PLUTARCH AND SPARTA
Four volumes of Lives by Plutarch are already available in Penguin Classics, so that by now he needs little introduction to readers of the series.1 He was a Greek from Chaeronea in Boeotia (part of the Roman province of Achaea), who lived between approximately AD 50 and 120. While he did play a role in the affairs of his city and province, as well as visiting both Egypt and Italy, he was content to live quietly at home for most of his life, and was proud of his long tenure of a priesthood at the shrine of Delphi nearby. At home he pursued his extremely wide intellectual interests, reading and writing with unflagging enthusiasm, especially in the general area of philosophy. Many of his varied philosophical works have survived under the general heading ofMoralia.2 In later life an interest in character, among other motives, led him to write Lives which could demonstrate the merit of his subjects and inspire imitation of them. The main series of Lives gradually expanded. A distinctive element was the pairing and formal comparison of a Greek and a Roman – hence the title Parallel Lives. This was primarily an artistic feature, but one which also served his moral purpose as well as permitting him to underline the contemporary partnership of the two peoples in the government of a common empire. Thus, for example, the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus was matched with the second king of Rome, Numa, who was likewise famous for his reforms.
It is essential always to bear in mind that Plutarch came to write Lives through his study of philosophy rather than history. The Lives are biography (a long-established Greek literary form), not standard history. They have consistently found readers, for two main reasons. First, they display a flair for portraying the personalities and achievements of noted historical figures in a wonderfully humane and engaging way. Second, with the loss of numerous other ancient authors (many of whom Plutarch had read), they offer an immense amount of information no longer obtainable elsewhere. Without Plutarch's Life, for example, our knowledge of the career of King Agis IV of Sparta would remain almost a blank.
The fame and importance of Sparta in the affairs of classical Greece make Plutarch's interest in her society and her great men readily understandable. Moreover the city itself in his day was enjoying an elaborate and highly successful cultural revival. Traditional practices were restored, and tourists (Plutarch among them) flocked to see ceremonies like the whipping of youths at the altar of Artemis Orthia.3 Plutarch wrote Lives of at least five Spartans – the early lawgiver Lycurgus; the great leaders of the late fifth and early fourth centuries (when Sparta's power was at its height), Lysander and King Agesilaus II; and the reformer kings of the third century, Agis IV and Cleomenes III. In addition he makes a promise to write a Life of the Agiad king Leonidas who died fighting the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae in 480, though he may not have fulfilled it since no such Life appears in the ancient catalogue of his works. However, that catalogue does contain a further work which it is relevant to mention in this context – a Life, now lost, of the Messenian Aristomenes, hero of the great rebellion against Spartan rule in the mid seventh century. Even beyond these there are few of Plutarch's Greek Lives which do not make more or less extensive allusion to Sparta's involvement in the affairs of Greece. It is particularly regrettable that the Life of Plutarch's fellow Boeotian Epaminondas is lost, so that we have no opportunity to see how he handled the achievements of the man who between 371 and 362 played such a decisive role in ending for ever Sparta's dominant position among the Greek states.
LYCURGUS
Historical Introduction
When Plutarch came to write a Life of the early Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus, he was well aware of the controversies surrounding every aspect of his identity and date. Partly for this reason he devotes much of the Life to an explanation and description of the laws and institutions attributed to him, and the resulting sketch of ‘Lycurgan’ Sparta has always been the main focus of interest for most readers.4
Today the same degree of controversy still surrounds Lycurgus' identity and date. He is awkward to fit into what little is generally agreed about the development of early Sparta. The settlement itself was never consolidated as a city, but was just a collection of four scattered villages, which remoteness allowed to remain without an encircling wall until the second century BC. It lies in the northern part of the River Eurotas valley in the region of the south-east Peloponnese called Laconia or Lacedaemon. The valley is fertile, but relatively narrow, enclosed by the steep mountain barriers of Parnon to the east and Taygetus to the west.5 The first settlers on the site seem to have been Dorian Greeks during the tenth century. The course of their remarkable early expansion is beyond recovery in detail, but it is at least possible to appreciate what they had gained by early in the seventh century. All Laconia had first been secured, as well as the Parnon range to the east and the territory south of it down to Cape Malea. Amyclae, about eight kilometres south of Sparta, was even incorporated as part of the state at an early stage, perhaps during the eighth century. In addition, the Spartans had taken the area named Thyreatis to the north-east of Parnon, and the island of Cythera below Cape Malea. Westwards they had crossed the Taygetus mountains and probably in the late eighth century, after a tremendous struggle, they had at least doubled their territory by the conquest of Messenia, much of it outstandingly fertile land.
In terms of territory and manpower this conquest made Sparta one of the strongest Greek states. But it also created problems. Jealousy and hostility on the part of neighbouring states increased – especially from Argos to the north-east – resulting in fierce clashes. Worse, the Messenians refused to accept subjugation: probably in the mid seventh century they raised a great rebellion, which Sparta eventually overcame, though only with the utmost difficulty. But at least thereafter Messenia did continue in subjection for over two centuries more, until liberated by the Thebans, following their defeat of Sparta at the battle of Leuctra in 371.
However, the urgent need for the Spartans to prevent any recurrence of Messenian rebellion must have been one main reason why during the sixth century their state ceased to resemble other Greek communities in its cultural development (which both literary and material evidence proves to have been very lively up to that date), and instead took on the austere, military character with which it has been associated ever since. Archaeological investigation has shown that the process was still a gradual one, but nonetheless the sixth century was a period of marked change at Sparta.
In view of this fact it is tempting to link reforms made then with Lycurgus. This is what seems to be done at one point by the earliest surviving author to give an account of him – the fifth-century historian Herodotus.6 But Herodotus is equally aware of a tradition that places Lycurgus much earlier (by perhaps as much as three centuries), and later ancient authors are similarly in favour of an early date – though just how early remained a matter of unresolved dispute. By placing him in the early eighth century according to our reckoning, Plutarch follows what seems to have been the majority opinion. Even so, we must acknowledge that Lycurgus is thereby pushed back to a time for which lack of evidence renders an accurate historical account impossible. While it is conceivable that one individual named Lycurgus was responsible for a set of early reforms, we are in no position to be more specific than that. The record of the only constitutional changes which we can securely identify – the ‘Great Rhetra’ and its supplement7– contains no reference to Lycurgus, nor is there any allusion to him in surviving fragments of the seventh-century Spartan poet Tyrtaeus. Archaic Greek communities certainly did appoint individual lawgivers at times of crisis, and Lycurgus could have been one such at Sparta. What certainly remains fantastic, however, as in the case of other lawgivers elsewhere, is the attribution of almost all the city's laws and institutions to him alone. At Sparta that applies on the one hand to the social and educational practices of the state, which must rather be the result of development and modification over a very long period, and on the other to certain measures which are completely anachronistic in an archaic context – like the ban on coinage at a time when no such thing even existed. Finally in the case of Lycurgus it is also necessary to take into account the tradition (which we can again trace as far back as Herodotus) that saw him as divine, not human at all. Altogether he cannot be securely placed in a historical context. It is conceivable that Lycurgus was responsible for certain reforms at some stage: no more definite claim can be made, and the question is of no particular importance for our understanding of Sparta.
Plutarch's Sources
In his treatment of Lycurgus and the society created by his laws, Plutarch described Sparta as he believed it to have been before a variety of major pressures brought sweeping change from the early fourth century onwards. The nature of that Lycurgan Sparta, which had disappeared five hundred years or so before Plutarch's own day, was hard to discover. Its origins and development stretched back long before historical writing began among Greeks around 500. Moreover, even later no contemporary Spartan ever produced a treatment of the subject. Plutarch did study archaic Spartan poetry and he even attempted some exploration of the public archives at Sparta.8 Naturally, too, from his wide reading he took into account what the great fifth-century historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, had to say, though in neither case was the character of Sparta a topic of more than passing concern to them. Herodotus, it is true, found much at Sparta to fascinate him, 9 and the accounts he gathered from his informants already show signs of a self-conscious desire on the part of Spartans to foster certain images of their society and attitudes. Thucydides, by contrast, came to be frustrated by the Spartans' secretiveness concerning their state affairs.10
All later sources were the work of writers who inevitably could have had no first-hand acquaintance with Sparta before it succumbed to major change. The truth was made no easier to discover by further idealization and distortion on the part of a whole range of admirers – among them aristocrats, philosophers, politicians and military thinkers – who found in Lycurgan Sparta models and examples to suit their own ideas. Thus there developed what a French scholar of the 1930s appropriately termed a ‘Spartan mirage’. From 369, after the liberation of Messenia, confusion came to be caused by the creation of a ‘national’ history (vehemently anti-Spartan by definition) for the new state.11 Further distortion then occurred in the third century when Kings Agis and Cleomenes successively proclaimed themselves restorers of Lycurgan Sparta. Even Plutarch's own approach is by no means altogether objective. He is particularly concerned to demonstrate Lycurgus' devotion to peace and his creation of a constitution and society outstanding both for their balance and their practicality.
For his achievement of this end Plutarch exhibits a characteristically impressive range of reading, which includes many authors now lost. No doubt his main reliance was placed on the group of works devoted to the type of explanation and description of the Spartan constitution that he incorporated in his own Lycurgus. He seems to have followed above all the lost Constitution of the Spartans prepared in the latter part of the fourth century by Aristotle or his assistants as part of their investigation into the workings of states. In addition he was aware of Aristotle's highly critical appraisal of contemporary Sparta in The Politics, 12 and of the investigations in the same general area made by Aristotle's pupil and successor Theophrastus. But he also knew of two of the earliest such ‘Spartan Constitutions’ – one (lost) by the Athenian oligarch Critias who was killed in 403, the other attributed to Xenophon. This latter is in fact the only one to survive complete and appears here in an Appendix.13 Later ‘Constitutions’ which he consulted include those by Dioscorides (of whom little is known, though he cannot have written earlier than the third century) and by the philosopher Sphaerus. The latter was a pupil first of Zeno, then later of Cleanthes, and he personally assisted King Cleomenes III in his reform programme. So it is only to be expected that Sphaerus' two works entitled On the Spartan Constitution and On Lycurgus and Socrates had a strongly contemporary slant.
Theopompus (fourth century) and Timaeus (late fourth/early third centuries) are standard historians – nearly all of whose work is lost – studied by Plutarch in addition to Herodotus and Thucydides. He has also consulted the important chronographers Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, of the third and second centuries respectively. A number of antiquarians are cited. They certainly include Philostephanus of Cyrene (third century) and two Spartans – Sosibius, who probably lived in the late third and early second centuries, and is the first Spartan known to have written about his own country; and Aristocrates, who belongs to the second century or later. Two even more shadowy figures cited, who were also antiquarians in all probability, are Dieutychidas of Megara and Apollothemis.
Among philosophers, the earliest cited is the fifth-century sophist (or teacher) Hippias of Elis. But Plutarch displays acquaintance above all with Aristotle's master Plato, who shared aristocratic Athenians' admiration for Sparta and was strongly influenced by Spartan practices, especially in The Laws.14 In addition he cites three Peripatetics, Aristoxenus of Tarentum (fourth century), Demetrius of Phalerum (fourth century), who wrote a work On Peace, and Hermippus of Smyrna (third century). The latter is known to have composed a huge and sensational biographical work, which included a section on lawgivers.
Despite this weight of learning, Plutarch retains an independence and a freshness that serve to give the Life tremendous appeal. For all the idealism of the moralist and philosopher which it displays, it comes down to us as the latest and fullest account of how Sparta's admirers believed her to have been in the days of her greatness. As such it is an important and compelling document.
Non-Lycurgan Institutions
Plutarch attributes to Lycurgus, and thus describes in the Life, most of the distinctive features of the Spartan state in the classical period, with three notable exceptions.
The first is the dual kingship. He takes this to be already in existence by Lycurgus' time and does not seek to explain its origin. In fact there is reason to conjecture that the first joint kings were Archelaus and Charilaus early in the eighth century, and that the dual kingship reflects some amalgamation of communities in circumstances wholly obscure to us. The existence of kingship as such at a very primitive period is no surprise. What is remarkable and unique, however, is that Sparta maintained two distinct royal lines as far down as the late third century, and that her kings' role never became an altogether formal one. To command the army on campaign was always an exclusive royal prerogative; in practice kings could exercise a decisive influence in other spheres too.
Besides the dual kingship Plutarch takes it for granted that the class and status divisions of Spartiates (full citizens), perioeci and helots were already established by Lycurgus' time. The perioeci (literally, ‘the dwellers round about’) we know to have been a substantial group of mixed origin who achieved their status in a number of different ways. In the classical period they occupied land in Laconia and Messenia assigned to them by Sparta in return for supplying military contingents when required. They enjoyed free status and managed the internal affairs of their own communities (none of which has been excavated unfortunately, though perioecic sanctuaries have been dug). Once few, if any, Spartiates practised a manual craft, the commercial and economic role of theperioecimust have become a very important one.
The term ‘helot’ derives either from Helos, a town in the most fertile area of Laconia, said to have been conquered and destroyed by the Spartans at an early date, or (more plausibly) just from the Greek root ‘hel-’, meaning ‘capture’. Helots were, in short, local inhabitants of Laconia and Messenia owned by the Spartan state and placed in total subjection to work for its citizens – an arrangement by no means unique in the Greek world. They are to be distinguished from slaves in that they continued to live in their own country, to have some family and community life (of which we know nothing), and to enjoy certain property rights. Unlike slaves, they could hardly hope ever to improve their status; although some were freed on occasion for military service, this was for a long time exceptional. Otherwise, it was their labour which permitted the Spartiate class to devote itself exclusively to non-productive pursuits.
The third feature of the Spartan state which Plutarch, in contrast to certain other ancient authors, 15 does not attribute to Lycurgus is the ephorate or chief magistracy. Rather, he follows Aristotle16 in making it a reform by King Theopompus. It is impossible to be sure whether this powerful board of five ephors elected annually by the assembly from among all Spartiates (with no re-election possible) really was created – or alternatively perhaps gained importance – only after the other main elements in the constitution were functioning. But at least the case put into the mouth of King Cleomenes III by Plutarch17 – that the ephors were originally no more than assistants of the kings, who little by little transferred authority to themselves – can be seen as consistent with the absence of any mention of them in the one genuinely archaic document about constitutional change which survives.18 All the same, the claim by Agis' supporters in the mid third century19 that a pair of kings in agreement always retained the power to override ephors who opposed them, is not heard of as such earlier and gives every impression of having been fabricated for the occasion.
AGESILAUS
Historical Introduction
It must have been with mixed emotions that Plutarch composed his Life of Agesilaus II, the Eurypontid king whose forty-year reign (400–360 BC) was to witness a dramatic decline in Sparta's position, much of it arguably attributable to him. Perhaps it should seem no surprise that the Life of Pompey – the great Roman leader of the Late Republic, with whom Plutarch paired Agesilaus – is nearly twice as long.
When Agesilaus succeeded to the kingship at the beginning of the fourth century, Sparta's influence was at its height. Recent victory over Athens in the long Peloponnesian War (431–404) now enabled her to dominate the Greek world. Agesilaus gloried in that role, but ruthless aggressiveness on his part and that of many other leading Spartans only fuelled the resentment already felt not just by the state's defeated enemies but also by her allies – especially Thebes, the dominant city of Boeotia. Moreover, the Greeks' neighbour to the east, the immense Persian empire, whose resources had been the decisive element in Sparta's victory over Athens, remained willing to intervene in the rivalries of the Greek states. Meanwhile, Sparta provocatively took up the cause of ‘liberating’ the Greek cities on the eastern seaboard of Asia Minor from Persian overlordship. This was the first major military command that Agesilaus received as king. Officially, he undertook it as a ‘panhellenic’ initiative – on behalf of all Greeks against their common foe, the Persians – although with what degree of sincerity he and other Spartans ever supported the ideals of Panhellenism is far from clear. Even as he set out in 396 BC, the Thebans lost no time in articulating their objection to his promotion of the expedition as a panhellenic one (Ch. 6). The hostility which they thereby aroused in Agesilaus was only deepened two years later when he found himself recalled prematurely to confront a powerful new anti-Spartan coalition formed by Corinth, Argos, Boeotia and Athens.
Although Agesilaus won the narrowest of victories against Theban-led forces at Coronea in Boeotia, this did nothing to reduce his implacable hatred. How justified he was in regarding Thebes as a menace to the long-term balance of power in Greece is in turn a matter for debate. However, the agreement supported by Persia in 386 (the ‘King's Peace’) – whereby, in order to eliminate rivalry, each mainland Greek state should remain ‘free’ and ‘autonomous’ – pleased him in so far as it gave Sparta the pretext, though not the authority, to enforce these terms. Two successive Spartan commanders, on their own initiative, were sufficiently reckless to make pre-emptive strikes against Thebes (in 382) and then Athens (in 378) – the former a success, the latter a failure. Agesilaus condoned both, and relished the ensuing clashes with Thebes which continued throughout the 370s. During the peace negotiations in 371, however, he met his match in the Theban commander Epaminondas. Agesilaus asked him whether the principles of the King's Peace did not require the Boeotian confederacy (dominated by Thebes) to be broken up. In response, Epaminondas had the temerity to enquire whether by the same token Sparta's domination of, and reliance upon, the perioecic communities of Laconia should not be brought to an end.
Agesilaus' enraged refusal to continue any negotiations with Thebes at this point led to a pitched battle only twenty days later, at Leuctra in Boeotia, which was a crushing defeat for Sparta. The myth of the army's invincibility was irretrievably shattered here. Even worse blows were to follow during the next decade. Sparta's allies in the Peloponnese and beyond dropped away. Theban forces penetrated not just Laconia, but even (twice) the city of Sparta itself, whose lack of a protective wall had always been a source of pride. Epaminondas removed the entire territory of Messenia from Spartan control, and made it into an independent state with a newly founded capital at Messene; Messenians who had taken refuge abroad now flocked back. In consequence the Spartan state, confined to Laconia, was approximately halved in size and population, as well as being deprived of much fertile land (not to mention the helots who had worked it). Thereafter, not only did a hostile neighbour lie to the west, but northwards, in Arcadia, the new city of Megalopolis was also founded, with the same deliberate aim of thwarting Sparta.
At home, several interrelated problems were sharply exposed. For the most part these were not novel but had developed gradually over a long period, although without doubt their impact was accelerated by Sparta's exceptionally active involvement in the affairs of Greece during the previous half-century. In particular, the number of Spartiates fell to no more than about 1,000, while the distribution of land ownership became extremely unequal. Altogether, Sparta on the model supposedly created by Lycurgus (and portrayed so idealistically by Plutarch in that Life) was brought to an end at long last by Epaminondas and his fellow Boeotian leader Pelopidas. It is true that Thebes' ambitions in turn did not outlast Epaminondas' death in battle at Mantinea in 362 (Pelopidas had met the same fate two years earlier). Sparta, however, never regained Messenia, and never again established herself as a power of more than local significance, despite remarkable efforts much later in the mid third century, recounted by Plutarch in Agis and Cleomenesbelow. In the short term, the state was in such dire need of funds that Agesilaus (aged over eighty) undertook humiliating service as a mercenary commander for profit.
Plutarch's Sources
The early fourth century in Greece was a well-documented period, and there can be no question that Plutarch was familiar with many of the accounts of it; he sometimes explicitly compares them. In this connection we should bear in mind that he also wrote Lives of four other figures whose careers intersect with that of Agesilaus – his fellow Spartan and lover, Lysander; the two Boeotian leaders Epaminondas and Pelopidas; and the Persian Great King from 405/4 to 359/8, Artaxerxes II. In consequence, predictably enough, the length at which he relates an episode, or the perspective which his account adopts, is prone to vary from one Life to another (his Epaminondas does not survive, a serious loss). A further influence is Plutarch's own Boeotian background. Much as he may have admired certain aspects of Agesilaus' character and his professed unflinching devotion to traditional Spartan values, at the same time it would only be natural for him to take pride in the leadership of the king's detested foes, Epaminondas and Pelopidas.
Plutarch was furnished with an unapologetically pro-Spartan record by the Athenian Xenophon, Agesilaus' contemporary and friend, who is introduced more fully below in the context of the work Spartan Society attributed to him. Xenophon wrote not only A History of My Times, in which Agesilaus features prominently and the Thebans' achievements are flagrantly downplayed, but he also composed an encomium specifically of Agesilaus, praising and illustrating his piety, justice, self-control, courage and wisdom. Plutarch likewise, in accordance with his commitment to composing biography rather than history, is concerned above all to record and discuss Agesilaus' personal qualities and behaviour (as king; his life to that point receives only the briefest notice), with the accent on their strengths, although certain limitations are by no means ignored. The campaigns in Asia Minor and Boeotia during the 390s aside, Plutarch's references to the highpoints of Greek history during the following three decades are kept to a minimum.20Equally, it is not part of his purpose to offer insight into the opposition to Agesilaus' attitudes and actions which clearly was voiced by fellow Spartiates.
This is not to suggest that Plutarch lacked a full awareness of the history of the period; rather, it is we who lack it. In fact, all the sources about to be mentioned are now lost except for fragments. Plutarch refers elsewhere (though not in this Life) to the standard account written by Ephorus as a contemporary. However, in Agesilaus he does refer four times to another standard history, also by a contemporary, Theopompus. A history by Callisthenes that covered the thirty years following the King's Peace is cited once (its author became better known for his first-hand account of Alexander the Great's exploits). Dicae-archus, also cited once, was a prolific author of the late fourth century and contemporary of Theophrastus (cited here twice); 21 both were pupils of Aristotle. Like Theophrastus, Dioscorides (cited here once) wrote specifically about Sparta.22 Last, but not least, we should note how Plutarch shares findings from his own travels to Sparta and research in the archives there.
AGIS AND CLEOMENES
Historical Introduction
In the absence of reform it is no surprise that Sparta remained weak after the terrible defeat at Leuctra in 371 BC. Though we lack the material to write any connected account of her history for the next century and more, it is at least clear that she did display unflinching hostility to Macedonian domination of Greece, which persisted from the 330s onwards. For the most part the opposition of a state by now so insignificant made little impact. But in 331 King Agis III led a short-lived rising of many Peloponnesian states which ended in crushing defeat and his own death. Early in the third century King Areus I broke with tradition by adopting an ostentatious style of monarchy similar to that of other kings in the eastern Mediterranean world (even issuing Spartan silver coinage for the first time, with his own head on it), and nursed grandiose ambitions of reviving Spartan leadership of the Peloponnese. To this end Macedonian domination had to be shaken off. The first attempt which he organized, in 280, quickly proved abortive. But the second, co-ordinated with Athens in the early 260s, was more serious, though in the end Areus met his death during his third season of campaigning, having failed to break the Macedonians' grip on Corinth and the Isthmus.
Areus received some subsidies from the king of Egypt, Ptolemy II: the interest which he and his successors showed in Greek affairs (and the cash they provided) were to continue making a significant impact. Within Greece the aggressive Aetolian League – a federal state in the north-west, founded around 400 – was to gain increasing prestige and strength during the third century. A second, more ancient, federal state, the Achaean League in the north-west Peloponnese, was revived from 280 onwards, and began to assume considerable importance once Aratus took the leading role in its affairs. He was a dynamic figure who at the age of twenty in 251 seized control of his native Sicyon and at once joined it to the League, thereby taking the first step in what was to become the expansion of a local federation into a much larger, more powerful body. The military operations of the League were conducted by a general (strategus) whom the assembly elected to hold office from May each year; no one could be general for more than one year at a time. Aratus first held this office in 245/4 and usually in alternate years thereafter.
In all likelihood the Spartan state had lost many of its traditional distinctive features by the mid third century. The figures given by Plutarch show that the decline in Spartiate numbers and the inequality of landholdings had both become even more serious. The latter trend may have been exacerbated by large land purchases on the part of those Spartiates who resorted to the common expedient of undertaking mercenary service abroad (as Agesilaus had done), and were successful enough to make their fortunes. Taenarum, at the bleak south-western tip of Laconia, had even become the main centre where Greek mercenaries generally were hired.
Plutarch's favourable account of Agis makes clear the need for reform, but leaves much obscure concerning precisely why he undertook it and why he failed to carry it through. Sweeping social reconstruction initiated spontaneously from the top is a rarity in any community at any time. We may wonder whether Agis' programme and the personal sacrifices which he offered to make were not motivated mainly by fear that events might otherwise overtake him: the mass of discontented would rise to deprive him (and other property-owners) of not just wealth, but also position. On the other hand it may be that he was really seeking personal glory and military strength for Sparta by enabling her to raise a large army again. Yet in that case it is remarkable how little he did to take the offensive even in the short time at his disposal. His one expedition was undertaken at the request of the Achaeans; in the course of it Aratus' decision not to let the Spartan troops show their mettle in battle was readily accepted, and no other occasion for action seemed to be sought. Equally unclear is the depth of Agis' devotion to the rule of law and to what he claimed to value as Lycurgan principles. It could be argued that while he was willing (or naive) enough at the outset to have his programme enacted in a constitutional fashion – an attempt which should have succeeded, we may note, if just a single vote had gone the other way in the Gerousia – thereafter he was prepared to abandon all such scruples, first by allowing the deposition of his fellow king and then by removing a hostile board of ephors.
For all Plutarch's scorn, there could have been some justification for the fears expressed by King Leonidas with regard to Agis' programme: ‘… [he] was pledging the property of the rich to the poor as their payment for making him tyrant, and by his land distributions and cancellations of debts was buying plenty of bodyguards for himself, rather than citizens for Sparta' (Agis, Ch. 7). Beyond question, the programme could be represented as merely a variation on the standard form of appeal made by aspiring tyrants to the lower classes in Greek cities. Personal considerations apart, Leonidas was right to be apprehensive, and in fact elements in the narrative show how Sparta was more deeply split over the programme than Plutarch specifically admits. This is highlighted by the vote in the Gerousia, where nearly all the membership must have been wealthy, yet almost half voted in favour of reform; in contrast the board of ephors elected (by the assembly) subsequent to this vote was opposed to reform, despite Plutarch's claim that citizens in general favoured it.
There remains the puzzle of why Agis accepted his uncle's proposal to postpone redistribution of land. It may be that by then he had come entirely under the latter's influence – despite his denial of this to the end. But naivety and inexperience seem the more likely explanations. They are all the more unexpected given the lessons in hard political reality which Agis had been willing enough to learn after rejection of his programme by the Gerousia. At the same time they do also encourage doubts about just how thoroughly he had considered in advance the aims and consequences of his proposals.
In his similarly favourable treatment of Cleomenes, Plutarch leaves the king's activities and ambitions during the early years of the reign unclear. Whether the murder of Agis' brother Archidamus actually prompted him to devise his coup, or instead just influenced the timing of a scheme already planned, we cannot say. At least its execution proved that Cleomenes had learned from Agis' difficulties and hesitation. There was no attempt to act constitutionally. Instead the ephors were violently eliminated, their office abolished, and the entire reform programme imposed at a single stroke. Cleomenes had no compunction about paying mere lip-service to Lycurgan principles, and he made it abundantly clear that his aims were personal glory together with revived military strength for Sparta.
The narrative shows how it was the very success of his reforms which led to his downfall. His leadership of the enlarged and re-equipped Spartan army was brilliant enough to threaten the Achaean League with disintegration, while his social measures at Sparta attracted supporters elsewhere who hoped that he might benefit their cities likewise. It was the strange fact that he did not do so, at Argos above all, which proved a decisive element in his loss of power. At the end of a year and more of submission to him the Argives were still hoping for reform, and the failure to offer it seems baffling. It could be claimed that Cleomenes feared a loss of support among the rich, but he had not been especially concerned to protect their interests at Sparta, and in 224 if he had seen the alternatives before him as either reform and the retention of Argos, or no reform and its loss (with all the consequences for him which were sure to follow), then in self-interest alone the former choice should have appeared obvious. It may possibly be that Cleomenes was apprehensive of Sparta's ability to control a reformed Argos in the long term, though that hardly seems an overwhelming consideration in the crisis. The real stumbling-block may rather have been a failure of imagination. Cleomenes had been committed to sweeping domestic reform of a uniquely Spartan character, 23 but could not conceive that this, or a version of it, was appropriate elsewhere. It is significant that a third Spartan reformer – the tyrant Nabis (207–192) – was to suffer from no such limitation. The success of his programme (at Sparta and Argos) eventually attracted Roman suspicion.24
Plutarch's Sources
Since the fullest ancient account of the reigns of Agis and Cleomenes is now lost, their Lives by Plutarch are of immense importance. In fact almost no other material about Agis survives, or about internal affairs at Sparta during the reign of Cleomenes. The fullest account was offered by Phylarchus, a contemporary who came either from Naucratis in Egypt or from Athens (or perhaps moved from the former to the latter). He wrote a history of Greece in twenty-eight books from the death of Pyrrhus in 272 to that of Cleomenes in 219, in which the view of both Agis and Cleomenes is known to have been exceptionally favourable. Plutarch's four citations show that he had read Phylarchus' work, and in all likelihood he actually based his account of the two kings on it.
But at least two hostile views of Cleomenes were also known to him. The first appeared in the extensive Memoirs of the Achaeans' leader, Aratus of Sicyon, another contemporary source, also now lost, which Plutarch drew upon primarily in the Life he wrote of Aratus.25 These Memoirs were written as a careful justification of Aratus' career, intended not least to defend his highly controversial appeal for Macedonian help against Cleomenes. The second hostile view of Cleomenes appeared in the Histories of Polybius of Megalopolis, which were written in the mid second century and still survive.26 Though Polybius' main narrative does not begin till 220, he was concerned to explain various background developments in some detail, among them the rise of the Achaean League, in whose affairs he came to take a prominent part himself. Naturally, therefore, he deals with what he calls the ‘Cleomenean War’ (229/8–222) 27 and later narrates Cleomenes' exile and death in Egypt.28 Polybius mainly followed Aratus' Memoirs, but he did also consult Phylarchus among others, even though he was exasperated by his admiration for Cleomenes and criticized him vehemently for his highly coloured, emotional style of writing. Similarly Plutarch, while sharing Phylarchus' assessment of the two kings, was well aware of his bias, and in his Aratus, Ch. 38 even goes so far as to state:
Phylarchus has in fact given a similar account of these events [just described]. In the absence of testimony by Polybius he does not merit any credence at all since whenever he touches on Cleomenes he is carried away by his partiality for him, and persistently turns his history into a court case in which he opposes Aratus and pleads for Cleomenes.
This is a valuable statement of caution. But the loss of Phylarchus still denies us any chance of assessing in detail the extent to which Plutarch exercised a control on his testimony.
Though Plutarch never refers to it in these Lives, he must presumably have been familiar with Polybius' biography of the Achaean leader Philopoemen, who took part in negotiations with Cleomenes after the fall of Megalopolis and fought at the battle of Sellasia.29 Plutarch certainly used this biography (now lost) for his own Life of Philopoemen. No doubt he consulted works by others, too, relating to Agis and Cleomenes, but none can be identified beyond that of Baton of Sinope.
NOTES
1. For further information on every aspect of what follows see, for example, P. A. Stadter's General Introduction to Plutarch: Greek Lives in Oxford's World Classics series (1998).
2. See the selection in Plutarch, Essays (Penguin, 1992).
3. See Lycurgus, Ch. 18.
4. See in particular E. Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford University Press, 1969).
5. See Maps, pp. 215, 217.
6. The Histories, 1. 65–6 (Penguin, 2003).
7. Plutarch, Lycurgus, Ch. 6.
8. See Lycurgus, Ch. 21, and Agesilaus, Ch. 19.
9. See under ‘Lacedaemonia' and ‘Sparta’ in the index of the Penguin edition of The Histories.
10. The Peloponnesian War, 5.68.
11. Known to us best through Pausanias, who wrote an extensive Guide to Greece in the latter part of the second century AD: see especially Book 4 (in the second volume of the Penguin edition).
12. 1269a29–1271b19 (rev. edn, Penguin, 1984).
13. See p. 194 below.
14. Penguin, 2004.
15. Among them Xenophon, Spartan Society, Ch. 8.
16. The Politics, 1313a26 (rev. edn, Penguin, 1992).
17. Cleomenes, Ch. 10.
18. See Lycurgus, Ch. 6.
19. Agis, Ch. 12.
20. As it happens, Agesilaus did not himself participate in either of the key battles at Leuctra and Mantinea.
21. See ‘Lycurgus: Plutarch's Sources’.
22. See ‘Lycurgus: Plutarch's Sources’.
23. Note that neither king was so radical as to propose a change in the status of the helots. Only in the final crisis did Cleomenes offer them freedom in exchange for military service, and even then at a high price.
24. See Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean (Penguin, 1976) under ‘Nabis of Sparta' in the index. He is as hostile to Nabis as Plutarch is favourable to Agis and Cleomenes.
25. To appear in The Rise of Rome (rev. edn, Penguin, forthcoming).
26. The Rise of the Roman Empire (Penguin, 1979).
27. 2.46–71.
28. 5.34–9.
29. See Cleomenes, Ch. 24 and note 63.