Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
compulsion, when he might have reigned in security at Troezen in the
enjoyment of no inglorious empire, of his own motion affected great
actions, whereas the other, to escape present servitude and a punishment
that threatened him, (according to Plato's phrase) grew valiant purely
out of fear, and dreading the extremest inflictions, attempted great
enterprises out of mere necessity. Again, his greatest action was only
the killing of one king of Alba; while, as mere by-adventures and
preludes, the other can name Sciron, Sinnis, Procrustes, and Corynetes;
by reducing and killing of whom, he rid Greece of terrible oppressors,
before any of them that were relieved knew who did it; moreover, he
might without any trouble as well have gone to Athens by sea,
considering he himself never was in the least injured by those robbers;
where as Romulus could not but be in trouble whilst Amulius lived. Add
to this the fact that Theseus, for no wrong done to himself, but for the
sake of others, fell upon these villains; but Romulus and Remus, as long
as they themselves suffered no ill by the tyrant, permitted him to
oppress all others. And if it be a great thing to have been wounded in
battle by the Sabines, to have killed king Acron, and to have conquered
many enemies, we may oppose to these actions the battle with the
Centaurs and the feats done against the Amazons. But what Theseus
adventured, in offering himself voluntarily with young boys and virgins,
as part of the tribute unto Crete, either to be a prey to a monster or a
victim upon the tomb of Androgeus, or, according to the mildest form of
the story, to live vilely and dishonorably in slavery to insulting and
cruel men; it is not to be expressed what an act of courage,
magnanimity, or justice to the public, or of love for honor and bravery,
that was. So that methinks the philosophers did not ill define love to
be the provision of the gods for the care and preservation of the young;
for the love of Ariadne, above all, seems to have been the proper work
and design of some god in order to preserve Theseus; and, indeed, we
ought not to blame her for loving him, but rather wonder all men and
women were not alike affected towards him; and if she alone were so.
truly I dare pronounce her worthy of the love of a god, who was herself
so great a lover of virtue and goodness, and the bravest man.
Both Theseus and Romulus were by nature meant for governors; yet neither
lived up to the true character of a king, but fell off, and ran, the one
into popularity, the other into tyranny, falling both into the same
fault out of different passions. For a ruler's first end is to maintain
his office, which is done no less by avoiding what is unfit than by
observing what is suitable. Whoever is either too remiss or too strict
is no more a king or a governor, but either a demagogue or a despot, and
so becomes either odious or contemptible to his subjects. Though
certainly the one seems to be the fault of easiness and good-nature, the
other of pride and severity.
If men's calamities, again, are not to be wholly imputed to fortune, but
refer themselves to differences of character, who will acquit either
Theseus of rash and unreasonable anger against his son, or Romulus
against his brother? Looking at motives, we more easily excuse the
anger which a stronger cause, like a severer blow, provoked. Romulus,
having disagreed with his brother advisedly and deliberately on public
matters, one would think could not on a sudden have been put into so
great a passion; but love and jealousy and the complaints of his wife,
which few men can avoid being moved by, seduced Theseus to commit that
outrage upon his son. And what is more, Romulus, in his anger,
committed an action of unfortunate consequence; but that of Theseus
ended only in words, some evil speaking, and an old man's curse; the
rest of the youth's disasters seem to have proceeded from fortune; so
that, so far, a man would give his vote on Theseus's part.
But Romulus has, first of all, one great plea, that his performances
proceeded from very small beginnings; for both the brothers being
thought servants and the sons of swineherds, before becoming freemen
themselves, gave liberty to almost all the Latins, obtaining at once all
the most honorable titles, as destroyers of their country's enemies,
preservers of their friends and kindred, princes of the people, founders
of cities, not removers, like Theseus, who raised and compiled only one
house out of many, demolishing many cities bearing the names of ancient
kings and heroes. Romulus, indeed, did the same afterwards, forcing his
enemies to deface and ruin their own dwellings, and to sojourn with
their conquerors; but at first, not by removal, or increase of an
existing city, but by foundation of a new one, he obtained himself
lands, a country, a kingdom, wives, children, and relations. And, in so
doing, he killed or destroyed nobody, but benefited those that wanted
houses and homes and were willing to be of a society and become
citizens. Robbers and malefactors he slew not; but he subdued nations,
he overthrew cities, he triumphed over kings and commanders. As to
Remus, it is doubtful by whose hand he fell; it is generally imputed to
others. His mother he clearly retrieved from death, and placed his
grandfather who was brought under base and dishonorable vassalage, on
the ancient throne of Aeneas, to whom he did voluntarily many good
offices, but never did him harm even inadvertently. But Theseus, in his
forgetfulness and neglect of the command concerning the flag, can
scarcely, methinks, by any excuses, or before the most indulgent judges,
avoid the imputation of parricide. And, indeed, one of the Attic
writers, perceiving it to be very hard to make an excuse for this,
feigns that Aegeus, at the approach of the ship, running hastily to the
Acropolis to see what news, slipped and fell down, as if he had no
servants, or none would attend him on his way to the shore.
And, indeed, the faults committed in the rapes of women admit of no
plausible excuse in Theseus. First, because of the often repetition of
the crime; for he stole Ariadne, Antiope, Anaxo the Troezenian, at last
Helen, when he was an old man, and she not marriageable; she a child,
and he at an age past even lawful wedlock. Then, on account of the
cause; for the Troezenian, Lacedaemonian, and Amazonian virgins, beside
that they were not betrothed to him, were not worthier to raise children
by than the Athenian women, derived from Erechtheus and Cecrops; but it
is to be suspected these things were done out of wantonness and lust.
Romulus, when he had taken near eight hundred women, chose not all, but
only Hersilia, as they say, for himself; the rest he divided among the
chief of the city; and afterwards, by the respect and tenderness and
justice shown towards them, he made it clear that this violence and
injury was a commendable and politic exploit to establish a society; by
which he intermixed and united both nations, and made it the fountain of
after friendship and public stability. And to the reverence and love
and constancy he established in matrimony, time can witness; for in two
hundred and thirty years, neither any husband deserted his wife, nor any
wife her husband; but, as the curious among the Greeks can name the
first case of parricide or matricide, so the Romans all well know that
Spurius Carvilius was the first who put away his wife, accusing her of
barrenness. The immediate results were similar; for upon those
marriages the two princes shared in the dominion, and both nations fell
under the same government. But from the marriages of Theseus proceeded
nothing of friendship or correspondence for the advantage of commerce,
but enmities and wars and the slaughter of citizens, and, at last, the
loss of the city Aphidnae, when only out of the compassion of the enemy,
whom they entreated and caressed like gods, they escaped suffering what
Troy did by Paris. Theseus's mother, however, was not only in danger,
but suffered actually what Hecuba did, deserted and neglected by her
son, unless her captivity be not a fiction, as I could wish both that
and other things were. The circumstances of the divine intervention,
said to have preceded or accompanied their births, are also in contrast;
for Romulus was preserved by the special favor of the gods; but the
oracle given to Aegeus, commanding him to abstain, seems to demonstrate
that the birth of Theseus was not agreeable to the will of the gods.
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