Justin 3.3.3.

12 David, , SER 69Google Scholar; AS 82 n. 52.

13 Walbank, op. cit. (n. 1) 727; cf. his comment on Plb. 6.5.1, where ‘the anacyclosis, which is probably the work of some writer of the third or second century, is said to have been set forth by “Plato and certain other philosophers”’. See also Gabba, E., ‘Studi Su Filarco’, Athenaeum 35 (1957), 3ffGoogle Scholar.;193ff., at 205.

14 Walbank, ibid.; cf. Jones, A. H. M., Sparta (Oxford, 1967), 40fGoogle Scholar.; Cozzoli 18ff. Xenophon's view that the Lykourgan reforms were approved by Delphi and that they were unique (refs. in Cozzoli, 20) further demonstrates the inaccuracy of Polybius' claim that he identified the Lakedaimonian constitution with that of Crete.

15 Walbank, ibid. 728; Barber, G. L., The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), 116Google Scholar. Cf. the judgement of Tigerstedt, op. cit. (n. 6) 210 that Ephorus' biography of Lykourgos ‘has no historical value, but… shows how quasi-scientific history in combination with political propaganda fashioned a consistent picture of the organization of the Spartan state and its mythical lawgiver’.

16 A hypothesis discounted by Kessler, E., Plutarchs Leben des Lykurgos (Berlin, 1910), 38Google Scholar; but for the considerable influence of this pamphlet on Ephorus, cf. Barber, ibid.; David, E., ‘The Pamphlet of Pausanias’, PP 34 (1979), 94ff., at 109ffGoogle Scholar.

17 David, ibid. 116.I accept his thesis, following Ed. Meyer, Forschungen zur Alien Geschichte i (Halle, 1892), 233ffGoogle Scholar., that Pausanias' pamphlet contained not an attack on Lykourgos' laws but a eulogy aimed at convicting his opponents, who, he claimed, had violated those laws.

18 Marasco, G., ‘La leggenda di Polidoro e la redistribuzione di terre di Licurgo nella propaganda Spartana del III secolo’, Prometheus 4 (1978), 115ffGoogle Scholar.; ‘Cleomene III, i mercenari e gli iloti’, Prometheus 5 (1979), 45ffGoogle Scholar.; Commento i. 248ffGoogle Scholar., ii.584f.; cf. Plutarco. Le Vite di Licurgo e di Numa, edd. Manfredini, M. and Piccirilli, L. (Milan, 1980), 246ffGoogle Scholar.

19 And possibly also with the 9,000-strong citizen-body achieved in Athens in 322 by a limitation of the franchise which was portrayed as a return to the ancestral constitution (Diod. 18.18.5; Plut. Phokion 27.5) and may have been viewed by contemporaries as the archetype of a balanced constitution.

20 This explanation of Plutarch's first version seems preferable to the alternative argument that the 9,000 citizen klēroi represent an arbitrary doubling of the klēroiin Agis' projected reform designed to reflect Sparta's former control of Messenia (see the refs. in Marasco, , Commento i.115 n. 1Google Scholar, to which add Cartledge, , SL 169fGoogle Scholar.), because the tradition about Lykourgos uniformly places him before the conquest of Messenia. The opposite theory that Plutarch's first version was in existence before the third century and was halved by the revolutionaries (Ehrenberg, V., ‘Spartiaten und Lakedaimonier’, Hermes 59 (1924), 23ff., at 44Google Scholar; Ziehen, op. cit. (n. 4) 223) fails to explain the 30,000 perioikic klēroi. Since there is no reason to believe that the Spartiates redistributed, or were thought to have redistributed, perioikic land before the third century, the revolutionaries' figure for the perioikic, and therefore also for the Spartiate, klēroi must have existed first: Cartledge, ibid.; A. H. M. Jones, op. cit. (n. 14) 40.

21 Refs. in Grote ii.549f.; Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), 137fGoogle Scholar.

22 Cozzoli 21.

23 Ibid. 23.

24 For the suggested influence of the Peripatetics on Plutarch and their unreliability, Tigerstedt, op. cit. (n. 6) i.304ff.; Aalders, G. J. D., Plutarch's Political Thought (Amsterdam, 1982), 64Google Scholar.

25 On the effect of the revolution in propagating an idealised vision of Lykourgan Sparta, Africa, T. W., Phylarchos and the Spartan Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961)Google Scholar; Starr, C. G., ‘The Credibility of Early Spartan History’, Historia 14 (1965), 257ffGoogle Scholar. = id., Essays in Ancient History, edd. Ferrill, A. and Kelly, T. (Leiden, 1979), 145ffGoogle Scholar.; Tigerstedt, op. cit. (n. 6) ii.49ff.

26 For Plutarch's dependence upon Phylarchos, cf. the refs. in David, , SER 211 n. 86Google Scholar.

27 ‘Aristotele come fonte di Plutarco nelle biografie di Agide e Cleomene’, Athenaeum 56 (1978), 170ffGoogle Scholar.

28 E.g. ibid. 174: (1) the reference to conflict between kings and ephors in Plut. Agis 12.2 goes far beyond Arist. Pol. 1271a 24–6, esp. the idea that the two kings together could outweigh the ephors; (2) in Agis 9.1, 11.1, despite the fact that an assembly was called when the Gerousia was divided, it was still the Gerousia which made the final decision, not the assembly as in Pol. 1273a6ff. (whichever one prefers of the two possible interpretations suggested by Saunders, T. J., in ed. Sinclair, T. A., Aristotle, The Politics, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, 1981), 156 n. 3)Google Scholar; (3) in A Kleom. 10.2–3 the ephors gradually usurp power after initially being assistants to the kings, whereas in Pol. 1313a25ff. and in Plut. Lyk. 7.2 they are a check on royal authority from the start. This last example demonstrates the error of Marasco's general assumption that Plutarch's sources for the lives of Agis and Kleomenes were the same as those for the life of Lykourgos. Plutarch's use of Aristotle in the Lykourgos does not prove that he was a significant source for the other two lives.

29 Marasco, ibid. 179, with refs. to earlier works; David, , AS 80Google Scholar.

30 Cozzoli 22. In particular, David, 's implicit claim (SER 59ff., esp. 66Google Scholar), that the remarks of Plato, , Republic 547d–552eGoogle Scholar on the decline of (Spartan) timocracy and the evils of oligarchy corroborate the account of Phylarchos, is not true as regards the issue under discussion. Plato says nothing of changes in the nature of land tenure. His general statement that under an oligarchy a man is allowed to sell all he has to another and become a pauper (552a–b) is unlikely to be a reference to such a measure as the supposed law of Epitadeus, which concerned not sale but gift and bequest.

31 Toynbee, A. J., Some Problems of Greek History (Oxford, 1969), 302Google Scholar; Buckler, J., ‘Land and Money in the Spartan Economy — A Hypothesis’, Research in Economic History 2 (1977), 249ff., at 258Google Scholar.

32 Busolt-Swoboda, op. cit. (n. 5) 636 n. 3; pace de Coulanges, N. D. Fustel, ‘Étude sur la propriété foncière à Sparte’, Mémoires de I' Académie des sciences morales et politiques de I'lnstitut de France 16 (1888), 835ff., at 851ffGoogle Scholar. = id. Nouvelles recherches sur quelques problèmes d'histoire (Paris, 1891), 54ff., at 62ffGoogle Scholar.

33 Cozzoli 28.

34 For this claim, see e.g. Michell, op. cit. (n. 2) 207ff.; David, , SER 46ffGoogle Scholar.; Marasco, , Commento i.211Google Scholar. Marasco attempts to avoid this contradiction by claiming that Plutarch's account is not one of complete equality. He argues that the phrase ⋯μ⋯ς γέ πως in Agis 5.2 indicates that the equality was only partial. For this to be so, however, one would expect the phrase to be placed either before or after διαμένουσα. As it stands, the more natural interpretation of the meaning of the sentence is that other defects in the state were partially corrected by the complete equality.

35 Walbank, op. cit. (n. 1) 728ff.; Busolt-Swoboda, op. cit. (n. 5) 634 n. 2; Cartledge, , SL 166Google Scholar.

36 E.g. Andreades, A. M., A History of Greek Public Finance (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 53ffGoogle Scholar.; Jones, op. cit. (n. 14) 134ff.; Toynbee, op. cit. (n. 31) 297ff.; de Ste. Croix, op. cit. (n. 21) 331f.; Cartledge, , SL 307ffGoogle Scholar.; Forrest, op. cit. (n. 3) 134ff.; Cawkwell, G. L., ‘The Decline of Sparta’, CQ 33 (1983), 385ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Lane Fox 221f.

37 Michell, op. cit. (n. 2) 207ff., 228ff.; Forrest, ibid. 136.

38 Cf. von Pöhlmann, R., Grundriss der griechischen Geschichte, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1906), 275 n. 1Google Scholar. It is no defence to argue, as does Marasco, , Commento i.209fGoogle Scholar., that Plutarch was not concerned with the concentration of land but with the freedom to alienate the klēros which led the poor into destitution. Plutarch himself states that equality existed before Epitadeus' law and that concentration of land and widespread poverty were its consequences.

39 Poverty of younger sons: David, , SER 48Google Scholar; both he (at 92) and Hooker, op. cit. (n. 5) 143, fail to discuss the question of manpower decline before the battle of Mantineia in 418. Natural extinction: Marasco, , Commento i.211Google Scholar; the implausibility of this explanation is increased by the fact that it is supposed to account for the entire manpower decline down to the 360s, since Marasco believes that each Spartiate possessed by right of birth a lot sufficient for his maintenance until the law of Epitadeus, which he dates after the loss of Messenia (214).

40 Op. cit. (n. 31)259.

41 Refs. to older works in Toynbee, op. cit. (n. 31) 301 n. 1; cf. more recently Cartledge, , SL 165ffGoogle Scholar.;Cozzoli 1ff.

42 David, , AS, esp. 79ffGoogle Scholar.

43 Note, however, that Rhetoric 1398b17–18, which David cites to underpin his argument (AS 85ffGoogle Scholar.; SER 69, 213 nn. 98, 100fGoogle Scholar.) that the object of Aristotle's criticisms were departures from Lykourgos' laws, not the laws themselves, will hardly bear the weight placed upon it. The statement that the Spartans were happy as long as they obeyed the laws of Lykourgos appears merely as a commonplace saying cited as an example of argument by induction, a counterpart to the vague statement that the Athenians were happy as long as they observed Solon's laws and the ascription of Theban success to their leaders' becoming philosophers. It is not even certain that the statement is by Aristotle himself, rather than a continuation of the quotation from Alkidamas which precedes it: Cope, E. M., The Rhetoric of Aristotle, rev. Sandys, J. E., ii (Cambridge, 1877), 233Google Scholar.

44 1270a 18–21: το⋯το δ⋯ кα⋯ δι⋯ τ⋯ν νόμων τέταкται φαὑλως ὠνɛῖσθαι μ⋯ν γ⋯ρ ἤ πωλɛῖν τ⋯ν ὑπάρΧουσαν ⋯ποίησɛν οὐ кαλόν, ⋯ρθώς ποιήσας, διδόναι δέ кα⋯ кαταλɛίπɛιν ⋯ξουσίαν ἔδωкɛ τοῖς βουλομένοις.

45 Compare 1263a35–7, a summary of the details in Xen. Lak. Pol. 6.3–4. This explanation is preferable to the suggestion of Keaney, J. J., ‘Hignett's HAC and the Authorship of the Athēnaiōn Politeia’, LCM 5 (1980), 51ffGoogle Scholar., at 53, that Aristotle learnt about the ancient portions only after writing this part of the Politics, when the detailed research for the Lak. Pol. was undertaken. His possible ignorance of the role ascribed to the early Spartan king, Theopompos (below, n. 57), constitutes no parallel to this supposed ignorance of a longstanding and contemporary form of land tenure.

46 SL 166Google Scholar. The argument of Michell, op. cit. (n. 2) 220f., that Aristotle ignores the Spartan prohibition against sale of the ancient portion, on the grounds that at 1319a 10–19 he gives examples of such prohibitions without mentioning Sparta, is incorrect. The cases of Oxylos and the Aphytaians to which Michell refers are not examples of prohibition against sale, nor did Aristotle intend them as such; he gives no examples at all.

47 See esp, Pareti, op. cit. (n. 8) 197ff.; Ehrenberg, op. cit. (n. 20) 45ff. Further refs. in David, , SER 200f. n. 13Google Scholar.

48 Cartledge, , SL 135, 168Google Scholar.

49 Toynbee, op. cit. (n. 31) 301 n. 1.

50 SL 168Google Scholar.

51 Jones, op. cit. (n. 14) 43; Cozzoli 8.

52 Meyer, op. cit. (n. 17) 258 n. 3; Busolt, G., Griechische Geschichte i, 2nd ed. (Gotha, 1893), 523Google Scholar; Newman, W. L., The Politics ofAristotle (Oxford, 1887–1902), ii.325fGoogle Scholar.; Meier, T., Das Wesen der spartanischen Staatsordnung (Leipzig, 1939), 56Google Scholar; Jones, ibid. 41; Cartledge, , SL 165ffGoogle Scholar.; Cozzoli 6; Forrest, op. cit. (n. 3) 137.

53 von Holzinger, C., ‘Aristoteles' und Herakleides' lakonische und kretische Politien’, Philologus 52 (1894), 58ff., at 61Google Scholar; Weil, R., Aristôte et l'Histoire (Paris, 1960), 244Google Scholar.

54 Ehrenberg, V., RE iii, A 2, s.v. Sparta (Geschichte) cols. 1373ff., at 1402Google Scholar; Asheri, , SLE 45ffGoogle Scholar.; LDP 12Google Scholar; Fuks, A., ‘The Spartan Citizen-body in the Mid-Third Century and its Enlargement Proposal by Agis IV’, Athenaeum 40 (1962), 244ff.Google Scholar, at 251 = id. Social Conflicts in Ancient Greece (Leiden, 1984), 230ffGoogle Scholar., at 237; Oliva, op. cit. (n. 2) 191; Christien, J., ‘La Loi D'Epitadeus: un aspect de l'histoire économique et sociale à Sparte’, RD 52 (1974), 197ff., at 201ffGoogle Scholar.; David, , SER 68fGoogle Scholar.; AS 81ffGoogle Scholar.; Marasco, , Commento i.179fGoogle Scholar.

55 Marasco, , Commento i. 179Google Scholar claims that the phrase δɩ⋯ τ⋯ν νόμων indicates that Aristotle is referring not to the original Lykourgan constitution but to the contemporary situation. This is far from clear, however, especially since at 1270a7 he uses the phrase ὑπò τοὺς νόμους with reference to Lykourgos' attempt to control the women. (I owe this last point to Dr J. F. Lazenby.)

56 The four references are: 1270b42, concerning the elders; 1271a13, ambition; 1271a32 (cf. 26–8), the common meals; 1271b13, intention to instil disdain for money. The other refs. are: 1270b1, b19, 1271a22.

57 Keaney, op. cit. (n. 45) 52, 56 suggests that the Lak. Pol. was written, or at least researched, between the composition of Books 2 and 5 and provided Aristotle with extra information for the latter book.

58 Although the authenticity of the whole chapter from 1273b27 to 1274b26 has long been the subject of debate (refs. in Susemihl, F. and Hicks, R. D., The Politics of Aristotle. Books I–V [London, 1894], 318Google Scholar), one should distinguish 1273b27–1274a21, which seems to be a genuine Aristotelian account of Solon's legislation, from the more dubious section on other lawgivers which follows: Newman, op. cit. (n. 52) 372f. The fragment from the Lak. Pol. (Dilts, fr. 9), which implicitly criticises those who attributed the whole Spartan politeia to Lykourgos, bears no necessary implications for Aristotle's view in the Politics (pace David, , AS 81Google Scholar), since it could be another instance of a change of opinion (Keaney, ibid. 52).

59 AS 82Google Scholar. His attempt (86) to evade tfiis point by arguing that, because the law was passed several decades before the Politics was written, Aristotle already regarded it as an integral part of the Spartan law code is unconvincing.

60 The earliest date at which most scholars who accept the authenticity of Epitadeus would place his law is the mid-390s; e.g. David, , SER 67Google Scholar, who supposes that it was enacted towards the end of Pausanias' reign in 395, or shortly afterwards. Other scholars place Epitadeus after the battle of Leuktra: e.g. Marasco, G., ‘La Retra di Epitadeo e la situazione sociale di Sparta nel IV secolo’, AC 49 (1980), 131 ffGoogle Scholar., at 132. Attempts to equate Epitadeus with the Epitadas who died on Sphakteria in 425 violate the chronology of Plutarch's account upon which they rely and are justly criticised by David, , SER 211 n. 88Google Scholar.

61 The fact that Xenophon's evidence concerning Agesilaos' gift was repeated by Plutarch in his own biography of the king (Ages. 4.1) further demonstrates the latter's lack of awareness of contradictions between his accounts in different biographies and casts further doubt upon the veracity of the account in the life of Agis.

Note that Agesilaos' freedom to alienate this land was not restricted by the fact that his son, Archidamos, must already have been alive at the time. Since Archidamos' paidika, Kleonymos, was about 18 in the year 378 (he had just come out of the paides: Xen. Hell. 5.4.25; cf. Tazelaar, C. M., ‘ПΑΙΔΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΦΗΒΟΙ. Some notes on the Spartan stages of youth’, Mnemosyne, 4th ser., 20 [1967], 127ff., at 139f., 147fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.), he must himself have been then in his late twenties (there was probably normally at least 8 years between erastēs and paidika: Hodkinson, S., ‘Social Order and the Conflict of Values in Classical Sparta’, Chiron 13 (1983), 239ff., at 245, 251 n. 28Google Scholar) and will therefore have been born around 405 or slightly earlier.

62 Cf. Finley, M. I., ‘The Alienability of Land in Ancient Greece’, Eirene 7 (1968), 25ffGoogle Scholar. = Annales ESC 25 (1970), 1271ffGoogle Scholar. = id. The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1975), 153ff., at 156Google Scholar.

63 Grote ii.558f. n. 1. The verb ⋯θέλη could imply either the initiative of the adopter or his consent to what someone else has requested or proposed; cf. the usages in LSJ 9. The majority of Herodotus' uses of (⋯)θ⋯λω in hypothetical conditional clauses are of the former type (2.11.4, 13.3, 14.1, 99.3, 173.4, 3.12.1; cf. Powell, J. E., A Lexicon to Herodotus, 2nd ed., (Hildesheim, 1960) s.v., Section 7Google Scholar) and this meaning is also frequent in other contexts (e.g. 1.141.1, 2.2.1, 3.1, 6.52.6,56). Since, however, the passage in question is part of a list which may derive directly from a more or less official Spartan source (Section III, below), it may be that normal Herodotean usage is not relevant. The clause is perhaps deliberately imprecise, but it need imply no more than that a man with too many sons might approach another man to request adoption.

64 Lacey, W. K., The Family in Classical Greece (London, 1968), 201Google Scholar.

65 Plutarch (Lyk. 15.12) refers to adoption when describing the custom whereby an old man with a young wife procured the services of a younger man to beget children by her, a passage clearly derived from Xenophon, Lak. Pol. 1.7. Plutarch claims that the older man would then adopt the offspring; but, since this is not mentioned by Xenophon, it is possible that he is mistaken. Since some of the occasions when the custom applied may have been marriages between an heiress and her next of kin (see Section III below), adoption would not always have been appropriate.

66 On partible inheritance as the general Greek pattern, cf. most recently Lane Fox 21 1ff.

67 Cartledge, , SW 103 n. 118Google Scholar; Lane Fox 223. Philo's evidence seems reliable, since his accompanying statements that the Athenians permitted marriage between non-uterine halfsiblings and the Egyptians full brother-sister marriage are both correct: Harrison, A. R. W., The Law of Athens (Oxford, 1968–1971), i.22–3Google Scholar; Hopkins, K., ‘Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt’, CSSH 22 (1980), 303ffGoogle Scholar.

68 I have adopted the interpretation of this passage by Lane Fox 222, who suggests that the clause ⋯δɛλφοὒς ⋯ντας should be taken with all the preceding accusatives. On the relevance of polyandry to the concentration of property, Kunstler, B. L., Women and the Development of the Spartan Polis (Diss. Boston, 1983), 475, 593 n. 990Google Scholar, who, along with Lane Fox (223), stresses that avoidance of division was as much a strategy of the rich as of the poor upon whom Aristotle concentrates. This is, indeed, suggested in the context of wife-sharing by Xenophon's reference to the power (dynamis) of the kin.

69 Asheri, , SLE 66Google Scholar; LDP 5Google Scholar; David, , SER 102, 221f. n. 49Google Scholar; AS 87Google Scholar.

70 Asheri's additional references (ibidd.) to privileges within the royal houses deriving from primogeniture (Hdt. 6.52; Paus. 1.1.4) are no support for a supposed system of indivisibility. Indeed, his general perspective (for which see also his Distribuzioni di terre nell'antica Grecia [Turin, 1966], 71, 77Google Scholar), which involves the claim that primogeniture was the traditional practiceb of moderate constitutions, is fundamentally mistaken. Partible inheritance was the invariable practice throughout Greek antiquity; the unique regulations of Plato, 's Laws (740b–d, 923c–dGoogle Scholar) and the frequently misunderstood advice of Hesiod concerning the desired number of sons (Works and Days 376–80) offer no support to Asheri's view: Lane Fox 211, 216.

71 Cf. also the criticism of Asheri's interpretation of this last passage by Cozzoli 7 n. 2.

72 David, (SER 102fGoogle Scholar.; AS 87Google Scholar) suggests that families used the new freedom of bequest to divide their estates among all their sons and that this became the common practice, with deleterious effects on the heirs, who each inherited too little land to remain citizens. This, however, involves the implausible view that families throughout Spartiate society voluntarily adopted this practice even when it was detrimental to their heirs.

73 For further arguments, Buckler, op. tit. (n. 31) 258ff.

74 Schaps ch. 3.

75 P., Carlier, La Royauté en Grèce avant Alexandre (Strasbourg, 1984), 250ffGoogle Scholar.

76 The clearest case concerns the wording of the kings' prerogative to wage war (6.56), which was sufficiently imprecise to accommodate both their collegial right to declare war before 506 and their subsequently reduced role whereby one of them merely conducted a war declared by the polis.

77 Cartledge, , SW 97fGoogle Scholar., who notes that a case can be made for a parallelism of development between some aspects of the Spartan and Cretan social systems; my approach here will be to use the evidence of the Gortyn Code, and also of the law of Athens, solely where it provides a useful analogy. Gortyn Code 7.52ffGoogle Scholar.; 9.8ff.; cf. Willetts, R. F., The Law Code of Gortyn, Kadmos Suppl. i (Berlin, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Athenian epiklēros, Harrison, op. cit. (n. 67) i.132ff.; Schaps 25ff. The discussion of this issue by Karabélias, E., ‘L'Epiclérat à Sparte’, Studi in Onore di Arnaldo Biscardi (Milan, 1982), ii.469ffGoogle Scholar., at 476 is vitiated by his view that a Spartiate held only a life tenure over an inalienable klēros until the time of Epitadeus (471 n. 7).

78 There is no evidence that Lysander had any sons. The episodes in which Dionysios of Syracuse twice offered him gifts for his daughters (Plut. Lys. 2.7–8; Mor. 141f, 190e, 229a) suggest that they were his only children.

79 E.g. Asheri, , SLE 61Google Scholar; LDP 18Google Scholar; Cozzoli 7.

80 Karabélias, op. cit. (n. 77) 473 n. 14, 474f.; Grote ii. 558ff. n. 1; Roussel, P., Sparte (Paris 1939), 122Google Scholar; cf. the usages of ίкνέομαι recorded by Powell, op. cit. (n. 63) 171.

81 For parallels elsewhere, Schaps 44.

82 Oilier, F., Xénophon, La République des Lacédemoniens (Paris, 1934), 23Google Scholar; Lacey, op. cit. (n 64) 199, 203, although I do not agree with his line of reasoning; Karabélias, op. cit. (n. 77) 479. The marriage of Leonidas and Gorgo may be a case in point, although it is not known whether it had been arranged by Kleomenes himself, or took place only after his death or during the possibly extended period of his flight from Sparta in winter 491/0. On the problems surrounding the marriage, Harvey, D., ‘Leonidas the Regicide?’, in Arktouros. Hellenic Studies presented to Bernard M. W. Knox, edd. Bowersock, G. W., Burkert, W. and Rutnam, M. J. (Berlin and New York, 1979), 253ffGoogle Scholar.

83 Harrison, op. cit. (n. 67) i.lOf.

84 For a similar interpretation of the evidence of Herodotus to that given in the text, Karabélias, op. cit. (n. 77) 474. Note that the passage lends no weight to the interpretation of Lacey, op. cit. (n. 64) 203 that marriage extinguished a girl's claim to her father's estate. It merely specifies which patrouchoi came within the kings' jurisdiction.

85 Harrison, op. cit. (n. 67) i.llf. and App. I; Schaps 28; Gòrtyn Code 8.20ffGoogle Scholar. At Gortyn a childless heiress was allowed to avoid the obligation only if she ceded half the inheritance to the next of kin (7.52ff.).

86 Cf. the usages cited in LSJ 9, s.v.

87 Contra Schaps' idea (44) that the girl's relative was the true heir and that he simply gave her a dowry. I do not imagine that any serious information about Spartan inheritance law underlies the remark of Plut. Mor. 775c, during his account of the love story of Damokrita, that her exiled husband's property was confiscated so that his two daughters, his only children, might not be provided with dowries. The possible existence at Sparta of the kyrieia (the legal guardianship of a female by her male next of kin, on which see most recently Cartledge, , SW 99Google Scholarf., with refs. to earlier work) does not as such affect the question of female ownership of property, concerning which I have benefited greatly from an unpublished paper by Lin Foxhall on ‘Property, Ownership and the Household in Classical Athens’.

88 Wolff, H. J., RE 23, 1957, s.v.proix, 133ff, at 166fGoogle Scholar.; Cartledge, , SW 97Google Scholar.

89 Newman, op. cit. (n. 52) ii.329; cf. Asheri, , SLE 55 n. 29Google Scholar.

90 Karabélias, op. cit. (n. 77) 478; cf. the translations of this phrase by Newman, op. cit. (n. 52) ii.329 (‘without having disposed of her hand by will’) and by Asheri, , LDP 19Google Scholar.

91 See e.g. Asheri, , SLE 62Google Scholar, LDP 19Google Scholar; Jones, op. cit. (n. 14) 135; Lacey, op. cit. (n. 64) 204f.; Andrewes, A., Greek Society (Harmondsworth, 1971), 125Google Scholar; Cozzoli 7; David, , AS 88fGoogle Scholar.; Carlier, op. cit. (n. 75) 271.

92 The adverb ν⋯ν used by Aristotle signifies not a contrast between present and past laws but the antithesis between the actual state of the law and that which Aristotle himself deemed more expedient: Grote ii.554 note.

93 Athens: Schaps 30, 35; cf. the case of Andokides and Leagros, Andok. 1.117ff. Gortyn: Schaps 45; Gortyn Code 7.41ffGoogle Scholar.

94 The date of the composition of the Lak. Pol. is uncertain. Higgins, W. E., Xenophon the Athenian (Albany, 1977), 65ffGoogle Scholar. suggests the 350s and this is accepted by Cartledge, , SL 302Google Scholar. Other scholars have preferred earlier dates going back to the mid-390s; see, for example, the works cited by Tigerstedt, op. cit. (n. 6) i.461 nn. 526, 530. In addition, it is difficult to relate Xenophon's evidence to a particular historical period because the ambiguous present tense used throughout the work may refer at different points to a past situation or to an ideal state of affairs as well as to the actual present: Momigliano, A., ‘Per l'unita logica della Πολιτɛία Λαкɛδαιμονίων di Senofonte’, RFIC 64 (1936), 170ff., at 171Google Scholar.

95 There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this incident, which was contemporary to the period about which Plutarch was writing, in contrast with those sections of the lives of Agis and Kleomenes which refer back to earlier periods. This is not, however, to guarantee the accuracy of the evidence about Agiatis' status. Like Aristotle, Plutarch mistakenly uses the Athenian term epiklēros. On Eurydamidas, see Bradford, A. S., A Prosopography of Lakedaimonians from the Death of Alexander the Great, 323 b.c., to the Sack of Sparta by Alaric (Munich, 1977)Google Scholar, s.v., who notes that Pausanias may have given his name incorrectly; cf. also Marasco, , Commento ii.347Google Scholarf.

96 Cf. Schaps App. II, with 85ff.

97 Harrison, op.cit. (n. 67) 52ff.; Schaps 75.

98 SW 98Google Scholar.

99 Willetts, op. cit. (n. 77) 20; Schaps 88.

100 I say ‘assumption’ advisedly because the question of female rights to inherit in the presence of brothers is seldom even raised. The account of Michell, op. cit. (n. 2) 205ft, for example, contains no discussion of female property rights at all. Most modern works assume without question that transfers at marriage were voluntary gifts, e.g. David, , SER 103Google Scholar; AS 89Google Scholar.

101 ἔστι δ⋯ кα⋯ τών γυναɩк⋯ν σΧɛδòν τ⋯ς πάσης Χὡρας τών πέντɛ μɛρ⋯ν τ⋯ δὑο (Pol. 1270a23–4). It is not clear whether σΧɛδòν should be translated here as ‘approximately’ or ‘nearly’; for general Aristotelian usage, Bonitz, H., Index Aristotelicus (Berlin, 1870), 739Google Scholar, which does not, however,, refer to this passage.

102 Finley, M. I., Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens 500–200 b.c. (New Brunswick, f 1952), 13f., 207f. nn. 18fGoogle Scholar.

103 Lin Foxhall, pers. comm.; such knowledge can often be remarkably detailed and accurate.

104 Take, for example, the demographic calculations of Goody, J. and Harrison, G. A., ‘Strategies of Heirship’, CSSH 15 (1973), 16ffGoogle Scholar. = Goody, J., Production and Reproduction (Cambridge, 1976), 133fGoogle Scholar., which they deem to correspond most closely with the situation in pre-industrial societies. According to these calculations, in a self-reproducing population marked by high mortality, averaging six children ever born per family, and with only a one in three chance of a child surviving its father, roughly 41% of families would have both son(s) and daughters), 21% son(s) only, 21% daughters) only and 17 % no surviving heirs. The resulting proportion ofland inherited byfemales would be 38.91% [(41 × l/3) + (21 × l) + (17 × 1/4)]. (The figure used for calculating the proportion deriving from heirless families is conservative, bearing in mind the prior claim to inherit of the brother(s) of an heirless person.)

These calculations assume a sex ratio of 1:1. The exact proportion of land in female possession will of course vary according to the precise percentage of households with, respectively, both surviving sons and daughters, surviving children of one sex only and no surviving children at all. But even quite significant changes in these percentages do not lead to deviations far from the figure of 40%. Take the extreme case of the calculations given by Goody and Harrison which postulate the greatest degree of continuity in family succession, those at the top right-hand corner of their Table, which assume a population marked by low mortality, averaging six children ever born per family, but with more than a two in three chance of a child surviving its father. According to these calculations, roughly 74% offamilies would have both son(s) and daughters), 10% son(s) only, 10% daughters) only and 6% no heirs. The resulting proportion of land inherited by females would still be as high as 36.16% [(74 × l/3) + (10 × l) + (6 × 1/4)].

105 SW 99Google Scholar. It might be objected that royal marriage customs may have been exceptional rather than representative of those of ordinary citizens, as was the case in some other societies, including ancient Persia and Egypt: Hopkins, op. cit. (n. 67) 306f. The Spartiate kings, however, were not monarchs distanced from their subjects like the kings of Persia, who referred to their subjects as ‘slaves’ (e.g. Hdt. 7.39.1, 8.102.2, 3), or those of Egypt, who received divine worship, but merely leading citizens.

106 Had she remarried and had children, they would have inherited. Had she remained om i childless, her property would then have been claimable by her father's kinsfolk.

107 Her family may well have been of some substance. There is a possibility that her father, Diaktoridas, was the Olympic four-horse chariot victor of 456 (Moretti, L., ‘Olympionikai, i vincitori negle antichi agoni olimpici’, Memorie delta Classe di Scienze morali e storiche dell' Accademia dei Lincei, 8, Ser. 8a (Rome, 1957), 53ff., no. 278Google Scholar). In addition, Herodotus' gratuitous mention of Eurydamē's brother, Menios, perhaps suggests that he was a man of note.

108 Xen. Ages. 9.6; Plut. Ages. 20.1 describe her as the sister of Agesilaos, probably his natural sister and a daughter of Archidamos' second wife, Eupolia, rather than a daughter of Lampito. For her chariot-race victories, perhaps in 396 and 392, Moretti, ibid. nos. 373 and 381. Xen. Ages. 9.6 is testimony to Kyniska's wealth. On the huge expenses of chariot-racing, see the collection of material in Davies, J. K., Athenian Propertied Families 600–300 b.c. (Oxford, 1971) xxv–xxvi n. 7Google Scholar. Note also the costly dedications which Kyniska made to celebrate her victories (Pausanias 3.8.1–2, 15.1, 5.12.5, 6.1.6; IG v.l.1564a; Palatine Anthology 13.16).

109 Assuming that she was indeed married; the sources are silent on the point. Under the hypothesis of female rights of inheritance Kyniska will have been entitled to one-fifth of Archidamos' property, since the latter had another son, Agis II, and to no more than one-fifth of her mother's, since Eupolia had at least one other son, Teleutias, born of a second marriage (Xen. Hell. 4.4.19; Plut. Ages. 21.1). The fact that on Agis II's death, Agesilaos, as step-brother inherited all his property (Xen. Ages. 4.5; cf. Plut. Ages. 4.1), with Kyniska, as step-sister apparently not sharing in the inheritance, is not incompatible with the hypothesis that daughters inherited in the presence of sons. In the Gortyn Code, for example, in the absence of sons or daughters, a man's or woman's property went first to any brothers, next to their children or grandchildren, and only in the absence of all these to any sisters or their descendants (5.9–22).

110 Moretti, op. cit. (n. 107) no. 418.

111 Op. cit. (n. 95) Appendix 6.

112 Cf. the Gortyn Code (4.23–31), according to which both mother and father could retain ownership of their property until death, with the exception that a son was entitled to receive his paternal inheritance prematurely in order to pay a fine.

113 Assume for example, that Eudamidas I had owned 180 units of land and Archidamia 90. Agesilaos' share of Eudamidas' property would be 40%, i.e. 72 units. Agesistrata's share on marriage would be 20% of the property of both parents, i.e. 36+18 = 54 units. The amount still retained by Archidamia after Agesistrata's marriage would be 80% of her original property, i.e. 72 units.

114 On the same calculations as in the previous note, Archidamos IV would have inherited 72 units from Eudamidas I. Assuming, exempli gratia, that his wife had possessed as many as 54 units (half Archidamos' potential inheritance from both father and mother), Eudamidas III would then have inherited 126 units, half of which would have given Agis IV 63 units.

115 These different functions of dowry are clearly distinguished by Sailer, R. P., ‘Roman Dowry and the Devolution of Property in the Principate’, CQ 34 (1984), 195ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar., following the work of Goody, J., ‘Bridewealth and Dowry in Africa and Eurasia’, in Goody, J. and Tambiah, S. J., Bridewealth and Dowry (Cambridge, 1973), 1ff., at 17ffGoogle Scholar.

116 Goody, ibid.; id. op. cit. (n. 104) 6f.

117 In addition to the examples of royal intra-lineage marriage discussed in the text, note that of Agis IV's brother, Archidamos V, to the daughter of his cousin Hippomedon (PIb. 4.35.13).

118 Goody, op. cit. (n. 115) 27.

119 Leach, E. R., ‘Polyandry, Inheritance and the Definition of Marriage’, Man 55 (1955), 182ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. = Kinship, ed. Goody, J. (Harmondsworth, 1971), 151ff., at 161Google Scholar.

120 On the latter alternative, house and garden land in the five villages of Sparta would be an example of a category of land of the appropriate scale which might well haye been regarded lave a falnuy's ancient portion (I owe this suggestion to Bjørn Qviller). This would, additionally, be one way of explaining the term klēronomos, and of reconciling the seeming contradiction in the evidence of Aristotle discussed in Section III (a), if he was the person who inherited the ancient portion, with the rest of the estate going to the heiress.

121 Goody, J., ‘Inheritance, Property and Women: Some Comparative Considerations.’, in Family and Inheritance. Rural Society in Western Europe 1200–1800 edd. Goody, J., Thirsk, J. and Thompson, E. P. (Cambridge, 1976), 10ffGoogle Scholar.; Leach, op. cit. (n. 119) 155.

122 Wrigley, E. A., ‘Fertility Strategy for the Individual and the Group’, in Historical Studies of Changing Fertility, ed. Tilly, C. (Princeton, 1978), 135ffGoogle Scholar.; cf. Lane Fox 214.

123 Refs. in Schaps 76f.; cf. Plato, , Laws 114cGoogle Scholar; Foxhall, op. cit. (n. 87), who stresses that the wife possessed the ultimate sanction of withdrawing herself and her dowry from the household.

124 Cf. Redfield, J., ‘The Women of Sparta’, CJ 73 (1977/1978), 146ff., at 160Google Scholar; Kunstler, op. cit. (n. 68) ch. 13. I should like to thank Cosmo Rodewald, Paul Cartledge, Lin Foxhall, David Harvey, David Whitehead and my wife, Hilary Hodkinson, for their helpful criticism at various stages in the extended development of this essay. They are of course not to be held responsible for the views expressed here. Above all, I should like to record the debt which this study owes to the late Professor Sir Moses Finley, valued supervisor and friend.

The recent book by MacDowell, D. M., Spartan Law (Edinburgh, 1986)Google Scholar did not appear until after this essay had been submitted for publication.

125 Some illuminating comparisons and contrasts could be made with Friedl, E.'s discussion of the impact of a similar inheritance system upon modern Greek society: ‘Dowry and Inheritance in Modern Greece’, Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 22 (1959), 49ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Vasilika (New York, 1963), ch. 4, esp. 64ffGoogle Scholar.