The Good Book (89 page)

30. Indeed, whoever will examine the sedition and misgovernment in the bordering nations to whom Sparta was near related in blood and situation, will find in them the best reason to admire the wisdom of Lycurgus.

31. 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,

32. Who, in the first allotment, were thought to have been luckier than the Spartans; yet their happiness did not endure,

33. Partly the tyrannical temper of their kings and partly the ungovernableness of the people quickly bringing upon them such disorders,

34. As clearly to show how truly great a blessing the Spartans had had in Lycurgus.

35. After the creation of the senators, Lycurgus’ next task, and indeed the most hazardous, was a new division of lands.

36. For there was an extreme inequality among the people;

37. Their state was overloaded with indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon very few.

38. To expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime,

39. And those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity,

40. Lycurgus therefore persuaded rich and poor alike to renounce their properties,

41. And to accept a new division of the land, so that all should live together on an equal footing;

42. Merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, the one measure of difference between man and man.

43. Upon their consent, he divided the country into thirty thousand equal shares, and the area around the city of Sparta into nine thousand; these he redistributed.

44. A share was enough to yield seventy bushels of grain annually for a man, and twelve for his wife, with a suitable proportion of oil and wine.

45. This he thought sufficient to keep their bodies in health and strength; superfluities they were better without.

46. It is reported, that, as he returned from a journey shortly after the land redistribution, the ground being newly reaped, seeing the stacks all standing equal and alike, he smiled, and said,

47. ‘Laconia looks like one family estate divided among a band of brothers.’

Chapter 4

  1. Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or inequality left amongst them;

  2. But finding that it would be dangerous to do it openly, he defeated their avarice by the following stratagem:

  3. He commanded that all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was worth little;

  4. So that to lay up twenty or thirty pounds required a large closet, and to move it nothing less than a yoke of oxen.

  5. With the diffusion of this money, a number of vices were at once banished;

  6. For who would steal, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have?

  7. In the next place, Lycurgus outlawed all superfluous arts; but here he might have spared his pains, for they would have gone of themselves after the gold and silver, the money which remained being not so proper payment for curious work;

  8. For, being of iron, it was scarcely portable, neither could they use it to buy from other Greeks, who ridiculed it.

  9. So there was now no way of purchasing foreign goods and small wares;

10. Merchants sent no shiploads into Laconian ports; no rhetoric master, no itinerant medicine man, no harlot monger, silversmith, engraver or jeweller, set foot in a country which had no money;

11. So that luxury, deprived little by little of that which fed and fomented it, died away of itself.

12. For the rich had no advantage here over the poor, as their expensive possessions were shut up at home doing nothing.

13. In this way the Spartans became excellent artists in ordinary and necessary things:

14. Beds, chairs and tables, and such staple utensils in a family, were admirably well made there;

15. Their cup, particularly, was much in demand, and eagerly bought up by soldiers, as Critias reports;

16. For its colour was such as to prevent water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look at, from being noticed;

17. And its shape was such that the mud stuck to the sides, so that only the cleaner part came to the drinker’s mouth.

18. For this also, they had to thank their lawgiver, who, by relieving the artisans of the trouble of making useless things,

19. Set them to show their skill in giving beauty to things of daily use.

Chapter 5

  1. The third and most masterly stroke of this great lawgiver, by which he delivered a yet more effective blow against luxury and the desire of riches,

  2. Was the ordinance he made that they should all eat in common, of the same bread and meat,

  3. And should not spend their lives at home, lying on costly couches at splendid tables,

  4. Delivering themselves into the hands of their tradesmen and cooks, to fatten like greedy brutes,

  5. And to ruin not only their minds but their bodies which, enfeebled by indulgence, would stand in need of long sleep, warm bathing, freedom from work,

  6. And, in a word, as much care and attendance as if they were continually sick.

  7. It was certainly an extraordinary thing to have brought about such a result,

  8. 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.

  9. For the rich, being obliged to go to the same table as the poor, could not make use of their abundance, nor so much as please their vanity by looking at or displaying it.

10. The common table ordinance in particular exasperated the wealthier men.

11. They collected in a body against Lycurgus, and from ill words came to throwing stones,

12. So that at length he was forced to run out of the marketplace, and seek sanctuary to save his life.

13. He managed to outrun all except one Alcander, a young man otherwise not ill accomplished, but hasty and violent, who came up so close to him,

14. That when Lycurgus turned to see who was near, Alcander struck his face with a stick, and put out one of his eyes.

15. Lycurgus, so far from being daunted by this accident, stopped short and showed his disfigured face and eye to his countrymen;

16. They, ashamed at the sight, escorted him safely home, and delivered Alcander into his hands to be punished.

17. Lycurgus, having thanked them, dismissed them all, except Alcander;

18. And, taking him with him into his house, neither did nor said anything severely to him, but bade Alcander to wait on him at table.

19. The young man, who was of an ingenuous temper, without murmuring did as he was commanded;

20. And being thus admitted to live with Lycurgus, he had an opportunity to observe in him, besides his gentleness and calmness, an extraordinary sobriety and an indefatigable industry,

21. And so, from an enemy, became one of his most zealous admirers.

Chapter 6

  1. The public repast of Sparta had several names in Greek; the Cretans called them ‘andria’, because the men only came to them.

  2. The Lacedaemonians called them ‘phiditia’, that is, by changing l into d, the same as ‘philitia’, love feasts, because by eating and drinking together they had opportunity of making friends.

  3. Or perhaps from ‘phido’, parsimony, because they were so many schools of sobriety.

  4. Or perhaps the first letter is an addition, and the word at first was ‘editia’, from ‘edode’, eating.

  5. They met by companies of about fifteen, 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 a small sum of money for meat or fish.

  6. Besides this, when any of them had been hunting, he donated a part of the venison he had killed;

  7. For such occasions were the only excuses allowed for supping at home.

  8. The custom of eating together was observed strictly for a great while afterwards;

  9. Insomuch that King Agis himself, after having vanquished the Athenians, sending for his commons at home, because he desired to eat privately with his queen, was refused by the polemarchs; when he complained they made him pay a fine.

10. The Spartans sent their children to these tables as to schools of temperance;

11. Here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen;

12. Here they learned to converse with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and to take teasing without ill humour.

13. In this point of good breeding the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given, no more was said to him.

14. It was customary also for the eldest in the company to say to each of them, as they came in, ‘Through this’ (pointing to the door) ‘no words go out.’

15. When anyone desired to be admitted into any of these little societies, he was to go through the following probation:

16. Each man in the company took a little ball of soft bread, which they were to throw into a basin carried by a waiter on his head.

17. Those favouring the candidate dropped their ball into the basin without altering its figure;

18. Those who disliked him flattened it between their fingers, and this signified a negative vote.

19. If there were just one of these flattened 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.

20. The basin was called ‘caddichus’, and the rejected candidate had a name thence derived.

21. The most famous dish of the common table was black broth, which was so much valued that the older men fed only upon that, leaving the meat to the younger men.

22. After drinking moderately, every man went home without lights,

23. For the use of them was forbidden, so that they might accustom themselves to march boldly in the dark.

Chapter 7

  1. Lycurgus would never put his laws into writing; there is a Rhetra expressly forbidding it.

  2. For he thought that the most material points, being imprinted on the hearts of the youth by a good discipline, would be sure to remain, and would find a stronger security there.

  3. It was his design that education should effect every end and object of the law.

  4. And as for things of lesser importance, as pecuniary contracts and such like, the forms of which have to be changed as occasion requires,

  5. He thought it best to prescribe no positive rules, willing that they should be alterable according to circumstances, as determined by men of sound judgement.

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

  7. Another was particularly levelled against luxury, for by it was ordained that the ceilings of the houses should only be wrought by the axe, and their gates and doors smoothed only by the saw.

  8. Epameinondas’ famous dictum about his own table, that ‘Treason and a plain dinner like this do not keep company together,’ may be said to have been anticipated by Lycurgus, for luxury and a plain house could not well be companions.

  9. He would lack sense who would furnish simple rooms with silver-footed couches, purple coverlets and gold plate.

10. Doubtless Lycurgus 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.

11. It is reported that King Leotychides, the first of that name, was so little used to the sight of any kind of decorated work,

12. That, being entertained at Corinth in a stately room, he was much surprised to see the timber and ceiling so finely carved, and asked his host whether the trees grew so in his country.

13. A third ordinance of Rhetra was, that they should not make war often, or long, with the same enemy,

14. Lest they should train and instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves.

15. And this is what Agesilaus was blamed for, a long time after; it being thought that, by his continual incursions into Boeotia, he made the Thebans a match for the Spartans;

16. And therefore Antalcidas, seeing him wounded one day, said that he was well paid for making the Thebans good soldiers despite themselves.

17. For the good education of the youth, which Lycurgus thought the most important and noblest work of a lawgiver,

18. He went so far back as to take into consideration their very conception and birth, by regulating marriages.