LYCURGUS

There is so much uncertainty in the accounts which historians have left

us of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, that scarcely anything is

asserted by one of them which is not called into question or

contradicted by the rest. Their sentiments are quite different as to

the family he came of, the voyages he undertook, the place and manner of

his death, but most of all when they speak of the laws he made and the

commonwealth which he founded. They cannot, by any means, be brought to

an agreement as to the very age in which he lived; for some of them say

that he flourished in the time of Iphitus, and that they two jointly

contrived the ordinance for the cessation of arms during the solemnity

of the Olympic games. Of this opinion was Aristotle; and for

confirmation of it, he alleges an inscription upon one of the copper

quoits used in those sports, upon which the name of Lycurgus continued

uneffaced to his time. But Eratosthenes and Apollodorus and other

chronologers, computing the time by the successions of the Spartan

kings, pretend to demonstrate that he was much more ancient than the

institution of the Olympic games. Timaeus conjectures that there were

two of this name, and in diverse times, but that the one of them being

much more famous than the other, men gave to him the glory of the

exploits of both; the elder of the two, according to him, was not long

after Homer; and some are so particular as to say that he had seen him.

But that he was of great antiquity may be gathered from a passage in

Xenophon, where he makes him contemporary with the Heraclidae. By

descent, indeed, the very last kings of Sparta were Heraclidae too; but

he seems in that place to speak of the first and more immediate

successors of Hercules. But notwithstanding this confusion and

obscurity, we shall endeavor to compose the history of his life,

adhering to those statements which are least contradicted, and depending

upon those authors who are most worthy of credit.

The poet Simonides will have it that Lycurgus was the son of Prytanis,

and not of Eunomus; but in this opinion he is singular, for all the rest

deduce the genealogy of them both as follows:--

Aristodemus

Patrocles

Sous

Eurypon

Eunomus

------------------------------------------

Polydectes by his first wife Lycurgus by Dionassa his second.

Dieuchidas says he was the sixth from Patrocles and the eleventh from

Hercules. Be this as it will, Sous certainly was the most renowned of

all his ancestors, under whose conduct the Spartans made slaves of the

Helots, and added to their dominions, by conquest, a good part of

Arcadia, There goes a story of this king Sous, that, being besieged by

the Clitorians in a dry and stony place so that he could come at no

water, he was at last constrained to agree with them upon these terms,

that he would restore to them all his conquests, provided that himself

and all his men should drink of the nearest spring. After the usual

oaths and ratifications, he called his soldiers together, and offered to

him that would forbear drinking, his kingdom for a reward; and when not

a man of them was able to forbear, in short, when they had all drunk

their fill, at last comes king Sous himself to the spring, and, having

sprinkled his face only, without swallowing one drop, marches off in the

face of his enemies, refusing to yield up his conquests, because himself

and all his men had not, according to the articles,

drunk of their water.

Although he was justly had in admiration on this account, yet his family

was not surnamed from him, but from his son Eurypon (of whom they were

called Eurypontids); the reason of which was that Eurypon relaxed the

rigor of the monarchy, seeking favor and popularity with the many.

They, after this first step, grew bolder; and the succeeding kings

partly incurred hatred with their people by trying to use force, or, for

popularity's sake and through weakness, gave way; and anarchy and

confusion long prevailed in Sparta, causing, moreover, the death of the

father of Lycurgus. For as he was endeavoring to quell a riot, he was

stabbed with a butcher's knife, and left the title of king

to his eldest son Polydectes.

He, too, dying soon after, the right of succession (as every one

thought) rested in Lycurgus; and reign he did, until it was found that

the queen, his sister-in-law, was with child; upon which he immediately

declared that the kingdom belonged to her issue, provided it were male,

and that he himself exercised the regal jurisdiction only as his

guardian; the Spartan name for which office is prodicus. Soon after, an

overture was made to him by the queen, that she would herself in some

way destroy the infant, upon condition that he would marry her when he

came to the crown. Abhorring the woman's wickedness, he nevertheless

did not reject her proposal, but, making show of closing with her,

dispatched the messenger with thanks and expressions of joy, but

dissuaded her earnestly from procuring herself to miscarry, which would

impair her health, if not endanger her life; he himself, he said, would

see to it, that the child, as soon as born, should be taken out of the

way. By such artifices having drawn on the woman to the time of her

lying-in, as soon as he heard that she was in labor, he sent persons to

be by and observe all that passed, with orders that if it were a girl

they should deliver it to the women, but if a boy, should bring it to

him wheresoever he were, and whatsoever doing. It so fell out that when

he was at supper with the principal magistrates the queen was brought to

bed of a boy, who was soon after presented to him as he was at the

table; he, taking him into his arms, said to those about him, "Men of

Sparta, here is a king born unto us;" this said, he laid him down in

the king's place, and named him Charilaus, that is, the joy of the

people; because that all were transported with joy and with wonder at

his noble and just spirit. His reign had lasted only eight months, but

he was honored on other accounts by the citizens, and there were more

who obeyed him because of his eminent virtues, than because he was

regent to the king and had the royal power in his hands. Some, however,

envied and sought to impede his growing influence while he was still

young; chiefly the kindred and friends of the queen mother, who

pretended to have been dealt with injuriously. Her brother Leonidas, in

a warm debate which fell out betwixt him and Lycurgus, went so far as to

tell him to his face that he was well assured that ere long he should

see him king; suggesting suspicions and preparing the way for an

accusation of him, as though he had made away with his nephew, if the

child should chance to fail though by a natural death. Words of the

like import were designedly cast abroad by the queen-mother

and her adherents.

Troubled at this, and not knowing what it might come to, he thought it

his wisest course to avoid their envy by a voluntary exile, and to

travel from place to place until his nephew came to marriageable years,

and, by having a son, had secured the succession; setting sail,

therefore, with this resolution, he first arrived at Crete, where,

having considered their several forms of government, and got an

acquaintance with the principal men amongst them, some of their laws he

very much approved of, and resolved to make use of them in his own

country; a good part he rejected as useless. Amongst the persons there

the most renowned for their learning all their wisdom in state matters

was one Thales, whom Lycurgus, by importunities and assurances of

friendship, persuaded to go over to Lacedaemon; where, though by his

outward appearance and his own profession he seemed to be no other than

a lyric poet, in reality he performed the part of one of the ablest

lawgivers in the world. The very songs which he composed were

exhortations to obedience and concord, and the very measure and cadence

of the verse, conveying impressions of order and tranquility, had so

great an influence on the minds of the listeners, that they were

insensibly softened and civilized, insomuch that they renounced their

private feuds and animosities, and were reunited in a common admiration

of virtue. So that it may truly be said that Thales prepared the way

for the discipline introduced by Lycurgus.

From Crete he sailed to Asia, with design, as is said, to examine the

difference betwixt the manners and rules of life of the Cretans, which

were very sober and temperate, and those of the Ionians, a people of

sumptuous and delicate habits, and so to form a judgment; just as

physicians do by comparing healthy and diseased bodies. Here he had the

first sight of Homer's works, in the hands, we may suppose, of the

posterity of Creophylus; and, having observed that the few loose

expressions and actions of ill example which are to be found in his

poems were much outweighed by serious lessons of state and rules of

morality, he set himself eagerly to transcribe and digest them into

order, as thinking they would be of good use in his own country. They

had, indeed, already obtained some slight repute amongst the Greeks, and

scattered portions, as chance conveyed them, were in the hands of

individuals; but Lycurgus first made them really known.

The Egyptians say that he took a voyage into Egypt, and that, being much

taken with their way of separating the soldiery from the rest of the

nation, he transferred it from them to Sparta, a removal from contact

with those employed in low and mechanical occupations giving high

refinement and beauty to the state. Some Greek writers also record

this. But as for his voyages into Spain, Africa, and the Indies, and

his conferences there with the Gymnosophists, the whole relation, as far

as I can find, rests on the single credit of the Spartan Aristocrates,

the son of Hipparchus.

Lycurgus was much missed at Sparta, and often sent for, "for kings

indeed we have," they said, "who wear the marks and assume the titles of

royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they have nothing by

which they are to be distinguished from their subjects;" adding, that in

him alone was the true foundation of sovereignty to be seen, a nature

made to rule, and a genius to gain obedience. Nor were the kings

themselves averse to see him back, for they looked upon his presence as

a bulwark against the insolencies of the people.

Things being in this posture at his return, he applied himself, without

loss of time, to a thorough reformation and resolved to change the whole

face of the commonwealth; for what could a few particular laws and a

partial alteration avail? He must act as wise physicians do, in the

case of one who labors under a complication of diseases, by force of

medicines reduce and exhaust him, change his whole temperament, and then

set him upon a totally new regimen of diet. Having thus projected

things, away he goes to Delphi to consult Apollo there; which having

done, and offered his sacrifice, he returned with that renowned oracle,

in which he is called beloved of God, and rather God than man; that his

prayers were heard, that his laws should be the best, and the

commonwealth which observed them the most famous in the world.

Encouraged by these things, he set himself to bring over to his side the

leading men of Sparta, exhorting them to give him a helping hand in his

great undertaking; he broke it first to his particular friends, and then

by degrees gained others, and animated them all to put his design in

execution. When things were ripe for action, he gave order to thirty of

the principal men of Sparta to be ready armed at the market-place by

break of day, to the end that he might strike a terror into the opposite

party. Hermippus hath set down the names of twenty of the most eminent

of them; but the name of him whom Lycurgus most confided in, and who was

of most use to him, both in making his laws and putting them in

execution, was Arthmiadas. Things growing to a tumult, king Charilaus,

apprehending that it was a conspiracy against his person, took sanctuary

in the temple of Minerva of the Brazen House; but, being soon after

undeceived, and having taken an oath of them that they had no designs

against him, he quitted his refuge, and himself also entered into the

confederacy with them; of so gentle and flexible a disposition he was,

to which Archelaus, his brother-king, alluded, when, hearing him

extolled for his goodness, he said, "Who can say he is anything but

good? he is so even to the bad."

Amongst the many changes and alterations which Lycurgus made, the first

and of greatest importance was the establishment of the senate, which,

having a power equal to the kings' in matters of great consequence, and,

as Plato expresses it, allaying and qualifying the fiery genius of the

royal office, gave steadiness and safety to the commonwealth. For the

state, which before had no firm basis to stand upon, but leaned one

while towards an absolute monarchy, when the kings had the upper hand,

and another while towards a pure democracy, when the people had the

better, found in this establishment of the senate a central weight, like

ballast in a ship, which always kept things in a just equilibrium; the

twenty-eight always adhering to the kings so far as to resist democracy,

and, on the other hand, supporting the people against the establishment

of absolute monarchy. As for the determinate number of twenty-eight,

Aristotle states, that it so fell out because two of the original

associates, for want of courage, fell off from the enterprise; but

Sphaerus assures us that there were but twenty-eight of the confederates

at first; perhaps there is some mystery in the number, which consists of

seven multiplied by four, and is the first of perfect numbers after six,

being, as that is, equal to all its parts. For my part, I believe

Lycurgus fixed upon the number of twenty-eight, that, the two kings

being reckoned amongst them, they might be thirty in all. So eagerly

set was he upon this establishment, that he took the trouble to obtain

an oracle about it from Delphi, the Rhetra, which runs thus: "After that

you have built a temple to Jupiter Hellanius, and to Minerva Hellania,

and after that you have phyle'd the people phyles, and obe'd them into

obes, you shall establish a council of thirty elders, the leaders

included, and shall, from time to time, apellazein the people betwixt

Babyca and Cnacion, there propound and put to the vote. The commons

have the final voice and decision. " By phyles and obes are meant the

divisions of the people; by the leaders, the two kings; apellazein,

referring to the Pythian Apollo, signifies to assemble; Babyca and

Cnacion they now call Oenus; Aristotle says Cnacion is a river, and

Babyca a bridge. Betwixt this Babyca and Cnacion, their assemblies were

held, for they had no council-house or building, to meet in. Lycurgus

was of opinion that ornaments were so far from advantaging them in their

counsels, that they were rather an hindrance, by diverting their

attention from the business before them to statues and pictures, and

roofs curiously fretted, the usual embellishments of such places amongst

the other Greeks. The people then being thus assembled in the open air,

it was not allowed to any one of their order to give his advice, but

only either to ratify or reject what should be propounded to them by

the king or senate. But because it fell out afterwards that the people,

by adding or omitting words, distorted and perverted the sense of

propositions, kings Polydorus and Theopompus inserted into the Rhetra,

or grand covenant, the following clause: "That if the people decide

crookedly, it should be lawful for the elders and leaders to dissolve;"

that is to say, refuse ratification, and dismiss the people as depravers

and perverters of their counsel. It passed among the people, by their

management, as being equally authentic with the rest of the Rhetra, as

appears by these verses of Tyrtaeus,--

These oracles they from Apollo heard,

And brought from Pytho home the perfect word:

The heaven-appointed kings, who love the land,

Shall foremost in the nation's council stand;

The elders next to them; the commons last;

Let a straight Rhetra among all be passed.

Although Lycurgus had, in this manner, used all the qualifications

possible in the constitution of his commonwealth, yet those who

succeeded him found the oligarchical element still too strong and

dominant, and, to check its high temper and its violence, put, as Plato

says, a bit in its mouth, which was the power of the ephori, established

one hundred and thirty years after the death of Lycurgus. Elatus and his

colleagues were the first who had this dignity conferred upon them, in

the reign of king Theopompus, who, when his queen upbraided him one day

that he would leave the regal power to his children less than he had

received it from his ancestors, said, in answer, "No, greater; for it

will last longer." For, indeed, their prerogative being thus reduced

within reasonable bounds, the Spartan kings were at once freed from all

further jealousies and consequent danger, and never experienced the

calamities of their neighbors at Messene and Argos, who, by maintaining

their prerogative too strictly, for want of yielding a little to the

populace, lost it all.

Indeed, whosoever shall look at the sedition and misgovernment which

befell these bordering nations to whom they were as near related in

blood as situation, will find in them the best reason to admire the

wisdom and foresight of Lycurgus. For these three states, in their

first rise, were equal, or, if there were any odds, they lay on the side

of the Messenians and Argives, who, in the first allotment, were thought

to have been luckier than the Spartans; yet was their happiness but of

small continuance, partly the tyrannical temper of their kings and

partly the ungovernableness of the people quickly bringing upon them

such disorders, and so complete an overthrow of all existing

institutions, as clearly to show how truly divine a blessing the

Spartans had had in that wise lawgiver who gave their government its

happy balance and temper.

But of this I shall say more in its due place.

After the creation of the thirty senators, his next task, and, indeed,

the most hazardous he ever undertook, was the making a new division of

their lands. For there was an extreme inequality amongst them, and

their state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent and necessitous

persons, while its whole wealth had centered upon a very few. To the

end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy,

luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and

superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to

consent to a new division of the land, and that they should live all

together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence,

and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure

of difference between man and man.

Upon their consent to these proposals, proceeding at once to put them

into execution, he divided the country of Laconia in general into thirty

thousand equal shares, and the part attached to the city of Sparta into

nine thousand; these he distributed among the Spartans, as he did the

others to the country citizens. Some authors say that he made but six

thousand lots for the citizens of Sparta, and that king Polydorus added

three thousand more. Others say that Polydorus doubled the number

Lycurgus had made, which, according to them, was but four thousand five

hundred. A lot was so much as to yield, one year with another, about

seventy bushels of grain for the master of the family, and twelve for

his wife, with a suitable proportion of oil and wine. And this he

thought sufficient to keep their bodies in good health and strength;

superfluities they were better without. It is reported, that, as he

returned from a journey shortly after the division of the lands, in

harvest time, the ground being newly reaped, seeing the stacks all

standing equal and alike, he smiled, and said to those about him,

"Methinks all Laconia looks like one family estate just divided among a

number of brothers."

Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of their

movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or inequality

left amongst them; but finding that it would be very dangerous to go

about it openly, he took another course, and defeated their avarice by

the following stratagem: he commanded that all gold and silver coin

should be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should

be current, a great weight and quantity of which was but very little

worth; so that to lay up twenty or thirty pounds there was required a

pretty large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of

oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were

banished from Lacedaemon; for who would rob another of such a coin? Who

would unjustly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing

which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any

use to cut in pieces? For when it was just red hot, they quenched it in

vinegar, and by that means spoilt it,

and made it almost incapable of being worked.

In the next place, he declared an outlawry of all needless and

superfluous arts; but here he might almost have spared his proclamation;

for they of themselves would have gone after the gold and silver, the

money which remained being not so proper payment for curious work; for,

being of iron, it was scarcely portable, neither, if they should take

the pains to export it, would it pass amongst the other Greeks, who

ridiculed it. So there was now no more means of purchasing foreign

goods and small wares; merchants sent no shiploads into Laconian ports;

no rhetoric-master, no itinerant fortune-teller, no harlot-monger or

gold or silversmith, engraver, or jeweler, set foot in a country which

had no money; so that luxury, deprived little by little of that which

fed and fomented it, wasted to nothing, and died away of itself. For

the rich had no advantage here over the poor, as their wealth and

abundance had no road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing

nothing. And in this way they became excellent artists in common,

necessary things; bedsteads, chairs, and tables, and such like staple

utensils in a family, were admirably well made there; their cup,

particularly, was very much in fashion, and eagerly bought up by

soldiers, as Critias reports; for its color was such as to prevent

water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look at, from being

noticed; and the shape of it was such that the mud stuck to the sides,

so that only the purer part came to the drinker's mouth. For this,

also, they had to thank their lawgiver, who, by relieving the artisans

of the trouble of making useless things, set them to show their skill in

giving beauty to those of daily and indispensable use.

The third and most masterly stroke of this great lawgiver, by which he

struck a yet more effectual blow against luxury and the desire of

riches, was the ordinance he made, that they should all eat in common,

of the same bread and same meat, and of kinds that were specified, and

should not spend their lives at home, laid on costly couches at splendid

tables, delivering themselves up into the hands of their tradesmen and

cooks, to fatten them in corners, like greedy brutes, and to ruin not

their minds only but their very bodies, which, enfeebled by indulgence

and excess, would stand in need of long sleep, warm bathing, freedom

from work, and, in a word, of as much care and attendance as if they

were continually sick. It was certainly an extraordinary thing to have

brought about such a result as this, but a greater yet to have taken

away from wealth, as Theophrastus observes, not merely the property of

being coveted, but its very nature of being wealth. For the rich, being

obliged to go to the same table with the poor, could not make use of or

enjoy their abundance, nor so much as please their vanity by looking at

or displaying it. So that the common proverb, that Plutus, the god of

riches, is blind, was nowhere in all the world literally verified but in

Sparta. There, indeed, he was not only blind, but like a picture,

without either life or motion. Nor were they allowed to take food at

home first, and then attend the public tables, for every one had an eye

upon those who did not eat and drink like the rest, and reproached them

with being dainty and effeminate.

This last ordinance in particular exasperated the wealthier men. They

collected in a body against Lycurgus, and from ill words came to

throwing stones, so that at length he was forced to run out of the

marketplace, and make to sanctuary to save his life; by good-hap he

outran all excepting one Alcander, a young man otherwise not ill

accomplished, but hasty and violent, who came up so close to him, that,

when he turned to see who was near him, he struck him upon the face with

his stick, and put out one of his eyes. Lycurgus, so far from being

daunted and discouraged by this accident, stopped short, and showed his

disfigured face and eye beat out to his countrymen; they, dismayed and

ashamed at the sight, delivered Alcander into his hands to be punished,

and escorted him home, with expressions of great concern for his ill

usage. Lycurgus, having thanked them for their care of his person,

dismissed them all, excepting only Alcander; and, taking him with him

into his house, neither did nor said anything severely to him, but,

dismissing those whose place it was bade Alcander to wait upon him at

table. The young man who was of an ingenuous temper, without murmuring

did as he was commanded; and, being thus admitted to live with Lycurgus,

he had an opportunity to observe in him, besides his gentleness and

calmness of temper, an extraordinary sobriety and an indefatigable

industry, and so, from an enemy, became one of his most zealous

admirers, and told his friends and relations that Lycurgus was not that

morose and ill-natured man they had formerly taken him for, but the one

mild and gentle character of the world. And thus did Lycurgus, for

chastisement of his fault, make of a wild and passionate young man one

of the discreetest citizens of Sparta.

In memory of this accident, Lycurgus built a temple to Minerva, surnamed

Optiletis; optilus being the Doric of these parts for ophthalmus, the

eye. Some authors, however, of whom Dioscorides is one (who wrote a

treatise on the commonwealth of Sparta), say that he was wounded indeed,

but did not lose his eye with the blow; and that he built the temple in

gratitude for the cure. Be this as it will, certain it is, that, after

this misadventure, the Lacedaemonians made it a rule never to carry so

much as a staff into their public assemblies.

But to return to their public repasts;--these had several names in

Greek; the Cretans called them andria, because the men only came to

them. The Lacedaemonians called them phiditia, that is, by changing l

into d, the same as philitia, love feasts, because that, by eating and

drinking together, they had opportunity of making friends. Or perhaps

from phido, parsimony, because they were so many schools of sobriety; or

perhaps the first letter is an addition, and the word at first was

editia, from edode, eating. They met by companies of fifteen, more or

less, and each of them stood bound to bring in monthly a bushel of meal,

eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese, two pounds and a half of

figs, and some very small sum of money to buy flesh or fish with.

Besides this, when any of them made sacrifice to the gods, they always

sent a dole to the common hall; and, likewise, when any of them had been

a hunting, he sent thither a part of the venison he had killed; for

these two occasions were the only excuses allowed for supping at home.

The custom of eating together was observed strictly for a great while

afterwards; insomuch that king Agis himself, after having vanquished the

Athenians, sending for his commons at his return home, because he

desired to eat privately with his queen, was refused them by the

polemarchs; which refusal when he resented so much as to omit next day

the sacrifice due for a war happily ended, they made him pay a fine.

They used to send their children to these tables as to schools of

temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to

experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse with pleasantry, to

make jests without scurrility, and take them without ill humor. In this

point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if

any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given there was no

more to be said to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in the

company to say to each of them, as they came in, "Through this"

(pointing to the door), "no words go out." When any one had a desire to

be admitted into any of these little societies; he was to go through the

following probation, each man in the company took a little ball of soft

bread, which they were to throw into a deep basin, which a waiter

carried round upon his head; those that liked the person to be chosen

dropped their ball into the basin without altering its figure, and those

who disliked him pressed it between their fingers, and made it flat; and

this signified as much as a negative voice. And if there were but one

of these pieces in the basin, the suitor was rejected, so desirous were

they that all the members of the company should be agreeable to each

other. The basin was called caddichus, and the rejected candidate had a

name thence derived. Their most famous dish was the black broth, which

was so much valued that the elderly men fed only upon that, leaving what

flesh there was to the younger.

They say that a certain king of Pontus, having heard much of this black

broth of theirs, sent for a Lacedaemonian cook on purpose to make him

some, but had no sooner tasted it than he found it extremely bad, which

the cook observing, told him, "Sir, to make this broth relish, you

should have bathed yourself first in the river Eurotas."

After drinking moderately, every man went to his home without lights,

for the use of them was, on all occasions, forbid, to the end that they

might accustom themselves to march boldly in the dark. Such was the

common fashion of their meals.

Lycurgus would never reduce his laws into writing; nay, there is a

Rhetra expressly to forbid it. For he thought that the most material

points, and such as most directly tended to the public welfare, being

imprinted on the hearts of their youth by a good discipline, would be

sure to remain, and would find a stronger security, than any compulsion

would be, in the principles of action formed in them by their best

lawgiver, education. And as for things of lesser importance, as

pecuniary contracts, and such like, the forms of which have to be

changed as occasion requires, he thought it the best way to prescribe no

positive rule or inviolable usage in such cases, willing that their

manner and form should be altered according to the circumstances of

time, and determinations of men of sound judgment. Every end and object

of law and enactment it was his design education should effect.

One, then, of the Rhetras was, that their laws should not be written;

another is particularly leveled against luxury and expensiveness, for by

it it was ordained that the ceilings of their houses should only be

wrought by the axe, and their gates and doors smoothed only by the saw.

Epaminondas's famous dictum about his own table, that "Treason and a

dinner like this do not keep company together," may be said to have been

anticipated by Lycurgus. Luxury and a house of this kind could not well

be companions. For a man must have a less than ordinary share of sense

that would furnish such plain and common rooms with silver-footed

couches and purple coverlets and gold and silver plate. Doubtless he

had good reason to think that they would proportion their beds to their

houses, and their coverlets to their beds, and the rest of their goods

and furniture to these. It is reported that king Leotychides, the first

of that name, was so little used to the sight of any other kind of work,

that, being entertained at Corinth in a stately room, he was much

surprised to see the timber and ceiling so finely carved and paneled,

and asked his host whether the trees grew so in his country.

A third ordinance or Rhetra was, that they should not make war often, or

long, with the same enemy, lest that they should train and instruct them

in war, by habituating them to defend themselves. And this is what

Agesilaus was much blamed for, a long time after; it being thought,

that, by his continual incursions into Boeotia, he made the Thebans a

match for the Lacedaemonians; and therefore Antalcidas, seeing him

wounded one day, said to him, that he was very well paid for taking such

pains to make the Thebans good soldiers, whether they would or no.

These laws were called the Rhetras, to intimate that they were divine

sanctions and revelations.

In order to the good education of their youth (which, as I said before,

he thought the most important and noblest work of a lawgiver), he went

so far back as to take into consideration their very conception and

birth, by regulating their marriages. For Aristotle is wrong in saying,

that, after he had tried all ways to reduce the women to more modesty

and sobriety, he was at last forced to leave them as they were, because

that, in the absence of their husbands, who spent the best part of their

lives in the wars, their wives, whom they were obliged to leave absolute

mistresses at home, took great liberties and assumed the superiority;

and were treated with overmuch respect and called by the title of lady

or queen. The truth is, he took in their case, also, all the care that

was possible; he ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with

wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end

that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take

firmer root and find better growth, and withal that they, with this

greater vigor, might be the more able to undergo the pains of child-

bearing. And to the end he might take away their over-great tenderness

and fear of exposure to the air, and all acquired womanishness, he

ordered that the young women should go naked in the processions, as well

as the young men, and dance, too, in that condition, at certain solemn

feasts, singing certain songs, whilst the young men stood around, seeing

and hearing them. On these occasions, they now and then made, by jests,

a befitting reflection upon those who had misbehaved themselves in the

wars; and again sang encomiums upon those who had done any gallant

action, and by these means inspired the younger sort with an emulation

of their glory. Those that were thus commended went away proud, elated,

and gratified with their honor among the maidens; and those who were

rallied were as sensibly touched with it as if they had been formally

reprimanded; and so much the more, because the kings and the elders, as

well as the rest of the city, saw and heard all that passed. Nor was

there any thing shameful in this nakedness of the young women; modesty

attended them, and all wantonness was excluded. It taught them

simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of

higher feelings, admitted as they thus were to the field of noble action

and glory. Hence it was natural for them to think and speak as Gorgo,

for example, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have done, when some

foreign lady, as it would seem, told her that the women of Lacedaemon

were the only women of the world who could rule men; "With good

reason," she said, "for we are the only women who bring forth men."

These public processions of the maidens, and their appearing naked in

their exercises and dancings, were incitements to marriage, operating

upon the young with the rigor and certainty, as Plato says, of love, if

not of mathematics. But besides all this, to promote it yet more

effectually, those who continued bachelors were in a degree

disfranchised by law; for they were excluded from the sight of those

public processions in which the young men and maidens danced naked, and,

in wintertime, the officers compelled them to march naked themselves

round the market-place, singing as they went a certain song to their own

disgrace, that they justly suffered this punishment for disobeying the

laws. Moreover, they were denied that respect and observance which the

younger men paid their elders; and no man, for example, found fault with

what was said to Dercyllidas, though so eminent a commander; upon whose

approach one day, a young man, instead of rising, retained his seat,

remarking, "No child of yours will make room for me. "

In their marriages, the husband carried off his bride by a sort of

force; nor were their brides ever small and of tender years, but in

their full bloom and ripeness. After this, she who superintended the

wedding comes and clips the hair of the bride close round her head,

dresses her up in man's clothes, and leaves her upon a mattress in the

dark; afterwards comes the bridegroom, in his every-day clothes, sober

and composed, as having supped at the common table, and, entering

privately into the room where the bride lies, unties her virgin zone,

and takes her to himself; and, after staying some time together, he

returns composedly to his own apartment, to sleep as usual with the

other young men. And so he continues to do, spending his days, and,

indeed, his nights with them, visiting his bride in fear and shame, and

with circumspection, when he thought he should not be observed; she,

also, on her part, using her wit to help and find favorable

opportunities for their meeting, when company was out of the way. In

this manner they lived a long time, insomuch that they sometimes had

children by their wives before ever they saw their faces by daylight.

Their interviews, being thus difficult and rare, served not only for

continual exercise of their self-control, but brought them together with

their bodies healthy and vigorous, and their affections fresh and

lively, unsated and undulled by easy access and long continuance with

each other; while their partings were always early enough to leave

behind unextinguished in each of them some remainder fire of longing and

mutual delight. After guarding marriage with this modesty and reserve,

he was equally careful to banish empty and womanish jealousy. For this

object, excluding all licentious disorders, he made it, nevertheless,

honorable for men to give the use of their wives to those whom they

should think fit, that so they might have children by them; ridiculing

those in whose opinion such favors are so unfit for participation as to

fight and shed blood and go to war about it. Lycurgus allowed a man who

was advanced in years and had a young wife to recommend some virtuous

and approved young man, that she might have a child by him, who might

inherit the good qualities of the father, and be a son to himself. On

the other side, an honest man who had love for a married woman upon

account of her modesty and the wellfavoredness of her children, might,

without formality, beg her company of her husband, that he might raise,

as it were, from this plot of good ground, worthy and well-allied

children for himself. And, indeed, Lycurgus was of a persuasion that

children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole

commonwealth, and, therefore, would not have his citizens begot by the

first comers, but by the best men that could be found; the laws of other

nations seemed to him very absurd and inconsistent, where people would

be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and pay

money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept their wives shut up, to be

made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or

diseased; as if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would

prove their bad qualities first upon those who kept and were rearing

them, and well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities.

These regulations, founded on natural and social grounds, were certainly

so far from that scandalous liberty which was afterwards charged upon

their women, that they knew not what adultery meant. It is told, for

instance, of Geradas, a very ancient, Spartan, that, being asked by a

stranger what punishment their law had appointed for adulterers, he

answered, "There are no adulterers in our country." "But," replied the

stranger, "suppose there were ?" "Then," answered he, "the offender

would have to give the plaintiff a bull with a neck so long as that he

might drink from the top of Taygetus of the Eurotas river below it."

The man, surprised at this, said, "Why, 'tis impossible to find such a

bull." Geradas smilingly replied, "'Tis as possible as to find an

adulterer in Sparta." So much I had to say of their marriages.

Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as he

thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain triers at a place

called Lesche; these were some of the elders of the tribe to which the

child belonged; their business it was carefully to view the infant, and,

if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing,

and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above

mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny and ill-

shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort

of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the

child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up,

if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and

vigorous. Upon the same account, the women did not bathe the new-born

children with water, as is the custom in all other countries, but with

wine, to prove the temper and complexion of their bodies; from a notion

they had that epileptic and weakly children faint and waste away upon

their being thus bathed, while, on the contrary, those of a strong and

vigorous habit acquire firmness and get a temper by it, like steel.

There was much care and art, too, used by the nurses; they had no

swaddling bands; the children grew up free and unconstrained in limb and

form, and not dainty and fanciful about their food; not afraid in the

dark, or of being left alone; without any peevishness or ill humor or

crying. Upon this account, Spartan nurses were often bought up, or

hired by people of other countries; and it is recorded that she who

suckled Alcibiades was a Spartan; who, however, if fortunate in his

nurse, was not so in his preceptor; his guardian, Pericles, as Plato

tells us, chose a servant for that office called Zopyrus,

no better than any common slave.

Lycurgus was of another mind; he would not have masters bought out of

the market for his young Spartans, nor such as should sell their pains;

nor was it lawful, indeed, for the father himself to breed up the

children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were seven years old

they were to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they

all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and

taking their play together. Of these, he who showed the most conduct

and courage was made captain; they had their eyes always upon him,

obeyed his orders, and underwent patiently whatsoever punishment he

inflicted; so that the whole course of their education was one continued

exercise of a ready and perfect obedience. The old men, too, were

spectators of their performances, and often raised quarrels and disputes

among them, to have a good opportunity of finding out their different

characters, and of seeing which would be valiant, which a coward, when

they should come to more dangerous encounters. Reading and writing they

gave them, just enough to serve their turn; their chief care was to make

them good subjects, and to teach them to endure pain and conquer in

battle. To this end, as they grew in years, their discipline was

proportionably increased; their heads were close-clipped, they were

accustomed to go bare-foot, and for the most part to play naked.

After they were twelve years old, they were no longer allowed to wear

any under-garment; they had one coat to serve them a year; their bodies

were hard and dry, with but little acquaintance of baths and unguents;

these human indulgences they were allowed only on some few particular

days in the year. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made

of the rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they

were to break off with their hands without a knife; if it were winter,

they mingled some thistle-down with their rushes, which it was thought

had the property of giving warmth. By the time they were come to this

age, there was not any of the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to

bear him company. The old men, too, had an eye upon them, coming often

to the grounds to hear and see them contend either in wit or strength

with one another, and this as seriously and with as much concern as if

they were their fathers, their tutors, or their magistrates; so that

there scarcely was any time or place without someone present to put

them in mind of their duty, and punish them if they had neglected it.

Besides all this, there was always one of the best and honestest men in

the city appointed to undertake the charge and governance of them; he

again arranged them into their several bands, and set over each of them

for their captain the most temperate and boldest of those they called

Irens, who were usually twenty years old, two years out of the boys; and

the eldest of the boys, again, were Mell-Irens, as much as to say, who

would shortly be men. This young man, therefore, was their captain when

they fought, and their master at home, using them for the offices of his

house; sending the oldest of them to fetch wood, and the weaker and less

able, to gather salads and herbs, and these they must either go without

or steal; which they did by creeping into the gardens, or conveying

themselves cunningly and closely into the eating-houses; if they were

taken in the fact, they were whipped without mercy, for thieving so ill

and awkwardly. They stole, too, all other meat they could lay their

hands on, looking out and watching all opportunities, when people were

asleep or more careless than usual. If they were caught, they were not

only punished with whipping, but hunger, too, being reduced to their

ordinary allowance, which was but very slender, and so contrived on

purpose, that they might set about to help themselves, and be forced to

exercise their energy and address. This was the principal design of

their hard fare; there was another not inconsiderable, that they might

grow taller; for the vital spirits, not being overburdened and oppressed

by too great a quantity of nourishment; which necessarily discharges

itself into thickness and breadth, do, by their natural lightness, rise;

and the body, giving and yielding because it is pliant, grows in height.

The same thing seems, also, to conduce to beauty of shape; a dry and

lean habit is a better subject for nature's configuration, which the

gross and over-fed are too heavy to submit to properly. Just as we find

that women who take physic whilst they are with child, bear leaner and

smaller but better-shaped and prettier children; the material they come

of having been more pliable and easily molded. The reason, however, I

leave others to determine.

To return from whence we have digressed. So seriously did the

Lacedaemonian children go about their stealing, that a youth, having

stolen a young fox and hid it under his coat, suffered it to tear out

his very bowels with its teeth and claws, and died upon the place,

rather than let it be seen. What is practiced to this very day in

Lacedaemon is enough to gain credit to this story, for I myself have

seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot of the

altar of Diana surnamed Orthia.

The Iren, or under-master, used to stay a little with them after supper,

and one of them he bade to sing a song, to another he put a question

which required an advised and deliberate answer; for example, Who was

the best man in the city? What he thought of such an action of such a

man? They used them thus early to pass a right judgment upon persons and

things, and to inform themselves of the abilities or defects of their

countrymen. If they had not an answer ready to the question Who was a

good or who an ill-reputed citizen, they were looked upon as of a dull

and careless disposition, and to have little or no sense of virtue and

honor; besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they said,

and in as few words and as comprehensive as might be; he that failed of

this, or answered not to the purpose, had his thumb bit by his master.

Sometimes the Iren did this in the presence of the old men and

magistrates, that they might see whether he punished them justly and in

due measure or not; and when he did amiss, they would not reprove him

before the boys, but, when they were gone, he was called to an account

and underwent correction, if he had run far into either of the extremes

of indulgence or severity.

Their lovers and favorers, too, had a share in the young boy's honor or

disgrace; and there goes a story that one of them was fined by the

magistrates, because the lad whom he loved cried out effeminately as he

was fighting. And though this sort of love was so approved among them,

that the most virtuous matrons would make professions of it to young

girls, yet rivalry did not exist, and if several men's fancies met in

one person, it was rather the beginning of an intimate friendship,

whilst they all jointly conspired to render the object of their

affection as accomplished as possible.

They taught them, also, to speak with a natural and graceful raillery,

and to comprehend much matter of thought in few words. For Lycurgus,

who ordered, as we saw, that a great piece of money should be but of an

inconsiderable value, on the contrary would allow no discourse to be

current which did not contain in few words a great deal of useful and

curious sense; children in Sparta, by a habit of long silence, came to

give just and sententious answers; for, indeed, as loose and incontinent

livers are seldom fathers of many children, so loose and incontinent

talkers seldom originate many sensible words. King Agis, when some

Athenian laughed at their short swords, and said that the jugglers on

the stage swallowed them with ease, answered him, "We find them long

enough to reach our enemies with;" and as their swords were short and

sharp, so, it seems to me, were their sayings. They reach the point and

arrest the attention of the hearers better than any. Lycurgus himself

seems to have been short and sententious, if we may trust the anecdotes

of him; as appears by his answer to one who by all means would set up

democracy in Lacedaemon. "Begin, friend," said he, "and set it up in

your family." Another asked him why he allowed of such mean and trivial

sacrifices to the gods. He replied, "That we may always have something

to offer to them." Being asked what sort of martial exercises or

combats he approved of, he answered, "All sorts, except that in which

you stretch out your hands." Similar answers, addressed to his

countrymen by letter, are ascribed to him; as, being consulted how they

might best oppose an invasion of their enemies, he returned this answer,

"By continuing poor, and not coveting each man to be greater than his

fellow." Being consulted again whether it were requisite to enclose the

city with a wall, he sent them word, "The city is well fortified which

hath a wall of men instead of brick." But whether these letters are

counterfeit or not is not easy to determine.

Of their dislike to talkativeness, the following apothegms are evidence.

King Leonidas said to one who held him in discourse upon some useful

matter, but not in due time and place, "Much to the purpose, Sir,

elsewhere." King Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus, being asked why his

uncle had made so few laws, answered, "Men of few words require but few

laws." When one blamed Hecataeus the sophist because that, being

invited to the public table, he had not spoken one word all supper-time,

Archidamidas answered in his vindication, "He who knows how to speak,

knows also when. "

The sharp and yet not ungraceful retorts which I mentioned may be

instanced as follows. Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by

an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at

last, "He, Sir, that is the least like you." Some, in company where

Agis was, much extolled the Eleans for their just and honorable

management of the Olympic tames; "Indeed," said Agis, "they are highly

to be commended if they can do justice one day in five years."

Theopompus answered a stranger who talked much of his affection to the

Lacedaemonians, and said that his countrymen called him Philolacon (a

lover of the Lacedaemonians), that it had been more for his honor if

they had called him Philopolites (a lover of his own countrymen). And

Plistoanax, the son of Pausanias, when an orator of Athens said the

Lacedaemonians had no learning, told him, "You say true, Sir; we alone

of all the Greeks have learned none of your bad qualities." One asked

Archidamidas what number there might, be of the Spartans; he answered,

"Enough, Sir, to keep out wicked men."

We may see their character, too, in their very jests. For they did not

throw them out at random, but the very wit of them was grounded upon

something or other worth thinking about. For instance, one, being asked

to go hear a man who exactly counterfeited the voice of a nightingale,

answered, "Sir, I have heard the nightingale itself." Another, having

read the following inscription upon a tomb,

Seeking to quench a cruel tyranny,

They, at Selinus, did in battle die,

said, it served them right; for instead of trying to quench the tyranny

they should have let it burn out. A lad, being offered some game-cocks

that would die upon the spot, said that he cared not for cocks that

would die, but for such that would live and kill others. Another,

seeing people easing themselves on seats, said, "God forbid I should

sit where I could not get up to salute my elders." In short, their

answers were so sententious and pertinent, that one said well that

intellectual much more truly than athletic exercise

was the Spartan characteristic.

Nor was their instruction in music and verse less carefully attended to

than their habits of grace and good breeding in conversation. And their

very songs had a life and spirit in them that inflamed and possessed

men's minds with an enthusiasm and ardor for action; the style of them

was plain and without affectation; the subject always serious and moral;

most usually, it was in praise of such men as had died in defense of

their country, or in derision of those that had been cowards; the former

they declared happy and glorified; the life of the latter they described

as most miserable and abject. There were also vaunts of what they would

do, and boasts of what they had done, varying with the various ages, as,

for example, they had three choirs in their solemn festivals, the first

of the old men, the second of the young men, and the last of the

children; the old men began thus:

We once were young, and brave and strong;

the young men answered them, singing,

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

the children came last and said,

But we'll be strongest by and by.

Indeed, if we will take the pains to consider their compositions, some

of which were still extant in our days, and the airs on the flute to

which they marched when going to battle, we shall find that Terpander

and Pindar had reason to say that music and valor were allied. The

first says of Lacedaemon--

The spear and song in her do meet,

And Justice walks about her street;

and Pindar--

Councils of wise elders here,

And the young men's conquering spear,

And dance, and song, and joy appear;

both describing the Spartans as no less musical than warlike; in the

words of one of their own poets--

With the iron stern and sharp

Comes the playing on the harp.

For, indeed, before they engaged in battle, the king first did sacrifice

to the Muses, in all likelihood to put them in mind of the manner of

their education, and of the judgment that would be passed upon their

actions, and thereby to animate them to the performance of exploits that

should deserve a record. At such times, too, the Lacedaemonians abated

a little the severity of their manners in favor of their young men,

suffering them to curl and adorn their hair, and to have costly arms,

and fine clothes; and were well pleased to see them, like proud horses,

neighing and pressing to the course. And therefore, as soon as they

came to be well-grown, they took a great deal of care of their hair, to

have it parted and trimmed, especially against a day of battle, pursuant

to a saying recorded of their lawgiver, that a large head of hair added

beauty to a good face, and terror to an ugly one.

When they were in the field, their exercises were generally more

moderate, their fare not so hard, nor so strict a hand held over them by

their officers, so that they were the only people in the world to whom

war gave repose. When their army was drawn up in battle array and the

enemy near, the king sacrificed a goat, commanded the soldiers to set

their garlands upon their heads, and the pipers to play the tune of the

hymn to Castor, and himself began the paean of advance. It was at once

a magnificent and a terrible sight to see them march on to the tune of

their flutes, without any disorder in their ranks, any discomposure in

their minds or change in their countenance, calmly and cheerfully moving

with the music to the deadly fight. Men, in this temper, were not

likely to be possessed with fear or any transport of fury, but with the

deliberate valor of hope and assurance, as if some divinity were

attending and conducting them. The king had always about his person

some one who had been crowned in the Olympic games; and upon this

account a Lacedaemonian is said to have refused a considerable present,

which was offered to him upon condition that he would not come into the

lists; and when he had with much to-do thrown his antagonist, some of

the spectators saying to him, "And now, Sir Lacedaemonian, what are you

the better for your victory?" he answered smiling, "I shall fight next

the king." After they had routed an enemy, they pursued him till they

were well assured of the victory, and then they sounded a retreat,

thinking it base and unworthy of a Grecian people to cut men in pieces,

who had given up and abandoned all resistance. This manner of dealing

with their enemies did not only show magnanimity, but was politic too;

for, knowing that they killed only those who made resistance, and gave

quarter to the rest, men generally thought it their best way to consult

their safety by flight.

Hippias the sophist says that Lycurgus himself was a great soldier and

an experienced commander. Philostephanus attributes to him the first

division of the cavalry into troops of fifties in a square body; but

Demetrius the Phalerian says quite the contrary, and that he made all

his laws in a continued peace. And, indeed, the Olympic holy truce, or

cessation of arms, that was procured by his means and management,

inclines me to think him a kind-natured man, and one that loved

quietness and peace. Notwithstanding all this, Hermippus tells us that

he had no hand in the ordinance; that Iphitus made it, and Lycurgus came

only as a spectator, and that by mere accident too. Being there, he

heard as it were a man's voice behind him, blaming and wondering at him

that he did not encourage his countrymen to resort to the assembly, and,

turning about and seeing no man, concluded that it was a voice from

heaven, and upon this immediately went to Iphitus, and assisted him in

ordering the ceremonies of that feast, which, by his means, were better

established, and with more repute than before.

To return to the Lacedaemonians. Their discipline continued still after

they were full-grown men. No one was allowed to live after his own

fancy; but the city was a sort of camp, in which every man had his share

of provisions and business set out, and looked upon himself not so much

born to serve his own ends as the interest of his country. Therefore,

if they were commanded nothing else, they went to see the boys perform

their exercises, to teach them something useful, or to learn it

themselves of those who knew better. And, indeed, one of the greatest

and highest blessings Lycurgus procured his people was the abundance of

leisure, which proceeded from his forbidding to them the exercise of any

mean and mechanical trade. Of the money-making that depends on

troublesome going about and seeing people and doing business, they had

no need at all in a state where wealth obtained no honor or respect.

The Helots tilled their ground for them, and paid them yearly in kind

the appointed quantity, without any trouble of theirs. To this purpose

there goes a story of a Lacedaemonian who, happening to be at Athens

when the courts were sitting, was told of a citizen that had been fined

for living an idle life, and was being escorted home in much distress of

mind by his condoling friends; the Lacedaemonian was much surprised at

it, and desired his friend to show him the man who was condemned for

living like a freeman. So much beneath them did they esteem the

frivolous devotion of time and attention to the mechanical arts

and to money-making.

It need not be said, that, upon the prohibition of gold and silver, all

lawsuits immediately ceased, for there was now neither avarice nor

poverty amongst them, but equality, where every one's wants were

supplied, and independence, because those wants were so small. All

their time, except when they were in the field, was taken up by the

choral dances and the festivals, in hunting, and in attendance on the

exercise-grounds and the places of public conversation. Those who were

under thirty years of age were not allowed to go into the marketplace,

but had the necessaries of their family supplied by the care of their

relations and lovers; nor was it for the credit of elderly men to be

seen too often in the marketplace; it was esteemed more suitable for

them to frequent the exercise-grounds and places of conversation, where

they spent their leisure rationally in conversation, not on money-making

and market-prices, but for the most part in passing judgment on some

action worth considering; extolling the good, and censuring those who

were otherwise, and that in a light and sportive manner, conveying,

without too much gravity, lessons of advice and improvement. Nor was

Lycurgus himself unduly austere; it was he who dedicated, says Sosibius,

the little statue of Laughter. Mirth, introduced seasonably at their

suppers and places of common entertainment, was to serve as a sort of

sweetmeat to accompany their strict and hard life. To conclude, he bred

up his citizens in such a way that they neither would nor could live by

themselves; they were to make themselves one with the public good, and,

clustering like bees around their commander, be by their zeal and public

spirit carried all but out of themselves, and devoted wholly to their

country. What their sentiments were will better appear by a few of

their sayings. Paedaretus, not being admitted into the list of the

three hundred, returned home with a joyful face, well pleased to find

that there were in Sparta three hundred better men than himself. And

Polycratidas, being sent with some others ambassador to the lieutenants

of the king of Persia, being asked by them whether they came in a

private or in a public character, answered, "In a public, if we

succeed; if not, in a private character." Argileonis, asking some who

came from Amphipolis if her son Brasidas died courageously and as became

a Spartan, on their beginning to praise him to a high degree, and saying

there was not such another left in Sparta, answered, "Do not say so;

Brasidas was a good and brave man,

but there are in Sparta many better than he."

The senate, as I said before, consisted of those who were Lycurgus's

chief aiders and assistants in his plans. The vacancies he ordered to be

supplied out of the best and most deserving men past sixty years old;

and we need not wonder if there was much striving for it; for what more

glorious competition could there be amongst men, than one in which it

was not contested who was swiftest among the swift or strongest of the

strong, but who of many wise and good was wisest and best, and fittest

to be entrusted for ever after, as the reward of his merits, with the

supreme authority of the commonwealth, and with power over the lives,

franchises, and highest interests of all his countrymen? The manner of

their election was as follows: the people being called together, some

selected persons were locked up in a room near the place of election, so

contrived that they could neither see nor be seen, but could only hear

the noise of the assembly without; for they decided this, as most other

affairs of moment, by the shouts of the people. This done, the

competitors were not brought in and presented all together, but one

after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly without

speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing-tables with them,

in which they recorded and marked each shout by its loudness, without

knowing in favor of which candidate each of them was made, but merely

that they came first, second, third, and so forth. He who was found to

have the most and loudest acclamations was declared senator duly

elected. Upon this he had a garland set upon his head, and went in

procession to all the temples to give thanks to the gods; a great number

of young men followed him with applauses, and women, also, singing verses

in his honor, and extolling the virtue and happiness of his life. As he

went round the city in this manner, each of his relations and friends

set a table before him, saying, "The city honors you with this

banquet;" but he, instead of accepting, passed round to the common table

where he formerly used to eat; and was served as before, excepting that

now he had a second allowance, which he took and put by. By the time

supper was ended, the women who were of kin to him had come about the

door; and he, beckoning to her whom he most esteemed, presented to her

the portion he had saved, saying, that it had been a mark of esteem to

him, and was so now to her; upon which she was triumphantly waited upon

home by the women.

Touching burials, Lycurgus made very wise regulations; for, first of

all, to cut of all superstition, he allowed them to bury their dead

within the city, and even round about their temples, to the end that

their youth might be accustomed to such spectacles, and not be afraid to

see a dead body, or imagine that to touch a corpse or to tread upon a

grave would defile a man. In the next place, he commanded them to put

nothing into the ground with them, except, if they pleased, a few olive

leaves, and the scarlet cloth that they were wrapped in. He would not

suffer the names to be inscribed, except only of men who fell in the

wars, or women who died in a sacred office. The time, too, appointed

for mourning, was very short, eleven days; on the twelfth, they were to

do sacrifice to Ceres, and leave it off; so that we may see, that as he

cut off all superfluity, so in things necessary there was nothing so

small and trivial which did not express some homage of virtue or scorn

of vice. He filled Lacedaemon all through with proofs and examples of

good conduct; with the constant sight of which from their youth up, the

people would hardly fail to be gradually formed and advanced in virtue.

And this was the reason why he forbade them to travel abroad, and go

about acquainting themselves with foreign rules of morality, the habits

of ill-educated people, and different views of government. Withal he

banished from Lacedaemon all strangers who could not give a very good

reason for their coming thither; not because he was afraid lest they

should inform themselves of and imitate his manner of government (as

Thucydides says), or learn any thing to their good; but rather lest they

should introduce something contrary to good manners. With strange

people, strange words must be admitted; these novelties produce

novelties in thought; and on these follow views and feelings whose

discordant character destroys the harmony of the state. He was as

careful to save his city from the infection of foreign bad habits, as

men usually are to prevent the introduction of a pestilence.

Hitherto I, for my part, see no sign of injustice or want of equity in

the laws of Lycurgus, though some who admit them to be well contrived to

make good soldiers, pronounce them defective in point of justice. The

Cryptia, perhaps (if it were one of Lycurgus's ordinances, as Aristotle

says it was), Gave both him and Plato, too, this opinion alike of the

lawgiver and his government. By this ordinance, the magistrates

dispatched privately some of the ablest of the young men into the

country, from time to time, armed only with their daggers, and taking a

little necessary provision with them; in the daytime, they hid

themselves in out-of-the-way places, and there lay close, but, in the

night, issued out into the highways, and killed all the Helots they

could light upon; sometimes they set upon them by day, as they were at

work in the fields, and murdered them. As, also, Thucydides, in his

history of the Peloponnesian war, tells us, that a good number of them,

after being singled out for their bravery by the Spartans, garlanded, as

enfranchised persons, and led about to all the temples in token of

honors, shortly after disappeared all of a sudden, being about the

number of two thousand; and no man either then or since could give an

account how they came by their deaths. And Aristotle, in particular,

adds, that the ephori, so soon as they were entered into their office,

used to declare war against them, that they might be massacred without a

breach of religion. It is confessed, on all hands, that the Spartans

dealt with them very hardly; for it was a common thing to force them to

drink to excess, and to lead them in that condition into their public

halls, that the children might see what a sight a drunken man is; they

made them to dance low dances, and sing ridiculous songs, forbidding

them expressly to meddle with any of a better kind. And, accordingly,

when the Thebans made their invasion into Laconia, and took a great

number of the Helots, they could by no means persuade them to sing the

verses of Terpander, Alcman, or Spendon, "For," said they, "the masters

do not like it." So that it was truly observed by one, that in Sparta

he who was free was most so, and he that was a slave there, the greatest

slave in the world. For my part, I am of opinion that these outrages

and cruelties began to be exercised in Sparta at a later time,

especially after the great earthquake, when the Helots made a general

insurrection, and, joining with the Messenians, laid the country waste,

and brought the greatest danger upon the city. For I cannot persuade

myself to ascribe to Lycurgus so wicked and barbarous a course, judging

of him from the gentleness of his disposition and justice upon all other

occasions; to which the oracle also testified.

When he perceived that his more important institutions had taken root in

the minds of his countrymen, that custom had rendered them familiar and

easy, that his commonwealth was now grown up and able to go alone, then,

as, Plato somewhere tells us, the Maker of the world, when first he saw

it existing and beginning its motion, felt joy, even so Lycurgus,

viewing with joy and satisfaction the greatness and beauty of his

political structure, now fairly at work and in motion, conceived the

thought to make it immortal too, and, as far as human forecast could

reach, to deliver it down unchangeable to posterity. He called an

extraordinary assembly of all the people, and told them that he now

thought every thing reasonably well established, both for the happiness

and the virtue of the state; but that there was one thing still behind,

of the greatest importance, which he thought not fit to impart until he

had consulted the oracle; in the meantime, his desire was that they

would observe the laws without any the least alteration until his

return, and then he would do as the god should direct him. They all

consented readily, and bade him hasten his journey; but, before he

departed, he administered an oath to the two kings, the senate, and the

whole commons, to abide by and maintain the established form of polity

until Lycurgus should be come back. This done, he set out for Delphi,

and, having sacrificed to Apollo, asked him whether the laws he had

established were good, and sufficient for a people's happiness and

virtue. The oracle answered that the laws were excellent, and that the

people, while it observed them, should live in the height of renown.

Lycurgus took the oracle in writing, and sent it over to Sparta; and,

having sacrificed the second time to Apollo, and taken leave of his

friends and his son, he resolved that the Spartans should not be

released from the oath they had taken, and that he would, of his own

act, close his life where he was. He was now about that age in which

life was still tolerable, and yet might be quitted without regret.

Every thing, moreover, about him was in a sufficiently prosperous

condition. He, therefore, made an end of himself by a total abstinence

from food; thinking it a statesman's duty to make his very death, if

possible, an act of service to the state, and even in the end of his

life to give some example of virtue and effect some useful purpose. He

would, on the one hand, crown and consummate his own happiness by a

death suitable to so honorable a life, and, on the other, would secure

to his countrymen the enjoyment of the advantages he had spent his life

in obtaining for them, since they had solemnly sworn the maintenance of

his institutions until his return. Nor was he deceived in his

expectations, for the city of Lacedaemon continued the chief city of all

Greece for the space of five hundred years, in strict observance of

Lycurgus's laws; in all which time there was no manner of alteration

made, during the reign of fourteen kings, down to the time of Agis, the

son of Archidamus. For the new creation of the ephori, though thought

to be in favor of the people, was so far from diminishing, that it very

much heightened, the aristocratical character of the government.

In the time of Agis, gold and silver first flowed into Sparta, and with

them all those mischiefs which attend the immoderate desire of riches.

Lysander promoted this disorder; for, by bringing in rich spoils from

the wars, although himself incorrupt, he yet by this means filled his

country with avarice and luxury, and subverted the laws and ordinances

of Lycurgus; so long as which were in force, the aspect presented by

Sparta was rather that of a rule of life followed by one wise and

temperate man, than of the political government of a nation. And as the

poets feign of Hercules, that, with his lion's skin and his club, he

went over the world, punishing lawless and cruel tyrants, so may it be

said of the Lacedaemonians, that, with a common staff and a coarse

coat, they gained the willing and joyful obedience of Greece, through

whose whole extent they suppressed unjust usurpations and despotisms,

arbitrated in war, and composed civil dissensions; and this often

without so much as taking down one buckler, but barely by sending some

one single deputy, to whose direction all at once submitted, like bees

swarming and taking their places around their prince. Such a fund of

order and equity, enough and to spare for others,

existed in their state.

And therefore I cannot but wonder at those who say that the Spartans

were good subjects, but bad governors, and for proof of it allege a

saying of king Theopompus, who, when one said that Sparta held up so

long because their kings could command so well, replied, "Nay, rather

because the people know so well how to obey." For people do not obey,

unless rulers know how to command; obedience is a lesson taught by

commanders. A true leader himself creates the obedience of his own

followers; as it is the last attainment in the art of riding to make a

horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of government, to

inspire men with a willingness to obey. The Lacedaemonians inspired men

not with a mere willingness, but with an absolute desire, to be their

subjects. For they did not send petitions to them for ships or money,

or a supply of armed men, but only for a Spartan commander; and, having

obtained one, used him with honor and reverence; so the Sicilians

behaved to Gylippus, the Chalcidians to Brasidas, and all the Greeks in

Asia to Lysander, Callicratidas, and Agesilaus; they styled them the

composers and chasteners of each people or prince they were sent to, and

had their eyes always fixed upon the city of Sparta itself, as the

perfect model of good manners and wise government. The rest seemed as

scholars, they the masters of Greece; and to this Stratonicus pleasantly

alluded, when in jest he pretended to make a law that the Athenians

should conduct religious processions and the mysteries, the Eleans

should preside at the Olympic games, and, if either did amiss, the

Lacedaemonians be beaten. Antisthenes, too, one of the scholars of

Socrates, said, in earnest, of the Thebans, when they were elated by

their victory at Leuctra, that they looked like schoolboys who had

beaten their master.

However, it was not the design of Lycurgus that his city should govern a

great many others; he thought rather that the happiness of a state, as

of a private man, consisted chiefly in the exercise of virtue, and in

the concord of the inhabitants; his aim, therefore, in all his

arrangements, was to make and keep them free-minded, self-dependent, and

temperate. And therefore all those who have written well on politics,

as Plato, Diogenes, and Zeno, have taken Lycurgus for their model,

leaving behind them, however, mere projects and words; whereas Lycurgus

was the author, not in writing but in reality, of a government which

none else could so much as copy; and while men in general have treated

the individual philosophic character as unattainable, he, by the example

of a complete philosophic state, raised himself high above all other

lawgivers of Greece. And so Aristotle says they did him less honor at

Lacedaemon after his death than he deserved, although he has a temple

there, and they offer sacrifices yearly to him as to a god.

It is reported that when his bones were brought home to Sparta his tomb

was struck with lightning; an accident which befell no eminent person

but himself, and Euripides, who was buried at Arethusa in Macedonia;

and it may serve that poet's admirers as a testimony in his favor, that

he had in this the same fate with that holy man and favorite of the

gods. Some say Lycurgus died in Cirrha; Apollothemis says, after he had

come to Elis; Timaeus and Aristoxenus, that he ended his life in Crete;

Aristoxenus adds that his tomb is shown by the Cretans in the district

of Pergamus, near the strangers' road. He left an only son, Antiorus,

on whose death without issue, his family became extinct. But his

relations and friends kept up an annual commemoration of him down to a

long time after; and the days of the meeting were called Lycurgides.

Aristocrates, the son of Hipparchus, says that he died in Crete, and

that his Cretan friends, in accordance with his own request, when they

had burned his body, scattered the ashes into the sea; for fear lest, if

his relics should be transported to Lacedaemon, the people might pretend

to be released from their oaths, and make innovations in the government.

Thus much may suffice for the life and actions of Lycurgus.