Spartan Constitution. 59 part of the body politic of the community, there is no doubt,; when we remember that ever Spartan citizen voted in the supreme legislative assembly, and that, according to the con- stitutional act of Sparta, the people had sovereign power ^^, that the Spartan government was strictly a democracy. But in practice it was an oligarchy or aristocracy, that is, its con- stitution worked as if the sovereignty had belonged to a minority ; in other words the government was administered in the same manner as in most states which were truly oligarchies. Hence it was not improperly called an oligarchy, as the Roman government after Augustus is called an absolute monarchy, although the emperor was only sovereign in fact and not in name : so we call the government of France under Napoleon an absolute monarchy, although the sovereign power was nominally shared by the emperor with the shadow of a senate. Sparta no less acted in the aristocratical interest, and was not less the head of the oligarchical party throughout Greece, than if its constitution had been in form, as well as substance, aristocratical. Legally it was a democracy, but in spirit, in the practical effect of its institutions, it was an oligarchy: a distinction the same as that pointed out by Thucydides, when he says that Athens under Pericles was in name a democracy, but in fact a monarchy ^^. Things which in reality are one thing, and in appearance another, are not unfrequently called by both names ; as Catullus calls the promontory of Sirmio both an island and a peninsula ^^ : because as seen from above it has the appearance of an island, though it is in fact connected with the shore of the lake by a narrow tongue of land : for although an island cannot be a peninsula, and a peninsula cannot be an island, yet as it is one and seems to be the other, Catullus gives it the names of both. The above passages do not indeed determine whether Sparta was considered by the Greek politicians as an oligarchy 26 SdjULcp Sk Kvpiav rj/uiev Kal KpciTo^^ Rhetra of Lycurgus in Plutarch Lye. 6. see Miiller, Vol. ii. p. 87. n. 1. Tyrtaeus ap. Diod. Exc. Vat. vii— x. 3. Sijfxov Te TrXijdeL viKYiv Kal Kdp^o£ eireadau In these passages drjimo^ signifies the order of Spartans, as in Dion Cassius, as epitomized by Zonaras, it is applied to the Roman Populus, or Patrician order without the Plebs, Niebuhr, Vol. ii. note 367. 27 lyiyueTO yio fihv oijfxoKpaTia, epyo) S' vtto tou irpcorov avopo^ ^PX^h I^» ^5* -s Peninsularum Sirmio insularumque Ocelle.
