For the conference which gave rise to this volume I was asked to discuss ‘the development of Sparta’s distinctive institutions to the end of the sixth century’.1 The organisers’ suitably laconic formulation forms a good starting-point for discussion, since it prompts some fundamental questions which might threaten to subvert any discussion of Archaic Sparta. First of all, do we have reliable information about the substance of Archaic Spartan institutions, let alone their development, in the period before c. 500? Secondly, were Sparta’s society and institutions really distinctive compared with those of other poleis, or is that just part of the Spartan myth? And, thirdly, even if there was some significant divergence, did it take place in the Archaic period, or only later in response to the very different challenges of the fifth century?
There have of course been studies which have tried to reconstruct the exact course of early Spartan history, relying upon late sources such as the pseudo-historical survey in Pausanias’ Guide to Greece (Books 3 and 4).2 Such approaches were rightly and roundly condemned over thirty years ago in Chester Starr’s important article on ‘The Credibility of Early Spartan History’, with its ringing comment, ‘We are, I fear, sometimes in danger of becoming Hellenistic rumor-mongering historians’.3 But even Starr’s scepticism appears insufficient for certain more recent scholars, especially with regard to the Classical sources. This issue is important because, apart from certain exceptional items of evidence from the Archaic period itself, we are dependent upon Classical writers for our earliest detailed notions of the nature of Spartan society. Starr expressed his doubts about the evidence of Classical writers concerning Spartan history. But he was more sanguine about the relevance of their accounts of contemporary Spartan society to understanding her Archaic past, on grounds of their access to ‘information from the living structure of Spartan life and government which had been formed in earlier days’.4
This view, however, has recently come under increasing challenge on two basic grounds. The first concerns the well-known phenomenon of the Spartan mirage, that ‘compound of distorted reality and sheer imaginative fiction’, created from the fifth century onwards by non-Spartans of various (not always compatible) persuasions as support for their political or philosophical views of their own societies.5 Oswyn Murray has recently put the ancient historian’s problem in a succinct, if perhaps extreme, form:
The Spartan system is known to us only in mythic form and from the outside: it is portrayed by a succession of non-(Spartan observers as an ideal construct, heavily contaminated with the typical anthropological failings, of emphasis upon its otherness, its difference from the norm, and of its conformity to a system; there are basic problems in the observer status of everything we think we know about Sparta. As a consequence, we cannot date or follow the development of the Spartan progress towards a distinctive politeia or socio-political system.6
Several of these ideal constructs were, as I have recently argued, both aided and abetted by the Spartans themselves through their range of official and personal contacts with Greeks from other poleis.7 And this brings us to the second main ground for scepticism about the relevance of Classical evidence to Archaic Spartan society: the Spartans’ own invention of their past, a phenomenon highlighted in a forthcoming article by Michael Flower.8 Flower argues that on a number of occasions in Spartan history supposedly ancient socio-political practices, attributed to the lawgiver Lykourgos, were quite simply invented for contemporary political purposes.
The most systematic invention of an entire new matrix of Lykourgan customs, that of Kings Agis and Kleomenes in the late third century, does not of course affect the validity of the Classical sources, although it does affect the authenticity of information in later sources which has often been regarded as descriptive of Archaic and Classical institutions.9 The invention of the Spartan past was, however, by no means restricted to the Hellenistic period. In the aftermath of the hotly contested debate in 404, when it was decided to admit the large amount of foreign currency acquired by Lysander into the polis for public use but to prohibit private ownership upon pain of death (Plut. Lys. 17.1–4), we can detect the emergence of two competing invented traditions. The first, reflecting the views of the dominant circle around King Agesilaos, associated the newly-established status quo with the unchanged laws of Lykourgos. The other, fiercely critical of the decision to admit the currency at all, claimed that Lykourgos had originally prohibited both private and public use of foreign coinage; this latter tradition seems to have originated in the pamphlet written by the exiled former king, Pausanias, the opponent of both Lysander and Agesilaos.10 Notwithstanding their powerful influence upon subsequent historiography, it should be stressed that both traditions were pure inventions, since it is clear that, in reality, foreign currency had long been in circulation in both private and public hands in the years before 404.11 Nor was this the only example of a influential invented tradition which originated in this period. The tradition that the ephorate was not an original institution of Lykourgos, but a subsequent creation of King Theopompos, was almost certainly another invention by Pausanias (cf. Arist. Pol. 5.1301b19–21), and one which quickly found its way into the works of both Plato and Aristotle.12
The period of Spartan imperialism in the early fourth century was clearly an era of considerable conflict and transformation when invention of the past was especially likely to flourish. But controversy and change were hardly new factors in Spartan society, and there is every reason to consider the role of invented tradition in earlier periods. Flower asks,
Can we be sure that such typically Spartan customs as the expulsion of foreigners, the bans on manual crafts and foreign travel, wife-sharing, the civil disabilities for not marrying, the annual declaration of war against the helots and the krypteia, really predate the fifth century?
He suggests that each of these practices may have originated as responses to novel conditions of the Classical period, but soon became portrayed as elements of the original Lykourgan politeia. The disruptive effect of Flower’s critique is potentially considerable. As he claims,
if the Spartans engaged in the invention of tradition as often and as profoundly as…suggested, then it is impossible for us to write a history of Spartan institutions which combines evidence from authors who lived in different centuries… because Spartan society was continually in a state of flux and was continually being reinvented. The only kind of Spartan history that one can write is one which traces the stages of development which Sparta went through.
Where does this dual challenge leave the project of analysing the development of Archaic Spartan institutions? Clearly, we must be aware of the possibility, even the likelihood, that information in Classical and later sources may not reflect the situation in the period before 500. Indeed, since much of our source material derives, either directly or ultimately, from periods of great social transformation—from the late fifth and early fourth centuries and from the ‘third-century revolution’—it is to be expected that these sources should reflect significant changes in discourse about Spartan affairs. It would, consequently, hardly be surprising if presentations of ‘ancient’ Spartan institutions differed from the reality of Archaic Sparta. It is clear, therefore, that information in the Classical sources cannot be treated as representing the outcome of some kind of uniform, linear development of Spartan society through the Archaic period. Indeed, since (to anticipate my arguments below) there is no reason to believe that the institutional development of Archaic Sparta somehow proceeded any less episodically, any less in terms of responses to novel situations, than it did in later periods, we should expect even our earliest sources to be subject to the same considerations.13 This can be seen even in the evidence of Herodotus, whom Starr wanted to view as a near-pristine source of evidence for early Sparta, but whose writings clearly reflect the crystallisation of several ‘traditional’ Spartan values in the context of her reaction to the threat from Persia.14 Our problem is that without detailed evidence for most of the Archaic period we cannot chart the process and timing of the introduction of particular traditions and practices in the way we sometimes can in later times.
Yet the dual challenge of the Spartan mirage and of the invention of tradition need not be regarded as a counsel of despair concerning our capacity to perceive the institutional character of Archaic Sparta. It is important here to make a distinction between the structure of the Spartan system and particular institutions and practices through which it was articulated. Flower has suggested that many of what we regard as typically Spartan practices may have been introduced at a comparatively late stage; but that does not mean that we need view the system in its essentials as a creation of the fifth century. For example, even if it is true that the annual declaration of war and the krypteia were new measures reflecting an unprecedented level of mistrust of the helots following the revolt of 464, that does not undermine the idea that Spartan citizen life had been economically reliant on the exploitation of the helots since at least the seventh century. Similarly, even if the Spartiates were not formally prohibited from engagement in manual crafts in Archaic times, as Cartledge has argued,15 no-one would seriously doubt that their economic support came essentially from their landholdings or that the lives of the overwhelming majority of citizens were devoted principally to civic and military concerns.
A similar conclusion is in fact drawn by Murray, who, despite his doubts about observer status, does not doubt that we can identify the essential structures of the Spartan system or that we can assign the creation of those structures to the Archaic period. Moreover, although detailed institutional changes were undoubtedly made later in response to novel circumstances, what is notable, as he points out, is that the outcome was not dissonance with the existing structures, but an increasing perfection of the original system. Spartan society, in fact, fulfils precisely the conditions of rationality which Murray himself sets out:
If we can detect an increasing degree of coherence in a society through its reforms, and if the principles governing the social system become clearer through change, then we may say that the society itself displays a high degree of rationality, not merely in the sense of internal coherence, but also in the sense of a self-conscious recognition of the reasons for change and the consequences of institutional reform.16
New introductions of varying dates could all plausibly be attributed, alongside older structures, to the work of Lykourgos, precisely because they shared a common underlying rationality. Hence the fact that Spartan society in the Classical sources increasingly takes on the appearance of an ‘ideal type’.
In this sense, the challenge of the invention of tradition brings us, paradoxically, back to a position not too far from Starr’s, since Sparta’s Classical institutions, even if developed considerably in the fifth century, can be argued to inform us, through the element of common rationality, about the trends inherent in Archaic developments. One might even argue that the conscious search for occasions when the Spartans were impelled to invent new traditions in Classical times could be employed as a positive tool to define the scope and limits of changes in the Archaic period. So, although a systematic account of Archaic Spartan society is clearly impossible, we can, I would suggest, plausibly discuss the overall trends and character of her institutional development. It is these general aspects which I shall address in the rest of this chapter, focusing especially upon issues which have been the subject of recent debate.
I made the distinction earlier between the structure of the Spartan system and the particular institutions and practices through which it was articulated; and it is with the underlying structure that we need to start. I should make clear my opinion that, although several key elements of this structure undoubtedly emerged during the seventh and sixth centuries, profitable discussion of the precise circumstances of their emergence is precluded— at least within the restricted span of this chapter— by our chronic state of uncertainty over the exact chronology, and sometimes even the sequence, of the most basic events in early Spartan history. Similarly, the precise import of the ephorate of Chilon in the mid sixth century seems equally uncertain, despite several scholarly efforts to establish its significance as a period of internal change.17 Hence I shall concentrate instead on the principles behind the emergence of the structure. This structure consisted of four fundamental aspects. First, a military system according to which full citizenship was extended to all adult male members of the community. That citizenship entailed membership of a guild of full-time hoplite warriors who, as a condition of membership, practised daily commensality in a number of mess groups. Secondly, an economic system which (originally, at least) provided each citizen with a minimum amount of land and an accompanying helot labour force to enable him to fulfil his compulsory mess contributions and devote himself fully to civic and military duties. Thirdly, a political system, promulgated in the so-called Great Rhetra (Plut. Lyk. 6), which gave the mass of citizens in assembly a formal role in decision-making, whilst retaining considerable influence in the hands of the kings and Gerousia. And, finally, a social and ritual system which marked out from birth to the grave the common, public way of life which every non-royal citizen was to lead.
These different elements may have had different origins and timetables of development, but they shared some essential common features. Each was created through the transformation of existing institutions. Warrior groups, male commensality and the exploitation of helot labour all predated their extension to the whole community, just as the kingships, Gerousia and assembly were already in existence before the promulgation of the Great Rhetra. Each element, moreover, was the product of conscious design. This is obvious in the case of the Great Rhetra; but it is equally true of the military and economic systems. The move to incorporate all Spartans within the warrior elite, and by implication to provide the poorer among them with sufficient landholdings, must have been a conscious decision. And, although the social and ritual system was clearly not created in its entirety at a single stroke and continued to be developed over the centuries, the act of combining age classes and other elements into a compulsory way of life could not have taken place without clear-sighted planning. The poetry of Tyrtaios also attests an explicit attempt to propound a new ethic which (in fr. 12 West) relates excellence in the phalanx to the life of the community and its common good.
The element of design should not, however, obscure the fact that these changes were conceived in a context of conflict. According to Aristotle, the contemporary evidence of Tyrtaios’ poem Eunomia gave evidence that ‘some people were so hard pressed by the war that they demanded a redistribution of land’ (Pol. 5.1306b37–1307a2); and, for what it is worth, the idea of conflict is also present in fifth-century sources. Herodotus (1.65) locates the transformation of Spartan institutions in a period of kakonomia; and Thucydides (1.18) refers to it as ‘the longest known period of faction’. One corollary is that, since the changes proceeded, as far as we know, by agreement rather than by revolution, they must have entailed compromises by which the changes were limited. We can see this in the Great Rhetra through which the Gerousia and kings retained important powers. We can see it, above all, in the provisions for property ownership and land tenure. Poorer Spartiates may have been given a sufficient minimum of land, but there was no general redistribution. Wealthy citizens retained their large estates, and the character of landholding retained the typical Greek pattern of private tenure and partible inheritance.18 Compromise is also evident at the cultural level. The poems of Alkman around the end of the seventh century have often been interpreted as evidence for the development of a cultured, ‘aristocratic’ way of life.19 The great increase in numbers of dedications of cheaper, popular artefacts (such as the lead figurines) at Spartan sanctuaries during the late seventh and early sixth centuries did not lead to any appreciable decline in the quality and quantity of more expensive dedications.20 These signs of compromise tie in with our earlier observation that Spartan society in general attained increasingly higher levels of overall coherence with the further changes made in succeeding centuries. But in some spheres major anomalies remained throughout: the sphere of land tenure was not subjected to the forces of rationality and brought under direct state control with equal, inalienable kleroi until the late third century. Throughout the Archaic and Classical periods the anomaly of private landholdings worked by state-controlled helots remained firmly entrenched.
These observations lead on to the question of the relationship between the institutions characteristic of Sparta’s new social system and what are claimed to be comparable earlier institutions. This question has long been an area of considerable controversy, since there has always been a strong trend to regard Sparta’s historical institutions in terms of ‘survivals’ from earlier periods, as somehow more ‘primitive’ or ‘archaic’ and less the product of change than the institutions of other poleis. In my opinion, this approach should be firmly resisted.
First, there is the issue of the age classes. Robert Sallares has recently argued that the character of the Greek poleis was strongly influenced by their development out of what he sees as the age class societies of early Greece.21 In Sparta, he argues, the influence was particularly strong, with practices such as wife-sharing and the penalties against bachelorhood originating not in Classical times owing to problems of manpower shortage, but much earlier as part of the exigencies of an age class society. Wife-sharing, he claims, originated as the collective claim of access which unmarried young men had to the wives of their age mates; penalties against bachelors as part of the peer pressure on those unmarried to acquire wives of their own. I find this most improbable, even if we were to grant, for argument’s sake, that early Sparta had once been a genuine age class society,22 in that it ignores the difference between social pressure and the state-imposed penalties of Classical times. Moreover, unless we are to believe that these age class practices somehow lingered on, devoid of their original context, the implication must be that the age class system remained so influential within the new social structures of Archaic Sparta as to maintain the original rationale behind these practices. In reality, however, the very form of her historical age class organisation was the product of the remodelling of Spartan society. Whereas true age class systems typically operate in acephalous societies in which the age classes themselves act as self-regulating entities which set their own behavioural norms,23 every aspect of Sparta’s Classical age classes was determined by the sovereign polis. Indeed, age was given a strictly limited role as a principle of organisation, being mainly operative only during a Spartiate’s youth and during adulthood becoming attenuated to the point of insignificance and superseded by other, competing principles of organisation embodied in the messes and the army.24 Rather than a case of the surviving impact of an age class society, this seems to be a matter of informal age groupings being institutionalised by the polis as just one of several cohesive principles of organisation.
A similar case in point is the institution of pederasty. A number of scholars have argued that the practice of pederasty in Archaic Greece reflected its origins in a system of initiation procedures which were part of the Indo-European inheritance of prehistoric Greece and which involved the insemination of a youth by his adult lover.25 On this view, whilst initiation procedures lapsed in most Greek states in historical times, in Sparta the connection between pederasty and initiation remained strong in the context of the upbringing, within which pederasty was given an institutionalised role. The local Spartan term for the elder lover, eispnelas (Theokritos, 12.13; Kallimachos, fr. 68.1), is interpreted, following a passage of Aelian,26 as meaning someone who breathed into his beloved, a practice regarded as analogous to insemination. There are two main problems with this view.27 First, there is of course no hard evidence for early Greek initiation procedures involving pederastic insemination. Indeed, the overt practice of pederasty is not definitely attested in Archaic Greece until the end of the seventh century, being absent from both Homer and Archilochos. From seventh-century Sparta, some lines of Tyrtaios (fr. 10.27–30), concerning the attractive qualities of a youth, ignore pederastic desire to focus on his desirability to women. There is a strong case to be made that overt male pederasty was a development of the years around 600 in parallel with the rise of the sexually exclusive phenomena of the athletic agon, the gymnasion, palaistra and symposion.28 In Sparta itself there are indications of the connection between pederasty and the symposion in the poetry of Alkman (fr. 17 Page).29 Secondly, the local Spartan terminology and the critical passage of Aelian have recently been reinterpreted as signifying that, far from breathing into his beloved, the eispnelas was regarded as someone who himself inhaled inspiration generated by the beauty of his beloved and the eros which it aroused.30 The notion that historical Spartan pederasty derived from early initiation rituals therefore collapses on all sides. There can be little doubt that by the Classical period pederasty was institutionalised within the upbringing.31 But the probability is that its institutionalisation was a work of the late Archaic or early Classical period, a typical example of the way in which the Spartans systematised contemporary Greek practices for the purpose of state control.
A comparable transformation of a contemporary Archaic institution can be seen with the common messes, the syssitia, although again this has been somewhat obscured in recent scholarship. Oswyn Murray has argued that the historical practice of male commensality had its origins in the feasts of warrior groups, or Männerbunde, evident in the Homeric epics. Following the hoplite reform, the warrior group was in most poleis transformed into an aristocratic leisure group, and its feasts into the symposion, or drinking party. Drawing upon Murray’s views, Jan Bremmer has argued that, whereas the symposion is the successor of the common meal of the Archaic warrior clubs, ‘we can still observe these meals as a living institution in Doric Sparta and Crete’.32 This view seems to be misguided. For a start, it has recently been shown that the participants in Homeric feasts do not constitute a warrior group or Männerbund. Most warriors were tied to their leaders by bonds other than mutual hospitality; the claimed connection between feasting and military organisation is tenuous. If it is true that in historical Sparta syssitia and army structure were closely linked, this is not an extension of Homeric practice but ‘the introduction of an entirely new way of structuring military organization’. As a leisure pursuit which created a social, not a military, group, the Homeric feast stood closer to the symposion than to the Spartan syssition.33
Secondly, the implication that Sparta moved directly from Homeric feast to Classical syssition, never experiencing the symposia of other poleis, is clearly mistaken. Here it is important to remember, as Mario Lombardo has demonstrated, that neither in the Homeric epics nor in historical times was there ever a single, archetypal mode of commensality, but rather a variety of practices operating in different contexts.34 Massimo Nafissi has recently noted a similar variety of convivial customs in early Archaic Sparta.35 Fragments of poems by Alkman, in particular, provide both the earliest literary description of the physical scene of a symposion (fr. 19) and indications of one type of shared meal (fr. 17) in which one person acts as host, in complete contrast to the Classical syssition. A relict of such personal hospitality remained evident in Classical times in Herodotus’ list of the traditional privileges (gerea) of the kings, which refers to the double portion they received at private dinners (Her. 6.57). The evidence then supports the view expressed by Ewen Bowie that ‘Sparta will have had symposia comparable to those in other Greek states’ and that it was these which ‘will have been refashioned into messes of homoioi in the 6th cent.’ [sic].36 The syssition, indeed, shows clear signs of sympotic influence, being both taken in the reclining position and divided into two parts, like the symposion.37 Bowie, moreover, makes a case for the continuation of a sympotic tradition at Sparta, in order to explain the survival of Tyrtaian elegy down to the late fourth century, when evidence attests sympotic-style, competitive individual singing of his poems in the royal syssition on campaign (Philochoros, FGrH 328 F 216; Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 107). Despite these continuing influences, one must nevertheless emphasise the radical nature of the transformation involved in the extension of the messes to the entire citizen body, their relocation to the public space of the Hyakinthian Way and the linkage of compulsory, monthly contributions to the retention of citizenship, each a reflection of the extension of state control over the sphere of male commensality.
Transformation can also be seen in other spheres, for example, in the krypteia. The common view that it was originally a typical initiatory rite de passage in which young men were sent temporarily into the wilderness, if correct, simply points up the extent of its historical transformation. By the fourth century, as Edmond Lévy has recently shown, it had bifurcated into two separate (though possibly sequential) institutions: a longer period of furtive hiding and endurance, which may not have been undertaken by all youths; and a shorter, commando-style operation against the helots conducted by only a select elite.38 Similarly, the supposed conservatism of the Lakonian dialect, previously regarded as a ‘fossil survival of the ancient Doric dialectal basis’ consequent upon the region’s isolation, has recently been reinterpreted as the product of conscious policy involving the deliberate retention of archaisms (combined with a few unusual innovations) to affirm Lakonian distinctiveness and Sparta’s true Dorian identity.39
Transformation is even evident in the case of the dual kingship, whose hereditary holders would be expected to guard their privileges jealously. In his classic article Finley expressed his disagreement with the general tendency to view the kings’ powers as survivals from Homeric times, asserting the hypothesis that they were rather the product of Archaic developments.40 More recently, Pierre Carlier’s detailed study suggests that Finley somewhat overstated his case: the official list of the privileges of the Spartan kings (Her. 6.56–8) displays such exact parallels in vocabulary and content with those of Homeric kings as to denote the inheritance of past privileges.41 Carlier nevertheless agrees with the thrust of Finley’s argument that the function and role of Homeric and Spartan kings were so different that to talk of ‘survival’ is insufficient; and his study reveals many respects in which royal powers were greatly reduced, sometimes under the smokescreen of the official list of privileges whose ambiguous formulation could conceal major changes of substance. One related change was the dramatic rise of the ephorate, which either did not exist or did not rank a mention at the time of the Great Rhetra, but which figures prominently from the mid sixth century.42
Archaic Spartan society then was far from static. It was changing fast, partly under its own internal dynamic, partly in line with contemporary changes elsewhere. This leads us to the question broached earlier: how distinctive was Archaic Spartan society? In answering this question, we must recognise that every polis varied from its neighbours in certain respects, without necessarily being qualitatively different in nature. Certainly, in some respects Sparta was singular, especially at the level of inter-state relations. At its creation in the later sixth century the Peloponnesian League was a unique phenomenon, the first hegemonic, multi-state, political organisation in Greek history. Its success and part of its rationale— namely, Sparta’s guarantee of support for oligarchic regimes—depended on two distinctive features of her society: her unusual capacity to avoid tyranny and her unique, full-time hoplite citizen body. Sparta’s leadership of the League, however, also highlights both the common ideological commitments she shared with other poleis and the relationships of xenia between leading Spartiates and their oligarchic friends which underpinned them.43 Whatever effect internal changes had upon the lifestyle of leading Spartiates at home, there was no detectable impact upon their social relations abroad. Recent research has demonstrated that leading Spartiates played as prominent a part in relations of xenia as did other Greeks.44 In the late Archaic and early Classical periods the personal relationships which underlay Sparta’s expedition against Samos, the range of poleis whose intimate links engendered fictitious claims to be Spartan colonies, and the number of ‘special relationships’ between states whose common denominator is a close connection with Sparta,45 show that leading Spartiates stood at the centre of a network of xeniai which gives a real meaning to Irad Malkin’s recent phrase, ‘the Spartan Mediterranean’.46
An important aspect of this interaction of elites was their participation in agonistic competition. Here there are signs of Spartan idiosyncrasy which can be related to her concern with military training: the unusual prominence of team games and, within individual athletic contests, an especial concentration on wrestling and the stade race.47 But extant victory dedications at Spartan sanctuaries attest participation in a wide range of standard athletic events.48 There is even some evidence for participation in boxing and the pankration. Although there was clearly some stigma attached to these events, their supposed official prohibition is now seen as an exaggerated claim of later sources.49 There is, it is true, the problematic decline of Spartiate athletic victories at Olympia in the later sixth century.50 It is sometimes suggested that the Spartan authorities adopted a hostile attitude towards athletic competition abroad; but this does not square with the privilege given to Olympic victors of fighting in the kings’ bodyguard (Plut. Lyk. 22A; Quaest. Conv. 2.639e). Scholars have often dismissed the decline as a by-product of a lifestyle concentrating upon military skills and general fitness rather than the specialized training required in an age of increasing professionalism.51 Nafissi has recently argued for a strong element of conscious policy behind the avoidance of professionalism. But, even on this reading, the prioritisation of civic and military achievements is not unparalleled elsewhere in Greek thought, and before long Sparta reverted to a more traditional stance whereby Panhellenic victories brought honour to the polis.52 In the early fifth century the Spartans commemorated the achievements of several earlier Olympic victors through the erection of public monuments and official approbation of athletic activity at home is demonstrated by the public display and preservation of local victor lists. Similarly, Spartan attitudes to chariot racing do not seem greatly different from those of other poleis. The Olympic victories of Euagoras and of King Damaratos during the sixth century provide evidence of Spartiate involvement at the highest level. Euagoras, at least, celebrated his victory with a victory monument at Olympia. Chariot victories and monuments, of course, continued throughout the fifth century.54 It was only in the early fourth century that King Agesilaos, fearful of a rival source of prestige, tried to discredit chariot racing and the making of personal statues as inappropriate to Spartan values (Xen. Ages. 9.6; 11.7). The sphere of the agon, then, is also one in which we can detect some variation of approach, but not one which was qualitatively different from the practices of other poleis.
A similar situation is evident in the sphere of material culture.55 Earlier this century the British excavators of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, impressed by the contrast between literary images of an austere Sparta and the wealth of artefacts found at pre-Classical levels, wrote of a ‘complete abandonment of artistic development’ in the second half of the sixth century. In their view, the decline of artistic production was to be associated with the growth of the austere, closed society of the Classical period depicted in the literary sources; and they ascribed it to a carefully considered act of state policy, attributed to the ephor Chilon.56 Few students would now accept this thesis in its simplest form. The theory of a sudden cultural break has now generally been abandoned as distinctions have been drawn between the varying timetables of the decline of different types of artefact.57 Cook, moreover, has pointed out the basic difficulty that, for the most part, the Spartiates themselves were not directly responsible for the artistic production whose decline is used as the index of their social and economic arrangements.58 What we are dealing with is not ‘Spartan art’—as the excavators tended to call it—but Lakonian art, produced at workshops at various places within the region.59 Nevertheless, several recent discussions continue to support the idea of a singular, if gradual, decay of Lakonian art resulting from a decline in patronage associated with a progressive transformation of Spartan society into a unique barrack-like culture.60
There are problems, however, with this hypothesis. Some of the most important forms of production (for example, the black-figure pottery and large bronze vessels, both of which died out in the years between c. 530 and c. 515) are mainly found abroad and their decline seems unlikely to have been significantly affected by a decay in patronage from a minority clientele inside Lakonia.61 The decline of Lakonian black-figure pottery is hardly a unique phenomenon, but parallels the fate of Corinthian painted pottery which similarly declined at a slightly earlier period under the effect of Attic competition.62 It is notable that these export-orientated products largely declined before those more geared to local consumption. One of the products most patronised by the Spartiates themselves, the bronze statuettes (see Table 8.1), reached a peak in the later sixth century; and, even during the early fifth century, they continued at a higher level of production than a century earlier, at a time when several other centres of manufacture seem to have been in decline.63
Another approach is to consider statistical patterns of dedications at Spartan sanctuaries in comparison with sanctuaries elsewhere. Table 8.2 presents the figures for published bronzes from Spartan sanctuaries between c. 650 and c. 350. The current state of the published evidence is clearly unsatisfactory, owing to the inadequate specification of numbers of finds in the excavation reports and the large number of items only vaguely dated or completely undated. Although the present figures, such as they are, suggest an overall decline in dedications during the late Archaic and early Classical periods, they provide little support for the idea of a general increase in austerity. The figures suggest divergent trends between different Spartan sanctuaries, with dedications on the Acropolis actually increasing in the later sixth century and continuing strongly into the early fifth. Fifth-century bronze votives at Spartan sanctuaries, indeed, show a greater openness to outside influences, several of them being imports or local imitationsof foreign work, thus contradicting the frequently expressed view that the growth of austerity in this period is proven by the cessation of imports and of foreign influences.64 There is, moreover, no reason to think that Spartan dedication patterns were particularly unusual. Drawing upon evidence from a range of Greek sanctuaries, Anthony Snodgrass has shown that the years around 500 witnessed major changes in the nature and role of votive offerings, involving a general decrease in surviving dedications.65 The detailed changes in types of votive offerings which lie behind the global Spartan statistics in Table 8.2 — namely, a decline in jewellery offerings and in bronze vessels after c. 550, but an increased level of votive statuettes until c. 450—are broadly in line with the situation at other Greek sanctuaries.66 Although it would be unwise to deny that there are any distinctive features in the character of bronze dedications at Spartan sanctuaries, in general Spartan developments reflect and exemplify those taking place within the wider Greek world.
Table 8.1 Datable numbers of Lakonian bronze statuettes
Table 8.2 Published bronze finds at Spartan sanctuaries, c. 650–c. 350
This conclusion concerning votive expenditures may be extended to the general role of wealth within Spartan society. Once again there are respects in which Sparta was different from many poleis. The underlying socio-economic arrangements of Archaic Sparta were such as to limit or exclude opportunities for certain uses of wealth common in other poleis. One thinks particularly of practices like the performance of liturgies, the private provision of public facilities—such as Kimon’s reconstruction of the Academy (Plut. Kim. 13)—or the deployment of material patronage towards poorer citizens (who in Sparta were, originally, at least, provided with sufficient economic resources). Sparta was also somewhat unusual, though not unique, in not producing her own coinage. However, the celebrated image of Sparta as a state in which wealth was of little use, with equal, publicly controlled kleroi and a prohibition of foreign coinage, was, as I have argued elsewhere, a construct of much later periods.67 Even in fifth-century sources, images of the general role of wealth show few differences from other poleis. In Herodotus’ Histories Spartans exchange gifts, cheat each other in the agora, and receive both bribes and distributions of booty in the same way as other Greeks.68
As Finley has noted, most Spartan institutions were in themselves far from rare within the Greek world.69 This applies even to the phenomenon of helotage, which scholars have often wanted to see as the unique driving force explaining her supposedly unique society.70 The ascription of Sparta’s transformation solely to the helot problem is too extreme. The communal enslavement of a native population was not unique to Sparta;71 and, although the helots were unusual in being Greek and were perhaps particularly numerous, they had no monopoly on attempts at liberation, as we know from examples of the Kyllyrioi at Syracuse and Penestai in Thessaly (Her. 7.155; Xen. Hell. 2.3.36). There was nothing inherent in the helot problem which demanded the radical transformation of Spartan society, had it not also been desirable in its own right, as a response to internal conflicts.72 The extension of full citizenship and economic security to the entire community as a means of establishing internal solidarity, with all that followed in the growth of a common, public disciplined lifestyle, was no doubt influenced by the helot problem; but it was nevertheless a logical, if extreme, development within the terms of Greek values. For the Spartans, in Redfield’s words, ‘their system was acceptable to them, was tried and proved habitable’.73
I end with the one institution which even Finley regarded as unique, as the pivotal mechanism which linked Sparta’s institutions into a singular structure: the agoge. Like several other institutions, the agoge of Classical Sparta has often been seen as an amalgam of primitive customs and rituals whose purpose could be illuminated by anthropological evidence of the fossilised cultures of African tribal systems.74 It was partly in reaction to this survivalist approach that Finley expressed his contrary view that
of all the elements in Sparta the agoge is the one of which it is most impossible to find traces in our earliest Greek records or traditions…. Therefore, I am driven to the inference that…the [Classical] agoge was a late invention, however old some of the initiation rites and other external aspects of it may have been.75
The latest research suggests that even Finley’s approach exaggerates the antiquity and singularity of the rituals of the Classical Spartan upbringing. As Nigel Kennell has convincingly shown, the Spartan agoge, as traditionally understood, was in fact a post-Classical creation.76 The term agoge is never used of the Classical upbringing (Xenophon uses the general Greek word, paideia: e.g. Lak. Pol. 2.1), appearing only in the third century. This is no mere matter of terminology: the upbringing had no specialised name in Classical times because it was not a discrete institution, but an integral part of the entire Spartiate way of life. Only when that way of life fell into decay did the upbringing come to be seen as a separate institution and acquire a distinct name. As such, it was regarded in the Hellenistic and later periods as synonymous with the ‘ancient traditions’ of Sparta, and was ‘revived’ and recreated both by Kleomenes III and in Roman times in line with contemporary inventions of the Classical Spartan past. Most of the post-Classical evidence, including much in Plutarch’s Lykourgos, therefore bears no relation to the Archaic or Classical upbringing. Most of the supposedly primitive ritual elements described by these late sources were recent inventions. This conclusion matches the latest findings of Africanist anthropology that the supposedly fossilised tribal customs so often treated as primitive comparisons were in reality modern constructions of societies asserting their cultural identities in the face of Western colonialism and modernisation. Kennell argues that the historical Spartan upbringing was first created in the early sixth century, contemporaneously with the remodelling of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, as part of the transformation of the Spartiate way of life. But he agrees that, since our earliest substantial source is Xenophon (Lak. Pol. 2–4) in the early fourth century, ‘it is impossible to use the extant evidence as a basis for reconstructing Spartan educational rituals in the Archaic period, since changing historical circumstances must inevitably have had their impact on the system well before Xenophon’s time’.77 Xenophon’s evidence must even be treated with caution concerning the upbringing of his own day, since his claim for its supposed uniqueness is overdone. The general stages of the Classical upbringing, its commencement at age 7, the liminal status it gave to the hebontes in their twenties and even its cycle of rituals were not too dissimilar from practices in other poleis. What was distinctive was the direct control exercised by the state and the collective identity of the youth which resulted from the institutionalisation of educational practices which remained voluntaristic in other states.
The upbringing then, far from being an exceptional institution, fits neatly into the pattern of Spartan society observed throughout this chapter: a society distinctive in the pervasiveness of its collectivity and in the application of state control over institutions and practices which were, in other respects, not qualitatively different from those of other Greek states; a society which we may view as standing at one end of the spectrum of Greek poleis, somewhat extreme, perhaps—but no more so than democratic Athens standing equally firmly at the other extremity. This society and its historical institutions were the product not of conservatism or of primitive survivals, but of continual change and adaptation throughout the Archaic period in response to new historical circumstances. The very problems we encounter in our attempt to detect the character of Archaic Spartan institutions and to trace their development are the clearest testimony of all to the ongoing transformations which characterised both Spartan society and the invented images of its past.
1 Much of the research incorporated in this paper was undertaken during my tenure of a Nuffield Foundation Social Science Research Fellowship in 1993/4.
2 For example, Huxley, Early Sparta.
3 C.G.Starr, Historia 14 (1965), 257–72 at 258–60.
4 Ibid., 263.
5 Quotation from Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, 416. The basic studies of the ‘mirage’ are Oilier, Le Mirage spartiate; Tigerstedt, The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity.
6 O.Murray, in Murray and Price (eds) The Greek City, 1–25 at 9.
7 Hodkinson, in Powell and Hodkinson (eds) The Shadow of Sparta, 183–222 at 211–16.
8 M.A.Flower, ‘The Invention of Tradition in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta’, a paper originally given at the University of Liverpool in May 1994: I am grateful to the author for permission to cite his paper in advance of publication. The term ‘invention of tradition’ is borrowed from Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition; but, whereas they restrict the scope of ‘invented tradition’ to recently established practices of a purely ritual and symbolic nature (see especially pp. 1–4), Flower applies the term in the sense of the image of their past which the Spartans created for themselves as justification for substantive socio-political innovations.
9 As has been shown by recent studies of land tenure and the upbringing: Hodkinson, CQ n.s. 36 (1986), 378–406; Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue, especially 98–114.
10 The first tradition appears in Xen. Lak. Pol 7.5–6; 14.1–3; the second in Plut. Lys. 17.3; Lyk. 9.1–2; 30.1; Diod. 7.12.8. The accounts of Plutarch and Diodorus drew directly upon the works of the fourth-century writers Ephoros and Theopompos. For the probable influence of Pausanias’ pamphlet (Ephoros, FGrH 70 F 118, ap. Strab. 365–6.8.5.5) on Spartan historiography, cf. Tigerstedt, op. cit. (n. 5), 111; E.David, PP34 (1979), 94–116; Hodkinson, op. cit. (n. 7), 200–1.
11 Michell, Sparta, 298–303; MacDowell, Spartan Law, 119; K.L.Noethlichs, Historia 36 (1987), 129–70; Hodkinson, in Rich and Shipley (eds) War and Society in the Greek World, 146–76 at 150–2.
12 Tigerstedt, op. cit. (n. 5), 110–11; Oliva, Sparta and her Social Problems, 123–5; David, op. cit. (n. 10); Plato, Laws 3.691d-692a; Arist. Pol. 5.1313a26–33.
13 The meagre information we have about the context of the period of Tyrtaios (Arist. Pol. 5.1306b37–1307a2), for example, suggests a society in crisis faced with the need to make radical decisions.
14 Cf., especially Her. 7.102–4, 134–6, 228.
15 P.Cartledge, LCM 1 (1976), 115–19.
16 Op. cit. (n. 6), 8–9.
17 See, most recently, Nafissi, La nascita del kosmos, 124–38. For a recent exposé of the uncertain chronology of the Messenian wars, V.Parker, Chiron 21 (1991), 25–47. The uncertainty of the sequence of the Second Messenian War and the Great Rhetra is noted, inter alia, by Forrest, History of Sparta, 56–8; Parker, op. cit., 41.
18 Hodkinson, op. cit. (n. 9).
Early19 For example, Murray, Early Greece, 2nd edition, 171–2; C.Segal, in Cambridge History of Classical Literature, i.179.
20 G.Dickins, Burlington Magazine 14 (1908), 66–84; Dawkins (ed.) The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta; Fitzhardinge, The Spartans.
21 Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World, 160–92.
22 The following criticisms have already been aired in my review in CP 87 (1992), 376–81, especially 380–1.
23 Bernardi, Age Class Systems.
24 See, generally, Eisenstadt, From Generation to Generation, 204–12; and on the competing principles: Hodkinson, Chiron 13 (1983), 239–81, especially 251–60.
25 E.Bethe, RM 62 (1907), 438–75; J.Bremmer, Arethusa 13 (1980), 279–98; Patzer, Die griechische Knabenliebe; Sergent, L’Homosexualité dans la mythologie grecque.
26 V.H. 3.12: Spartan eromenoi (‘beloveds’) asked their erastai (‘lovers’) to åßóðíåßí
27 Much of my critique draws upon the excellent study by Dover, The Greeks and their Legacy, 115–34.
28 Murray, op. cit. (n. 19), 215.
29 And also on sixth-century Lakonian black-figure pottery, if indeed the subject matter is Spartiate-based: Nafissi, op. cit. (n. 17), 211– 13.
30 Dover, op. cit. (n. 27), 123–4.
31 Cf. P.Cartledge, PCPS n.s. 27 (1981), 17–36, and N.R.E.Fisher, in Powell (ed.) Classical Sparta, 26–50, at 46 n.37, as against the view of MacDowell, op. cit. (n. 11), 61–5, that it was largely a voluntary arrangement.
32 O.Murray, in Concilium Eirene XVI, i.47–52; O.Murray, in Tria Corda…A. Momigliano, 257–72; O.Murray, in Hagg (ed.) The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century B.C., 195–9; J.N.Bremmer, in Murray (ed.) Sympotica, 135–48 at 136.
33 H. van Wees, in Crielaard (ed.) Homeric Questions, 147–82, especially 173–4 and 177–9; quotation from 178 n. 66. The suggestion of a link between the syssitia and the army has frequently been made: cf. Hodkinson, op. cit. (n. 24), 258 n. 55; for some doubts, Lazenby, The Spartan Army, 13.
34 M.Lombardo, ASNP 3rd series 18 (1988), 263–86; van Wees, op. cit. (n. 33), 165–71.
35 Nafissi, op. cit. (n. 17), 206–24.
36 E.Bowie, in Murray (ed.) Sympotica, 221–9 at 225 n. 16.
37 Murray, op. cit. (n. 19), 177; Nafissi, op. cit. (n. 17), 178–80.
Ktema38 E.Lévy, Ktema 13 (1988), 245–52.
39 J.M.Hall, PCPS n.s. 41 (1995), 83–100 at 90; quotation from Barton.k, Classification of the West Greek Dialects, 186.
40 Finley, ‘Sparta’, in his The Use and Abuse of History, 161–77 at 176. (This was originally published in Vernant [ed.] Problèmes de la guerre en Grece ancienne, 143– 60; it is also reprinted in Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, 24–40.)
41 Carlier, La Royauté en Grèce, 240–324.
42 Even if one is disinclined to accept the claims of later sources (Diog. Laert. 1.68; P.Ryl. 18; Paus. 3.16.4) that the mid-sixth-century ephor Chilon was a figure of major importance, on grounds of the absence of political references from Herodotus’ information about the man (1.59; 7.235), the ephors are clearly prominent in the affair of Anaxandridas and his wives (5.39–40).
43 Cartledge, op. cit. (n. 5), 243–6; C.J.Tuplin, LCM 2 (1977), 5–10.
44 Herman, Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City. In his catalogue of explicit references to xeniai in Appendix A, twenty-three out of just over 100 historical, pre-Hellenistic entries involve Spartiates.
45 Sparta and Samos: P.Cartledge, CQ n.s. 32 (1982), 243–65, especially 244 and 249. Fictitious ‘colonies’: Knidos (Her. 1.174); Thera (Her. 4.145–50; Pindar, Pyth. 5.256–9); Melos (Thuc. 4.112); Kythera (Thuc. 7.57.6). ‘Special relationships’: Knidos and Taras; Thera and Samos; Kyrene and Samos (Her. 3.138; 4.152).
46 Malkin, Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean.
47 Team contests: cheese-stealing contests at Artemis Orthia; the sphairomachia (Xen. Lak. Pol. 2.8–9; 9.5); massed unclad battles at the Gymnopaidiai (Plato, Laws 1.633b-c). Wrestling and the stade account for the vast majority of Spartiate Olympic victories: N.B.Crowther, AC 59 (1990), 198–202.
48 Cf. Lazzarini, Leformule delle dediche votive nella Grecia arcaica, 45–354: nos. 830–1, 834; 849–50; and the evidence of the Damonon inscription (IG v.l 213).
49 Crowther, op. cit. (n. 47), with references.
50 Twenty-seven known Spartan athletic victors between 720 and 552; only six or seven over the following two centuries: Moretti, Olympionikai, 53–198.
51 For example, Hönle, Olympia in der Politik der griechischen Staatenwelt, 131–5; Finley and Pleket, The Olympic Games, 74.
52 Nafissi, op. cit. (n. 17), 167–70, comparing Tyrtaios (fr. 12) with Xenophanes (fr. 2 West) and Solon’s limitation of athletic prizes (Diog. Laert. 1.55; Plut. Sol. 23.3; Diod. Sic. 9.2.5). Cf., generally, P.Angeli Bernadini, Stadion 6 (1980), 81–111.
53Commemorative monuments: Paus. 3.13.9, 14.3, 15.7; 6.13.2, 15.8. The earlyfifth-century dating is clearest in the case of the six- or seven-times Olympic victor, Chionis (668/664–656), whose statue at Olympia was commissioned from the famous Athenian sculptor Myron to stand beside and rival that of Astylos, the six-times Syracusan victor of the 480s. The bronze statues of other early victors must likewise post-date late sixth-century developments in bronzeworking techniques. Local victor lists: Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, 201 nos 44–7; in the fifth century Hellanikos of Lesbos could compile a list of victors in the Karneian games.
54 Victories of Euagoras (Moretti, op. cit. [n. 50], nos. 110, 113, 117: dated 548, 544 and 540); Damaratos (no. 157: dated 504).
Euagoras’ victory dedication: Paus. 6.10.8. The fifth-century evidence is summarised by Hodkinson, in Powell op. cit. (n. 31), 96–9.55 For fuller exposition of the following comments, cf. my forthcoming articles in Fisher and van Wees (eds) Archaic Greece, and in Walker and Cavanagh (eds.) Sparta in Lakonia.
56 Dickins, op. cit. (n. 20), 67; Dickins, JHS 32 (1912), 1–42, especially 17–19.
57 Cf. especially C.Rolley, Ktema 2 (1977), 125–40.
58 R.M.Cook, CQ n.s. 12 (1962), 156–8. Cook’s basic point is not undermined by the plausible argument of Cartledge, op. cit. (n. 15), that some Spartiates may have engaged in artistic production in the period before the fifth century. As already noted, this would not affect the fact that most production was in non-Spartiate hands and that most Spartiates, especially the richest and most powerful landowners, would not have been involved.
59 Cf. regarding the bronzework C.Leon, AM 83 (1968), 175–85. Although ‘Lakonian art’ is now the established term, the continuing tendency to view it in specifically Spartan terms is indicated by the title The Spartans given to Fitzhardinge’s recent art-historical book, op. cit. (n. 20).
60 For example, A.J.Holladay, CQ n.s. 27 (1977), 111–26; Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, 154–7.
61 For a statistical analysis of the production and distribution history of Lakonian black-figure and other pottery, Nafissi, op. cit. (n. 17), 236–53. Earlier versions were published in Pompili (ed.) Studi sulla ceramica Laconica, 149–72, and (most conveniently for English-speaking readers) in C.M.Stibbe, Laconian Mixing Bowls, 68–88. The precise terminal date of Lakonian bronze-vessel production is uncertain, depending as it does on the disputed attribution of several vessels between Lakonian, Corinthian and South Italian workshops: cf., recently, Rolley, Les Vases de bronze de l'archaúsme recent en Grande-Grèce, 75–6, with P. Cartledge’s review in JHS 105 (1985), 238–40.
62 Salmon, Wealthy Corinth, 109–16.
63 Lamb, Ancient Greek and Roman Bronzes, 145 and 150–1.
64 For this view, cf. especially Holladay, op. cit. (n. 60), 115 and 117. On fifthcentury imported and foreign-influenced bronzework at Sparta, see generally Rolley, Greek Bronzes, 113.
65 A.M.Snodgrass, in Science dell’Antichità 3–4 (1989–90), 287–94.
66 On jewellery votives, note the dramatic contemporary decline at Olympia: Snodgrass, op. cit. (n. 65), 288, based on Philipp, Bronzeschmuck aus Olympia. On the increasing non-votive use of bronze vessels, which in part reflects the development of large votive statuary: Rolley, op. cit. (n. 64), 169; Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary, 58–118. On the late fifth-century decline in votive statuettes: Lamb, op. cit. (n. 63), 106; Rolley, op. cit. (n. 64), 169.
67 Hodkinson, op. cit. (n. 7 and 9).
68 Her. 1.153; 6.62; 9.81, with Hodkinson, op. cit. (n. 7), 185–6; cf. the numerous references to bribery discussed by Noethlichs, op. cit. (n. 11).
69 Finley, op. cit. (n. 40), 174–5.
70 For example, de Ste Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, especially 91.
71 Cf. the penestai in Thessaly and numerous native populations enslaved by Greek settlers in Magna Graecia, Asia Minor and around the Black Sea; for a succinct survey, Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece, 101–6.
72 Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants, 66–77; J.Redfield, CJ 73 (1977/8), 146–61; Ducat, Les Hilotes, 152–3; M.Whitby, in Powell and Hodkinson op. cit. (n. 7), 87–126 at 89.
73 Op. cit. (n. 72), 161.
74 Jeanmaire, Couroi et courètes.
75 Finley, op. cit. (n. 40), 175–6.
76 Kennell, op. cit. (n. 9).
77 Ibid., 143.