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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2013
The History of Greece, by Mr Grote, perhaps the most notable production of modern English scholarship, is characterised, amongst many great virtues, by what has always appeared to me, in a historian, a great fault—a tendency to undervalue traditional authority, and to over-rate the importance of conjectural ingenuity, in the reconstruction of the past. One of the most remarkable instances of this tendency which has fallen specially under my view, is his treatment of Lycurgus and his legislation, as it occurs near the end of his second volume. The fallacies which seem to me to lie in this treatment, it is the object of this paper shortly to set forth.
page 426 note * Τῆς μὲν δὴ Λακεδαιμονίων πολιτείας ἴδιον εἶναί ϕασι, πρῶτον μὲν τὰ περὶ τὰς ἐγγαίους κτήσεις, ὧν οὐδενὶ μέτεστι πλεῖον, ἀλλὰ πάντας τοὺς πολίτας ἴσον ἔχειν δεῖ τῆς πολιτικῆς χώρας.—vi. 45.
page 426 note † Δεύτερον δὲ τῶν Λυκούργου πολιτευμάτων καὶ νεανικώτατον ὁ τῆς γῆς ἀναδασμός ἐστι. Δεινῆς γὰρ οὔσης ἀνωμαλίας καὶ πολλῶν ἀκτημόνων καὶ ἀπόρων ἐπιφερομένων τῇ πόλει, τοῦ δὲ πλούτου παντάπασιν εἰς ὀλίγους συνερρυηκότος, ὕβριν καί φθόνον καὶ κακουργίαν καὶ τρυφὴν καὶ τὰ τούτων ἔτι πρεσβύτερα καὶ μείζω νοσήματα πολιτείας, πλοῦτον καὶ πενίαν, ἐξελαύνων, συνέπεισε τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν εἰς μέσον θέντας ἐξ ἀρχῦς ἀναδάσασθαι καὶ ζῇν μετ' ἀλλήλων ἅπαντας ὁμαλεῖς καὶ ἰσοκλήρους τοῖς βίοις γενομένους.—Vit. Lyc. viii.
page 428 note * .—Pol. ii. init.