90 ARZSTO TLE ’S POLITlCS.
ing (see the passage quoted in note on $ 6). Aristotle supposes
that Lycurgus went to Crete before he gave laws to Sparta. Ac-
cording to other accounts his travels, like those of Solon, were
subsequent to his legislation.
Ephorus, the contemporary of Aristotle [see fragment quoted in
Strabo x. 4801, argues at length that the Spartan Institutions origi-
nally existed in Crete but that they were perfected in Sparta, and
that they deteriorated in Cnossus and other Cretan cities j both
writers agree in the general view that the Cretan institutions are
older than the Spartan and in several other particulars, e.g. that
the Lyctians were a Lacedaemonian colony, that the common
meals were called “Au8pia or ’Awb’pda, that the Cretan institutions
had decayed in their great to\ws but survived among the Perioeci :
and also in the similarity of offices at Lacedaemon and Crete.
The great resemblance between this account and that of Aristotle
sccnis to indicate a common unknown source.
The existence of the same institutions in Sparta and Crete and
the greater antiquity of the Cretan Minos may have led to the
belicf in their Cretan origin. Others dcemed such an opinion
unworthy of Sparta and argued plausibly that the greater could
not have been derived from the less; Strabo 1.c.10, 3, AOKC; 6’^4 vjuos Kai xpbs ,;>,w (ipxiu r;)~ ‘E~X?ULK~V ?Tt$JUK/VQi KQ~ KfiuBni
Aristotle, like Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, is not indis-It may be observed that the remark is not perfectly consistent
The ‘silver streak’ and ‘the empire of the sea’Kd&.posd to a geographical digression; cp. vii. 10. 8s 3-5.with $4 15, 16.
are the symbols of two different policies.
- A16 Ka‘l T$V TGS dohdqU?lS ;pX$Y KarbXFV^6 MhS.
Cp. Herod. iii. 122, Thuc. i. 4.
- A16 Ka‘l T$V TGS dohdqU?lS ;pX$Y KarbXFV^6 MhS.
- ytwpyoiui IF yAp TOiS p;v rlhorcs rois^62 Iip7uiv oi mpiowoc.
But if Sosicrates, a ariter of the second century B.c., quoted by
Athenaeus vi. 81 is to be trusted, Aristotle is here at fault in his
use of terms; nju piu ioivjr 8ouXciav oi Kpjrrr wdoiiui pvoiav, iv 62
;aiw a’$aptLras, robs 6; ncptuiKovs ~K~OUS: see c. 9. 3.