136 Appendix 1
or philosophical imagination and that what Polybius, Plutarch, and others
have to report concerning property relations at Lacedaemon in earlier times
is a product of the propaganda generated during the abortive third-century
revolution.^33
Herodotus is the first surviving writer to have written about Lacedaemon.
He described her as being possessed of a polıteía (9.34.1), and he termed it a
kósmos (1.65.4).^34 In other words, from the outset, it was recognized as dis-
tinctive—at least in part because it was a beautiful, elegantly ordered whole.
This order was, moreover, noteworthy for its coherence and consistency, and
it derived its coherence and consistency from a single set of principles, which
I have tried to make visible in the first two chapters of this book. One addi-
tional reason for accepting the testimony of the ancient sources concerning
property relations at Sparta is that the picture they draw fits in well with ev-
erything else that we are told about the fiercely communal character of Spar-
tan life. After all, if the Spartans came to be called hoı hómoıoı, there had to
be a reason.^35