Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
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.