Λυκοῦργος
Life of Lycurgus by Plutarch
Translated by Richard J.A.Talbert and edited exclusively for St. Albans School by Dr. R.M. Shurmer
1. Generally speaking it is impossible to make any undisputed statement about Lycurgus the lawgiver, since conflicting accounts have been given of his ancestry, his travels, his death, and above all his activity with respect to his laws and government; and there is least agreement among historians as to when the man lived. Some claim that he was in his prime at the same time as Iphitus and was his partner in establishing the Olympic truce and games. Among those who take this view is Aristotle the philosopher, who alleges as proof a discus preserved at Olympia with Lycurgus’ name inscribed on it. But others who calculate his time by the succession of Spartan kings claim that he must have lived much earlier than the First Olympiad. The philosopher Timaeus conjectures that there were actually two Lycurguses at Sparta at different times, and that the achievements of both are attributed to a single man. The older man may have lived close to the time of Homer; there are some who think Lycurgus even met Homer in person. Xenophon, too, suggests a rather early date in a passage of his written work Nonetheless, even though this is such a muddled topic of history, I shall try to present an account of Lycurgus by following those stories which are least contradicted and from the most distinguished authorities.
2. Of Lycurgus’ ancestors, Soüs was most famous and particularly admired. Under him the Spartans both made slaves of the helots and acquired the lands of Messenia by conquest. Among the succeeding kings some were detested for ruling the people by force, while others were merely tolerated because their rule was feeble. As a result, for a long period Sparta was gripped by lawlessness and disorder. It was as a consequence of this that Lycurgus’ father, too, met his death while king. He died from being struck by a chef’s cleaver in the course of trying to stop a brawl. The throne was left to his elder son Polydectes.
3. When Polydectes also died not long after, everyone figured that Lycurgus ought to replace his brother as king. And he did serve as king until it became apparent that his brother’s widow was pregnant. As soon as he discovered this, Lycurgus declared that the kingship rightfully belonged to the child if it should turn out to be a male, and he would exercise power simply as a prodikoi: prodikoi was the term used by the Spartans for the guardians of young kings without fathers. The mother, however, in secret communication explained to him her wish to abort the baby on condition that Lycurgus would marry her and remain king of Sparta. Though he loathed her suggestion and morals, he raised no objection to the proposal and pretended to approve and accept it. He said that there was no need for her to suffer physical harm and to run the risks by taking drugs to induce a miscarriage, since he would ensure that the child was disposed of as soon as it was born. By this means he continued to mislead the woman up until the time of the child’s birth. When he learned that she was in labor, Lycurgus sent in observers and guards to be present at the delivery with instructions: should the child turn out to be a girl, it was to be handed over to its mother, but if it should be a boy, they were to bring it to him personally. It so happened that Lycurgus was eating with some distinguished Spartans when a boy was born and the servants appeared with the child. The story goes that he took him and said to those present: ‘Spartiates, a king is born to you.’ And then he laid the child in the king’s place and named him Charilaus, meaning the People’s Joy, because everyone, impressed at how high-minded and fair Lycurgus was, felt overjoyed.
4. Lycurgus had been king for eight months and admired by the citizens. Many were obedient because he was the prodikoi and had authority as guardian, but many more were devoted to him because of his personal excellence. Yet there was also some jealousy and attempts to stem his power among the relations and friends of the king’s mother who felt particularly injured by Lycurgus’ popularity. On one occasion her brother abused Lycurgus quite offensively and added that he was fully aware of Lycurgus’ intention to seize the throne and make himself king. This slander laid the ground for accusing Lycurgus of a plot to harm the boy king. Similar sorts of remarks were made by the king’s mother too. Since these caused Lycurgus distress and fear about the uncertain future, he decided to avoid suspicion by going abroad and travelling around until his nephew should come of age and have a son of his own to succeed him and inherit the throne.
5. So he left Sparta, set sail, and arrived first at Crete. Here he studied the various forms of government and associated with men of the highest reputation. He greatly admired the laws there and took note with the intention of bringing them home and putting them to use in Sparta. By his charm and friendliness, he prevailed upon one of these men whom he regarded as shrewd and statesmanlike to undertake a mission to Sparta. This man, named Thales, though a powerful lawgiver, had a reputation as a composer of lyric poetry. His songs served as arguments to evoke obedience and concord. The accompanying music and rhythms had a notably regular and soothing quality, so that those who heard them would unconsciously mellow in character. In place of the mutual ill-will which at that time prevailed there, they would instead became used to striving together for excellence. Thus in a sense Thales paved the way for Lycurgus’ instruction of the Spartiates.
6. From Crete Lycurgus sailed to Asia [Ionian coast]. Some say that his plan was to compare the frugal, tough way of life on Crete with the extravagance and luxury of Ionia, and to observe the differences in the ways of life and government, just as a physician who compares festering and diseased bodies with the healthy. It was apparently in Ionia that Lycurgus first encountered the poems of Homer. And when he observed that besides their tendencies to unrestrained indulgence they also contained political and educational elements which were no less worthy of attention, he enthusiastically had them written down and collected in order to bring them back home. Homer’s epics had already gained a certain reputation among some of the Greeks, and a few individuals had acquired fragments of the works thanks to chance, but Lycurgus was the first and most successful in making them widely known.
7. The Egyptians think that Lycurgus reached them too, and was so impressed with their system that separated the warrior class from civilians that he went home and instituted similar divisions in Spartan society. There are certainly some Greek historians who endorse these claims by the Egyptians. There are even a few who contend that Lycurgus visited both Libya and Iberia and that in his wanderings around India he talked with the Gymnosophists there.
8. The Spartans missed Lycurgus throughout this absence and often summoned him back. To them the kings, while accorded a title and an office, were in other ways not superior to the people. And in Lycurgus they recognized a natural leader with the ability to attract a following. In fact even the kings were not reluctant to see him back again. Their hope was that with his presence they would receive less offense from the people. So when Lycurgus did return to a populace in this kind of mood, his immediate intention was to sweep away the existing order and to make a complete change of constitution rather than attempt to introduce piecemeal legislation. Once he had decided on this road, Lygurgus travelled first to Delphi and after sacrificing to the god and consulting him, he returned bringing that famous oracle in which the Pythia called him ‘dear to the gods’ and ‘a god rather than a man’. Lycurgus asked for Good Order and she declared that the god Apollo granted this and further promised that his constitution would be the finest by far.
9. With this encouragement he made approaches to the most distinguished men and invited them to join in the task. Initially he conferred with his friends in secret, yet ever so gradually he won over more men and organized them for action. When the moment came, he ordered his thirty foremost men to proceed under arms into the agora at dawn, so as to shock and terrify his opponents.
10. First and most significant among Lycurgus’ numerous innovations was the institution of the gerousia. According to Plato, its combination with the kings’ executive authority and the right to an equal vote on the most important matters, produced security and sound policy for the State. For the State had been unstable, at one moment inclining towards monarchy and virtual tyranny and at another towards the people and democracy. But now by placing the senators of the gerousia in between as a kind of ballast, and thus striking a balance, it found the safest arrangement and organization, with the twenty-eight senators always siding with the kings when it came to a matter of resisting democracy, yet in turn reinforcing the people against the development of tyranny. According to Aristotle the number of senators was instituted because two of Lycurgus’ thirty leading associates panicked and abandoned the reforming enterprise. But Sphaerus claims that from the outset there were twenty-eight collaborators in the scheme. Possibly the fact that this number is reached through multiplying seven by four also has something to do with it, as well as the point that it is the next perfect number after six. Yet in my view the main reason for fixing this number was that so the total number of senators should be thirty when the two kings were added to the twenty-eight.
11. Lycurgus was so enthusiastic about the gerousia that he sought an oracle from Delphi, which they call a rhetra. Thus receiving the Pythia’s endorsement, Lycurgus related the origin and source of his constitution to Apollo. When the populace was assembled in the apella, Lycurgus permitted no one else excep the senators and kings to make a proposal, although the authority to decide upon what the latter put forward did belong to the people. Later, however, when the people distorted proposals and mauled them by their deletions and additions, the kings Polydorus and Theopompus supplemented the rhetra as follows: ‘If the people should make a crooked choice, the senators and the kings are to set it aside, that is, not confirm it, but to withdraw it completely and to dismiss the people because they are altering and reformulating the proposal contrary to what was best. Moreover these kings persuaded the city that the god Apollo had ordered this supplement to the constitution — as the poet Tyrtaeus seems to be recalling in the following lines:
Having listened to Phoebus Apollo they brought home from Pytho
The oracles of the god and his words which were to be fulfilled:
To rule in council is for the kings, who are esteemed by the gods
And whose care is the lovely city of Sparta,
And for the aged senators; but then it is for the common people
To respond in turn with straight rhetras.
12. While Lycurgus had thus incorporated a blend of elements in the constitution, Spartans after his day nonetheless still saw oligarchy as undiluted and dominant so that they created the authority of the ephors to act as a curb to the gerousia. It was apparently about 130 years after the time of Lycurgus, during the reign of king Theopompus, that the first ephors were appointed. By its renunciation of excessive authority and the related resentment, the Spartan kingship escaped the danger of suffering the fate which the Messenians and Argives inflicted upon their kings, who refused to concede anything or yield and of their authority to the popular element. Lycurgus’ skill and forsight in this respect are also seen with special clarity in any review of the civil strife and misgovernment among the Spartans’ own kinsmen and neighbors, the Messenians and Argives. Initially they had been equal to the Spartans and even possessed more land than Sparta. However, they did not prosper for long, but through the insolence of their kings and the non-cooperation of the masses they threw their institutions into complete turmoil and their states into disorder, thereby demonstrating what a truly divine blessing the Spartiate enjoyed in the man who constructed Sparta’s constitution and blended it. Yet these development came later.
13. Lycurgus’ second, and most revolutionary, reform was his redistribution of the land. There was in Sparta dreadful inequality: many destitute people without means were congregating in the city, while wealth had poured completely into the hands of but a few. In order to expel arrogance, envy, crime, luxury, and those yet older and more serious political afflictions, wealth and poverty, Lycurgus persuaded the citizens to pool all of the land and then redistribute it afresh. Then they would all live on equal terms with one another, with the same amount of property to support each, and they would seek to be first only in merit. There would be no distinction or inequality between individual Spartan citizens except for what censure of bad conduct and praise of good would determine.
14. Acting upon his word, Lycurgus distributed the remainder of Laconia to the perioikoi in 30,000 lots and divided the part subject to the city of Sparta into 9000. This was the number of lots reserved for the Spartiate. Each citizen’s lot was sufficient to provide a rent of 70 medimni of barley for a man and 12 for his wife, along with proportionate quantities of fresh produce. He thought that just this amount of food would suffice for their proper fitness and health, and that they would need no more than that. There is a story that at some later date, when on return from abroad, he was passing through the country just after the harvesting and saw heaps of grain side by side and all equal in size. He smiled and remarked to his companions that the whole of Laconia had the look of a property which many brothers have recently divided between themselves.