1. Generally speaking it is impossible to make any undisputed statement about Lycurgus the lawgiver, since conflicting accounts have been given of his ancestry, his travels, his death, and above all his activity with respect to his laws and government; but there is least agreement about the period in which the man lived. Some claim that he was in his prime at the same time as Iphitus and was his partner in instituting the Olympic truce.1 Among those who take this view is Aristotle the philosopher, 2 adducing as proof the discus with Lycurgus' name inscribed3 on it preserved at Olympia. But others like Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, who calculate his period by the succession of kings at Sparta, make the claim that he lived a great many years before the First Olympiad. Timaeus conjectures that there were two Lycurguses at Sparta at different times, and that the achievements of both were attributed to one because of his renown. The older one might have lived close to Homer's time: 4 there are some who think that he even met Homer in person. Xenophon, too, suggests a very early date in the passage where he states that Lycurgus lived in the time of the Heraclids. Now of course the most recent Spartan kings were in fact Heraclids by ancestry, but Xenophon evidently also wanted to call the first kings Heraclids, 5 as being closely connected with Heracles. Nonetheless, even though this is such a muddled historical topic, we shall attempt to present an account of Lycurgus by following those treatments which offer the smallest contradictions or the most distinguished authorities.
The poet Simonides6 maintains that Lycurgus' father was not Eunomus, but that both Lycurgus and Eunomus were the sons of Prytanis. Nearly all others, however, trace his genealogy differently, as follows: Procles, son of Aristodemus, was the father of Soüs; Eurypon was Soüs' son; Prytanis was Eurypon's son; Eunomus was Prytanis' son; Eunomus had Polydectes by his first wife, and Lycurgus was his younger son by a second wife, Dionassa. This is the account given by Dieutychidas, which puts Lycurgus in the fifth generation after Procles and in the tenth after Heracles.
2. Among his ancestors Soüs was particularly admired: under him the Spartiates both made slaves of the helots7 and won further extensive Arcadian territory which they annexed. There is a story that when Soüs was being besieged by the Cleitorians in a rugged waterless spot, he agreed to surrender to them the territory which he had gained in the fighting if he and all those with him might drink from the spring nearby. Once the agreement had been confirmed under oath he assembled his men and offered to confer the kingship of the area upon the one who refrained from drinking. Not one, however, possessed such self-restraint, but they all drank. Soüs went down after everyone else, and with the enemy still there just splashed himself. Then he moved off, but retained control of the land because not everybody had drunk.
Yet even though he was admired for such acts, his family were termed the Eurypontids, not after him but after his son, because Eurypon by courting popularity and ingratiating himself with the masses was evidently the first to relax the excessively autocratic character of the kingship. Such relaxation, however, led to a bolder attitude on the part of the people. Among the succeeding kings some were detested for ruling the people by force, while others were merely tolerated because their rule was either partisan or feeble. As a result, for a long period Sparta was gripped by lawlessness and disorder. It was as a consequence of this that Lycurgus' father, too, met his death while king. He died from being struck by a chef's cleaver in the course of putting a stop to some brawl, and left his throne to his elder son Polydectes.
3. When Polydectes also died not long after, everyone reckoned that Lycurgus ought to become king. And king he was, until it became obvious that his brother's widow was pregnant. As soon as he discovered this, he declared that the kingship belonged to the child if it should turn out to be male, while for his own part he would exercise power simply as a guardian: prodikoi8 was the term used by the Spartans for the guardians of kings without fathers. The mother, however, in secret communications explained to him her wish to abort the baby on condition that while remaining king of Sparta he would marry her. Though he loathed her morals, he raised no objection to the actual proposal, but pretended to approve and accept it. He said that there was no need for her to suffer physical harm and to run risks by inducing a miscarriage and taking drugs, since he would ensure that the child should be disposed of as soon as it was born. By this means he continued to mislead the woman right up until the baby was due. Then as soon as he learned that she was in labour, he sent in observers to be there at her delivery, as well as guards under orders, should the baby turn out to be a girl, to hand it over to the women, but if it should be a boy, to bring it to him personally, whatever he might happen to be doing. It so happened that he was having a meal with the magistrates when a boy was born, and the servants appeared bringing him the infant. The story goes that he took him and said to those present: ‘Spartiates, a king is born to you.’ Then he laid him in the king's place and named him Charilaus (‘People's Joy’) because everyone, impressed at how high-minded and fair Lycurgus was, felt overjoyed.
He was king, then, for eight months altogether. There were other reasons, too, for the citizens' admiration. In fact those devoted to him and willing to carry out his orders promptly because of his personal excellence outnumbered those obedient to him because he was a king's guardian and had the royal prerogative. Yet there was also some jealousy, as well as an effort to obstruct his upward rise when he was young, in particular by the relations and friends of the king's mother, who felt injured by him. On one occasion her brother Leonidas abused Lycurgus quite offensively and added that he was fully aware of Lycurgus' intention to become king. Leonidas thus roused suspicion and by his slander laid the ground for accusing Lycurgus of a plot, should the king come to any harm. Similar sorts of remarks were put about by the king's mother too. Since these caused him distress and fear about the uncertain future, he decided to avoid suspicion by going abroad and travelling around until his nephew should come of age and have a son to succeed to his throne.
4. So he set out and came first to Crete. Here he studied the forms of government and associated with the men of the highest reputation. Among the laws there were those that he admired and took note of with the intention of bringing them home and putting them to use, but there were others which he thought little of. By the exercise of charm and friendship he prevailed upon one of those regarded there as shrewd and statesmanlike to undertake a mission to Sparta. This man, Thales, had some reputation as a composer of lyric poetry and had made this art his cover, though in fact his activities were precisely those of the most powerful lawgivers. For his songs were arguments to evoke ready obedience and concord. The accompanying music and rhythms had a notably regular and soothing quality, so that those who heard them would unconsciously mellow in character. In place of the mutual ill-will which at the time prevailed there, they would instead become habituated to striving communally for excellence. Thus in a sense Thales paved the way for Lycurgus' instruction of the Spartiates.
From Crete Lycurgus sailed to Asia. We are told that his plan was to compare the frugal, tough way of life in Crete with the extravagance and luxury of Ionia, and to observe the contrast in the ways of life and government – just like a doctor who compares bodies which are festering or diseased with healthy ones. It was apparently in Ionia that he also first encountered the poems of Homer, which Creophylus’9 descendants were responsible for preserving. And when he observed that besides their tendencies to unrestrained indulgence they contained political and educational elements which were no less worthy of attention, he enthusiastically had them written down and collected them in order to bring them back home. Homer's epics had already gained a certain vague reputation among the Greeks, and a few individuals had acquired certain portions thanks to chance distribution of these works here and there; but in making them known Lycurgus was the first and most successful.
The Egyptians think that Lycurgus reached them too, and that their separation of the warrior class from the others particularly impressed him – the consequence being that he carried it over to Sparta, and by differentiating labourers10 and craftsmen demonstrated how genuinely refined and pure his constitution was. There are certainly even some Greek historians who endorse these claims by the Egyptians. Yet so far as I am aware nobody except the Spartiate Aristocrates, the son of Hipparchus, has maintained that Lycurgus also visited both Libya and Iberia, and that in his wanderings round India he talked with the Gymnosophists.11
5. The Spartans missed Lycurgus throughout his absence and often summoned him back. To them the kings, while accorded a title and an office, were in other ways not superior to the people, whereas in Lycurgus they recognized a natural leader with the ability to attract a following. In fact even the kings were not reluctant to see him back again: their hope was that with his presence they would receive less offence from the people. So when Lycurgus did return to a populace in this kind of mood, his immediate intention was to sweep away the existing order and to make a complete change of constitution, since piecemeal legislation would have no effect or value. It was like the case of someone in bodily distress from a whole range of different disorders, who will begin a different, new life only by dissolving and changing his existing make-up with drugs and purges. Once Lycurgus had formed this intention he travelled first to Delphi. And after sacrificing to the god and consulting him, he returned bringing that famous oracle12in which the Pythia called him ‘dear to the gods’ and ‘a god rather than a man’: he had asked for Good Order, and she declared that the god granted this and promised that his constitution would be by far the finest of all.
With this encouragement he made approaches to the most distinguished men and invited them to join in the task with him. Initially he conferred with his friends in secret, yet ever so gradually he won over more men and organized them for action. When the moment came, he ordered his thirty foremost men to proceed under arms into the agora13 at dawn, so as to shock and terrify his opponents. Hermippus has recorded the twenty most distinguished among these men. Arthmiadas is generally named as the one who was particularly associated with Lycurgus in all his operations, and who collaborated with him in formulating legislation. When the disturbance began, King Charilaus took fright because he thought that the whole action was being concerted against him, and so sought sanctuary with the goddess in her Bronze House. But once reassured by an oath he emerged, and as a man of mild temperament played a part in Lycurgus' programme. This mildness is reflected in the story of his fellow king Archelaus, who responded to praise of the youngster by saying: ‘How could Charilaus be a gentleman, when he isn't hard even on scoundrels?’
First and most significant among Lycurgus' numerous innovations was the institution of the Elders. According to Plato, 14 its combination with the kings' arrogant rule, and the right to an equal vote on the most important matters, produced security and at the same time sound sense. For the state was unstable, at one moment inclining towards the kings and virtual tyranny, at another towards the people and democracy. But now by placing the office of the Elders in the middle as a kind of ballast, and thus striking a balance, it found the safest arrangement and organization, with the twenty-eight Elders always siding with the kings when it was a matter of resisting democracy, yet in turn reinforcing the people against the development of tyranny. According to Aristotle this number of Elders was instituted because two of Lycurgus' thirty leading associates panicked and abandoned the enterprise. But Sphaerus claims that from the outset there were twenty-eight collaborators in the scheme. Possibly the fact that this number is reached through multiplying seven by four also has something to do with it, as well as the point that being equal to the sum of its own divisors it is the next perfect number after six.15 Yet in my view the main reason for fixing upon this number of Elders was so that the total should be thirty when the two kings were added to the twenty-eight.
6. Lycurgus was so enthusiastic about this council that he brought an oracle about it from Delphi, which they call a rhetra.16 It goes as follows: ‘After dedicating a temple to Zeus Scyllanius and Athena Scyllania, forming phylai and creating obai, and instituting a Gerousia of thirty including the founder-leaders, then from season to season apellaze between Babyca and Cnacion so as to propose and withdraw. But to the people should belong the right to respond as well as power.’17 In this the phrases ‘forming phylai’ and ‘creating obai’ refer to the division and distribution of the people into groups, the former of which he termed phylai, the latter obai.18 The ‘founder-leaders’ means the kings, while to apellaze' means to summon the assembly, because Lycurgus related the origin and source of his constitution to Pythian Apollo.19 Their present names for Babyca and Cnacion are… 20 and Oinous. Aristotle says that Cnacion is a river, while Babyca is a bridge. It was between these that they used to hold their assemblies: there were no porticoes nor any other edifice. For in his opinion these were in no way conducive to sound deliberations, but instead harmful. They make those who assemble idiotic and give them silly, mindless notions, when at their meetings they can stare at statues and pictures, or the stages of theatres, 21 or the richly decorated roofs of council chambers. When the populace was assembled, Lycurgus permitted no one else except the Elders and kings to make a proposal, although the authority to decide upon what the latter put forward did belong to the people. Later, however, when the people distorted proposals and mauled them by their deletions and additions, the kings Polydorus and Theopompus supplemented the rhetra as follows: ‘If the people should make a crooked choice, the Elders and the founder-leaders are to set it aside’ that is, not to confirm it, but to withdraw it completely and to dismiss the people because they are altering and reformulating the proposal contrary to what was best. Moreover these kings persuaded the city that the god had ordered thissupplement – as Tyrtaeus seems to be recalling in the following lines:
Having listened to Phoebus they brought home from Pytho
The oracles of the god and his words which were to be fulfilled:
To rule in council is for the kings (who are esteemed by the gods
And whose care is the lovely city of Sparta),
And for the aged Elders; but then it is for the common people
To respond in turn with straight rhetras.22
7. While Lycurgus had thus incorporated a blend of elements in the constitution, Spartans after his day nonetheless still saw oligarchy as the one that was undiluted and dominant – or ‘inflated and fervent’23 (as Plato puts it) ‘so that they imposed upon it the authority of the ephors to act as a curb’. It was apparently about 130 years after Lycurgus' time that the first ephors were appointed, headed by Elatus, during the reign of Theopompus.24 This is the king about whom they also relate that when his wife criticized him because the kingship he would hand on to his sons would be less than the one he inherited, he replied: ‘No, greater – since it will last longer.’ In fact by its renunciation of excessive authority and the related resentment, the Spartan kingship escaped the danger of suffering the fate which the Messenians and Argives inflicted upon their kings, who refused to concede anything or yield any of their authority to the popular element. Lycurgus' skill and foresight in this respect are also seen with special clarity in any review of the civil strife and misgovernment among the Spartans' own kinsmen and neighbours, the Messenian and Argive peoples and kings. Initially their circumstances and those of the Spartans had been equal, and in the allocation of land25 they may even have seemed to gain more than they did. However, they did not prosper for very long, but through the insolence of their kings on one side and the non-cooperation of their masses on the other, they threw their institutions into complete turmoil – thereby demonstrating what a truly divine blessing the Spartiates enjoyed in the man who constructed their constitution and blended it for them. Yet these developments came later.
8. Lycurgus' second, and most revolutionary, reform was his redistribution of the land. For there was dreadful inequality: many destitute people without means were congregating in the city, while wealth had poured completely into just a few hands. In order to expel arrogance, envy, crime, luxury and those yet older and more serious political afflictions, wealth and poverty, Lycurgus persuaded the citizens to pool all the land and then redistribute it afresh. Then they would all live on equal terms with one another, with the same amount of property to support each, and they would seek to be first only in merit. There would be no distinction or inequality between individuals except for what censure of bad conduct and praise of good would determine.
Acting upon his word Lycurgus distributed the rest of Laconia to the perioeci in 30,000 lots, and divided the part subject to the city of Sparta into 9,000.26 This was the number of lots for Spartiates. However, some say that Lycurgus allocated 6,000 such lots and that Polydorus added 3,000 later. Others say that half the 9,000 were allotted by the latter, and half by Lycurgus. Each person's lot was sufficient to provide a rent of 70 medimni of barley27 for a man, and 12 for his wife, along with proportionate quantities of fresh produce. He thought that just this amount of food would suffice for their proper fitness and health, and they would need nothing more. There is a story that at some later date when on return from abroad he was passing through the country just after the reaping, and saw the heaps of grain side by side and all equal in size, he smiled and remarked to the bystanders that the whole of Laconia had the look of a property which many brothers had recently divided between themselves.28
9. He attempted to divide up their movable property too, in order to remove inequalities and contrasts altogether. But when he saw their adverse reaction to outright expropriation, he went about this in a different way and devised constitutional measures against their greed. First he declared that all gold and silver coinage was now invalid, and decreed that only iron should be used as currency; 29 and then he assigned a low value to even a great weight and mass of this, so that a sum of ten minas demanded substantial storage space in a house and a waggon to shift it. Once this was made the legal tender, many types of crime disappeared from Sparta. For who would set out to steal, or accept as a bribe, or rob, or plunder something which could not be hidden, excited no envy when possessed, and could not even be profitably chopped up? For the story is that Lycurgus doused the surface of the red-hot iron with vinegar, thus removing whatever other use and strength it might have, and making it fragile and intractable.
After this he effected an expulsion of useless and superfluous alien crafts. Even without anybody banishing them, most would probably have been eliminated by the common currency, since there was no sale for their products. The iron money, after all, could not be exported elsewhere in Greece, and was considered a joke there, not an object of value. Consequently it was impossible to buy any shoddy foreign goods, and no cargo of merchandise would enter the harbours, no teacher of rhetoric trod Laconian soil, no begging seer, no pimp, no maker of gold or silver ornaments – because there was no coined money. Thus gradually cut off from the things that animate and feed it, luxury atrophied30 of its own accord. And those who had great possessions won no advantage because there was no public outlet for their wealth, but it had to be kept unused in storage at home. As a result their craftsmanship of everyday essential items of furniture like beds and chairs and tables was first-rate, and the Laconian kothon or drinking cup, according to Critias, is especially valued for use on campaigns. Visibly off-putting elements in water which had to be drunk were concealed by its colour, while the dirt in the liquid was trapped by the lip, so that what reached the mouth for drinking was cleaner. The lawgiver was responsible for this too, since craftsmen had been released from useless jobs and now displayed the quality of their skill in essential ones.
10. With the aim of stepping up the attack on luxury and removing the passion for wealth, he introduced his third and finest reform, the establishment of common messes. The intention was that they should assemble together and eat the same specified meat-sauces and cereals. This prevented them from spending the time at home, lying at table on expensive couches, being waited upon by confectioners and chefs, fattened up in the dark like gluttonous animals, and ruining themselves physically as well as morally, and by giving free rein to every craving and excess which demanded lengthy slumbers, warm baths, plenty of rest, and, in a sense, daily nursing.
This, then, was indeed a great achievement, yet as Theophrastus says, it was an even greater one to have made wealth undesirable and to have produced ‘non-wealth' by meals taken in common and by the frugality of the diet. When the rich man would go to the same meal as the poor one, he could have no use nor pleasure from lavish table settings, let alone view them or display them. Thus in Sparta alone of all the states under the sun was seen that proverbial blind Plutus31 lying inanimate and inert, as if in a picture. It was not even possible for the rich to dine at home first and then to proceed to their messes on a full stomach. Rather, the rest were on the look-out for whoever would not drink and eat along with them, and they would abuse him for having no self-discipline and for being too delicate to consume the common fare.
11. We are told that it was this reform above all which roused the fury of the wealthy against Lycurgus, so that they joined together in a body to jeer at him and to express their anger. Eventually, when many of them pelted him, he ran from the agora to escape, and did manage to take refuge in a sanctuary ahead of them. But one particular youth, Alcander – who was by no means unintelligent, though he did have a quick, excitable temper – pressed hard in pursuit, and struck him with his stick when he turned round, knocking his eye out. However, Lycurgus did not give in because of this blow, but stood to confront the citizens and show them his bloodstained face and ruined eye. When they saw this they were overcome with such deep shame and sorrow that they handed Alcander over to him and escorted him home as an expression of their joint outrage. Lycurgus then complimented and dismissed them, but Alcander he brought into his own house: he neither said nor did anything hurtful to him, but got rid of his usual servants and attendants, and ordered him to act as his servant. Alcander, who was by no means ill-bred, did as he was instructed without a word; and by staying in Lycurgus' house and living with him came to recognize his gentleness, his depth of soul, his ascetic lifestyle and his inexhaustible capacity for work. In consequence Alcander became quite remarkably attached to him, and used to say to his comrades and friends that Lycurgus, far from being severe or unfeeling, was uniquely gentle and mild to others. This, then, was how Alcander was punished and the kind of penalty he paid – a criminal, wilful adolescent who became the most civil and responsible man. In memory of his injury Lycurgus dedicated a shrine of Athena – whom he gave the special name Optillet's, because the Dorians there call eyesoptilloi. Some writers, however (among them Dioscorides, who produced a work on the Spartan constitution), maintain that although Lycurgus was hit in the eye, he was not blinded, but actually dedicated the shrine to the goddess as a thanksgiving for its recovery. At any rate it was after this incident that the Spartiates gave up the habit of carrying sticks when attending the assembly.
12. While Cretans call messes andreia32 Spartans call them phiditia, either because they are places of friendship (philia) and kindliness – with the ‘d’ in phiditia in place of the ‘1' in philitia – or because they instil thriftiness and frugality (pheido). Yet, as some claim, it is also tenable that the first letter (‘ph’) may have been added on arbitrarily to editia, which would suggest the way of life and eating (edode). They would gather in groups of fifteen or thereabouts, more or less. Each member of the mess would contribute every month a medimnus of barley-meal, eight choes of wine, five minas of cheese, five half-minas of figs, and in addition just a small sum of money for fish or meat.33 Besides, anyone who had made an offering of first-fruits or had been hunting sent a share to the mess. For whenever anyone made a sacrifice or was back late from hunting, he was allowed to have dinner at home, but others had to be at the mess. This practice of messing together was for a long time strictly maintained. Certainly when King Agis returned from the campaign in which he had defeated the Athenians, he wanted to eat at home with his wife and called for his portions; the polemarchs would not send them. Next day in his fury he did not carry out the required sacrifice, and they then fined him.34
The boys, too, used to frequent the messes: for them it was like being brought to a school for self-discipline, where they both heard political discussion and witnessed the kind of entertainments appropriate for free men. For their own part they would grow used to making fun and joking without becoming indecent, as well as not taking offence when they were the butt of the joke. In fact this ability to take a joke would seem to be very Spartan. If a joke was too much for someone to take, he could plead with the person making it, and the latter left off.
The oldest member indicated the doors to each person entering and said: ‘Not a word goes out through these.’ By all accounts anyone desiring to join a mess35 was vetted in the following way. Each member would take a piece of soft bread in his hand and in silence would throw it, like a ballot, into the bowl which a servant carried on his head. Those in favour threw the bread as it was, while those against squeezed it hard with their hand. The effect of a squeezed piece is that of a hollow ballot.36 And should they find even one of these, they do not admit the would-be entrant because it is their wish that all should be happy in each other's company. They refer to somebody rejected in this way as kaddished, since the bowl into which they throw the pieces of bread is called akaddichos.
The food they think most highly of is the black broth.37 Thus the older men do not even ask for a helping of meat but leave it to the young ones, while they have broth poured out for themselves and make a meal of it. There is a story that one of the kings of Pontus even bought a Laconian cook for the sake of the broth, but after tasting it was not pleased. At this the cook declared: ‘This is broth to be savoured, O king, by those who have bathed in the Eurotas.’ After moderate drinking they depart without a torch. Neither for this journey nor for any other are they allowed to walk with a light, so that they should grow used to the darkness and to travelling cheerfully and fearlessly by night. This, then, is how the messes are organized.
13. Lycurgus did not put his laws in writing: in fact one of the so-called rhetras is a prohibition38 to this effect. Instead he reckoned that the guiding principles of most importance for the happiness and excellence of a state would remain securely fixed if they were embedded in the citizens' character and training.39 This approach would forge a stronger commitment to such principles than the sense of compulsion induced in the young by education, when it gives a full picture of the legislator's arrangements for each of them. In his view it was also better that minor financial agreements where needs change from time to time should not be bound by written constraints and fixed conventions, but that additions and deletions to be made as circumstances require should be allowed for, subject to the approval of experts. In fact he made his whole legislative endeavour altogether depend upon education.40
Thus, as has been explained, one of the rhetras prohibited the use of written laws. Another in turn was directed against extravagance, to the effect that in every house the ceiling should be made with an axe, and the doors only with a saw, not with any other tools. This idea, which Epaminondas is later said to have expressed at his own table – that there was no treason in such a meal41 – first occurred to Lycurgus, in that there was no place for luxury or extravagance in a house of this type, nor was there anybody so lacking in taste and intelligence as to bring into a plain, common house beds with legs of silver and bedspreads of purple, as well as gold goblets and the extravagance consequent upon them. Instead, of necessity the bed fits the house and matches it, while the same is true of the bedcovers in relation both to the bed and to the rest of the furniture and fittings. It was such conditioning which (according to the story) prompted the elder Leotychidas, 42 when he was dining at Corinth and viewed the lavish, coffered design of the ceiling of the room, to ask his host if timber there grew square.
A third rhetra of Lycurgus is recorded, which banned frequent campaigns against the same foes, so that these should not grow used to defending themselves and thus become skilled in warfare. And this complaint was later laid most notably against King Agesilaus, that by his numerous constant forays and expeditions against Boeotia he made the Thebans a match for the Spartans. Thus when Antalcidas saw him wounded, 43 he remarked: ‘What a splendid tuition fee you are receiving from the Thebans for having taught them to fight when they had neither the wish nor the knowledge to do so.’
Ordinances such as these, then, Lycurgus called rhetras, because they were considered to come from the god and to be oracles.
14. Since he regarded the upbringing of children as the greatest and noblest responsibility of the legislator, at an early stage he took his start from that by first showing concern for matters relating to marriages and births. Aristotle44 claims wrongly that he tried to discipline the women but gave up when he could not control the considerable degree of licence and power attained by women because of their husbands' frequent campaigning. At these times the men were forced to leave them in full charge, and consequently they used to dance attendance on them to an improper extent and call them their Ladyships. Lycurgus, rather, showed all possible concern for them too. First he toughened the girls physically by making them run and wrestle and throw the discus and javelin. Thereby their children in embryo would make a strong start in strong bodies and would develop better, while the women themselves would also bear their pregnancies with vigour and would meet the challenge of childbirth in a successful, relaxed way. He did away with prudery, sheltered upbringing and effeminacy of any kind.45 He made young girls no less than young men grow used to walking nude in processions, as well as to dancing and singing at certain festivals with the young men present and looking on. On some occasions the girls would make fun of each of the young men, helpfully criticizing their mistakes. On other occasions they would rehearse in song the praises which they had composed about those meriting them, so that they filled the youngsters with a great sense of ambition and rivalry. For the one who was praised for his manliness and became a celebrated figure to the girls went off priding himself on their compliments; whereas the jibes of their playful humour were no less cutting than warnings of a serious type, especially as the kings and the Elders attended the spectacle along with the rest of the citizens.
There was nothing disreputable about the girls' nudity. It was altogether modest, and there was no hint of immorality. Instead it encouraged simple habits and an enthusiasm for physical fitness, as well as giving the female sex a taste of masculine gallantry, since it too was granted equal participation in both excellence and ambition. As a result the women came to talk as well as to think in the way that Leonidas' wife Gorgo46 is said to have done. For when some woman, evidently a foreigner, said to her: ‘You Laconian women are the only ones who can rule men,’ she replied: ‘That is because we are the only ones who give birth to men.’
15. There were then also these inducements to marry. I mean the processions of girls, and the nudity, and the competitions which the young men watched, attracted by a compulsion not of an intellectual type, but (as Plato47 says) a sexual one. In addition Lycurgus placed a certain civil disability on those who did not marry, for they were excluded from the spectacle of the Gymnopaediae. In winter the magistrates would order them to parade naked in a circle round the agora, and as they paraded they sang a special song composed about themselves, which said that their punishment was fair because they were flouting the laws. In addition they were deprived of the respect and deference which young men habitually showed their elders. Thus nobody objected to what was said to Dercyllidas, 48 even though he was a distinguished general. When he approached, one of the younger men did not give up his seat to him, but said: ‘You have produced no son who will give his seat to me.’
The custom was to capture women for marriage – not when they were slight or immature, but when they were in their prime and ripe for it. The so-called ‘bridesmaid’ took charge of the captured girl. She first shaved her head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man's cloak and sandals, and laid her down alone on a mattress in the dark. The bridegroom – who was not drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as always – first had dinner in the messes, then would slip in, undo her belt, lift her and carry her to the bed. After spending only a short time with her, he would depart discreetly so as to sleep wherever he usually did along with the other young men. And this continued to be his practice thereafter: while spending the days with his contemporaries, and going to sleep with them, he would warily visit his bride in secret, ashamed and apprehensive in case someone in the house might notice him. His bride at the same time devised schemes and helped to plan how they might meet each other unobserved at suitable moments. It was not just for a short period that young men would do this, but for long enough that some might even have children before they saw their own wives in daylight. Such intercourse was not only an exercise in self-control and moderation, but also meant that partners were fertile physically, always fresh for love, and ready for intercourse rather than being sated and pale from unrestricted sexual activity. Moreover some lingering glow of desire and affection was always left in both.
After making marriage as modest and orderly as this, Lycurgus showed equal concern for removing absurd, unmanly jealousy. While excluding from marriage any kind of outrageous and disorderly behaviour, he made it honourable for worthy men to share children and their production, and derided people who hold that there can be no combination or sharing of such things, and who avenge any by assassinations and wars. Thus if an older man with a young wife should take a liking to one of the well-bred young men and approve of him, he might well introduce him to her so as to fill her with noble sperm and then adopt the child as his own. Conversely a respectable man who admired someone else's wife noted for her lovely children and her good sense, might gain the husband's permission to sleep with her – thereby planting in fruitful soil, so to speak, and producing fine children who would be linked to fine ancestors by blood and family.
First and foremost Lycurgus considered children to belong not privately to their fathers, but jointly to the city, so that he wanted citizens produced not from random partners, but from the best. Moreover he observed a good deal of stupidity and humbug in others' rules on these matters. Such people have their bitches and mares mounted by the finest dogs and stallions whose owners they can prevail upon for a favour or fee. But their wives they lock up and guard, claiming the right to produce their children exclusively, even though they may be imbeciles, or past their prime, or diseased. They forget that where children are born of poor stock, the first to suffer from their poor condition are those who possess and rear them, while the same applies conversely to the good qualities of those from sound stock. What was thus practised in the interests of breeding and of the state was at that time so far removed from the laxity for which the women later became notorious, that there was absolutely no notion of adultery among them. There is a story recorded about Geradas, a Spartiate of really ancient times, who when asked by a foreigner what their punishment for adulterers was, said: ‘There is no adulterer among us, stranger.’ When the latter replied: ‘But what if there should be one?’, Geradas' answer was: ‘His fine would be a great bull which bends over Mount Taygetus to drink from the Eurotas.’ The foreigner was amazed at this and said: ‘But how could there be a bull of such size?’ At which Geradas laughed and said: ‘But how could there be an adulterer at Sparta?’ This, then, concludes my investigation of their marriages.
16. The father of a newborn child was not entitled to make his own decision about whether to rear it, but brought it in his arms to a particular spot termed a lesche where the eldest men of his tribe sat. If after examination the baby proved well-built and sturdy they instructed the father to bring it up, and assigned it one of the 9,000 lots of land.49 But if it was puny and deformed, they dispatched it to what was called ‘the place of rejection' (‘Apothetae’), a precipitous spot by Mount Taygetus, considering it better both for itself and the state that the child should die if right from its birth it was poorly endowed for health or strength. And that is why women would test their babies' constitutions by washing them in wine instead of water. The effect of the unmixed wine on ailing and epileptic children is said to be that they lose their senses, and their limbs go stiff, whereas healthy ones are toughened by it and acquire a hardier constitution. The children's nurses exercised special care and skill. To allow free development of limbs and physique, they dispensed with swaddling clothes. They trained children to eat up their food and not to be fussy about it, not to be frightened of the dark or of being left alone, and not to be prone to ill-bred fits of temper or crying. This is why some foreigners bought Laconian wet-nurses for their children. Amycla, who breast-fed the Athenian Alcibiades, 50 is said to have been a Spartan girl.51
When Alcibiades needed a tutor, however, Plato states that Pericles gave charge of him to one Zopyrus, who was no more than an ordinary slave. But Lycurgus did not put Spartiate children in the care of any tutors who had been bought or hired. Neither was it permissible for each father to bring up and educate his son in the way he chose. Instead, as soon as boys reached the age of seven, Lycurgus took charge of them all himself and distributed them into Troops: 52 here he accustomed them to live together and be brought up together, playing and learning as a group. The captaincy of the Troop was conferred upon the boy who displayed the soundest judgement and the best fighting spirit. The others kept their eyes on him, responded to his instructions, and endured their punishments from him, so that altogether this training served as a practice in learning ready obedience. Moreover as they exercised boys were constantly watched by their elders, who were always spurring them on to fight and contend with one another: in this their chief object was to get to know each boy's character, in particular how bold he was, and how far he was likely to stand his ground in combat.
The boys learned to read and write no more than was necessary. Otherwise their whole education was aimed at developing smart obedience, perseverance under stress, and victory in battle. So as they grew older they intensified their physical training, and got into the habit of cropping their hair, going barefoot, and exercising naked. From the age of twelve they never wore a tunic, and were given only one cloak a year. Their bodies were rough, and knew nothing of baths or oiling: only on a few days in the year did they experience such delights. They slept together by Squadron53 and Troop on mattresses which they made up for themselves from the tips of reeds growing along the River Eurotas, broken off by hand without the help of any iron blade. During winter they added the so-called thistledown and mixed it into the mattresses, since it was a substance thought to give out warmth.
17. By this age the boys came to be courted by lovers from among the respectable young men. The older men, too, showed even more interest, visiting the gymnasia frequently and being present when the boys fought and joked with one another. This was not just idle interest: instead there was a sense in which everyone regarded himself as father, tutor and commander of each boy. As a result everywhere, on all occasions, there would be somebody to reprimand and punish the boy who slipped up. In addition a Trainer-in-Chief54 was appointed from among the men with outstanding qualities; they in turn chose as leader for each Troop the one out of the so-called Eirens who had the most discretion and fighting spirit. Those who have proceeded two years beyond the boys' class55are termed Eirens, and the oldest boys Melleirens (‘prospective Eirens’).
So such an Eiren, twenty years of age, commands those under him in his Troop's fights, while in his quarters he has them serve him his meals like servants. The burlier boys he instructs to bring wood, the slighter ones to collect vegetables. They steal what they fetch, some of them entering gardens, others slipping into the men's messes with a fine mixture of cunning and caution. If a boy is caught, he receives many lashes of the whip for proving to be a clumsy, unskilled thief. The boys also steal whatever provisions they can, thereby learning how to pounce skilfully upon those who are asleep or keeping guard carelessly. A boy is beaten and goes hungry if he is caught. The aim of providing them with only sparse fare is that they should be driven to make up its deficiencies by resort to daring and villainy. While this is the main purpose of their scanty diet, a subsidiary one is claimed to be the development of their physique, helping them in particular to grow tall. When people over-eat, their breathing is laboured, thus producing a broad, squat frame. In contrast if breath suffers from only slight delay and difficulty and has an easy ascent, the body is enabled to develop freely and comfortably. Good looks are produced in the same way. For where lean, spare features respond to articulation, the sheer weight of obese, over-fed ones makes them resist it. In the same way perhaps, women who take a purge during pregnancy bear babies which are small, but nonetheless have a good, neat shape, since their matter is more amenable to moulding because of its lightness. All the same, why this should be so is an open question still to be investigated.
18. The care which the boys take over their stealing is illustrated by the story of the one who had stolen a fox cub and had it concealed inside his cloak: in order to escape detection he was prepared to have his insides clawed and bitten out by the animal, and even to die. This tale is certainly not incredible, judging from Spartan ephebes56 today. I have witnessed many of them dying under the lashes they received at the altar of Artemis Orthia.57
As he reclined after his meal the Eiren would tell one boy to sing, while to another he would pose a question which called for a considered reply, like ‘Who among the men is the best?’, or ‘What is your opinion of so-and-so's action?’ Thereby boys grew accustomed to judging excellence and to making a critical appraisal of the citizens right from the start. When asked which citizen was good, or whose reputation was low, the boy who proved to be at a loss for an answer was regarded as a sluggard whose mind showed no sign of any ambition to excel. Answers had to be reasoned, supported by argument, and at the same time expressed with brevity and conciseness. A bite on the thumb by the Eiren was the punishment for a boy who gave a wrong answer. The Eiren often used to chastise boys in the presence of elders and magistrates, thus offering a demonstration that his punishments were reasonable and necessary. He was permitted to administer punishment without interference, but once the boys had been dismissed he had to give an explanation if his punishments were harsher than necessary or, in contrast, if they were considered inappropriately light.
Whether a boy's standing was good or bad, his lover shared it. There is a story that once when a boy had let slip a despicable cry in the course of a fight, it was his lover whom the magistrates fined. Sexual relationships of this type were so highly valued that respectable women would in fact have love affairs with unmarried girls. Yet there was no rivalry; instead, if individual males found that their affections had the same object, they made this the foundation for mutual friendship, and eagerly pursued joint efforts to perfect their loved one's character.
19. Boys were further taught to express themselves in a style which was at once sharp, yet at the same time attractive and suited to concise exposition of a variety of points. While in the case of his iron money, as I have explained, Lycurgus arranged for heavy weight to be matched by low value, he did the opposite for the currency of speech. Here he developed the technique of expressing a wide range of ideas in just a few, spare words. In his scheme boys, by staying silent most of the time, were led to give pithy, well-trained answers. By contrast the talk of the person who babbles constantly turns out vapid and mindless, just as excessive sexual activity for the most part leads to barrenness and sterility. Indeed when some Athenian made a joke about how short Laconian swords were, and spoke of the ease with which theatrical conjurors swallow them, King Agis retorted: ‘All the same, we certainly reach the enemy with our daggers.’58 While the Laconian style of speech may seem brief, in my view it certainly does penetrate to the heart of a matter, and makes a forcible impression upon its hearers' minds.
Judging by his recorded remarks, Lycurgus himself in fact seems to have been a man of just a few, well-chosen words. Take, for instance, what he said about government to the person who advocated making the city a democracy: ‘Make your own household a democracy first.’ And his remark about sacrifices to the person who inquired why the ones he arranged were so small and economical: ‘So that we may never cease to honour the gods.’ Moreover, when it came to athletics, he would permit citizens to take part only in those games where a hand is not raised.59 There are accounts of similar replies which he made to the citizens by letter. Asked: ‘How should we repel an enemy attack?’ he replied: ‘If you stay poverty-stricken and each man among you has no passion to be greater than another.’ And again with reference to walls he said: ‘A city cannot be unfortified if it is ringed with brave men and not bricks.’ It is difficult to say, however, just how much credence should be attached to these letters and others like them.
20. Spartans' distaste for prolixity can be demonstrated from their pointed remarks. For instance, when somebody engaged Leonidas at an inappropriate moment about business which was by no means trivial, the king said: ‘Friend, the question you raise is a good one, but your timing is not good.’ When Charilaus, Lycurgus' nephew, was asked why his uncle had made so few laws, his reply was that men of few words need few laws. There was criticism of the sophist Hecataeus in some quarters because he had been invited to the mess, and would then say nothing; Archidamidas’60 response was that: ‘An expert at speaking also knows when to do so.’
Here are some examples of those remarks which I mentioned earlier as being sharp, yet attractive. A wretched character bombarded Demaratus61 with inopportune questions, and in particular the persistent query: ‘Who is the best of the Spartiates?’ Demaratus' answer was: ‘The one least like you.’ When approval was being expressed of the Eleans' expert and fair management of the Olympic Games, Agis62 inquired: ‘What is so remarkable about fair conduct by the Eleans on one day every four years?’ When some foreigner was expressing his goodwill towards Sparta and claiming that in his own city he was called a friend of Sparta, Theopompus said: ‘Stranger, it would be more honourable for you to be called a friend of your own city.’ The reaction of Pausanias' son, Pleistoanax, 63 to an Athenian politician's disparagement of Spartans as uneducated, was to say: ‘Your point is correct, since we are the only Greeks who have learned nothing wicked from you Athenians.’ Archidamidas' answer to a man who inquired how many Spartiates there were was: ‘Enough, my friend, to keep out undesirables.’
The Spartans' character may equally be illustrated from their humorous remarks. It was their habit never to waste words and to articulate nothing which did not in some way or other contain an idea meriting serious consideration. One Spartan64 on being invited to listen to a man imitating the nightingale replied: ‘I've heard the nightingale herself.’ Another on reading this epitaph:
These men were once cut down by brazen Ares65 as they were
Extinguishing tyranny: they died around the gates of Selinus,
remarked: ‘Those men deserved to die because they should have let tyranny burn out totally.’ When someone promised to give a young man cockerels that would die in combat, the latter retorted: ‘Don't give me those, but let me have ones that kill in combat.’ Another Spartan, when he saw men sitting on stools in a lavatory, declared: ‘May I never sit where it is impossible for me to get up and offer my seat to an older man.’ This, then, was the character of their sayings, and it justifies some people's claim that devotion to the intellect is more characteristic of Spartans than love of physical exercise.
21. They were no less enthusiastic about training in lyric poetry and singing than they were about good style and purity in speech. Moreover their songs offered stimulus to rouse the spirit and encouragement for energetic, effective action; in style they were plain and unpretentious, while their subject-matter was serious and calculated to mould character. For the most part they were praises applauding the good fortune of those who had died for Sparta; condemnations of cowards (tresantes) 66 whose lives were filled with grief and misery; and promises to be brave, or boasts about their bravery, depending upon the singers' ages. There is value in citing by way of illustration one example of the last type. At festivals three choirs would be formed corresponding to the three age groups. The choir of old men would sing first:
‘We were once valiant young men.’
Next the choir of men in their prime would respond with the words:
‘But we are the valiant ones now; put us to the test, if you wish.’
Then the third choir, that of the boys, would sing:
‘But we shall be far mightier.’
Altogether anyone who has studied Spartan poetry (some specimens of which have survived even to the present day), and has examined the marching rhythms which they used to an accompaniment of pipes when advancing upon the enemy, would not think both Terpander and Pindar67 wrong to connect bravery and music. The former wrote as follows about the Spartans:
Young men's warlike spirit flourishes there, along with
The clear-sounding Muse and Justice in the wide streets.
Pindar says:
The councils of old men
Are pre-eminent there, and the spears of young men,
And choirs and the Muse and Festivity.
Thus the two poets portray the Spartans as being at one and the same time the most musical and the most warlike of people: ‘Fine lyre-playing matches iron weaponry,’ as the Spartan poet68 has put it. In fact at time of battle the king would first sacrifice to the Muses, thereby apparently reminding his men of their training and their trials, so that they should be ready to face the dangers ahead, and should perform memorable feats in the fighting.
22. It was in wartime that they relaxed the harshest elements of the young men's training: they did not stop them grooming their hair and decorating their weapons and clothes, but were pleased at the sight of them like horses prancing and neighing before a contest. So they wore their hair long as soon as they had passed the age of ephebes; they took particular care over it in the face of danger, making it look sleek and combing it. They bore in mind one of Lycurgus' statements about long hair, that it renders handsome men better looking, and ugly ones more frightening. On campaign also their physical exercises were less demanding and they permitted the young men a lifestyle which was generally less subject to punishment and scrutiny, with the result that for them uniquely among mankind war represented a respite from their military training. Once their phalanx69 was marshalled together in sight of the enemy, the king sacrificed the customary she-goat, instructed everyone to put on garlands, and ordered the pipers to play Castor's Air.70 At the same time he began the marching paean, so that it was a sight at once solemn and terrifying to see them marching in step to the pipes, creating no gap in the phalanx nor suffering any disturbance of spirit, but approaching the confrontation calmly and happily in time to the music. In all likelihood men in this frame of mind feel neither fear nor exceptional anger, but with hope and courage they steadily maintain their purpose, believing heaven to be with them.
The king advanced against the enemy with an escort of those who had won a contest for which the prize was a crown. The story is told of one man at the Olympic Games who, when offered an immense sum of money, refused it and with a great struggle beat his opponent in wrestling. When he was asked: ‘What have you gained by your victory, Spartan?’, he replied with a smile: ‘In battle against the enemy my place will be in front of the king.’ After they had beaten the enemy and made them flee, they gave chase only far enough to confirm the victory by their opponents' flight, and then at once pulled back, because in their view it was neither noble nor Hellenic to butcher and slaughter men who had given up and yielded their ground. This practice was not only splendid and magnanimous, it also paid dividends: it was known that Spartans would kill those who stood in their way, but would spare those who surrendered, so that adversaries saw it as more advantageous to flee than to stand their ground.
23. Hippias the sophist states that Lycurgus personally enjoyed making war and took part in many campaigns, while according to Philostephanus he was even responsible for forming the cavalry into oulami. Under his arrangements an oulamus was a body of fifty cavalrymen marshalled in a square formation. Demetrius of Phalerum, however, says that he had no involvement in military actions and established his constitution in peacetime. Certainly his scheme for the Olympic truce does seem to bear the stamp of a mild man of peaceful disposition. And yet, as Hermippus mentions, some say that Lycurgus was initially neither interested in Iphitus' group, nor associated with them, but just happened to be at Olympia for other reasons as a spectator. In this version he heard behind him what sounded like a man's voice criticizing him and expressing surprise at his failure to urge citizens to take part in the festival. But when he turned round, the person who had spoken was nowhere to be seen, so he considered the voice to be divine, joined Iphitus, and was his partner in putting the festival on a more illustrious and secure footing.
24. Spartiates' training extended into adulthood, for no one was permitted to live as he pleased. Instead, just as in a camp, so in the city, they followed a prescribed lifestyle and devoted themselves to communal concerns. They viewed themselves absolutely as part of their country, rather than as individuals, and so unless assigned a particular job they would always be observing the boys and giving them some useful piece of instruction, or learning themselves from their elders. Abundant leisure was unquestionably among the wonderful benefits which Lycurgus had conferred upon his fellow citizens. While he totally banned their involvement in any manual craft, there was equally no need for them to amass wealth (with all the work and concentration which that entails), since riches were emphatically neither envied nor esteemed. The helots worked the land for them and paid over the amount mentioned earlier.71 There was a Spartiate who happened to be in Athens when the courts were sitting, and he learned that a man who had incurred some penalty for refusal to work72 was going home depressed, escorted by sympathetic friends who shared his mood. The Spartiate requested those who were there with him to point out this man who had been penalized for his freedom. This illustrates how they thought of a preoccupation with working at a craft and with moneymaking as only fit for slaves! As might be expected, legal disputes disappeared along with coinage, since there was no longer greed nor want among them, but instead equal enjoyment of plenty and the sense of ease which comes from simple living. Except when they went on campaign, all their time was taken up by choral dances, festivals, feasts, hunting expeditions, physical exercise and conversation.
25. Those under the age of thirty generally would not do their own shopping, but would have their domestic needs met by relatives and lovers. It was equally frowned upon for older men to be seen constantly taking time over these matters rather than spending most of the day around the gymnasia and the so-called leschae. By meeting in these they would make suitable use of their leisure together. No remarks would be passed about anything relating to moneymaking or commercial dealings. Instead the main function of the time spent thus would be to bestow some praise on good conduct or criticism on bad – in a light-hearted, humorous way which made warning and correction easy to accept. In fact Lycurgus himself was not uncompromisingly austere. But rather, according to Sosibius, it was he who dedicated the little statue of Laughter73 with the idea of suitably introducing humour to their drinking-parties and such diversions, so as to sweeten their rigorous lifestyle.
Altogether he accustomed citizens to have no desire for a private life, nor knowledge of one, but rather to be like bees, always attached to the community, swarming together around their leader, and almost ecstatic with fervent ambition to devote themselves entirely to their country. This attitude can also be detected in some of their remarks. When Pedaritus74 was not selected as one of the Three Hundred, he withdrew looking very cheerful, thus expressing his happiness that the city possessed 300 men better than he was. Polystratidas, as one of a group of envoys to the Great King's generals, was asked by them whether they were taking a private initiative, or had been sent by the state. His reply was: ‘If we succeed, the latter; if we fail, the former.’ When some Amphipolitans came to Sparta and visited Brasidas’75 mother, Argileonis, she asked them if his death had been a noble one, worthy of Sparta. As they were heaping praise on him and claiming that there was no one in Sparta to match him, she declared: ‘Don't say that, strangers. Noble and brave Brasidas was, but Sparta has many better men than he.’
26. As already mentioned, Lycurgus himself appointed Elders initially from among those who had been associated with his plan. But later he arranged that whenever an Elder died his place should be taken by the man over sixty whose merits were regarded as most outstanding. And this contest seemed to be the greatest in the world and the one most worth competing for. In it a man was to be chosen not as the swiftest of swift men nor the strongest of strong ones, but as the best and wisest of the good and wise, who as a lifelong reward for his merits would have in effect sweeping authority in the state, with control over death and loss of citizen rights and the most important matters generally. The selection was made in the following way. The assembly gathered, and picked men were shut up in a nearby building where they could neither see out nor be seen, but could only hear the shouts of those in the assembly. For in this instance, as in others, it was by shouting that they decided between the competitors. These were brought in, not all together, but one by one in an order determined by lot, and each walked through the assembly in silence. The men who had been shut up had writing-tablets, and so in each case they noted the volume of shouting without knowing the identity of the competitor, except that he was the first brought in, or the second, or the third, and so on. Whoever was met with the most shouting, and the loudest, was the man declared elected. Then, wearing a crown, he made a round of the sanctuaries of the gods. He was followed by many young men full of admiration and praise for him, and by many women who sang in celebration of his excellence and proclaimed his good fortune in life. Everyone close to him would serve him a meal, with a declaration that the dinner was a sign of the city's respect. After making his round he went off to his mess. Here everything was as usual for him except that he was served a second portion, which he took and kept by him. After the meal, when his female relatives gathered at the entrance to the mess, he would call forward the one for whom he had the highest esteem, and present the portion, saying that he was giving to her this mark of distinction which he had received. Consequently she too was congratulated and escorted by the other women.
27. Furthermore Lycurgus made excellent arrangements for their funerals. First he removed all superstition by not placing any ban on burial of the dead within the city or on siting tombs close to temples. Thus through their upbringing young people came to regard such sights as familiar and normal; they were not disturbed by them, nor did they fear death as liable to pollute anyone who touched a corpse or walked between gravestones. Secondly Lycurgus did not allow anything to be buried with the dead: instead they would lay out the body wrapped just in a red cloak76 and olive leaves. Those who buried a dead person were not permitted to inscribe the name on a grave except in the cases of a man who had died on campaign or a woman who had died in labour.77 He prescribed only a brief period of mourning – eleven days. On the twelfth day mourners were to sacrifice to Demeter and abandon their grief.78 In truth Lycurgus left nothing undone or neglected, but incorporated into each essential function some stimulus to good conduct or disparagement of bad. Indeed he completely filled the city with a quantity of models which would necessarily be encountered all the time by those aiming for excellence, and become familiar to them, so that they would be guided and influenced in this way.
Consequently he did not grant Spartiates permission to be away from the city and to travel freely, acquiring foreign habits and copying lifestyles based upon no training as well as types of government different from that of Sparta. In fact he even expelled those people who were pouring into the city and congregating there for no useful purpose. He was not afraid (as Thucydides79 claims) that they might imitate the form of government or might gain some knowledge to enhance their personal qualities: his fear was rather that they might develop into teachers of evil practices. By definition foreigners must bring in foreign ideas with them, and novel ideas lead to novel attitudes. Hence inevitably many emotions and preferences emerge which – if the existing government be likened to a piece of music – are out of tune with it. Thus it was the need to protect the city from being invaded by harmful practices which concerned him more than any physical infection by unhealthy immigrants.
28. In all this there is no trace of the inequity or arrogance with which Lycurgus' laws are charged by some people: in their view the laws are well designed to develop valour, but fail to foster the practice of justice. It may be that Plato80 was likewise led to this opinion of Lycurgus and his constitution because of the Spartiates' so-called krypteia – assuming this really was one of Lycurgus' institutions, as Aristotle has maintained. Its character was as follows.81
Periodically the overseers of the young men would dispatch into the countryside in different directions the ones who appeared to be particularly intelligent; they were equipped with daggers and basic rations, but nothing else. By day they would disperse to obscure spots in order to hide and rest. At night they made their way to roads and murdered any helot whom they caught. Frequently, too, they made their way through the fields, killing the helots who stood out for their physique and strength. Similarly in hisHistory of the Peloponnesian War82 Thucydides tells how those helots who had been singled out by the Spartiates for their bravery were first crowned as if they had been granted their freedom, and made a round of the sanctuaries of the gods; but then a little later they all vanished – over 2,000 of them – and nobody either at the time itself or later was able to explain how they had been eliminated. Aristotle makes the further notable point that immediately upon taking up office the ephors would declare war on the helots, so that they could be killed without pollution.
In other ways, too, Spartiates' treatment of helots was callous and brutal. They would force them, for instance, to drink quantities of unmixed wine83 and then they would bring them into messes to show the young men what drunkenness was like. They would also order them to perform songs and dances which were vulgar and ludicrous, while excluding them from ones fit for free men. So later, according to reports, when Theban forces penetrated Laconia84 and told the helots they captured to sing the works of Terpander and Alcman and Spendon the Spartan, 85 the latter declined to, claiming that their masters did not approve. The class distinction is reflected fully in the statement that there is nothing to match either the freedom of the free man at Sparta or the slavery of the slave.86 In my view such ill-treatment on the part of the Spartiates only developed later – especially after the Great Earthquake, when the helots are said to have taken the offensive with the Messenians, to have done the country tremendous damage and to have posed a dire threat to the city.87 Personally I would not attribute such a foul exercise as the krypteia to Lycurgus: in my estimation his disposition was otherwise mild and fair, a view which the god88 showed that he shared too.
29. Once he saw that his most vital measures had gained firm acceptance, and the form of government fostered by him was acquiring enough strength to support and protect itself unaided, then, like the god in Plato's description89 who was delighted at his universe coming into being and making its first movement, Lycurgus was deeply moved and well pleased by the beauty and extent of his legislation now that it was in action and proceeding on its way. In so far as human foresight could achieve this, he longed to leave it immortal and immutable in the future. So he summoned everyone to an assembly and declared that while what had already been established was sufficient and appropriate to secure the happiness and excellence of the state, there remained the greatest, most essential measure, which would not be disclosed to them before he had consulted the oracle. Consequently they must abide by the laws laid down without dropping or changing any until he should return in person from Delphi. On his return he would do whatever the god recommended. When they unanimously agreed to this and urged him to proceed, Lycurgus made first the kings and Elders, and then the other citizens, swear that they would abide by the established constitution, and continue to use it until he should return. Then he set out for Delphi.
Once he had reached the oracle and sacrificed to the god, he inquired if the laws which he had laid down were of sufficient quality to secure the happiness and excellence of the state. The god replied that the quality of the laws was high and that by adhering to Lycurgus' constitution the city would enjoy the most brilliant reputation. Lycurgus had this oracle written down and sent it to Sparta. He then made a second, personal sacrifice to the god, embraced his friends and his son, and determined never to release the citizens from their oath, but to commit voluntary suicide on the spot. He had reached an age when a choice can properly be made of whether or not to go on living, and when those close to him seemed comfortably enough settled. So he starved himself to death. In his opinion it was wrong for a statesman's death to be of no benefit to his city or for the ending of his life to be valueless; instead there should be an element of distinction and effectiveness about it. In his own case, after his wonderful achievements, his end really would serve to crown his good fortune. As to the citizens, he would leave them his death as guarantor of the excellent benefits which he had provided for them during his lifetime, since they had sworn to observe his constitution until he should return. And he was not mistaken in his reckoning, since Sparta occupied the front rank in Greece for Good Order and reputation for some 500 years thanks to her use of the laws of Lycurgus, which were not altered by any of the fourteen kings after him down to Agis the son of Archidamus.90 For the institution of ephors served to reinforce the constitution rather than weaken it, and even though it appeared to be to the people's advantage, in fact it strengthened the aristocracy.
30. But during Agis' reign money first poured into Sparta, and with money there developed greed and a passion for riches. Lysander91 was responsible, because even though incorruptible himself, he filled his country with a passion for wealth and luxury through bringing back gold and silver from the war, and thereby undermining the laws92 of Lycurgus. Previously, while these prevailed, it was not so much the constitution of a state which Sparta followed as the lifestyle of a trained, intelligent individual. To put it differently, just as poets tell stories of Heracles roaming the world with his lion-skin and his club, punishing lawless and bestial despots, so this city used to control a willingly compliant Greece with just a skytale and cloak. She would disband unjust juntas and tyrannies in the states, as well as arbitrating in wars and quelling civil strife, frequently without having raised a single shield, but merely with the dispatch of one envoy, to whose instructions everyone would instantly respond, like bees which on the appearance of their leader cluster together and range themselves in order. This demonstrates how outstanding was Sparta's Good Order and justice!
Personally I am surprised by the claim that while the Spartans knew how to obey, they had no idea of how to command. Those who make this claim endorse the remark of King Theopompus, who when somebody said that Sparta was preserved by her kings' talent for command, replied: ‘No, by her citizens' readiness to obey.’ Men do not submit to orders from those with no ability for leadership, but such obedience is in fact a lesson taught by the commander. (It is the good leader who produces good followers. Just as the object of schooling a horse is to produce one that is docile and responsive, so the science of kingship has the function of instilling prompt obedience in men.) What the Spartans instilled in others was not just prompt obedience but a positive desire to come under their command and submit to them. It was not ships or money or hoplites that these other Greeks would ask Sparta to send them, but just a single Spartiate commander. Once they obtained him they would treat him with respect and awe, as the Sicilians and Chalcidians treated Gylippus and Brasidas93 respectively, and all the Greeks living in Asia treated Lysander, Callicratidas and Agesilaus.94 These men they termed harmosts and discipliners of peoples and rulers everywhere, while the Spartiates' entire city they viewed as a tutor or instructor in decent living and orderly government. It was this view which Stratonicus95 seems to have been mocking when for a joke he proposed a law which required Athenians to supervise Mysteries and processions, and the Eleans to organize Games (because this is what they did most splendidly), while Spartans were to be whipped for any mistakes these others might make. This was proposed merely to raise a laugh. But Antisthenes the Socratic was more serious when he witnessed the Thebans' conceit after the battle of Leuctra and remarked that they were like youngsters made cocky because they had given their tutor a beating.
31. All the same it was not Lycurgus' main aim at the time to leave his city as the leader of so many other cities. Instead his view was that happiness in the life of a whole city, as in that of one individual, derives from its own merits and from its internal concord: it was to this end that all his arrangements and his structures were combined, so that Spartans should be free and self-sufficient, and should have the good sense to continue thus for a very long time. This theory of government was adopted by Plato, Diogenes, Zeno96and all those who are praised for their attempts to make some statement about these matters, even though they left only paper theories. Lycurgus on the other hand brought into the light of day, not paper theories, but a functioning constitution which is quite unmatched. To those who suspect that it is impracticable for a theoretical structure to be centred upon a Sage, he has exhibited his whole city practising philosophy, and has deservedly won greater renown than all those who have ever governed so far among the Greeks. It is for this reason that Aristotle claims the honours granted him at Sparta to be slighter than he merits, even though they are the highest ones. For he has a temple, and sacrifices are made to him every year as if to a god. Moreover it is said that when his remains had been brought home, lightning struck his tomb. This is something which has occurred in the case of hardly any other famous later person except Euripides, 97 who died and was buried near Arethusa in Macedonia. Consequently the fact that what happened to him after his death had occurred previously only in the case of a man who was outstandingly devout and dear to the gods is for admirers of Euripides a strong argument and piece of evidence in his favour.
Some say that Lycurgus died in Cirrha; Apollothemis says that he had been conveyed to Elis; Timaeus and Aristoxenus say that he ended his life in Crete, and Aristoxenus claims that Cretans point out his tomb at Pergamia by the ‘Strangers’ road. It is said further that he left an only son, Antiorus, 98 and when he died childless the family was extinct. But his comrades and relatives set up a kind of successor group which continued in existence a long time; and the days on which they used to meet they called ‘Lycurgid’. Aristocrates the son of Hipparchus says that after Lycurgus' death in Crete his hosts burnt the body and scattered the ashes in the sea. They did this in accordance with his own request, for he wished to prevent his remains ever being brought back to Sparta, since such a return might cause the cancellation of his oath, followed by changes to the constitution. This concludes my treatment of Lycurgus.