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Lycurgus
By Plutarch

(legendary, lived legendary, 9th century B.C.E.)


Translated by John Dryden

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

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