SOURCE: Rawson, Elizabeth. Introduction to The Spartan Tradition in European Thought, pp. 1-11. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1969.

[In the following essay, Rawson describes the political and social system of classical Sparta after surveying modern impressions of the ancient Greek city-state.]

Ancient Sparta: a militaristic and totalitarian state, holding down an enslaved population, the helots, by terror and violence, educating its young by a system incorporating all the worst features of the traditional English public school, and deliberately turning its back on the intellectual and artistic life of the rest of Greece. Such, at least, is the picture, if any, which mention of the name consciously or unconsciously conjures up in the minds of most people in this country today. The liberal democratic tradition that dominates modern English thought has very naturally tended to idealize Sparta's great rival, democratic Athens; and its consequent distrust of Sparta was reinforced by reaction against a very different set of political ideas, particularly prominent in Germany, where admiration for Sparta reached a fantastic conclusion under the Nazis; to some writers, at that time, Sparta was the most purely Nordic state in Greece, and an exemplar of National Socialist virtues. Two hundred years ago, however, an ordinary educated Englishman would most probably have viewed the Spartan constitution as a prototype of the British limited monarchy in all its perfection; his French contemporary might have been one of those who revered her, with Rousseau and others, primarily as an egalitarian, often more or less communistic, republic. Two hundred years before that she appeared in still other guises; as the ideal aristocratic republic, for example, practically indistinguishable from Venice. And so we might go on.

For over two and a half millennia politicians and philosophers, in the light of their own needs and convictions, have regarded now one aspect and now another of Sparta as significant. From almost the dawn of Greek history enormous prestige surrounded her, and this was exploited to recommend the most disparate virtues and institutions; the occasional reactions are correspondingly obsessive. Only Rome, sometimes as republic and sometimes as empire, has exerted greater attraction; influence cannot be measured, and is a word to avoid.

With the history of attitudes to ancient Rome scholars have to some extent occupied themselves. They have largely neglected the longer and even more Protean history of laconism, as the Greeks called it, though classical scholars have paid considerable attention to the first part of the story, that of Sparta's reputation in ancient Greece itself. But if Sparta has not dominated the stage as much as Rome, she has usually played a more prominent role than Athens. The reputation of one of the two great city-states of Greece necessarily involves that of its rival in practice as well as theory; indeed, most of our ideas about Sparta can be traced ultimately to Athenian critics, occupied above all with self-criticism. But between the end of the fifth century b.c. and the eighteenth century a.d. Athens, or at least Athenian democracy, was as a political ideal in almost permanent eclipse. It is the fortunes of Sparta that make up a continuous and comprehensible story, interesting and at times amusing in itself, and above all apt to throw light on the political and moral ideas of antiquity, and on the reflection of these ideas in more recent times.

What Sparta in fact was is of less importance to us than what she was thought to be; indeed scholars have always found it all but impossible to disentangle the one from the other, partly because so many of the ancient sources are strikingly lacking in objectivity. Let us, however, briefly recall her main features, as they appeared in the fifth century b.c. The state with which we are concerned was seemingly founded by some of the ‘Dorian’ Greeks, who entered the peninsula after the first flowering of Greek civilization in the Bronze Age, and it replaced an important kingdom of Mycenean Greece. It was officially known, like its forerunner, as Lacedaemon, rather than by the name of its new capital Sparta, as is usual today—though it was the citizens of Sparta alone, properly to be described as Spartiates, who controlled the whole southern area of the Peloponnese, an area which we now generally call by its Roman or at least late-classical name Laconia. This, like laconic, comes from the conveniently shortened forms of the adjective Lacedaemonian which were in common use in Greece.

The most striking, perhaps, of all the new Lacedaemon's striking features was the double kingship. Two kings from distinct and frequently hostile houses but both supposedly descended from the hero Heracles reigned simultaneously and with equal powers. But these powers had been progressively so circumscribed (though not to the extent suffered by the monarchy in Athens and elsewhere) that by the fifth or fourth century the Spartan kings might be regarded as little more than hereditary commanders-in-chief, with various other privileges mostly religious and ceremonial. The assembly of Spartiates decided which of the two kings was to lead a particular campaign; once in the field, the king could normally conduct war and negotiate with allies or enemies at his own discretion, but might be tried on his return should his decisions prove unwelcome (we hear of special commissioners being sent out to oversee a king's actions abroad, but this appears to have been unusual). The kings married into leading families at Sparta, not into each other's or abroad. Herodotus, who was interested in their position, implies that they not only presided over the council but had two votes apiece in it. Thucydides roughly denied this last, no doubt rightly for his own time [Herodotus vi. 57; Thucydides i. 20.]; and the presidency may also have passed by then to the ephors.

These were a board of five magistrates elected each year by the Spartiates. The ephors or ‘overseers’ appear to have been instituted originally as watchdogs of the kings on behalf of the citizens. They received from the kings a monthly oath to observe the laws (which, on entering office, they also ordered the people to do) and even had the power to arrest them, for the kings were subject to trial and punishment. There are late and perhaps unreliable tales implying that the ephors might even inflict summary fines on them for various misdemeanours. The ephorate was closely similar in many respects to the supreme executive magistracy in other Greek states. By the fifth century its members presided over the assembly, conducting its business and putting questions to the vote; they were responsible for raising the military levy; they received foreign envoys, and determined whether to refer their requests to the council and assembly; they had extensive judicial functions, each ephor being charged to hear a particular class of cases; they had considerable police powers, especially over the helots. They were able to take a strong initiative on many occasions, and theorists sometimes regarded them as the real rulers of the state, but it seems that when there was a popular and energetic king they could sink into insignificance. It is noteworthy that they were apparently often men of humble extraction and popular sympathies, as these went in Sparta.

Not so the members of the council or Gerousia, consisting of twenty-eight elders over the age of sixty who were elected for life and sat with the kings—though possibly, in classical times, under the ephors—to prepare business for the assembly, on the pattern usual in Greece (this gave them the sole initiative in all legislation). The council also acted as the highest court of justice; to it were reserved all cases involving the penalties of death, exile, or loss of civic rights. The small number, permanence, and high age-qualification made the council look very oligarchic to fifth-century eyes, in spite of its popular election. According to the precious early document known as the Great Rhetra and quoted by Plutarch, the kings and council together could even overrule the assembly. But it is uncertain if this was so in the fifth century, when the ephors had become so potent a factor in the state, and when the assembly appears in all our historical narratives as the ultimate authority.

This assembly of all male citizens met to elect officials by acclamation, to decide on peace or war, and for the little new legislation there was. The ordinary member, unlike the Athenian, could probably only listen to the speeches of notables. Again, this was doubtless the usual state of affairs in the archaic period. During the fifth century the number of citizens seems to have fallen to a very few thousand, and this too made it possible to regard the whole state as an oligarchy, though even so it rested on a broader base than most Greek oligarchies, and in the seventh and sixth centuries must have appeared remarkably liberal. But the assembly was also restricted, as we shall see, to those fulfilling a property qualification, and further excluded the perioeci, the inhabitants of the other cities of Laconia over which the Spartiates early extended their rule; but these possessed, with the name of Lacedaemonians, probably considerable local autonomy (Athens, by contrast, fully enfranchised the whole of Attica). Even more obviously, the helots were excluded. Presumably in origin the earlier rural population, pre-Dorian but not necessarily wholly pre-Greek, these had been reduced to a kind of state serfdom. Helots lived on and worked the lands of individual Spartiates; they were bound to the soil, having no freedom of movement, but were not bound to their masters, being legally servants of the state; they could be freed or moved only by state order. They were, however, required to give a fixed proportion or quantity of produce to the Spartiate who held the land, for the support of his household and the payment of his dues in the common mess. They were also required to serve in war when called up by the magistrates. They appear to have been subject to arbitrary arrest and execution, and there are dark hints of terroristic tactics against them: sudden murder raids, the unexplained disappearance of some 2,000 helots who had distinguished themselves in the Peloponnesian War. This unfree population, at least after Sparta conquered the neighbouring province of Messenia in the late eighth century b.c., enormously outnumbered its masters, a fact that not only explains the ruthlessness with which it was often treated but doubtless had the greatest influence on the whole Spartan way of life.

Such was the political constitution of Sparta. Most of it was usually attributed to the great lawgiver Lycurgus, supposed to have been a member of one of the royal houses about the ninth century b.c., who imposed his laws as regent for an infant nephew. The ephorate however was sometimes believed, probably rightly, to be rather later in its full development at least, while as all agreed the double kingship went far further back. But Lycurgus was thought to be responsible also for the social institutions that the rest of Greece grew to find so remarkable. These were, in essence, the communal and military way of life of the Spartiates, with an economic basis ultimately supposed to involve an egalitarian division of land and the absence of coinage as well as the eschewing of industry and commerce, and a moral basis stressing such virtues as obedience and courage. In reality many features of this life must go back to a very primitive period, though it is probable that the system was much altered and developed at some time.

In Sparta, as elsewhere for that matter, deformed or feeble children were exposed at birth. It is uncertain how reliable may be stories that infant toughness was tested by means of baths in wine or icy water, but it is perhaps true that the decision to rear or destroy a child lay not with the father but with the elders of his tribe. At the age, probably, of seven the boy who had survived these hazards entered a ‘herd’ or agela, under the supervision of an older boy (with the right to beat his juniors) and ultimately of a magistrate, the paedonomus, but also of any citizen who happened to be present. At twelve the boys were taken from home and kept in barracks until the age of eighteen, where they were trained, under twenty-year-old officers, to drill and to fight in mimic battles. They were expected at this stage to take grown male lovers, and learn the proper habits of a soldier and a citizen from them. (Ancient authors dispute endlessly the exact nature of these relations; a form of bundling seems to have been practised; Cicero has probability on his side when he cites the rule of physical chastity in these contacts, and doubts its efficacy.) In barracks the trainees were questioned constantly by their officers at meals; the boy who gave an inadequate answer was struck smartly on the thumb. Our sources lay stress on the physical toughness of the boys' training and its military object; they went without shoes and had inadequate clothing and food—the last eked out by secret marauding on private property, for which they were praised if successful but beaten where lack of skill led to detection. Courage was tested at a religious ceremony involving endurance of the lash. The boys probably learnt to read and write, and to know selected poets, including Homer and especially their own warlike Tyrtaeus (of whose work the Spartan character in Plato's Laws is expected to be sick to death); and they were trained to take part in the choral performances at the great Laconian festivals, in song and dances as well as gymnastic competitions, like their elders. This whole system of training was known as the agoge.

When he had passed through the various classes or age-groups the young Spartan seems to have spent a period of time in the crypteia or Secret Band, whose members lived off the countryside and according to one source sometimes descended in fury to massacre the helots. Originally this was doubtless a form of manhood initiation rite for which parallels can be found, but it was probably, like so much else, rationalized as time went on, and the crypteia became in the first instance a secret police in peace and an intelligence service in war.

The object of the Spartan education, the object of the Spartan way of life, was war. The Spartan soldier in the field wore scarlet, lest his fellows should lose heart to see him bleed; he marched in step to the music of the oboe, wearing, in battle, a crown of flowers. He fought in platoons of thirty-odd men, grouped in companies, battalions, and regiments, with subordinate commanders at each level, an arrangement apparently entirely unique for classical Greece. The whole formed a phalanx of infantry usually fighting in a single line, eight to twelve men deep. So organized, drilled to the strictest discipline that Greeks had ever known, bred up from infancy to privation and to pain, the Spartiate at war was for centuries virtually unbeatable.

If he had borne himself creditably in all this, the adult Spartiate was accepted into a syssition, or mess, of about fifteen men—unless blackballed by a pellet of bread. On membership of such a mess, which must in origin at least have been a military unit, citizenship depended. With this mess the Spartiate took his frugal supper, notable for the famous black broth (from pork cooked in its blood) that the other Greeks found so repellent, for moderation in drinking, and for educative post-prandial conversations on war and politics, to which the boys were admitted. The primitive fear of public opinion, which treated all disobedience and cowardice in particular so severely that life became notoriously hardly worth living, persisted as a factor more powerful probably than the hope of honours and promotion, especially selection by the hippagretae into the royal guard of Three Hundred.

It is uncertain how much a man regularly slept away from home, though we are told that on marriage he was at first only allowed to visit his wife occasionally and by stealth. But his wife, whether she was left in complete control of the household for this reason or not, had received a certain amount of ‘gymnastic’ training herself, had taken part as a girl in races and very active dances, as well as personal and satirical songs, at the festivals, and furthermore had probably not been permitted to marry till she was fully grown; and thus she was unlike most other Greek women in strength of mind and body. According to later, possibly idealizing, Greek authors (contradicted, for the earlier period, by archaeology) she was also unusual in being allowed no cosmetics or jewellery or dyed clothing, and in having her hair close-cut, at least on marrying. Men who did not marry were compelled, at least at some period, to undergo ignominious penalties, whether for primitive religious reasons or because of the increasingly serious population problem.

From the produce of his land, which was cultivated by helots, the Spartiate paid the dues to his mess, largely in kind. If he could not do so he lost his full citizenship. It is possible that on the conquest of Laconia or later of Messenia some territory was distributed, according to a common Greek custom, into comparatively equal lots; and it appears that until the early fourth century there was some land that was not yet alienable, but doubtless owned in common by a family—a stage that most other parts of Greece left behind earlier. There can be little doubt however that there was not much financial equality; we know there were rich families who bred racehorses, and dangerously poor ones. The Spartiates boasted no doubt of the name homoioi or ‘Equals’, but this must have referred to their (theoretical) political equality, and perhaps to the superficially egalitarian mode of life. There were also traces of—perhaps primitive—communism; in some circumstances it was allowable to help oneself to the produce of another man's estate or the aid of his slaves and livestock, and even women were occasionally lent about, or held in common within the family.

Freed by helots (and wife) from the care of his property, the Spartiate devoted his time to hunting, drilling, and political duties. The Spartan phalanx became the admiration of Greece, the one professional force among a crowd of inexpert militias. The city, till far into her decline, never deigned to fortify herself, and the helots and Messenians were generally kept cowed. Perhaps it was at first only lack of time and the contempt common among Greek aristocracies which prevented the Spartiate taking active part in trade or manufacturing, which were left to the perioeci. It was believed in the fourth century that Lycurgus, in order to banish money-making and luxury, had actually forbidden the use of money save in the form of awkward iron spits. But in fact these appear simply to have been a survival of an institution widespread in Greece before the introduction of coinage in the late seventh century, and some foreign money probably circulated in Sparta even before the influx caused by victory in the Peloponnesian War. Other supposedly ascetic practices seem either to be archaic usages, sometimes of a basically religious nature, that persisted here alone, or propagandist statements by late moralists without any basis in fact. Others may be the result of a special crisis, such as the years of pressure and isolation in the middle of the fifth century. Perhaps the xenelasiai, or orders for the expulsion of foreigners, which so annoyed the inquisitive Athenians, were one custom that only became common now. But it is easily understandable that close control was also kept over Spartiates wishing to travel abroad; their country needed them too much.

Now lawgivers of extensive influence certainly did emerge in the small cities of Greece. The Athenian Solon, with whose name that of Lycurgus is so often bracketed, is a fully historical figure of the early sixth century. But the very existence of the latter is now often doubted. Some of our earliest sources notoriously ignore him or suggest that his origin was thought of as divine not human. Antiquity, however, spent centuries elaborating the events of his life, and the result may be read in the detailed biography of Plutarch. In reality it seems likely that Sparta underwent a fundamental reform or series of reforms about the early seventh century b.c. rather than at any of the variable but earlier dates given us for Lycurgus. This was a period of rapid development and thus of unrest in Greece, marked by the rising prosperity and assertion of classes outside the old nobility but rich enough to fight in the new fashion, with the heavy armour of the ‘hoplite’ foot-soldier. In Sparta's case, the conquest and division of Messenia may have enlarged or strengthened this hoplite class as well as suggesting the need to tighten up military training and make sure of moral unity among all Spartiates. The earlier seventh century is, at any rate, the age of the poet Tyrtaeus, whose fragments show part of the political constitution of Sparta as we know it in operation, attributing it to the kings Theopompus and Polydorus in whose time Messenia was conquered; and also—it can hardly be earlier—of the Great Rhetra, whose provisions seem closely related to those in Tyrtaeus. There were certainly later changes, particularly in the organization of the army, but the long-continued success of the system, and the cast of mind it induced, meant that by the fifth century Sparta was in many respects old-fashioned and indeed anxious to stop the clock. It was partly this fact that made her now seem strange to the rest of Greece.

It was observed, nevertheless, that she was not quite unique. Certain resemblances in Crete prompted the idea, already found by Herodotus in Sparta itself, that Lycurgus had taken hints from this source. The Dorian cities of Crete also had a large semi-serf population; they also had public messes for the men, and some sort of organization by age-groups for the boys, though beginning apparently only after adolescence and centred on the great families rather than the state. Their magistrates, the cosmoi, were compared to the ephors, and the country, being out of the main stream of Greek life at this time, was poor and old-fashioned. And finally Crete had a grand though semi-mythical lawgiver, King Minos, believed to be of far remoter date than Lycurgus but often said like him to have been directly inspired by a god.

The amazing vitality of Sparta as a political ideal springs in part from the complexity and even ambiguity of the system just outlined. Furthermore, she herself altered more than was always realized, while the outside world, and so the issues in which her name was involved, changed as well. The bewilderingly contradictory attitudes taken to Sparta in post-classical times can only be understood when it is seen how contradictory the ancient sources are too; necessarily so, for they are deeply rooted in the political and intellectual history of the ancient world.

As the only one of the leading states of classical Greece in which the king, or rather kings, preserved some at least of their powers, Sparta made some contribution to the ancient theory of kingship, and from the late Middle Ages she was in the forefront of the debate about absolute and limited monarchy. In the fifth century b.c. she acted as Greece's leading oligarchy; in the next, as in many later centuries, she seemed the embodiment of the mixed constitution, that combination of two or more types, most classically of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. The fourth century sometimes stressed her democratic and egalitarian side instead; and so Lycurgus became a patron saint of the Utopian tradition.

Distrust of commerce, and proposals for currency reform; belief in communism, or the vital importance of property rights, especially in land; militarism and pacifism; female emancipation; racialism and cosmopolitanism; education by the state and for the state, education of the whole man, anti-intellectualism; the most divergent ideas have been formulated or recommended with Spartan aid. There is no single thread running through the whole story; at most there are certain themes involving freedom, the rule of law, and the state's powers, to shape and educate in particular, which recur again and again in different forms. And there are also some wholly eccentric episodes.

There is one political ideal that Sparta cannot be made to reflect—the radical belief in individual liberty, issuing in liberal democracy. Here, if only stammeringly and by some distortion, Athens can speak—with the result that in most quarters today the long-established order of priority between the two perpetual rivals has been reversed. So deeply, however, have both impressed themselves on the European consciousness, that even in an age when classical antiquity is less familiar, and wields less authority, than before, one may take leave to doubt whether the long story of their transformations has really come to a full stop.