Plutarch, Lives that Made Greek History

Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus is unique among the Lives in this collection, since it concerns a man about whom very little was known. Instead of a true biography, then, this Life is largely a record of Spartan laws and institutions, since Lycurgus, according to semimythic Greek traditions, devised these on his own sole authority. Perhaps there is truth behind these myths, and a lawgiver named Lycurgus did indeed reform the Spartan constitution in the eighth century BCE; modern historians are unsure. But Plutarch has used the legend as a hook on which to hang a portrait of classical Sparta—a society very much weakened and transformed in his own day but depicted here in more detail than in any contemporary source.

According to Plutarch, Lycurgus was a member of one of Sparta’s two royal families but was not in the direct line of succession. (From earliest times Sparta’s governments had been headed by two kings who provided checks on one another’s power; eventually they were further weakened by the oversight of public officials called ephors.) When one of the city’s two thrones became vacant, Lycurgus briefly occupied it, but he willingly stepped down when he learned that his sister-in-law was pregnant with a more legitimate heir. Lycurgus then served as regent, wielding power on behalf of his infant nephew, but he came under suspicion (as most regents do) of wanting to rule in his own name. To allay these suspicions, Lycurgus chose to remove himself from Sparta by traveling abroad.

[4] Sailing away, Lycurgus traveled first to Crete. Studying the forms of government there, and becoming acquainted with the most reputable men, he admired and adopted some of their laws, intending to carry them home with him and put them into effect.… From Crete Lycurgus sailed to Asia, where he reportedly wished to compare the extravagance and luxury of Ionia with the Cretan way of life, which was frugal and austere, just as a doctor compares unsound and diseased bodies with healthy ones.¹ … The Egyptians think that Lycurgus also visited them, and that as he particularly admired the separation of their soldiery from the other classes of society,² he carried that practice back to Sparta, and by excluding the craftsmen and artisans from participation he made his polity truly refined and pure. Some of the Greek writers confirm the Egyptians’ claims.

[5] The Spartans yearned for Lycurgus when he was away, and sent for him often, in the belief that their kings, despite their renown and eminence, were really no different from most people, whereas Lycurgus possessed a natural talent for command and an ability to lead. And the kings were not averse to having him at home, but hoped that in his presence the people would treat them with less insolence. Accordingly, upon returning to citizens so well-disposed to him, he at once tried to alter existing conditions and change the form of government, thinking there was no point or advantage in changing the laws one by one, but that he must act as a doctor would with a patient who was ill and afflicted with all sorts of diseases, lowering and changing the existing temperature by means of drugs and purges, and instituting a new and different regimen.…

Lycurgus tried to enlist the best men and encouraged them to help him, explaining his undertaking first to his friends, and then little by little engaging others and uniting them to put his program into effect. When the critical moment came, he ordered thirty of them to take up arms, go to the marketplace at dawn, and strike fear and astonishment into their opponents.³ … Among Lycurgus’ many innovations, the first and most important was the establishment of the council of elders,⁴ which, as Plato says, by being combined with the inflamed rule of the kings,⁵ and by having an equal vote with them in the most important matters, produced stability and moderation. For the polity had veered between tyranny and democracy, inclining now to the kings, now to the multitude. But now, by making the council of elders a central weight, like a ship’s ballast, which always provides equilibrium, the state achieved the safest arrangement and order, the twenty-eight elders always taking the kings’ side against democracy, but at the same time strengthening the people to resist encroaching tyranny. The number of elders was established at twenty-eight.

[6] So eager was Lycurgus to establish this government that he brought from Delphi a prophecy about it, which they call a rhetra.⁶ It runs thus: “Once you have erected a shrine of Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, divided the people into classes and subclasses, established a council of thirty elders with the help of the leaders,⁷ hold an assembly of the people from time to time between Babyca and Cnacion, where you will introduce and rescind motions; but the people must have the deciding voice and power.” … The Babyca is today called Cheimarrus, and the Cnacion Oernus.… Between these two places the Spartans held their assemblies, though there were no porticoes or any other sort of building. For Lycurgus thought that such things did nothing to enhance soundness of judgment, but rather undermined it by filling the minds of the assembled citizens with foolish and frivolous thoughts as they sat gazing steadfastly at statues and paintings, theatrical backdrops, or the elaborately constructed roofs of council chambers.

When the people had assembled, none of them was permitted to make a motion, though the assembly had the authority to decide for or against a motion proposed by the elders and the kings. Later on, however, when by subtractions and additions the people warped and distorted the motions, Kings Polydorus and Theopompus⁸ subjoined the following clause to the rhetra: “But if the people adopt a crooked measure, the elders and leaders have the power to dissolve an assembly,” meaning that the elders and kings should not ratify the measure, but should simply dismiss and dissolve the assembly if the people were distorting and altering the motion contrary to the city’s best interests.⁹

[7] Though Lycurgus thus tempered his commonwealth, the men who came after him, seeing the oligarchy still “untempered and fierce,” as Plato says, “imposed the power of the ephors upon it as a curb.”¹⁰ Roughly 130 years after Lycurgus, the first ephors¹¹—Elatus and his colleagues—were appointed during the reign of Theopompus. It is said that Theopompus was reproached by his wife because the royal power, when he handed it over to his sons, would be weaker than when he received it, to which he replied, “On the contrary, stronger, since it will last longer.” For in fact, by throwing off its excesses and jealousies, the Spartan sovereignty escaped danger, and consequently the Spartan kings did not suffer the fate that the Messenians and Argives inflicted on their kings,¹² who were unwilling to yield in any way or to relax their power for the people’s benefit.

[8] Lycurgus’ second and extremely bold political measure was his redistribution of the land. For there was a terrible disparity in this regard, since many propertyless and poor people were becoming a burden to the city, and wealth was flowing wholly to a few. Aiming to rid the polity of violence, envy, malice, and luxury, and the more longstanding and graver afflictions, namely wealth and poverty, Lycurgus persuaded the people to pool all their territory and let a new distribution be made, and to live together on an equal footing, each man possessing equal means of subsistence and seeking preeminence on the basis of virtue alone, it being assumed that there was no other difference or inequality between one man and the next than that which was established by blame for shameful actions and praise for honorable ones.

Acting on his proposal, he distributed the rest of the Laconian territory to the “free inhabitants,” in thirty thousand lots, and divided the share belonging to the city of Sparta into nine thousand lots, as that was the number of Spartan citizens.… Each man’s lot was of a size to produce seventy bushels of wheat for a man, and twelve for his wife, and a proportionate quantity of liquid measures. For he thought that a lot of that size would suffice them, since they needed sustenance enough to maintain vigor and health, and nothing else.

[9] When he tried to divide up their movable property as well, so that inequity and inequality might be eliminated, he saw that the people balked at its outright confiscation. He therefore took a different course and attacked greed by enacting political measures. First, after canceling the value of all gold and silver currency, he ordered the citizens to use iron exclusively. Then he assigned a very small value to a bulky, weighty mass of it, so that the iron equivalent of ten minas¹³ required a large storeroom at home and a yoke of oxen if it were to be transported. When this law went into effect, many sorts of wrongdoing disappeared from Lacedaemon. For who was likely to steal, or take as a bribe, or rob, or plunder a thing that could neither be hidden, nor creditably possessed, nor was even of value when cut in pieces? For it is said that by quenching the red-hot iron with vinegar Lycurgus spoiled it for any other purpose, since it became brittle and could not be worked.

He then rid the city of useless and superfluous crafts and manufacture. Most of these crafts would probably have disappeared along with the common coinage even if no one had outlawed them, since their products could not be sold. For the Spartans could not carry their iron money to other parts of Greece, and it had no value there; indeed, it was even ridiculed. And consequently the Spartans could not purchase any foreign goods or small wares, and no merchant shipped cargo into Spartan harbors. No sophist set foot on Laconian¹⁴ soil, no vagabond soothsayer, no keeper of prostitutes, no fashioner of gold or silver ornaments, since there was no money there.

[10] With the intention of further attacking luxuriousness and undermining the zeal for wealth, he introduced his third and noblest political measure, namely the institution of public meals, so that the citizens might eat together in companies, consuming a fixed menu of meats and grains, and not spend their time reclining on couches at extravagant tables, growing fat by night at the hands of servants and chefs, like gluttonous animals, and ruining their bodies along with their characters by devoting the former entirely to appetite and satiety, which require prolonged naps, warm baths, extended idleness, and, in some sense, daily nursing. This was indeed a great achievement, but even greater was his making wealth “an object of no desire,” as Theophrastus¹⁵ says, and even creating “freedom from wealth” by their communal meals and the frugality of their way of life.

[11] They say it was because of this political measure that the well-to-do were harshly disposed to Lycurgus. Banding together against him, they assailed him with angry shouts and cries; and at last, pelted with stones, he was forced to run from the marketplace. He fled to the temple ahead of all the others except Alcander, a youth by no means without ability, but hasty and passionate, who pursued and attacked him. When Lycurgus turned around, Alcander struck him with a cane and put out his eye. Lycurgus, however, undaunted by the accident, confronted his fellow citizens, showing them his face stained with blood and his sight destroyed. And they were so overcome with shame and sorrow at the sight that they delivered Alcander into his hands and escorted him to his house, all of them indignant on his behalf. Commending his fellow citizens for their conduct, Lycurgus dismissed them, but brought Alcander inside. There he did the boy no harm by word or deed, but after sending away his familiar servants and attendants, ordered Alcander to minister to his needs. The young man, who was not ill-bred, performed his duties in silence. Abiding with Lycurgus and sharing his daily life, and coming to understand the gentleness and serenity of his soul, the austerity of his way of life, and the dauntlessness he brought to his labors, Alcander grew deeply devoted to him and told his acquaintances and friends that the man was not harsh or willful, as he had supposed, but the mildest and gentlest character in the world.

[12] The Cretans call their common meals “mens’ table,” while the Spartans call it “meager table.”… Each [Spartan] table group included roughly fifteen men. Each member would contribute a bushel of barley meal each month, eight measures of wine, five minas of cheese, five half-minas of figs, and, in addition to these items, some very small sum of money for the purchase of fish or other relish. Besides this, a member who had performed a sacrifice would send along first-fruits,¹⁶ and one who had gone hunting would send a portion to the common mess. For a man who had sacrificed or had returned late from hunting was permitted to dine at home, but all the others had to attend the mess.… Boys, too, used to visit the common messes, as if they were attending schools of self-discipline. They would listen to political discussions and observe men who could teach them how a freeborn man conducts himself.… Of their dishes, the most famous is their black broth. Their older men do not even ask for a slice of meat; they leave the meat for the young men, and dine only on the broth.… After drinking moderately, they depart without a torch. For the Spartans are not allowed to walk with a light, on this or any other occasion, so that they may accustom themselves to marching boldly and fearlessly at night. Such is the fashion of their common messes.

[13] Lycurgus did not commit his laws to writing, and in fact one of the rhetras forbids it.… Another was directed against extravagance. It required that every house have a roof fashioned by the axe, and doors by the saw only, and no other tool.… A third rhetra of Lycurgus … discourages the people from frequently waging war against the same enemies, lest the latter, becoming accustomed to defending themselves often, become skilled warriors. It was chiefly on this ground that they later denounced Agesilaus, their king, who by launching prolonged and frequent invasions and campaigns against Boeotia made the Thebans a match in battle for the Spartans. That was why, when Agesilaus had been wounded, Antalcidas said to him, “You are certainly receiving handsome tuition fees from the Thebans, having taught them to fight despite their reluctance and ignorance.”¹⁷

[14] When it came to education, which he considered to be the greatest and noblest task of the lawgiver, Lycurgus began so far back as to regulate all that concerned marriages and births.… He saw to it that the girls took physical exercise—in races, wrestling, and hurling the discus and javelin—so that their embryos, implanted firmly in firm bodies, might develop more healthily, and so that the women themselves, enduring their pregnancies with fortitude, might struggle successfully and easily with the pains of childbirth.… The baring of the girls’ bodies involved nothing shameful, since modesty attended them, and wantonness was dispelled.¹⁸ On the contrary, it implanted habits of simplicity and a zeal for bodily vigor, and gave womankind a taste of noble high-mindedness, since they were participating no less than the men in the pursuit of excellence and honor. And this was why their women were moved to speak and think in the manner attributed to Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas. For it seems that when some foreign woman said to her, “You women of Sparta are the only ones who rule their men,” Gorgo replied, “Yes, since we alone give birth to men.”

[15] These measures were also intended to foster marriage—I mean the young women’s processions, their disrobing, and the fact that their contests were attended by the young men, who were drawn there, as Plato says, “not by geometric, but by erotic necessity.”¹⁹ Moreover, Lycurgus imposed a certain dishonor on those who did not marry. For these persons were barred from viewing the gymnastic exercises, and in winter they were commanded by the magistrates to go around the marketplace in a circle, lightly clad and singing a song about bachelors to the effect that they were justly punished for disobeying the laws.…

The Spartans married by abducting their brides, who were not small and immature, but in their full bloom and ripeness. When the bride had been carried off, her so-called bridesmaid received her, cropped her hair short all around, dressed her in a man’s cloak and sandals, and laid her down on a pallet, alone in the dark. Then the groom, not drunk or even tipsy, but sober after dining as usual in the common mess, stole in, loosened her maiden girdle, raised her in his arms, and carried her to the bed. After spending very little time with her, he departed discreetly to his usual quarters, to sleep among the other young men. And so he continued to do from then on. Spending his days with his age-mates and sleeping among them, he would visit his bride cautiously and in secret, ashamed and fearful lest anyone indoors notice him. And likewise his bride would conspire with him to arrange opportune times when they could meet without being detected.… Such a sexual life not only fostered self-restraint and moderation, but brought husbands and wives to their union when their bodies were healthy and vigorous and their affections fresh and new, rather than sated or exhausted by unrestrained intercourse, and kept alive a spark of desire and mutual delight.

Having given marriage such a modest and orderly character, Lycurgus nonetheless abolished vain and womanish jealousy by making it honorable, while keeping marriage free of all promiscuity, for worthy men to share their wives for the purpose of begetting children; and he ridiculed those who consider such sharing intolerable and resort to murders and wars rather than consent to it.… For, in the first place, Lycurgus did not regard children as the property of their fathers, but rather of the commonwealth, and therefore would not have his citizens produced by random couplings, but by the best that could be arranged.²⁰

[16] It was not for the father to decide whether the child was reared. He had to carry it to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes would conduct a careful examination of the newborn. If it was sturdy and strong, they ordered the father to rear it, and allotted it one of the nine thousand parcels of land. If it was unsound and ill-shaped, they would send it away to the so-called Apothetae, a pitlike place near Mount Taygetus, in the belief that a life not endowed by nature at the outset with health and vigor was of no advantage either to the child itself or to the city. And for the same reason, the women used to bathe their newborns not with water, but with wine, as a way of testing their constitutions. For it is said that epileptic and sickly infants are thrown into convulsions by the unmixed wine²¹ and lose consciousness, while healthy ones, on the contrary, are steeled and strengthened by it.…

But Lycurgus would not entrust the children of Spartans to purchased or hired tutors,²² nor was each father permitted to rear and educate his son as he liked. Instead, as soon as the children were seven years old, Lycurgus ordered that they be taken and enrolled in companies, where they lived under the same discipline and nurture and grew accustomed to studying and playing together. The boy who excelled in judgment and warlike spirit was made captain of his company, and the others would look up to him, obey his orders, and submit to his punishments, with the result that their education was a training in obedience. The elders would observe the boys as they played, and by frequently involving them in battles and competitions, gained accurate knowledge as to which boy would endure, and which would shirk in their contests.²³

The children learned to read and write only for practical purposes.²⁴ All the rest of their education was intended to make them obey commands, endure hardship, and prevail in battle. That was why, as time went on, they increased the boys’ training, cut their hair short, and accustomed them to going barefoot and playing for the most part without clothes. After the age of twelve, they were no longer given tunics to wear, received one cloak a year, and had hard, dry bodies and little experience of bathing and unguents;²⁵ they indulged in such amenities only on certain days of the year. They slept together, in companies and bands, on beds that they collected for themselves, breaking off by hand, without an iron tool, the tops of the rushes that grew by the Eurotas.²⁶

[17] When the boys reached this age, reputable youths consorted with them as lovers.²⁷ The older men also kept an eye on them, coming more often to the gymnasia and observing their contests of strength and wit, not casually, but with the idea that all of them were in some sense the fathers, tutors, and governors of all the boys. And thus, on every occasion and in every place a boy who erred had someone to correct and chastise him. Moreover, a supervisor of their education was appointed from among the noblest citizens, and the boys themselves always chose as leaders of their bands the most prudent and warlike of the so-called eirens. (The young men who are two years past boyhood are called eirens; the senior boys are called melleirens.) Now the eiren, at twenty years of age, commands his charges in their war games, and at home makes them serve at table. He orders the stout ones to fetch wood, the smaller ones vegetables. And they fetch by stealing, some going to the orchards, others slipping into the men’s common messes very craftily and cautiously; for if a boy is caught he receives many lashes with the whip for being an inept and careless thief. The boys also steal whatever food they can and learn to be adept at taking advantage of people who are sleeping or keeping careless watch. For the boy who is caught is punished with a beating and by having to go hungry. Their meals are meager, in order that the boys may exert themselves to stave off hunger and thus be forced to become bold and intrepid.

[18] The boys took their thieving so seriously that one of them, who had stolen a fox’s whelp and was hiding it under his threadbare cloak, and whose belly was being torn by the animal’s claws and teeth, is said to have endured—and died—in order to escape detection. And one may well believe it, judging by the Spartan youths of our own day, many of whom we have seen dying under the lash at the altar of Orthia.

The eiren, reclining after supper, would order one of the boys to sing, and would ask another a question requiring a clever answer, as, for example, “Who is the noblest among our citizens?” or “What do you think of his conduct?” By this practice the boys were accustomed to judge soundly and to be interested, from an early age, in their fellow citizens. For if, when asked who was a good citizen, or who a disreputable one, the boy was at a loss to answer, the Spartans considered it the sign of a sluggish mind, and one that did not aspire to moral excellence. And the boy’s answer, which had to include a reason and a proof, also had to be expressed briefly and concisely. As punishment for an inadequate answer, the boy was bitten on the thumb by the eiren.… Lovers shared in their beloved’s reputation, for good or ill, and it is even reported that on one occasion the lover of a boy who, while fighting, let out an ignoble cry, was fined by the magistrates. Being in love with the young was so approved among them that even the most respectable women fell in love with young girls.

[19] The boys were trained to develop a speaking style in which pungency was combined with grace, and acute insights were tersely expressed.²⁸

[21] Training in song and lyric poetry was assigned as much importance as the cultivation of a speaking style that was correct and pure. And their songs had the capacity to stir the spirit and rouse impulses both enthusiastic and energetic.²⁹ … Pindar declares that the Spartans were highly musical and at the same time highly warlike;

For swordsmanship vies with exquisite harp-playing,

as their poet³⁰ has said. For just before their battles their king offered sacrifices in honor of the Muses, reminding his warriors, as it seems, of their training and their firm resolves, so that they might be ready to face the worst and perform soldierly deeds worthy of some record.

[22] In time of war, too, they also relaxed the rigor of the young men’s training, and no one hindered the soldiers from adorning their hair and attending to the good order of their weapons and cloaks, rejoicing to see them, like horses, prancing and neighing eagerly before their races. That was why, as soon as Spartans reached manhood, they let their hair grow, and would take care, especially in times of danger, that their hair appear sleek and well-parted,³¹ recalling Lycurgus’ remark about hair, that it makes the handsome appear even more distinguished, the ugly more fearsome. They trained more lightly during their campaigns, and in other respects their daily routines were less restrictive, and the young men themselves were less likely to be called to account for their conduct. And thus these were the only men for whom war itself brought a respite from the training for war. Once their phalanx³² had been drawn up and the enemy was at hand, the king sacrificed the she-goat,³³ commanded everyone to don garlands, and ordered the pipers to play the song of Castor;³⁴ then he himself began the marching paean, and it was a vision both awesome and striking when they marched onward to the rhythm of the flute, keeping their phalanx compact, their souls untroubled, and their spirits mild and merry as they moved with the music into deadly combat.

[24] The training of the Spartans continued into their mature years. For no one was permitted to live as he liked; in their city, as in a camp, they had an organized routine and civic duties, the citizens thinking that they belonged not to themselves but to their country. And if no other duty was assigned to them they spent their time looking after the children, teaching them something useful, or receiving instruction themselves from their elders. And indeed one of the noble and blessed things Lycurgus gave his fellow citizens was their abundant leisure, since they were not allowed to engage in any base manufacture whatsoever, and there was no need for moneymaking, with its toilsome amassing and busyness, since wealth no longer excited envy or honor. The helots worked their land, paying them the appointed produce.³⁵ When a Spartan visiting Athens while the courts were in session learned that a certain Athenian had been fined for idleness and was being escorted home by his dismayed friends and receiving their consolation, the Spartan asked the bystanders to point out to him who it was that had been fined for living like a free man. So slavish did the Spartans deem the lack of leisure associated with manufacture and moneymaking. Lawsuits, as it seems, completely disappeared along with coinage, since instead of greed or want, there was equality, ease, and leisure based on thrift. Whenever they were not on campaign, all their time was occupied in dancing, good cheer, feasting, and activities associated with hunting, physical exercise, and conversation.

[25] In general Lycurgus accustomed the citizens neither to desire nor even know how to live for themselves. Instead, like bees that are naturally communal and constantly swarm together around their ruler, the citizens of Sparta, practically ecstatic in their enthusiasm and public spirit, belonged wholly to their country.

[26] The elders³⁶ were at first appointed by Lycurgus himself, as has been mentioned, from among those who shared his counsels. Later he arranged for any vacancy arising from an elder’s death to be filled by the man over the age of sixty who had been judged worthiest.… The election was carried out in the following way. When an assembly was held, selected men were confined in a little room nearby. Out of sight, and unable to see, they merely heard the shout sent up by the assembled citizens. For as in other competitions, the contestants were judged by acclamation. The candidates were not introduced all together, but each man, chosen by lot, was brought in and made his way in silence through the assembly. The confined men, who had small tablets, distinguished in each instance the loudness of the shout that went up, without knowing for whom it was raised; they knew only the place in the sequence—first, second, third, and so on—of those being introduced. They publicly announced the election of the man for whom the loudest and most thunderous shout was raised. After placing a wreath upon his own head, the victor visited the temples of the gods, escorted by many young men, who congratulated and exalted him, and many women, who sang the good man’s praises and called his life blessed.

[27] And Lycurgus filled the city with good examples, whose constant presence and society necessarily exerted a formative influence on those who were walking the path of honor. That was why he did not give his permission when citizens wished to travel abroad and wander in foreign lands, where they might adopt foreign ways and imitate the lives of uneducated peoples who lived under alien forms of government. He even expelled those who streamed into the city and congregated for no useful purpose, not because he feared that they would become imitators of his constitution and learn useful lessons about virtue, as Thucydides says, but rather so that they might not become teachers of anything base. For foreign persons are necessarily accompanied by foreign ideas; and novel ideas bring novel decisions, with the result that many attitudes and points of view come into being that mar the harmony of the established political order. He therefore thought it more necessary to prevent bad habits from entering and filling the city than it was to keep out infectious diseases.

[28] The so-called secret service³⁷ of the Spartans, if it is one of Lycurgus’ political measures, … functioned as follows. From time to time the magistrates would send their brightest young men into the countryside, providing them with daggers and necessary food, but nothing else. During the day, the youths would scatter to unseen places, conceal themselves, and sleep. But at night, coming down to the roads, they would cut the throat of any helot they caught. Often they would even go into the fields and kill the strongest and most powerful of them. And Thucydides, in his Peloponnesian War,³⁸ reports that the helots whom the Spartans had judged to be conspicuously brave decked their heads with garlands to show that they had been freed, and visited the temples of the gods; but shortly afterward they all vanished—more than two thousand men—and neither then nor later could anyone say how they had been slain. And Aristotle in particular adds that the ephors, when they first entered office,³⁹ declared war on the helots, so that it might be lawful to kill them.

They treated the helots harshly and cruelly in other ways as well. After forcing them to drink too much unmixed wine, they would admit them into the common messes in order to show the young men what it was to be drunk. They would also order the helots to sing songs and dance dances that were ignoble and ridiculous, but would not allow them to perform the nobler kind.… But I presume that such instances of harshness occurred later among the Spartans, particularly after the great earthquake,⁴⁰ during which the helots and Messenians are said to have jointly attacked the Spartans, devastated the countryside, and placed the city in the gravest danger.

[29] Lycurgus convened everyone in the assembly and said that everything else was progressing fairly and adequately with regard to the city’s prosperity and virtue, but that there was one matter of great importance that he could not reveal to them until he had consulted the god. Accordingly, they must abide by the established laws and not alter or change them until he himself returned from Delphi, at which time he would do whatever the god thought best. When they had agreed to everything and urged him to set off, and he had received sworn promises from the kings, the elders, and all the other citizens that they would uphold and make use of the established constitution “until Lycurgus returned,” he departed for Delphi.

When he had arrived at the oracle and sacrificed to the god, he asked whether the laws he had established were sound, and sufficient to ensure the city’s prosperity and virtue. When the god replied that the laws were sound, and that the city would continue to be held in the highest esteem while it used the constitution of Lycurgus, he had the prophecy written down and sent to Sparta. And when he had again sacrificed to the god, and had embraced his friends and his son, he decided not to release his fellow citizens from their oath, but to freely end his life there, having reached an age when one might live longer or not, according to one’s preference, and when his family and dependents appeared to be prospering sufficiently. Accordingly, he ended his life by abstaining from food, thinking that the death of a statesman should not be a private matter; that the end of his life need not be ineffectual, but might serve as an example of virtue. For his own part, since he had brought the noblest tasks to fulfillment, the end of life would be a consummation of his happiness, while for his fellow citizens it would be a guardian of the blessings he had secured for them during his lifetime, since they had sworn to use his constitution until he returned. And his calculations did not prove false; for the city held first place in Greece for good order and renown, abiding for five hundred years by Lycurgus’ laws.

[30] When Agis was king,⁴¹ gold and silver began to flow into Sparta; and with the introduction of money, greed and a zeal for wealth prevailed thanks to Lysander,⁴² who, though not corruptible himself, filled his native land with love of wealth and luxuriousness by bringing back gold and silver from the war,⁴³ thereby undermining the laws of Lycurgus. But while these remained in effect, Sparta had the character not of a city systematically governed, but of a wise and disciplined individual; or rather, just as the poets say of Heracles that with only his club and lion’s skin he traveled the world punishing the lawless and savage tyrants, so the city of Sparta, with only a staff and threadbare cloak, ruled over a Greece ready and willing to be so ruled, deposing the unjust dynasties and tyrannies in her various states, acting as a mediator in wars, and bringing civil strife to an end, often without putting a single spear in motion, but merely by sending one ambassador, whose orders everyone instantly obeyed, just as bees, when their ruler appears, swarm to him and array themselves in order. To such a degree did the city’s good order and just dealing inspire respect.

[31] But it was not Lycurgus’ chief purpose then to leave his city in command of a great many others; he thought rather that the happiness of an entire city, like that of an individual, depends on moral excellence and inner harmony. His aim, therefore, in all his arrangements, was to make his fellow citizens free-minded, self-sufficient, and self-controlled, and keep them so for as long as possible. For Plato took this to be the purpose of Lycurgus’ form of government, as did Diogenes and Zeno and all who are praised for their treatises on these matters,⁴⁴ though these men left behind them only letters and speeches. But Lycurgus, because he produced not letters and speeches but an inimitable polity, and because he gave to those who assume that the so-called disposition to wisdom is imaginary an example of an entire city in love with wisdom, has fairly surpassed in renown all who have ever created polities among the Greeks. And that is why Aristotle says that Lycurgus obtained fewer honors than he deserved in Lacedaemon, though he enjoys the highest. For there is a shrine in his honor, and they sacrifice there every year as to a god.⁴⁵

1. This is the first of many metaphors in which Plutarch compares Lycurgus to a doctor curing a patient. Greek writers often equated social ills, in particular luxuriousness, with disease.

2. In contrast to modern nation-states, most Greek city-states did not have professional soldiers or standing armies but instead drafted ordinary citizens for limited periods of time or when a conflict required their service. Sparta was the first and, for a long time, the only Greek state to maintain what we would call career soldiers.

3. Even a divinely inspired sage such as Lycurgus, in Plutarch’s view, needed armed force behind him in order to effect dramatic social change.

4. The Greek word translated as “council of elders” is gerousia, the name of an essential organ of the Spartan government. The gerousia consisted of twenty-eight men over the age of sixty, chosen by the citizens’ assembly (see chapter 6) from a small group of noble families and serving for life. They formed both a kind of Spartan supreme court as well as a steering and governing body for the assembly. Since they had the power both to try the kings for abuses and to negate acts of the assembly, Plutarch regards them as a moderating force between the two extremes of autocracy and mob rule.

5. Continuing the medical metaphor of the previous paragraph, Plutarch speaks of the Spartan kingship as though it were an infected wound in want of cleansing.

6. The Greek term rhetra here is left untranslated because there is no good English equivalent; it signifies a law or decree given in spoken rather than written form. Wherever this rhetra originated (probably it was not in fact generated by the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, though it was in Lycurgus’ interest to make it appear so), it represents the oldest known constitutional document in the Greek world. It also contains the oldest establishment of a sovereign people’s assembly, with the power to pass motions put to it by the kings. Historians often refer to it as the Great Rhetra.

7. The “leaders” are archēgetai in Greek, one of several obscure and antiquated terms used in this rhetra. In context, it must refer to the two Spartan kings, as Plutarch clarifies below.

8. Their reigns probably fell in the early seventh century BCE, about a century after the time assumed for Lycurgus.

9. This serious limitation on the power of the assembly probably came in response to some policy error or military reverse, possibly during the Messenian wars that dominated the later part of the eighth century BCE.

11. Sparta had five ephors elected annually by the people’s assembly. The ephors served as a check on the kings, against whom they were empowered to bring charges. No one could hold the office of ephor more than once.

12. Argos and Messenia, territories neighboring Sparta, did away with their monarchies during the Archaic Age.

13. Ten minas equaled about 1,000 drachmas, or a sixth of a talent. The daily wage of a well-off Athenian in the Classical Age was about a drachma, so ten minas would be the equivalent of about three years’ decent salary.

17. See Agesilaus 26 in this volume. Agesilaus, a Spartan king of the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE, led numerous campaigns against Thebes.

18. Spartans were famous among other Greeks for being unembarrassed by nakedness; see, for example, Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1.6.

19. Republic 458d, in a description of the life of the guardians, the elite warrior class of the ideal state. Plato fashioned the upbringing and social customs of the guardians after those of the Spartans.

20. Further points on which the life of the Spartans served as a model for the guardians of Plato’s ideal state in the Republic.

21. Ancient wine was very strong and was usually mixed with water before being drunk.

22. Paidagogoi or “child minders,” usually slaves, would look after the sons of well-off citizens in other Greek cities.

23. Further points that inspired Plato when he was composing the Republic, though in that work’s scheme, children are examined by judges at a much younger age, to determine which belong to the silver class and which to the bronze.

24. Presumably the main purpose a Spartan would have for letters was to send and receive military orders.

27. Xenophon, who himself spent much time in Sparta and had his two sons educated there, contradicts Plutarch on this point, claiming that Lycurgus banned all homosexuality among males and made it equivalent to incest. But Xenophon also admits that few Greeks of his time believed this (Constitution of the Spartans 2.12–14).

28. Numerous anecdotes attest to the Spartan dislike of excess verbiage; see, for example, Herodotus, Histories 3.46. Today the English adjective “laconic,” based on the place-name Laconia (the region around Sparta), refers to this quality.

29. The verses of Tyrtaeus and Alcman, the best-preserved Spartan poets, deal principally with martial themes.

31. See Herodotus 7.208, the episode of the last stand of the Spartan 300, for a famous instance.

32. The phalanx was the standard formation of Greek infantry warfare throughout the Archaic and Classical Ages. Armed warriors, called hoplites, formed a cohesive unit by standing together in rows and files. In this way they could lock shields together to form a nearly impenetrable barrier against the enemy.

34. Castor and Pollux, twins also known as the Dioscuri, were thought to be native Spartan deities.

35. An important point, though it is raised for the first time only here. The helots were Greeks from the province of Messenia, an agriculturally rich territory adjoining that of the Spartans. After the Spartans conquered the Messenians in a series of wars, they reduced the native population to the status of forced agricultural labor. The helots raised food on their own land but were required to donate most of their produce to the Spartan state. Only in this way was the Spartan military system, which required full-time training and drill of male citizens, able to function.

40. In 464 BCE much of Sparta was destroyed by an earthquake, and the helots used the opportunity to launch a revolt; see Cimon 16 in this volume, and Thucydides 1.101–2.

41. The end of the fifth century BCE, the era in which Sparta had to rely on Persian funds to build and staff a navy for its war against Athens.

44. All three of these philosophers wrote treatises describing the ideal composition of a Greek city-state. Diogenes and Zeno both lived slightly later than Plato, in the late fourth century BCE; Diogenes belonged to the Cynic school of philosophy, whereas Zeno is considered the founder of Stoicism.