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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
There is a passage in Xenophon's pamphlet on the Constitution of Sparta which has given rise to puzzlement and consequent bad criticism. An obscure German dissertation talks of its corruption and Marchant brackets it in his edition. I hope to show that it is perfectly explicable and that light is thrown upon it by a strange story in Herodotos.
1 Xenophon, De re publica Lacedaemoniorum, 2, 9.
2 Habben, Fooke, De Xenophontis libello qui Λακεδαιμονίων πολιτεία inscribitur (diss., Münster, 1909), p. 9Google Scholar.
3 In vol. V (Opuscula) of the Oxford Classical Texts edition of Xenophon.
4 Artemis Orthia (Hellenic Society, Supplementary Paper No. 5, London, Macmillan, 1929), p. 405. I there give references, or what seem to be such, to this rite in other Greek authors.
5 Herodotos, iii, 48, 2 ff.
6 De malignitate Herodoti, 859E ff.
7 Pliny, N. H., ix, 80, citing Mutianus as his authority.
8 See Herodotos, iii, 60, especially 60, 4, where the words τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν point to firsthand acquaintance with Samos.
9 For the holiness of choreutai, see, e.g., Aristophanes, Frogs, 686; Demosthenes, xxi, 53.
10 Folk-Lore, xxii (1911), p. 57.
11 Folk-Lore, xxv (1914), p. 258, where see note 1 for several further instances.
12 Folk-Lore, xxxviii (1927), p. 319.
13 Folk-Lore, xxxix (1928), p. 173.
14 Herodotos does not specifically mention the altar, but says in general ἱροῦ ἅψασθαι, iii, 48, 2; but it is safe to assume that the children did sit at it, for that was the regular posture of suppliants throughout Greece.