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The story of the dual kingship at Sparta. Privileges of the kings with notes on non-Hellenic customs (ch. 59, 60). This digression (the main story is not resumed till ch. 61) is the most important contribution in H. to Greek constitutional history. It illustrates admirably how much and how little the Greeks knew of their origins, and also the religious and military character of early kingship. The legend of the twins is a clumsy fiction intended to account for the dual kingship. The most probable origin of this anomaly is the fusion of two distinct communities whose chiefs shared the throne. That the two royal houses were of different origin seems proved by the fact that their homes and tombs were to be found in different quarters of Sparta, those of the Agiads close to the Acropolis (Paus. iii. 14. 2), those of the Eurypontids on the heights of New Sparta (Paus. iii. 12. 8). The two quarters may have been originally (cf. the case of Rome) two distinct communities. It is perhaps most likely that both communities and both kings were Dorian invaders (Duncker, G. i. 351 f.), and that the claims of the kings to Achaean descent (cf. v. 72; i. 67; vii. 159) were a fiction intended to justify the Dorian conquest. Wachsmuth, however (Jahrbuch f. Philologie, 1868, p. 1 f.), sees in the superior dignity of the elder Agiad line, and in the claim of Cleomenes to be an Achaean (v. 72), indications that the old Achaean royal house survived side by side with that of the invading Dorians. In any case, the rival theory that the dual kingship was instituted to weaken the royal power (cf. the Consulship at Rome) confuses effect and cause, and fails to explain such facts as the separate burying-places. For other instances of double kingship in Greece and elsewhere (e.g. Siam), and for further discussion cf. Busolt, i. 546. 4; Frazer, Paus. iii. 312.

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    • Pausanias, Description of Greece, 3.12.8
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