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                                      75 AD
                                    LYCURGUS
                          Legendary, 9th Century B.C.
                                  by Plutarch
                           translated by John Dryden
LYCURGUS

  There is so much uncertainty in the accounts which historians have
left us of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, that scarcely anything is
asserted by one of them which is not called into question or
contradicted by the rest. Their sentiments are quite different as to
the family he came of, the voyages he undertook, the place and
manner of his death, but most of all when they speak of the laws he
made and the commonwealth which he founded. They cannot, by any means,
be brought to an agreement as to the very age in which he lived; for
some of them say that he flourished in the time of Iphitus, and that
they two jointly contrived the ordinance for the cessation of arms
during the solemnity of the Olympic games. Of this opinion was
Aristotle; and for confirmation of it, he alleges an inscription
upon one of the copper quoits used in those sports, upon which the
name of Lycurgus continued uneffaced to his time. But Eratosthenes and
Apollodorus and other chronologers, computing the time by the
successions of the Spartan kings, pretend to demonstrate that he was
much more ancient than the institution of the Olympic games. Timaeus
conjectures that there were two of this name, and in diverse times,
but that the one of them being much more famous than the other, men
gave to him the glory of the exploits of both; the elder of the two,
according to him, was not long after Homer; and some are so particular
as to say that he had seen him. But that he was of great antiquity may
be gathered from a passage in Xenophon, where he makes him
contemporary with the Heraclidae. By descent, indeed, the very last
kings of Sparta were Heraclidae too; but he seems in that place to
speak of the first and more immediate successors of Hercules. But
notwithstanding this confusion and obscurity, we shall endeavour to
compose the history of his life, adhering to those statements which
are least contradicted, and depending upon those authors who are
most worthy of credit.
  The poet Simonides will have it that Lycurgus was the son of
Prytanis, and not of Eunomus; but in this opinion he is singular,
for all the rest deduce the genealogy of them both as follows:-

                             Aristodemus.
                                 to
                              Patrocles.
                                 to
                                Sous.
                                 to
                               Eurypon.
                                 to
                               Eunomus
                                 / \
     Polydectes by his first wife.  Lycurgus by Dionassa his second.

Dieuchidas says he was the sixth from Patrocles and the eleventh
from Hercules. Be this as it will, Sous certainly was the most
renowned of all his ancestors, under whose conduct the Spartans made
slaves of the Helots, and added to their dominions, by conquest, a
good part of Arcadia. There goes a story of this king Sous, that,
being besieged by the Clitorians in a dry and stony place so that he
could come at no water, he was at last constrained to agree with
them upon these terms, that he would restore to them all his
conquests, provided that himself and all his men should drink of the
nearest spring. After the usual oaths and ratifications, he called his
soldiers together, and offered to him that would forbear drinking
his kingdom for a reward; and when not a man of them was able to
forbear, in short, when they had all drunk their fill, at last comes
King Sous himself to the spring, and, having sprinkled his face
only, without swallowing one drop, marches off in the face of his
enemies, refusing to yield up his conquests, because himself and all
his men had not, according to the articles, drunk of their water.
  Although he was justly had in admiration on this account, yet his
family was not surnamed from him, but from his son Eurypon (of whom
they were called Eurypontids); the reason of which was that Eurypon
relaxed the rigour of the monarchy, seeking favour and popularity with
the many. They, after this first step, grew bolder; and the succeeding
kings partly incurred hatred with their people by trying to use force,
or, for popularity's sake and through weakness, gave way; and
anarchy and confusion long prevailed in Sparta, causing, moreover, the
death of the father of Lycurgus. For as he was endeavouring to quell a
riot, he was stabbed with a butcher's knife, and left the title of
king to his eldest son, Polydectes.
  He, too, dying soon after, the right of succession (as every one
thought) rested in Lycurgus; and reign he did, until it was found that
the queen, his sister-in-law, was with child; upon which he
immediately declared that the kingdom belonged to her issue,
provided it were male, and that he himself exercised the regal
jurisdiction only as his guardian; the Spartan name for which office
is prodicus. Soon after, an overture was made to him by the queen,
that she would herself in some way destroy the infant, upon
condition that he would marry her when he came to the crown. Abhorring
the woman's wickedness, he nevertheless did not reject her proposal,
but, making show of closing with her, despatched the messenger with
thanks and expressions of joy, but dissuaded her earnestly from
procuring herself to miscarry, which would impair her health, if not
endanger her life; he himself, he said, would see to it, that the
child, as soon as born, should be taken out of the way. By such
artifices having drawn on the woman to the time of her lying-in, as
soon as he heard that she was in labour, he sent persons to be by
and observe all that passed, with orders that if it were a girl they
should deliver it to the women, but if a boy, should bring it to him
wheresoever he were, and whatsoever doing. It fell out that when he
was at supper with the principal magistrates the queen was brought
to bed of a boy, who was soon after presented to him as he was at
the table; he, taking him into his arms, said to those about him, "Men
of Sparta, here is a king born unto us;" this said, he laid him down
in the king's place, and named him Charilaus, that is, the joy of
the people; because that all were transported with joy and with wonder
at his noble and just spirit. His reign had lasted only eight
months, but he was honoured on other accounts by the citizens, and
there were more who obeyed him because of his eminent virtues, than
because he was regent to the king and had the royal power in his
hands. Some, however, envied and sought to impede his growing
influence while he was still young; chiefly the kindred and friends of
the queen-mother, who pretended to have been dealt with injuriously.
Her brother Leonidas, in a warm debate which fell out betwixt him
and Lycurgus, went so far as to tell him to his face that he was
well assured that ere long he should see him king; suggesting
suspicions and preparing the way for an accusation of him, as though
he had made away with his nephew, if the child should chance to
fail, though by a natural death. Words of the like import were
designedly cast abroad by the queen-mother and her adherents.
  Troubled at this, and not knowing what it might come to, he
thought it his wisest course to avoid their envy by a voluntary exile,
and to travel from place to place until his nephew came to
marriageable years, and, by having a son, had secured the
succession; setting sail, therefore, with this resolution, he first
arrived at Crete, where, having considered their several forms of
government, and got an acquaintance with the principal men among them,
some of their laws he very much approved of, and resolved to make
use of them in his own country; a good part he rejected as useless.
Among the persons there the most renowned for their learning and their
wisdom in state matters was one Thales, whom Lycurgus, by
importunities and assurances of friendship, persuaded to go over to
Lacedaemon; where, though by his outward appearance and his own
profession he seemed to be no other than a lyric poet, in reality he
performed the part of one of the ablest lawgivers in the world. The
very songs which he composed were exhortations to obedience and
concord, and the very measure and cadence of the verse, conveying
impressions of order and tranquillity, had so great an influence on
the minds of the listeners, that they were insensibly softened and
civilized, insomuch that they renounced their private feuds and
animosities, and were reunited in a common admiration of virtue. So
that it may truly be said that Thales prepared the way for the
discipline introduced by Lycurgus.
  From Crete he sailed to Asia, with design, as is said, to examine
the difference betwixt the manners and rules of life of the Cretans,
which were very sober and temperate, and those of the Ionians, a
people of sumptuous and delicate habits, and so to form a judgment;
just as physicians do by comparing healthy and diseased bodies. Here
he had the first sight of Homer's works, in the hands, we may suppose,
of the posterity of Creophylus; and, having observed that the few
loose expressions and actions of ill example which are to be found
in his poems were much outweighed by serious lessons of state and
rules of morality, he set himself eagerly to transcribe and digest
them into order, as thinking they would be of good use in his own
country. They had, indeed, already obtained some slight repute among
the Greeks, and scattered portions, as chance conveyed them, were in
the hands of individuals; but Lycurgus first made them really known.
  The Egyptians say that he took a voyage into Egypt, and that,
being much taken with their way of separating the soldiery from the
rest of the nation, he transferred it from them to Sparta, a removal
from contact with those employed in low and mechanical occupations
giving high refinement and beauty to the state. Some Greek writers
also record this. But as for his voyages into Spain, Africa and the
Indies, and his conferences there with the Gymnosophists, the whole
relation, as far as I can find, rests on the single credit of the
Spartan Aristocrates, the son of Hipparchus.
  Lycurgus was much missed at Sparta, and often sent for, "for kings
indeed we have," they said, "who wear the marks and assume the
titles of royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they
have nothing by which they are to be distinguished from their
subjects; adding, that in him alone was the true foundation of
sovereignty to be seen, a nature made to rule, and a genius to gain
obedience. Nor were the kings themselves averse to see him back, for
they looked upon his presence as a bulwark against the insolence of
the people.
  Things being in this posture at his return, he applied himself,
without loss of time, to a thorough reformation, and resolved to
change the whole face of the commonwealth; for what could a few
particular laws and a partial alteration avail? He must act as wise
physicians do, in the case of one who labours under a complication
of diseases, by force of medicines reduce and exhaust him, change
his whole temperament, and then set him upon a totally new regimen
of diet. Having thus projected things, away he goes to Delphi to
consult Apollo there; which having done, and offered his sacrifice, he
returned with that renowned oracle, in which he is called beloved of
God, and rather God than man; that his prayers were heard, that his
laws should be the best, and the commonwealth which observed them
the most famous in the world. Encouraged by these things he set
himself to bring over to his side the leading men of Sparta, exhorting
them to give him a helping hand in his great undertaking; he broke
it first to his particular friends, and then by degrees, gained
others, and animated them all to put his design in execution. When
things were ripe for action, he gave orders to thirty of the principal
men of Sparta to be ready armed at the market-place by break of day,
to the end that he might strike a terror into the opposite party.
Hermippus hath set down the names of twenty of the most eminent of
them; but the name of him whom Lycurgus most confided in, and who
was of most use to him, both in making his laws and putting them in
execution was Arthmiadas. Things growing to a tumult, King
Charilaus, apprehending that it was a conspiracy against his person,
took sanctuary in the temple of Minerva of the Brazen House; but,
being soon after undeceived, and having taken an oath of them that
they had no designs against him, he quitted his refuge, and himself
also entered into the confederacy with them; of so gentle and flexible
a disposition he was, to which Archelaus, his brother-king, alluded,
when, hearing him extolled for his goodness, he said, "Who can say
he is anything but good? he is so even to the bad."
  Amongst the many changes and alterations which Lycurgus made, the
first and of greatest importance was the establishment of the
senate, which having a power equal to the king's in matters of great
consequence, and, as Plato expresses it, allaying and qualifying the
fiery genius of the royal office, gave steadiness and safety to the
commonwealth. For the state, which before had no firm basis to stand
upon, but leaned one while towards an absolute monarchy, when the
kings had the upper hand, and another while towards a pure
democracy, when the people had the better, found in this establishment
of the senate a central weight, like ballast in a ship, which always
kept things in a just equilibrium; the twenty-eight always adhering to
the kings so far as to resist democracy, and on the other hand,
supporting the people against the establishment of absolute
monarchy. As for the determinate number of twenty-eight, Aristotle
states, that it so fell out because two of the original associates,
for want of courage, fell off from the enterprise; but Sphaerus
assures us that there were but twenty-eight of the confederates at
first; perhaps there is some mystery in the number, which consists
of seven multiplied by four, and is the first of perfect numbers after
six, being, as that is, equal to all its parts. For my part, I believe
Lycurgus fixed upon the number of twenty-eight, that, the two kings
being reckoned amongst them, they might be thirty in all. So eagerly
set was he upon this establishment, that he took the trouble to obtain
an oracle about it from Delphi, the Rhetra, which runs thus: "After
that you have built a temple to Jupiter Helianius, and to Minerva
Hellania, and after that you have phyle'd the people into phyles,
and obe'd them into obes, you shall establish a council of thirty
elders, the leaders included, and shall, from time to time, apellazein
the people betwixt Babyca and Cnacion, there propound and put to the
vote. The commons have the final voice and decision." By phyles and
obes are meant the divisions of the people; by the leaders, the two
kings; apellazein, referring to the Pythian Apollo, signifies to
assemble; Babyca and Cnacion they now call Oenus; Aristotle says
Cnacion is a river, and Babyca a bridge. Betwixt this Babyca and
Cnacion, their assemblies were held, for they had no council-house
or building to meet in. Lycurgus was of opinion that ornaments were so
far from advantaging them in their counsels, that they were rather
an hindrance, by diverting their attention from the business before
them to statues and pictures, and roofs curiously fretted, the usual
embellishments of such places amongst the other Greeks. The people
then being thus assembled in the open air, it was not allowed to any
one of their order to give his advice, but only either to ratify or
reject what should be propounded to them by the king or senate. But
because it fell out afterwards that the people, by adding or
omitting words, distorted and perverted the sense of propositions,
Kings Polydorus and Theopompus inserted into the Rhetra, or grand
covenant, the following clause: "That if the people decide crookedly
it should be lawful for the elders and leaders to dissolve;" that is
to say, refuse ratification, and dismiss the people as depravers and
perverters of their counsel. It passed among the people, by their
management, as being equally authentic with the rest of the Rhetra, as
appears by these verses of Tyrtaeus,-

        "These oracles they from Apollo heard,
        And brought from Pytho home the perfect word:
        The heaven-appointed kings, who love the land,
        Shall foremost in the nation's council stand;
        The elders next to them; the commons last;
        Let a straight Rhetra among all be passed."

  Although Lycurgus had, in this manner, used all the qualifications
possible in the constitution of his commonwealth, yet those who
succeeded him found the oligarchical element still too strong and
dominant, and to check its high temper and its violence, put, as Plato
says, a bit in its mouth, which was the power of the ephori,
established an hundred and thirty years after the death of Lycurgus.
Elatus and his colleagues were the first who had this dignity
conferred upon them in the reign of King Theopompus, who, when his
queen upbraided him one day that he would leave the regal power to his
children less than he had received it from his ancestors, said in
answer, "No, greater; for it will last longer." For, indeed, their
prerogative being thus reduced within reasonable bounds, the Spartan
kings were at once freed from all further jealousies and consequent
danger, and never experienced the calamities of their neighbours at
Messene and Argos, who, by maintaining their prerogative too
strictly for want of yielding a little to the populace, lost it all.
  Indeed, whosoever shall look at the sedition and misgovernment which
befell these bordering nations to whom they were as near related in
blood as situation, will find in them the best reason to admire the
wisdom and foresight of Lycurgus. For these three states, in their
first rise, were equal, or, if there were any odds, they lay on the
side of the Messenians and Argives, who, in the first allotment,
were thought to have been luckier than the Spartans; yet was their
happiness of but small continuance, partly the tyrannical temper of
their kings and partly the ungovernableness of the people quickly
bringing upon them such disorders, and so complete an overthrow of all
existing institutions, as clearly to show how truly divine a
blessing the Spartans had had in that wise lawgiver who gave their
government its happy balance and temper. But of this I shall say
more in its due place.
  After the creation of the thirty senators, his next task, and,
indeed, the most hazardous he ever undertook, was the making a new
division of their lands. For there was an extreme inequality amongst
them, and their state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent
and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon a
very few. To the end, therefore, that he might expel from the state
arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate
diseases of want and superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce
their properties, and to consent to a new division of the land, and
that they should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be
their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of
worthy acts, their one measure of difference between man and man.
  Upon their consent to these proposals, proceeding at once to put
them into execution, he divided the country of Laconia in general into
thirty thousand equal shares, and the part attached to the city of
Sparta into nine thousand; these he distributed among the Spartans, as
he did the others to the country citizens. Some authors say that he
made but six thousand lots for the citizens of Sparta, and that King
Polydorus added three thousand more. Others say that Polydorus doubled
the number Lycurgus had made, which, according to them, was but four
thousand five hundred. A lot was so much as to yield, one year with
another, about seventy bushels of grain for the master of the
family, and twelve for his wife, with a suitable proportion of oil and
wine. And this he thought sufficient to keep their bodies in good
health and strength; superfluities they were better without. It is
reported, that, as he returned from a journey shortly after the
division of the lands, in harvest time, the ground being newly reaped,
seeing the stacks all standing equal and alike, he smiled, and said to
those about him, "Methinks all Laconia looks like one family estate
just divided among a number of brothers."
  Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of their
movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or
inequality left amongst them; but finding that it would be very
dangerous to go about it openly, he took another course, and
defeated their avarice by the following stratagem: he commanded that
all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only a sort
of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity
of which was very little worth; so that to lay up twenty or thirty
pounds there was required a pretty large closet, and, to remove it,
nothing less than a yoke of oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at
once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon; for who would
rob another of such a coin? Who would unjustly detain or take by
force, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide,
nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any use to cut in pieces? For when
it was just red hot, they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means
spoilt it, and made it almost incapable of being worked.
  In the next place, he declared an outlawry of all needless and
superfluous arts; but here he might almost have spared his
proclamation; for they of themselves would have gone after the gold
and silver, the money which remained being not so proper payment for
curious work; for, being of iron, it was scarcely portable, neither,
if they should take the means to export it, would it pass amongst
the other Greeks, who ridiculed it. So there was now no more means
of purchasing foreign goods and small wares; merchants sent no
shiploads into Laconian ports; no rhetoric-master, no itinerate
fortune-teller, no harlot-monger, or gold or silversmith, engraver, or
jeweller, set foot in a country which had no money; so that luxury,
deprived little by little of that which fed and fomented it, wasted to
nothing and died away of itself. For the rich had no advantage here
over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had no road to come
abroad by but were shut up at home doing nothing. And in this way they
became excellent artists in common, necessary things; bedsteads,
chairs, and tables, and such like staple utensils in a family, were
admirably well made there; their cup, particularly, was very much in
fashion, and eagerly bought up by soldiers, as Critias reports; for
its colour was such as to prevent water, drunk upon necessity and
disagreeable to look at, from being noticed; and the shape of it was
such that the mud stuck to the sides, so that only the purer part came
to the drinker's mouth. For this also, they had to thank their
lawgiver, who, by relieving the artisans of the trouble of making
useless things, set them to show their skill in giving, beauty to
those of daily and indispensable use.
  The third and most masterly stroke of this great lawgiver, by
which he struck a yet more effectual blow against luxury and the
desire of riches, was the ordinance he made, that they should all
eat in common, of the same bread and same meat, and of kinds that were
specified, and should not spend their lives at home, laid on costly
couches at splendid tables, delivering themselves up into the hands of
their tradesmen and cooks, to fatten them in corners, like greedy
brutes, and to ruin not their minds only but their very bodies
which, enfeebled by indulgence and excess, would stand in need of long
sleep, warm bathing, freedom from work, and, in a word, of as much
care and attendance as if they were continually sick. It was certainly
an extraordinary thing to have brought about such a result as this,
but a greater yet to have taken away from wealth, as Theophrastus
observes, not merely the property of being coveted, but its very
nature of being wealth. For the rich, being obliged to go to the
same table with the poor, could not make use of or enjoy their
abundance, nor so much as please their vanity by looking at or
displaying it. So that the common proverb, that Plutus, the god of
riches, is blind, was nowhere in all the world literally verified
but in Sparta. There, indeed, he was not only blind, but like a
picture, without either life or motion. Nor were they allowed to
take food at home first, and then attend the public tables, for
every one had an eye upon those who did not eat and drink like the
rest, and reproached them with being dainty and effeminate.
  This last ordinance in particular exasperated the wealthier men.
They collected in a body against Lycurgus, and from ill words came
to throwing stones, so that at length he was forced to run out of
the market-place, and make to sanctuary to save his life; by
good-hap he outran all, excepting one Alcander, a young man
otherwise not ill accomplished, but hasty and violent, who came up
so close to him, that when he turned to see who was so near him, he
struck him upon the face with his stick, and put out one of his
eyes. Lycurgus, so far from being daunted and discouraged by this
accident, stopped short and showed his disfigured face and eye beat
out to his countrymen; they, dismayed and ashamed at the sight,
delivered Alcander into his hands to be punished, and escorted him
home, with expressions of great concern for his ill-usage. Lycurgus,
having thanked them for their care of his person, dismissed them
all, excepting only Alcander; and, taking him with him into his house,
neither did nor said anything severely to him, but, dismissing those
whose place it was, bade Alcander to wait upon him at table. The young
man, who was of an ingenuous temper, without murmuring did as he was
commanded; and being thus admitted to live with Lycurgus, he had an
opportunity to observe in him, besides his gentleness and calmness
of temper, an extraordinary sobriety and an indefatigable industry,
and so, from an enemy, became one of his most zealous admirers, and
told his friends and relations that Lycurgus was not that morose and
ill-natured man they had formerly taken him for, but the one mild
and gentle character of the world. And thus did Lycurgus, for
chastisement of his fault, make of a wild and passionate young man one
of the discreetest citizens of Sparta.
  In memory of this accident, Lycurgus built a temple to Minerva,
surnamed Optiletis; optilus being the Doric of these parts for
ophthalmus, the eye. Some authors, however, of whom Dioscorides is one
(who wrote a treatise on the commonwealth of Sparta), say that he
was wounded, indeed, but did not lose his eye with the blow; but
that he built the temple in gratitude for the cure. Be this as it
will, certain it is, that, after this misadventure, the Lacedaemonians
made it a rule never to carry so much as a staff into their public
assemblies.
  But to return to their public repast;- these had several names in
Greek; the Cretans called them andria, because the men only came to
them. The Lacedaemonians called them phiditia, that is, by changing
l into d, the same as philitia, love feasts, because that, by eating
and drinking together, they had opportunity of making friends. Or
perhaps from phido, parsimony, because they were so many schools of
sobriety; or perhaps the first letter is an addition, and the word
at first was editia, from edode, eating. They met by companies of
fifteen, more or less, and each of them stood bound to bring in
monthly a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of
cheese, two pounds and a half of figs, and a very  small sum of
money to buy flesh or fish with. Besides this, when any of them made
sacrifice to the gods, they always sent a dole to the common hall;
and, likewise, when any of them had been a hunting, he sent thither
a part of the venison he had killed; for these two occasions were
the only excuses allowed for supping at home. The custom of eating
together was observed strictly for a great while afterwards;
insomuch that King Agis himself, after having vanquished the
Athenians, sending for his commons at his return home, because he
desired to eat privately with his queen, was refused them by the
polemarchs; which refusal when he resented so much as to omit next day
the sacrifice due for a war happily ended, they made him pay a fine.
  They used to send their children to these tables as to schools of
temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to
experienced statesmen; here they learned to converse with
pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility and take them without ill
humour. In this point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled
particularly, but if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint
given, there was no more to be said to him. It was customary also
for the eldest man in the company to say to each of them, as they came
in, "Through this" (pointing to the door), "no words go out." When any
one had a desire to be admitted into any of these little societies, he
was to go through the following probation: each man in the company
took a little ball of soft bread, which they were to throw into a deep
basin, which a waiter carried round upon his head; those that liked
the person to be chosen dropped their ball into the basin without
altering its figure, and those who disliked him pressed it betwixt
their fingers, and made it flat; and this signified as much as a
negative voice. And if there were but one of these flattened pieces in
the basin, the suitor was rejected, so desirous were they that all the
members of the company should be agreeable to each other. The basin
was called caddichus, and the rejected candidate had a name thence
derived. Their most famous dish was the black broth, which was so much
valued that the elderly men fed only upon that, leaving what flesh
there was to the younger.
  They say that a certain king of Pontus, having heard much of this
black broth of theirs, sent for a Lacedaemonian cook on purpose to
make him some, but had no sooner tasted it than he found it
extremely bad, which the cook observing, told him, "Sir, to make
this broth relish, you should have bathed yourself first in the
river Eurotas."
  After drinking moderately, every man went to his home without
lights, for the use of them was, on all occasions, forbid to the end
that they might accustom themselves to march boldly in the dark.
Such was the common fashion of their meals.
  Lycurgus would never reduce his laws into writing; nay there is a
Rhetra expressly to forbid it. For he thought that the most material
points, and such as most directly tended to the public welfare,
being imprinted on the hearts of their youth by a good discipline,
would be sure to remain, and would find a stronger security, than
any compulsion would be in the principles of action formed in them
by their best lawgiver, education. And as for things of lesser
importance, as pecuniary contracts, and such like, the forms of
which have to be changed as occasion requires, he thought it the
best way to prescribe no positive rule or inviolable usage in such
cases, willing that their manner and form should be altered
according to the circumstances of time, and determinations of men of
sound judgment. Every end and object of law and enactment it was his
design education should effect.
  One, then, of the Rhetras was, that their laws should not be
written; another is particularly levelled against luxury and
expensiveness, for by it was ordained that the ceilings of their
houses should only be wrought by the axe, and their gates and doors
smoothed only by the saw. Epaminondas's famous dictum about his own
table, that "Treason and a dinner like this do not keep company
together," may be said to have been anticipated by Lycurgus. Luxury
and a house of this kind could not well be companions. For a man might
have a less than ordinary share of sense that would furnish such plain
and common rooms with silver-footed couches and purple coverlets and
gold and silver plate. Doubtless he had good reason to think that they
would proportion their beds to their houses, and their coverlets to
their houses, and their coverlets to their beds, and the rest of their
goods and furniture to these. It is reported that king Leotychides,
the first of that name, was so little used to the sight of any other
kind of work, that, being entertained at Corinth in a stately room, he
was much surprised to see the timber and ceiling so finely carved
and panelled, and asked his host whether the trees grew so in his
country.
  A third ordinance of Rhetra was, that they should not make war
often, or long, with the same enemy, lest that they should train and
instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves. And
this is what Agesilaus was much blamed for, a long time after; it
being thought, that, by his continual incursions into Boeotia, he made
the Thebans a match for the Lacedaemonians; and therefore
Antalcidas, seeing him wounded one day, said to him, that he was
very well paid for taking such pains to make the Thebans good
soldiers, whether they would or no. These laws were called the
Rhetras, to intimate that they were divine sanctions and revelations.
  In order to the good education of their youth (which, as I said
before, he thought the most important and noblest work of a lawgiver),
he went so far back as to take into consideration their very
conception and birth, by regulating their marriages. For Aristotle
is wrong in saying, that, after he had tried all ways to reduce the
women to more modesty and sobriety, he was at last forced to leave
them as they were, because that in the absence of their husbands,
who spent the best part of their lives in the wars, their wives,
whom they were obliged to leave absolute mistresses at home, took
great liberties and assumed the superiority; and were treated with
overmuch respect and called by the title of lady or queen. The truth
is, he took in their case, also, all the care that was possible; he
ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running,
throwing, the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit
they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root
and find better growth, and withal that they, with this greater
vigour, might be the more able to undergo the pains of
child-bearing. And to the end he might take away their overgreat
tenderness and fear of exposure to the air, and all acquired
womanishness, he ordered that the young women should go naked in the
processions, as well as the young men, and dance, too, in that
condition, at certain solemn feasts, singing certain songs, whilst the
young men stood around, seeing and hearing them. On these occasions
they now and then made, by jests, a befitting reflection upon those
who had misbehaved themselves in the wars; and again sang encomiums
upon those who had done any gallant action, and by these means
inspired the younger sort with an emulation of their glory. Those that
were thus commended went away proud, elated, and gratified with
their honour among the maidens; and those who were rallied were as
sensibly touched with it as if they had been formally reprimanded; and
so much the more, because the kings and the elders, as well as the
rest of the city, saw and heard all that passed. Nor was there
anything shameful in this nakedness of the young women; modesty
attended them, and all wantonness was excluded. It taught them
simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of
higher feelings, admitted as they thus were to the field of noble
action and glory. Hence it was natural for them to think and speak
as Gorgo, for example, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have done,
when some foreign lady, as it would seem, told her that the women of
Lacedaemon were the only women in the world who could rule men;
"With good reason," she said, "for we are the only women who bring
forth men."
  These public processions of the maidens, and their appearing naked
in their exercises and dancings, were incitements to marriage,
operating upon the young with the rigour and certainty, as Plato says,
of love, if not of mathematics. But besides all this, to promote it
yet more effectually, those who continued bachelors were in a degree
disfranchised by law; for they were excluded from the sight those
public processions in which the young men and maidens danced naked,
and, in winter-time, the officers compelled them to march naked
themselves round the marketplace, singing as they went a certain
song to their own disgrace, that they justly suffered this
punishment for disobeying the laws. Moreover, they were denied that
respect and observance which the younger men paid their elders; and no
man, for example, found fault with what was said to Dercyllidas,
though so eminent a commander; upon whose approach one day, a young
man, instead of rising, retained his seat, remarking, "No child of
yours will make room for me."
  In their marriages, the husband carried off his bride by a sort of
force; nor were their brides ever small and of tender years, but in
their full bloom and ripeness. After this, she who superintended the
wedding comes and clips the hair of the bride close round her head,
dresses her up in man's clothes, and leaves her upon a mattress in the
dark; afterwards comes the bridegroom, in his everyday clothes,
sober and composed, as having supped at the common table, and,
entering privately into the room where the bride lies, unties her
virgin zone, and takes her to himself; and, after staying some time
together, he returns composedly to his own apartment, to sleep as
usual with the other young men. And so he continues to do, spending
his days, and, indeed, his nights, with them, visiting his bride in
fear and shame, and with circumspection, when he thought he should not
be observed she, also, on her part, using her wit to help and find
favourable opportunities for their meeting, when company was out of
the way. In this manner they lived a long time, insomuch that they
sometimes had children by their wives before ever they saw their faces
by daylight. Their interviews, being thus difficult and rare, served
not only for continual exercise of their self-control, but brought
them together with their bodies healthy and vigorous, and their
affections fresh and lively, unsated and undulled by easy access and
long continuance with each other; while their partings were always
early enough to leave behind unextinguished in each of them some
remaining fire of longing and mutual delight. After guarding
marriage with this modesty and reserve, he was equally careful to
banish empty and womanish jealousy. For this object, excluding all
licentious disorders, he made it, nevertheless, honourable for men
to give the use of their wives to those whom they should think fit,
that so they might have children by them; ridiculing those in whose
opinion such favours are so unfit for participation as to fight and
shed blood and go to war about it. Lycurgus allowed a man who was
advanced in years and had a young wife to recommend some virtuous
and approved young man, that she might have a child by him, who
might inherit the good qualities of the father, and be a son to
himself. On the other side, an honest man who had love for a married
woman upon account of her modesty and the well-favouredness of her
children, might, without formality, beg her company of her husband,
that he might raise, as it were, from this plot of good ground, worthy
and well-allied children for himself. And indeed, Lycurgus was of a
persuasion that children were not so much the property of their
parents as of the whole commonwealth, and, therefore, would not have
his citizens begot by the first-comers, but by the best men that could
be found; the laws of other nations seemed to him very absurd and
inconsistent, where people would be so solicitous for their dogs and
horses as to exert interest and to pay money to procure fine breeding,
and yet kept their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by
themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or diseased; as if it were
not apparent that children of a bad breed would prove their bad
qualities first upon those who kept and were rearing them, and
well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities. These
regulations, founded on natural and social grounds, were certainly
so far from that scandalous liberty which was afterwards charged
upon their women, that they knew not what adultery meant. It is
told, for instance, of Geradas, a very ancient Spartan, that, being
asked by a stranger what punishment their law had appointed for
adulterers, he answered, "There are no adulterers in our country."
"But," replied the stranger, "suppose there were?" "Then," answered
he, "the offender would have to give the plaintiff a bull with a
neck so long as that he might drink from the top of Taygetus of the
Eurotas river below it." The man, surprised at this, said, "Why,
'tis impossible to find such a bull." Geradas smilingly replied, "'Tis
as possible as to find an adulterer in Sparta." So much I had to say
of their marriages.
  Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as
he thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain triers at
a place called Lesche; these were some of the elders of the tribe to
which the child belonged; their business it was carefully to view
the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order
for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of
land above mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny
and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the
Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither
for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it
should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear made
to be healthy and vigorous. Upon the same account, the women did not
bathe the new-born children with water, as is the custom in all
other countries, but with wine, to prove the temper and complexion
of their bodies; from a notion they had that epileptic and weakly
children faint and waste away upon their being thus bathed while, on
the contrary, those of a strong and vigorous habit acquire firmness
and get a temper by it, like steel. There was much care and art,
too, used by the nurses; they had no swaddling bands; the children
grew up free and unconstrained in limb and form, and not dainty and
fanciful about their food; not afraid in the dark, or of being left
alone; and without peevishness, or ill-humour, or crying. Upon this
account Spartan nurses were often bought up, or hired by people of
other countries; and it is recorded that she who suckled Alcibiades
was a Spartan; who, however, if fortunate in his nurse, was not so
in his preceptor; his guardian, Pericles, as Plato tells us, chose a
servant for that office called Zopyrus, no better than any common
slave.
  Lycurgus was of another mind; he would not have masters bought out
of the market for his young Spartans, nor such as should sell their
pains; nor was it lawful, indeed, for the father himself to breed up
the children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were seven years
old they were to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where
they all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their
exercises and taking their play together. Of these, he who showed
the most conduct and courage was made captain; they had their eyes
always upon him, obeyed his orders, and underwent patiently whatsoever
punishment he inflicted; so that the whole course of their education
was one continued exercise of a ready and perfect obedience. The old
men, too, were spectators of their performances, and often raised
quarrels and disputes among them, to have a good opportunity of
finding out their different characters, and of seeing which would be
valiant, which a coward, when they should come to more dangerous
encounters. Reading and writing they gave them, just enough to serve
their turn; their chief care was to make them good subjects, and to
teach them to endure pain and conquer in battle. To this end, as
they grew in years, their discipline was proportionately increased;
their heads were close-clipped, they were accustomed to go barefoot,
and for the most part to play naked.
  After they were twelve years old, they were no longer allowed to
wear any undergarments, they had one coat to serve them a year;
their bodies were hard and dry, with but little acquaintance of
baths and unguents; these human indulgences they were allowed only
on some few particular days in the year. They lodged together in
little bands upon beds made of the rushes which grew by the banks of
the river Eurotas, which they were to break off with their hands
without a knife; if it were winter, they mingled some thistle-down
with their rushes, which it was thought had the property of giving
warmth. By the time they were come to this age there was not any of
the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to bear him company. The old
men, too, had an eye upon them, coming often to the grounds to hear
and see them contend either in wit or strength with one another, and
this as seriously and with as much concern as if they were their
fathers, their tutors, or their magistrates; so that there scarcely
was any time or place without some one present to put them in mind
of their duty, and punish them if they had neglected it.
  Besides all this, there was always one of the best and honestest men
in the city appointed to undertake the charge and governance of
them; he again arranged them into their several bands, and set over
each of them for their captain the most temperate and boldest of those
they called Irens, who were usually twenty years old, two years out of
the boys; and the oldest of the boys, again, were Mell-Irens, as
much as to say, who would shortly be men. This young man, therefore,
was their captain when they fought and their master at home, using
them for the offices of his house; sending the eldest of them to fetch
wood, and the weaker and less able to gather salads and herbs, and
these they must either go without or steal; which they did by creeping
into the gardens, or conveying themselves cunningly and closely into
the eating-houses; if they were taken in the fact, they were whipped
without mercy, for thieving so ill and awkwardly. They stole, too, all
other meat they could lay their hands on, looking out and watching all
opportunities, when people were asleep or more careless than usual. If
they were caught, they were not only punished with whipping, but
hunger, too, being reduced to their ordinary allowance, which was
but very slender, and so contrived on purpose, that they might set
about to help themselves, and be forced to exercise their energy and
address. This was the principal design of their hard fare; there was
another not inconsiderable, that they might grow taller; for the vital
spirits, not being overburdened and oppressed by too great a
quantity of nourishment, which necessarily discharges itself into
thickness and breadth, do, by their natural lightness, rise; and the
body, giving and yielding because it is pliant, grows in height. The
same thing seems, also, to conduce to beauty of shape; a dry and
lean habit is a better subject for nature's configuration, which the
gross and over-fed are too heavy to submit to properly. Just as we
find that women who take physic whilst they are with child, bear
leaner and smaller but better-shaped and prettier children; the
material they come of having been more pliable and easily moulded. The
reason, however, I leave others to determine.
  To return from whence we have digressed. So seriously did the
Lacedaemonian children go about their stealing, that a youth, having
stolen a young fox and hid it under his coat, suffered it to tear
out his very bowels with its teeth and claws and died upon the
place, rather than let it be seen. What is practised to this very
day in Lacedaemon is enough to gain credit to this story, for I myself
have seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot
of the altar of Diana surnamed Orthia.
  The Iren, or under-master, used to stay a little with them after
supper, and one of them he bade to sing a song, to another he put a
question which required an advised and deliberate answer; for example,
Who was the best man in the city? What he thought of such an action of
such a man? They used them thus early to pass a right judgment upon
persons and things, and to inform themselves of the abilities or
defects of their countrymen. If they had not an answer ready to the
question, Who was a good or who an ill-reputed citizen, they were
looked upon as of a dull and careless disposition, and to have
little or no sense of virtue and honour; besides this, they were to
give a good reason for what they said, and in as few words and as
comprehensive as might be; he that failed of this, or answered not
to the purpose, had his thumb bit by the master. Sometimes the Iren
did this in the presence of the old men and magistrates, that they
might see whether he punished them justly and in due measure or not,
and when he did amiss, they would not reprove him before the boys,
but, when they were gone, he was called to an account and underwent
correction, if he had run far into either of the extremes of
indulgence or severity.
  Their lovers and favourers, too, had a share in the young boy's
honour or disgrace; and there goes a story that one of them was
fined by the magistrate, because the lad whom he loved cried out
effeminately as he was fighting. And though this sort of love was so
approved among them, that the most virtuous matrons would make
professions of it to young girls, yet rivalry did not exist, and if
several men's fancies met in one person, it was rather the beginning
of an intimate friendship, whilst they all jointly conspired to render
the object of their effection as accomplished as possible.
  They taught them, also, to speak with a natural and graceful
raillery, and to comprehend much matter of thought in few words. For
Lycurgus, who ordered, as we saw, that a great piece of money should
be but of an inconsiderable value, on the contrary would allow no
discourse to be current which did not contain in few words a great
deal of useful and curious sense; children in Sparta, by a habit of
long silence, came to give just and sententious answers; for,
indeed, as loose and incontinent livers are seldom fathers of many
children, so loose and incontinent talkers seldom originate many
sensible words. King Agis, when some Athenian laughed at their short
swords, and said that the jugglers on the stage swallowed them with
ease, answered him, "We find them long enough to reach our enemies
with;" and as their swords were short and sharp, so, it seems to me,
were their sayings. They reach the point and arrest the attention of
the hearers better than any. Lycurgus himself seems to have been short
and sententious, if we may trust the anecdotes of him; as appears by
his answer to one who by all means would set up a democracy in
Lacedaemon. "Begin, friend," said he, "and set it up in your
family." Another asked him why he allowed of such mean and trivial
sacrifices to the gods. He replied, "That we may always have something
to offer to them." Being asked what sort of martial exercises or
combats he approved of, he answered, "All sorts, except that in
which you stretch out your hands." Similar answers, addressed to his
countrymen by letter, are ascribed to him; as, being consulted how
they might best oppose an invasion of their enemies, he returned
this answer, "By continuing poor, and not coveting each man to be
greater than his fellow." Being consulted again whether it were
requisite to enclose the city with a wall, he sent them word, "The
city is well fortified which hath a wall of men instead of brick." But
whether these letters are counterfeit or not is not easy to determine.
  Of their dislike to talkativeness, the following apophthegms are
evidence. King Leonidas said to one who held him in discourse upon
some useful matter, but not in due time and place, "Much to the
purpose, Sir, elsewhere." King Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus,
being asked why his uncle had made so few laws, answered, "Men of
few words require but few laws." When one, named Hecataeus the
sophist, because that, being invited to the public table, he had not
spoken one word all supper-time, Archidamidas answered in his
vindication, "He who knows how to speak, knows also when."
  The sharp and yet not ungraceful retorts which I mentioned may be
instanced as follows. Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner
by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered
at last, "He, Sir, that is the least like you." Some, in company where
Agis was, much extolled the Eleans for their just and honourable
management of the Olympic games; "Indeed," said Agis, "they are highly
to be commended if they can do justice one day in five years."
Theopompus answered a stranger who talked much of his affection to the
Lacedaemonians, and said that his countrymen called him Philolacon
(a lover of the Lacedaemonians), that it had been more for his
honour if they had called him Philopolites (a lover of his own
countrymen). And Plistoanax, the son of Pausanias, when an orator of
Athens said the Lacedaemonians had no learning, told him, "You say
true, Sir; we alone of all the Greeks have learned none of your bad
qualities." One asked Archidamidas what number there might be of the
Spartans, he answered: "Enough, Sir, to keep out wicked men."
  We may see their character, too, in their very jests. For they did
not throw them out at random, but the very wit of them was grounded
upon something or other worth thinking about. For instance, one, being
asked to go hear a man who exactly counterfeited the voice of a
nightingale, answered, "Sir, I have heard the nightingale itself."
Another, having read the following inscription upon a tomb-

        "Seeking to quench a cruel tyranny,
        They, at Selinus, did in battle die,"

said, it served them right; for instead of trying to quench the
tyranny, they should have let it burn out. A lad, being offered some
game-cocks that would die upon the spot, said that he cared not for
cocks that would die, but for such that would live and kill others.
Another, seeing people easing themselves on seats, said, "God forbid I
should sit where I could not get up to salute my elders." In short,
their answers were so sententious and pertinent, that one said well
that intellectual much more truly than athletic exercise was the
Spartan characteristic.
  Nor was their instruction in music and verse less carefully attended
to than their habits of grace and good-breeding in conversation. And
their very songs had a life and spirit in them that inflamed and
possessed men's minds with an enthusiasm and ardour for action; the
style of them was plain and without affectation; the subject always
serious and moral; most usually, it was in praise of such men as had
died in defence of their country, or in derision of those that had
been cowards; the former they declared happy and glorified; the life
of the latter they described as most miserable and abject. There
were also vaunts of what they would do, and boasts of what they had
done, varying with the various ages, as, for example, they had three
choirs in their solemn festivals, the first of the old men, the second
of the young men, and the last of the children; the old men began
thus:-

        "We once were young, and brave, and strong;"

the young men answered them, singing:-

        "And we're so now, come on and try;"

the children came last and said:-

        "But we'll be strongest by and by."

  Indeed, if we will take the pains to consider their compositions,
some of which were still extant in our days, and the airs on the flute
to which they marched when going to battle, we shall find that
Terpander and Pindar had reason to say that musing and valour were
allied. The first says of Lacedaemon-

        "The spear and song in her do meet,
        And justice walks about her street;

And Pindar-

        "Councils of wise elders here,
        And the young men's conquering spear,
        And dance, and song, and joy appear;

both describing the Spartans as no less musical than warlike; in the
words of one of their own poets-

        "With the iron stern and sharp,
        Comes the playing on the harp."

For, indeed, before they engaged in battle, the king first did
sacrifice to the Muses, in all likelihood to put them in mind of the
manner of their education, and of the judgment that would be passed
upon their actions, and thereby to animate them to the performance
of exploits that should deserve a record. At such times, too, the
Lacedaemonians abated a little the severity of their manners in favour
of their young men, suffering them to curl and adorn their hair, and
to have costly arms and fine clothes; and were well pleased to see
them, like proud horses, neighing and pressing to the course. And,
therefore, as soon as they came to be well-grown, they took a great
deal of care of their hair, to have it parted and trimmed,
especially against a day of battle, pursuant to a saying recorded of
their lawgiver, that a large head of hair added beauty to a good face,
and terror to an ugly one.
  When they were in the field, their exercises were generally more
moderate, their fare not so hard, nor so strict a hand held over
them by their officers, so that they were the only people in the world
to whom war gave repose. When their army was drawn up in battle array,
and the enemy near, the king sacrificed a goat, commanded the soldiers
to set their garlands upon their heads, and the pipers to play the
tune of the hymn to Castor, and himself began the paean of advance. It
was at once a magnificent and a terrible sight to see them march on to
the tune of their flutes, without any disorder in their ranks, any
discomposure in their minds, or change in their countenances, calmly
and cheerfully moving with the music to the deadly fight. Men, in this
temper, were not likely to be possessed with fear or any transport
of fury, but with the deliberate valour of hope and assurance, as if
some divinity were attending and conducting them. The king had
always about his person some one who had been crowned in the Olympic
games; and upon this account a Lacedaemonian is said to have refused a
considerable present, which was offered to him upon condition that
he would not come into the lists; and when he had with much to-do
thrown his antagonist, some of the spectators saying to him, "And now,
Sir Lacedaemonian, what are you the better for your victory?" he
answered, smiling, "I shall fight next the king." After they had
routed an enemy, they pursued him till they were well assured of the
victory, and then they sounded a retreat, thinking it base and
unworthy of a Grecian people to cut men in pieces, who had given up
and abandoned all resistance. This manner of dealing with their
enemies did not only show magnanimity, but was politic too; for,
knowing that they killed only those who made resistance, and gave
quarter to the rest, men generally thought it their best way to
consult their safety by flight.
  Hippius the sophist says that Lycurgus himself was a great soldier
and an experienced commander. Philostephanus attributes to him the
first division of the cavalry into troops of fifties in a square body;
but Demetrius the Phalerian says quite the contrary, and that he
made all his laws in a continued peace. And, indeed, the Olympic
holy truce, or cessation of arms, that was procured by his means and
management, inclines me to think him a kind-natured man, and one
that loved quietness and peace. Notwithstanding all this, Hermippus
tells us that he had no hand in the ordinance, that Iphitus made it,
and Lycurgus came only as a spectator, and that by mere accident
too. Being there, he heard as it were a man's voice behind him,
blaming and wondering at him that he did not encourage his
countrymen to resort to the assembly, and, turning about and seeing no
man, concluded that it was a voice from heaven, and upon this
immediately went to Iphitus and assisted him in ordering the
ceremonies of that feast, which, by his means, were better
established, and with more repute than before.
  To return to the Lacedaemonians. Their discipline continued still
after they were full-grown men. No one was allowed to live after his
own fancy; but the city was a sort of camp, in which every man had his
share of provisions and business set out, and looked upon himself
not so much born to serve his own ends as the interest of his country.
Therefore if they were commanded nothing else, they went to see the
boys perform their exercises, to teach them something useful or to
learn it themselves of those who knew better. And indeed one of the
greatest and highest blessings Lycurgus procured his people was the
abundance of leisure which proceeded from his forbidding to them the
exercise of any mean and mechanical trade. Of the money-making that
depends on troublesome going about and seeing people and doing
business, they had no need at all in a state where wealth obtained
no honour or respect. The Helots tilled their ground for them, and
paid them yearly in kind the appointed quantity, without any trouble
of theirs. To this purpose there goes a story of a Lacedaemonian
who, happening to be at Athens when the courts were sitting, was
told of a citizen that had been fined for living an idle life, and was
being escorted home in much distress of mind by his condoling friends;
the Lacedaemonian was much surprised at it and desired his friend to
show him the man who was condemned for living like a freeman. So
much beneath them did they esteem the frivolous devotion of time and
attention to the mechanical arts and to moneymaking.
  It need not be said that upon the prohibition of gold and silver,
all lawsuits immediately ceased, for there was now neither avarice nor
poverty amongst them, but equality, where every one's wants were
supplied, and independence, because those wants were so small. All
their time, except when they were in the field, was taken up by the
choral dances and the festivals, in hunting, and in attendance on
the exercise-grounds and the places of public conversation. Those
who were under thirty years of age were not allowed to go into the
market-place, but had the necessaries of their family supplied by
the care of their relations and lovers; nor was it for the credit of
elderly men to be seen too often in the market-place; it was
esteemed more suitable for them to frequent the exercise-grounds and
places of conversation, where they spent their leisure rationally in
conversation, not on money-making and marketprices, but for the most
part in passing judgment on some action worth considering; extolling
the good, and censuring those who were otherwise, and that in a
light and sportive manner, conveying, without too much gravity,
lessons of advice and improvement. Nor was Lycurgus himself unduly
austere; it was he who dedicated, says Sosibius, the little statue
of Laughter. Mirth, introduced seasonably at their suppers and
places of common entertainment, was to serve as a sort of sweetmeat to
accompany their strict and hard life. To conclude, he bred up his
citizens in such a way that they neither would nor could live by
themselves; they were to make themselves one with the public good,
and, clustering like bees around their commander, be by their zeal and
public spirit carried all but out of themselves, and devoted wholly to
their country. What their sentiments were will better appear by a
few of their sayings. Paedaretus, not being admitted into the list
of the three hundred, returned home with a joyful face, well pleased
to find that there were in Sparta three hundred better men than
himself. And Polycratidas, being sent with some others ambassador to
the lieutenants of the king of Persia, being asked by them whether
they came in a private or in a public character, answered, "In a
public, if we succeed; if not, in a private character." Argileonis,
asking some who came from Amphipolis if her son Brasidas died
courageously and as became a Spartan, on their beginning to praise him
to a high degree, and saying there was not such another left in
Sparta, answered, "Do not say so; Brasidas was a good and brave man,
but there are in Sparta many better than he."
  The senate, as I said before, consisted of those who were Lycurgus's
chief aiders and assistants in his plans. The vacancies he ordered
to be supplied out of the best and most deserving men past sixty years
old, and we need not wonder if there was much striving for it; for
what more glorious competition could there be amongst men, than one in
which it was not contested who was swiftest among the swift or
strongest of the strong, but who of many wise and good was wisest
and best, and fittest to be intrusted for ever after, as the reward of
his merits, with the supreme authority of the commonwealth, and with
power over the lives, franchises, and highest interests of all his
countrymen? The manner of their election was as follows: The people
being called together, some selected persons were locked up in a
room near the place of election, so contrived that they could
neither see nor be seen, but could only hear the noise of the assembly
without; for they decided this, as most other affairs of moment, by
the shouts of the people. This done, the competitors were not
brought in and presented all together, but one after another by lot,
and passed in order through the assembly without speaking a word.
Those who were locked up had writing-tables with them, in which they
recorded and marked each shout by its loudness, without knowing in
favour of which candidate each of them was made, but merely that
they came first, second, third, and so forth. He who was found to have
the most and loudest acclamations was declared senator duly elected.
Upon this he had a garland set upon his head, and went in procession
to all the temples to give thanks to the gods; a great number of young
men followed him with applauses, and women, also, singing verses in
his honour, and extolling the virtue and happiness of his life. As
he went round the city in this manner, each of his relations and
friends set a table before him, saying "The city honours you with this
banquet;" but he, instead of accepting, passed round to the common
table where he formerly used to eat, and was served as before,
excepting that now he had a second allowance, which he took and put
by. By the time supper was ended, the women who were of kin to him had
come about the door; and he, beckoning to her whom he most esteemed,
presented to her the portion he had saved, saying, that it had been
a mark of esteem to him, and was so now to her; upon which she was
triumphantly waited upon home by the women.
  Touching burials, Lycurgus made very wise regulations; for, first of
all, to cut off all superstition, he allowed them to bury their dead
within the city, and even round about their temples, to the end that
their youth might be accustomed to such spectacles, and not be
afraid to see a dead body, or imagine that to touch a corpse or to
tread upon a grave would defile a man. In the next place, he commanded
them to put nothing into the ground with them, except, if they
pleased, a few olive leaves, and the scarlet cloth that they were
wrapped in. He would not suffer the names to be inscribed, except only
of men who fell in the wars, or women who died in a sacred office. The
time, too, appointed for mourning, was very short, eleven days; on the
twelfth, they were to do sacrifice to Ceres, and leave it off; so that
we may see, that as he cut off all superfluity, so in things necessary
there was nothing so small and trivial which did not express some
homage of virtue or scorn of vice. He filled Lacedaemon all through
with proofs and examples of good conduct; with the constant sight of
which from their youth up the people would hardly fail to be gradually
formed and advanced in virtue.
  And this was the reason why he forbade them to travel abroad, and go
about acquainting themselves with foreign rules of morality, the
habits of ill-educated people, and different views of government.
Withal he banished from Lacedaemon all strangers who would not give
a very good reason for their coming thither; not because he was afraid
lest they should inform themselves of and imitate his manner of
government (as Thucydides says), or learn anything to their good;
but rather lest they should introduce something contrary to good
manners. With strange people, strange words must be admitted; these
novelties produce novelties in thought; and on these follow views
and feelings whose discordant character destroys the harmony of the
state. He was as careful to save his city from the infection of
foreign bad habits, as men usually are to prevent the introduction
of a pestilence.
  Hitherto I, for my part, see no sign of injustice or want of
equity in the laws of Lycurgus, though some who admit them to be
well contrived to make good soldiers, pronounce them defective in
point of justice. The Cryptia, perhaps (if it were one of Lycurgus's
ordinances, as Aristotle says it was), gave both him and Plato, too,
this opinion alike of the lawgiver and his government. By this
ordinance, the magistrates despatched privately some of the ablest
of the young men into the country, from time to time, armed only
with their daggers, and taking a little necessary provision with them;
in the daytime, they hid themselves in out-of-the-way places, and
there lay close, but in the night issued out into the highways, and
killed all the Helots they could light upon; sometimes they set upon
them by day, as they were at work in the fields, and murdered them.
As, also, Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian war, tells
us, that a good number of them, after being singled out for their
bravery by the Spartans, garlanded, as enfranchised persons, and led
about to all the temples in token of honours, shortly after
disappeared all of a sudden, being about the number of two thousand;
and no man either then or since could give an account how they came by
their deaths. And Aristotle, in particular, adds, that the ephori,
so soon as they were entered into their office, used to declare war
against them, that they might be massacred without a breach of
religion. It is confessed, on all hands, that the Spartans dealt
with them very hardly; for it was a common thing to force them to
drink to excess, and to lead them in that condition into their
public halls, that the children might see what a sight a drunken man
is; they made them to dance low dances, and sing ridiculous songs,
forbidding them expressly to meddle with any of a better kind. And
accordingly, when the Thebans made their invasion into Laconia, and
took a great number of the Helots, they could by no means persuade
them to sing the verses of Terpander, Alcman, or Spendon, "For,"
said they, "the masters do not like it." So that it was truly observed
by one, that in Sparta he who was free was most so, and he that was
a slave there, the greatest slave in the world. For my part, I am of
opinion that these outrages and cruelties began to be exercised in
Sparta at a later time, especially after the great earthquake, when
the Helots made a general insurrection, and, joining with the
Messenians, laid the country waste, and brought the greatest danger
upon the city. For I cannot persuade myself to ascribe to Lycurgus
so wicked and barbarous a course, judging of him from the gentleness
of his disposition and justice upon all other occasions; to which
the oracle also testified.
  When he perceived that his more important institutions had taken
root in the minds of his countrymen, that custom had rendered them
familiar and easy, that his commonwealth was now grown up and able
to go alone, then, as Plato somewhere tells us, the Maker of the
world, when first he saw it existing and beginning its motion, felt
joy, even so Lycurgus, viewing with joy and satisfaction the greatness
and beauty of his political structure, now fairly at work and in
motion, conceived the thought to make it immortal too, and, as far
as human forecast could reach to deliver it down unchangeable to
posterity. He called an extraordinary assembly of all the people,
and told them that he now thought everything reasonably well
established, both for the happiness and the virtue of the state; but
that there was one thing still behind, of the greatest importance,
which he thought not fit to impart until he had consulted the
oracle; in the meantime, his desire was that they would observe the
laws without any the least alteration until his return, and then he
would do as the god should direct him. They all consented readily, and
bade him hasten his journey; but, before he departed, he
administered an oath to the two kings, the senate, and the whole
commons, to abide by and maintain the established form of polity until
Lycurgus should be come back. This done, he set out for Delphi, and,
having sacrificed to Apollo, asked him whether the laws he had
established were good, and sufficient for a people's happiness and
virtue. The oracle answered that the laws were excellent, and that the
people, while it observed them, should live in the height of renown.
Lycurgus took the oracle in writing, and sent it over to Sparta;
and, having sacrificed the second time to Apollo, and taken leave of
his friends and his son, he resolved that the Spartans should not be
released from the oath they had taken, and that he would, of his own
act, close his life where he was. He was now about that age in which
life was still tolerable, and yet might be quitted without regret.
Everything, moreover, about him was in a sufficiently prosperous
condition. He therefore made an end of himself by a total abstinence
from food, thinking it a statesman's duty to make his very death, if
possible, an act of service to the state, and even in the end of his
life to give some example of virtue and effect some useful purpose. He
would, on the one hand, crown and consummate his own happiness by a
death suitable to so honourable a life, and on the other hand, would
secure to his countrymen the enjoyment of the advantages he had
spent his life in obtaining for them, since they had solemnly sworn
the maintenance of his institutions until his return. Nor was he
deceived in his expectations, for the city of Lacedaemon continued the
chief city of all Greece for the space of five hundred years, in
strict observance of Lycurgus's laws; in all which time there was no
manner of alteration made, during the reign of fourteen kings down
to the time of Agis, the son of Archidamus. For the new creation of
the ephori, though thought to be in favour of the people, was so far
from diminishing, that it very much heightened, the aristocratical
character of the government.
  In the time of Agis, gold and silver first flowed into Sparta, and
with them all those mischiefs which attend the immoderate desire of
riches. Lysander promoted this disorder; for by bringing in rich
spoils from the wars, although himself incorrupt, he yet by this means
filled his country with avarice and luxury, and subverted the laws and
ordinances of Lycurgus; so long as which were in force, the aspect
presented by Sparta was rather that of a rule of life followed by
one wise and temperate man, than of the political government of a
nation. And as the poets feign of Hercules, that, with his lion's skin
and his club, he went over the world, punishing lawless and cruel
tyrants, so may it be said of the Lacedaemonians, that, with a
common staff and a coarse coat, they gained the willing and joyful
obedience of Greece, through whose whole extent they suppressed unjust
usurpations and despotisms, arbitrated in war, and composed civil
dissensions; and this often without so much as taking down one
buckler, but barely by sending some one single deputy to whose
direction all at once submitted, like bees swarming and taking their
places around their prince. Such a fund of order and equity, enough
and to spare for others, existed in their state.
  And therefore I cannot but wonder at those who say that the Spartans
were good subjects, but bad governors, and for proof of it allege a
saying of King Theopompus, who when one said that Sparta held up so
long because their kings could command so well, replied, "Nay,
rather because the people know so well how to obey." For people do not
obey, unless rulers know how to command; obedience is a lesson
taught by commanders. A true leader himself creates the obedience of
his own followers; as it is the last attainment in the art of riding
to make a horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of
government, to inspire men with a willingness to obey. The
Lacedaemonians inspired men not with a mere willingness, but with an
absolute desire to be their subjects. For they did not send
petitions to them for ships or money, or a supply of armed men, but
only for a Spartan commander; and, having obtained one, used him
with honour and reverence; so the Sicilians behaved to Gylippus, the
Chalcidians to Brasidas, and all the Greeks in Asia to Lysander,
Callicratidas, and Agesilaus; they styled them the composers and
chasteners of each people or prince they were sent to, and had their
eyes always fixed upon the city of Sparta itself, as the perfect model
of good manners and wise government. The rest seemed as scholars, they
the masters of Greece; and to this Stratonicus pleasantly alluded,
when in jest he pretended to make a law that the Athenians should
conduct religious processions and the mysteries, the Eleans should
preside at the Olympic games, and, if either did amiss, the
Lacedaemonians be beaten. Antisthenes, too, one of the scholars of
Socrates, said, in earnest, of the Thebans, when they were elated by
their victory at Leuctra, that they looked like school-boys who had
beaten their master.
  However, it was not the design of Lycurgus that his city should
govern a great many others; he thought rather that the happiness of
a state, as a private man, consisted chiefly in the exercise of
virtue, and in the concord of the inhabitants; his aim, therefore,
in all his arrangements, was to make and keep them free-minded,
self-dependent, and temperate. And therefore all those who have
written well on politics, as Plato, Diogenes and Zeno, have taken
Lycurgus for their model, leaving behind them, however mere projects
and words; whereas Lycurgus was the author, not in writing but in
reality, of a government which none else could so much as copy; and
while men in general have treated the individual philosophic character
as unattainable, he, by the example of a complete philosophic state,
raised himself high above all other lawgivers of Greece. And so
Aristotle says they did him less honour at Lacedaemon after his
death than he deserved, although, he has a temple there, and they
offer sacrifices yearly to him as to a god.
  It is reported that when his bones were brought home to Sparta his
tomb was struck with lightning, an accident which befell no eminent
person but himself and Euripides, who was buried at Arethusa in
Macedonia; and it may serve that poet's admirers as a testimony in his
favour, that he had in this the same fate with that holy man and
favourite of the gods. Some say Lycurgus died in Cirrha.
Apollothemis says, after he had come to Elis; Timaeus and Aristoxenus,
that he ended his life in Crete; Aristoxenus adds that his tomb is
shown by the Cretans in the district of Pergamus, near the
strangers' road. He left an only son, Antiorus, on whose death without
issue his family became extinct. But his relations and friends kept up
an annual commemoration of him down to a long time after; and the days
of the meeting were called Lycurgides. Aristocrates, the son of
Hipparchus, says that he died in Crete, and that his Cretan friends,
in accordance with his own request, when they had burned his body,
scattered the Ashes into the sea; for fear lest, if his relics
should be transported to Lacedaemon, the people might pretend to be
released from their oaths, and make innovations in the government.
Thus much may suffice for the life and actions of Lycurgus.


                               THE END