Having thus finished the lives of Lycurgus and Numa, we shall now,
though the work be difficult, put together their points of difference as
they lie here before our view. Their points of likeness are obvious;
their moderation, their religion, their capacity of government and
discipline, their both deriving their laws and constitutions from the
gods. Yet in their common glories there are circumstances of diversity;
for, first, Numa accepted and Lycurgus resigned a kingdom; Numa received
without desiring it, Lycurgus had it and gave it up; the one from a
private person and a stranger was raised by others to be their king, the
other from the condition of a prince voluntarily descended to the state
of privacy. It was glorious to acquire a throne by justice, yet more
glorious to prefer justice before a throne; the same virtue which made
the one appear worthy of regal power exalted the other to the disregard
of it. Lastly, as musicians tune their harps, so the one let down the
high-flown spirits of the people at Rome to a lower key, as the other
screwed them up at Sparta to a higher note, when they were sunken low by
dissoluteness and riot. The harder task was that of Lycurgus; for it
was not so much his business to persuade his citizens to put off their
armor or ungird their swords, as to cast away their gold or silver, and
abandon costly furniture and rich tables; nor was it necessary to preach
to them, that, laying aside their arms, they should observe the
festivals, and sacrifice to the gods, but rather, that, giving up
feasting and drinking, they should employ their time in laborious and
martial exercises; so that while the one effected all by persuasions and
his people's love for him, the other, with danger and hazard of his
person, scarcely in the end succeeded. Numa's muse was a gentle and
loving inspiration, fitting him well to turn and soothe his people into
peace and justice out of their violent and fiery tempers; whereas, if we
must admit the treatment of the Helots to be a part of Lycurgus's
legislations, a most cruel and iniquitous proceeding, we must own that
Numa was by a great deal the more humane and Greek-like legislator,
granting even to actual slaves a license to sit at meat with their
masters at the feast of Saturn, that they, also, might have some taste
and relish of the sweets of liberty. For this custom, too, is ascribed
to Numa, whose wish was, they conceive, to give a place in the enjoyment
of the yearly fruits of the soil to those who had helped to produce
them. Others will have it to be in remembrance of the age of Saturn,
when there was no distinction between master and slave, but all lived as
brothers and as equals in a condition of equality.
In general, it seems that both aimed at the same design and intent,
which was to bring their people to moderation and frugality; but, of
other virtues, the one set his affection most on fortitude, and the
other on justice; unless we will attribute their different ways to the
different habits and temperaments which they had to work upon by their
enactments; for Numa did not out of cowardice or fear affect peace, but
because he would not be guilty of injustice; nor did Lycurgus promote a
spirit of war in his people that they might do injustice to others, but
that they might protect themselves by it.
In bringing the habits they formed in their people to a just and happy
mean, mitigating them where they exceeded, and strengthening them where
they were deficient, both were compelled to make great innovations. The
frame of government which Numa formed was democratic and popular to the
last extreme, goldsmiths and flute-players and shoemakers constituting
his promiscuous, many-colored commonalty. Lycurgus was rigid and
aristocratical, banishing all the base and mechanic arts to the company
of servants and strangers, and allowing the true citizens no implements
but the spear and shield, the trade of war only, and the service of
Mars, and no other knowledge or study but that of obedience to their
commanding officers, and victory over their enemies. Every sort of
money-making was forbid them as freemen; and to make them thoroughly so
and to keep them so through their whole lives, every conceivable concern
with money was handed over, with the cooking and the waiting at table,
to slaves and helots. But Numa made none of these distinctions; he only
suppressed military rapacity, allowing free scope to every other means
of obtaining wealth; nor did he endeavor to do away with inequality in
this respect, but permitted riches to be amassed to any extent, and paid
no attention to the gradual and continual augmentation and influx of
poverty; which it was his business at the outset, whilst there was as
yet no great disparity in the estates of men, and whilst people still
lived much in one manner, to obviate, as Lycurgus did, and take measures
of precaution against the mischiefs of avarice, mischiefs not of small
importance, but the real seed and first beginning of all the great and
extensive evils of after times. The re-division of estates, Lycurgus is
not, it seems to me, to be blamed for making, nor Numa for omitting;
this equality was the basis and foundation of the one commonwealth; but
at Rome, where the lands had been lately divided, there was nothing to
urge any re-division or any disturbance of the first arrangement, which
was probably still in existence.
With respect to wives and children, and that community which both, with
a sound policy, appointed, to prevent all jealousy, their methods,
however, were different. For when a Roman thought himself to have a
sufficient number of children, in case his neighbor who had none should
come and request his wife of him, he had a lawful power to give her up
to him who desired her, either for a certain time, or for good. The
Lacedaemonian husband on the other hand, might allow the use of his wife
to any other that desired to have children by her, and yet still keep
her in his house, the original marriage obligation still subsisting as
at first. Nay, many husbands, as we have said, would invite men whom
they thought like]y to procure them fine and good-looking children into
their houses. What is the difference, then, between the two customs?
Shall we say that the Lacedaemonian system is one of an extreme and
entire unconcern about their wives, and would cause most people endless
disquiet and annoyance with pangs and jealousies? The Roman course
wears an air of a more delicate acquiescence, draws the veil of a new
contract over the change, and concedes the general insupportableness of
mere community? Numa's directions, too, for the care of young women are
better adapted to the female sex and to propriety; Lycurgus's are
altogether unreserved and unfeminine, and have given a great handle to
the poets, who call them (Ibycus, for example) Phaenomerides, bare-
thighed; and give them the character (as does Euripides) of being
wild after husbands;
These with the young men from the house go out,
With thighs that show, and robes that fly about.
For in fact the skirts of the frock worn by unmarried girls were not
sewn together at the lower part, but used to fly back and show the whole
thigh bare as they walked. The thing is most distinctly given
by Sophocles.
--She, also, the young maid,
Whose frock, no robe yet o'er it laid,
Folding back, leaves her bare thigh free,
Hermione.
And so their women, it is said, were bold and masculine, overbearing to
their husbands in the first place, absolute mistresses in their houses,
giving their opinions about public matters freely, and speaking openly
even on the most important subjects. But the matrons, under the
government of Numa, still indeed received from their husbands all that
high respect and honor which had been paid them under Romulus as a sort
of atonement for the violence done to them; nevertheless, great modesty
was enjoined upon them; all busy intermeddling forbidden, sobriety
insisted on, and silence made habitual. Wine they were not to touch at
all, nor to speak, except in their husband's company, even on the most
ordinary subjects. So that once when a woman had the confidence to
plead her own cause in a court of judicature, the senate, it is said,
sent to inquire of the oracle what the prodigy did portend; and, indeed,
their general good behavior and submissiveness is justly proved by the
record of those that were otherwise; for as the Greek historians record
in their annals the names of those who first unsheathed the sword of
civil war, or murdered their brothers, or were parricides, or killed
their mothers, so the Roman writers report it as the first example, that
Spurius Carvilius divorced his wife, being a case that never before
happened, in the space of two hundred and thirty years from the
foundation of the city; and that one Thalaea, the wife of Pinarius, had
a quarrel (the first instance of the kind) with her mother-in-law,
Gegania, in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus; so successful was the
legislator in securing order and good conduct in the marriage relation.
Their respective regulations for marrying the young women are in
accordance with those for their education. Lycurgus made them brides
when they were of full age and inclination for it. Intercourse, where
nature was thus consulted, would produce, he thought, love and
tenderness, instead of the dislike and fear attending an unnatural
compulsion; and their bodies, also, would be better able to bear the
trials of breeding and of bearing children, in his judgment
the one end of marriage.
Astolos chiton, the under garment, frock, or tunic, without anything,
either himation or peplus, over it.
The Romans, on the other hand, gave their daughters in marriage as early
as twelve years old, or even under; thus they thought their bodies alike
and minds would be delivered to the future husband pure and undefiled.
The way of Lycurgus seems the more natural with a view to the birth of
children; the other, looking to a life to be spent together, is more
moral. However, the rules which Lycurgus drew up for superintendence of
children, their collection into companies, their discipline and
association, as also his exact regulations for their meals, exercises,
and sports, argue Numa no more than an ordinary lawgiver. Numa left the
whole matter simply to be decided by the parent's wishes or necessities;
he might, if he pleased, make his son a husbandman or carpenter,
coppersmith or musician; as if it were of no importance for them to be
directed and trained up from the beginning to one and the same common
end, or as though it would do for them to be like passengers on
shipboard, brought thither each for his own ends and by his own choice,
uniting to act for the common good only in time of danger upon occasion
of their private fears, in general looking simply to their own interest.
We may forbear, indeed, to blame common legislators, who may be
deficient in power or knowledge. But when a wise man like Numa had
received the sovereignty over a new and docile people, was there any
thing that would better deserve his attention than the education of
children, and the training up of the young, not to contrariety and
discordance of character, but to the unity of the common model of
virtue, to which from their cradle they should have been formed and
molded? One benefit among many that Lycurgus obtained by his course was
the permanence which it secured to his laws. The obligation of oaths to
preserve them would have availed but little, if he had not, by
discipline and education, infused them into the children's characters,
and imbued their whole early life with a love of his government. The
result was that the main points and fundamentals of his legislation
continued for above five hundred years, like some deep and thoroughly
ingrained tincture, retaining their hold upon the nation. But Numa's
whole design and aim, the continuance of peace and good-will, on his
death vanished with him; no sooner did he expire his last breath than
the gates of Janus's temple flew wide open, and, as if war had, indeed,
been kept and caged up within those walls, it rushed forth to fill all
Italy with blood and slaughter; and thus that best and justest fabric of
things was of no long continuance, because it wanted that cement which
should have kept all together, education. What, then, some may say, has
not Rome been advanced and bettered by her wars? A question that will
need a long answer, if it is to be one to satisfy men who take the
better to consist in riches, luxury, and dominion, rather than in
security, gentleness, and that independence which is accompanied by
justice. However, it makes much for Lycurgus, that, after the Romans
deserted the doctrine and discipline of Numa, their empire grew and
their power increased so much; whereas so soon as the Lacedaemonians
fell from the institutions of Lycurgus, they sank from the highest to
the lowest state, and, after forfeiting their supremacy over the rest of
Greece, were themselves in danger of absolute extirpation. Thus much,
meantime, was peculiarly signal and almost divine in the circumstances
of Numa, that he was an alien, and yet courted to come and accept a
kingdom, the frame of which though he entirely altered, yet he performed
it by mere persuasion, and ruled a city that as yet had scarce become
one city, without recurring to arms or any violence (such as Lycurgus
used, supporting himself by the aid of the nobler citizens against the
commonalty), but, by mere force of wisdom and justice, established union
and harmony amongst all.