Sparta
We turn naturally from Apollo and his Dorians to the headquarters of the Dorian race, where all the strength and weakness of the Dorian character is revealed at its highest and lowest. As the most important part of Greek history consists of the long duel between Sparta and Athens, and all our literature comes from Athens, posterity naturally tends to take sides against Sparta. And yet all those writers, from Herodotus to Aristotle, had a very real admiration for Sparta. Liberals, on the other hand—and we are all Liberals nowadays—dislike Sparta, as representing oligarchy against democracy and as having sold the liberty of Greece to the Persians. And yet the Spartans practised equality, which the Athenians praised, as no people on earth have ever practised it, and in selling Greece to Persia they were only bidding against Athens. Other people despise Sparta as the one Greek people which contributed hardly anything to literature and art. And yet she is the most typically Greek of all Greek states. The fact is that she is a paradox. One of the chief interests of Greek history is the extraordinary psychological contrast between the two chief actors. Sparta is the antithesis of Athens, and yet, if any one would know Greece, he must realise that both are essentially and characteristically Greek. Each is the complement of the other. Without Sparta Greece would lack its most remarkable figure in the realm of politics, as well as its chief bulwark in land warfare. These are the two sides of Sparta on which we ought to fix our attention—the political system which gave her the best, or at any rate the most stable, government in Greek history, and the military education and discipline which gave her the finest army.
Politically, all the Greek states, whether democracies or oligarchies, rest upon a double structure of council and assembly. In democracies the assembly is based on a very wide franchise, and possesses the actual control of the state, the council being limited to subordinate functions, executive and deliberative. At Athens, as we shall see, the council is more like a committee to prepare business for the assembly. In oligarchies, on the other hand, the assembly consists of a comparatively small and select body of richer or nobler citizens, while the actual government is in the hands of the council. Sparta contained both these elements: an assembly of all the warriors, or Spartiates, with full rights, though these were comparatively a small proportion of the population of Laconia, and a Gerousia, or Senate, of thirty elders. But Sparta, though ranked as an oligarchy by the general opinion of Greece, was not, as Aristotle saw, a true or typical oligarchy. In the first place, the ruling council of regular oligarchies generally consisted of a close corporation co-opting its members, while the Spartan gerontes were elected by the whole body of the full citizens. In the second place, Sparta had developed an executive magistracy, which had far more real share in the direction of the state than either the Senate or the Assembly. This perhaps was the secret of their efficient and stable government, for most Greek states had such a dread of personal ascendancy that they sacrificed unity and efficiency of administration by placing their executive magistracies in a position wholly subordinate. It was not so at Sparta. There they had retained a kingship from the early times of the Dorian invasion right through their history, as no other really Greek State was able to do. They had two kings descending in parallel dynasties from prehistoric times, or, as they put it, from two Heracleid families. The origin of this double kingship is really lost in antiquity, though there are many theories about it, both ancient and modern. The most probable is that of two separate bands of Dorian invaders, each under its own king, uniting to conquer the valley of the Eurotas, and combining to form the state. In reviewing the kingship of Greek history Aristotle places this Spartan system
Plate XXI. CHARIOTEER: BRONZE
Mansell & Co.
in a class by itself, calling it a “permanent hereditary generalship.” By his time the office had lost, indeed, much of its political significance, and was notoriously subordinate to the Ephorate. The military leadership was by far the most conspicuous duty attached to the office. This is curious, for political experience commonly shows the opposite case; one of the first duties to be taken from a hereditary office is the military leadership, because of the peculiar need for personal capacity in that department. But Sparta was a singularly conservative and religious, not to say superstitious, city, devoted to ritual, and firmly believing in the general’s luck. Such a people does not feel confidence under the leadership of mere talent; it much prefers to fight under the orders of a descendant of Heracles. And as Spartan warfare was always a very simple business, requiring no strategic skill in its direction, the Spartans were not likely to find out the weakness of a hereditary system in generalship. Beyond the leading of armies, the Spartan kings had few rights or duties. They had ex-officio titles to two of the thirty seats in the Gerousia, they had legal jurisdiction in some unimportant cases connected with religion, and they represented the state in certain festivals and sacrifices.
But the political executive passed over in the fifth and fourth centuries to the five Ephors, who controlled and sometimes even oppressed the kings. The origin of this peculiar and distinctive office is also lost in antiquity. Spartan tradition certainly believed in a time when the Ephorate was not; and on the whole the most probable theory is that the Ephorate was originally created by the kings as a subordinate office. Judging from actual history, it is too much to say that the Ephors were always supreme over the kings in practice; nearly all the great men of Spartan history—Leonidas, Cleomenes, Agesilaus, Agis, Cleombrotus—are its kings, and we scarcely know the name of a single Ephor. It was, in fact, a long fight between kings and Ephors for pre-eminence. As a general rule the board of Ephors no doubt directed the state’s policy, but kings like Agesilaus seem to have had far more than a mere executive duty. What struck all observers was that Ephors sometimes summoned kings before them for trial, sometimes condemned them to death, and in ceremonial remained seated in the presence of the kings. The fact is that at Sparta sovereignty belonged in a very real sense to the warrior body, and the Ephors expressed that sovereignty, as being directly elected by it. Especially in judicial matters they were supreme, and in a state which moved by clockwork under the control of a rigid discipline and fixed customs, though all the laws were unwritten, the heads of the judicial system naturally held the reins of government. The fact that the Ephors held their position by popular election is held to constitute a democratic element in the constitution. This gives rise to the theory, evolved by the successors of Aristotle in political philosophy, that the stability of the Spartan constitution depended on its nice adjustment of the three elements of polity—monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Sparta was thus considered to be the type of a Mixed Constitution. From Sparta the Greek historian Polybius applied the same theory to the government of Rome. Thence it was transferred by Montesquieu to the British Constitution, and thus has played, and is playing, an important part in the history of political science. So far as Sparta is concerned, the theory rests upon a false basis. Aristotle was undoubtedly right in terming Sparta an aristocracy, for the Spartiate body itself was a minority and a jealously guarded close corporation. Both the democratic and the monarchical elements in the state were largely an illusion. Moreover, Aristotle did not admit the propriety of applying the term democracy to a state which merely had some choice in the persons by whom it should be governed. “To govern and be governed in turn” was the essence of democracy to Aristotle, and he would certainly have called both the other examples of the Mixed Constitution, ancient Rome and modern England, aristocracies. To him, however, aristocracy was the best kind of rule. Did it not
Plate XXII. VIEW OF MODERN SPARTA, WITH MOUNT TAYGETUS
English Photo Co., Athens
mean etymologically “government by the best”? Besides, there was the practical proof of excellence that Sparta alone was free from the ever endemic Greek disease of “stasis” or civil strife, and that Sparta alone of Greek States had never witnessed a successful revolution.
In the common meaning of the term also Sparta was an aristocracy. Her citizen body—the Spartiates, as they called themselves—were always a minority of nobles, living armed and watchful amid a great subject population of serfs. These Helots were of the same blood as the neighbouring peoples of Messenia and Arcadia—that is to say, they are the aboriginal stratum of Greece—and if they had a chance would no doubt prove as intelligent and artistic as their ancestors. But no chance was given them; they were ruthlessly oppressed, cruelly exploited, and there was an organised secret service to remove any men of mark that might arise from their ranks. On the battlefield of Platæa every Spartan soldier was followed by seven Helots. Thus every Spartan is to be ranked with the mediæval knight, though he fought on foot. Between these two classes of knights and serfs there was also an intermediate rank—the Neighbours, or Perioikoi. If the theory of racial stratification is to be applied to them they must represent a pre-Dorian wave of conquest, Achæan presumably, which in its turn had to yield, but, being not entirely alien, was treated on a superior footing. Though they had no political or social standing, the Perioikoi were not oppressed. They lived mostly in the country and on the sea-coast. They provided the sailors, the farmers, and, so far as Laconia had any trade, the traders. They seem to have been contented with their lot, but we know singularly little about them.
The city of Sparta itself—the only unwalled city in Greece, planted on the banks of the Eurotas, under Mount Taygetus[27]—consisted, then, of a circle of knights and their slaves. The Spartiates formed a very exclusive and haughty clique of military men, extremely narrow and oppressive to those about and beneath them, ever vigilant against rebellion, and conscious that their spears and shields had to take the place of a wall for Lacedæmon. Among themselves they lived an absolutely equal communistic life. Their meals were provided at common mess-tables, each a little club with power to elect and reject its members. As this institution also prevailed among the Dorians of Crete, it is to be regarded as something very ancient and characteristically Dorian. It meant, of course, the complete absence of home and family life. It was by such habits that the Spartans remained a conquering race, victorious first over their Messenian neighbours in two long wars, the details of which are legendary, and then gradually extending their control over the whole Peloponnesus, including their Dorian kinsmen of Argos and Epidaurus.
It is possible that the remarkable discipline and asceticism of Sparta which is proverbially linked with her name had gradually increased. Recent excavations have shown that seventh-century Sparta was not destitute of art. From the lyric poets of the seventh century we get glimpses of a Sparta not entirely ascetic or contemptuous of culture. On the contrary, she is a patroness of foreign poets like Tyrtæus. But already she appreciates most the martial song and dance. It must be remembered that in Greece poetry, music, and the dance were far more closely allied than with us. Not only did Greek dramatists originally train their own choruses in the dance and compose their own music, but even Hesiod in that Eubœan competition had to chant his verses aloud. So at Sparta Terpander and Alcman were first musicians and secondly lyric poets, and Tyrtæus, the Athenian bard, was there to conduct martial dances and to train the boys of Sparta in their musical drill. Thus there was no contradiction in early times between strict military discipline and a love of lyric poetry. Afterwards, when music grew softer and poetry less martial, the Spartans banished all musicians and poets from their midst, though they retained the old marching tunes of antiquity. One of these poets, Alcman, seems to have come to Sparta as a captive from luxurious Lydia, and he does sing of cakes and kisses, but the small fragments of Tyrtæus are all military:
“Come, ye sons of dauntless Sparta,
Warrior sons of Spartan citizens,
With the left advance the buckler,
Stoutly brandish spears in right hands,
Sparing not your lives for Sparta:
Such is not the Spartan custom.”
Terpander praises Sparta for three things, the courage of her youths, her love of music, and her justice. A Spartan proverb, apparently ancient, runs: “Sparta will fall by love of wealth, naught else.” They were, and always remained, a covetous people; but for that very reason when coined money began to be used in Greece about the seventh century Sparta forbade its introduction lest commerce should taint the warrior spirit of her citizens, so that Sparta had no coinage until the second century, but continued to use, where money was necessary, the ancient clumsy ingots of iron. Change for five pounds at Sparta needed a cart to bring it home in. But money is not the only form of wealth, and it is probably an Athenian lampoon which represents the Spartan as living on nothing but the celebrated black soup. As every Spartan had his land (the equality and inalienability of the lots is probably a later fiction), with any number of Helots to till it, while the young men spent their leisure in the chase, there was plenty to supply the Spartan larder, and to provide wine and sweetmeats for Lydian poets as well.
It was in education that the discipline is most characteristically “Spartan.” From birth to death the Spartan was in the grip of an iron system. Indeed, it began before birth, for the Spartans are the only people in history who have dared to carry out the principles of modern eugenics. They trained the bodies of their girls with running[28] and wrestling and throwing of quoits and javelins, that when the time came they might bear stalwart sons, and bear them bravely. “The Law-giver,” says Plutarch, “put away all coquettishness and hysteria and effeminacy by making the girls strip for processions, dances, and choruses at the temples, with the youths present as spectators. This stripping of the maidens involved no shame, for modesty was there and lewdness was absent, but it produced unaffected manners and a desire for physical fitness, and it gave the female sex some taste of a not ignoble pride, in that they too had their share of manly worth and ambition to excel. Whence came to them that thought which is expressed in the traditional repartee of Leonidas’ wife Gorgo. A foreign woman remarking to her, ‘You Laconians are the only women who rule the men,’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we are the only women who are the mothers of men.’”
The strongest moral suasion compelled Spartan men to marry. The marriage customs of Sparta were peculiar and carry us back to the remotest antiquity. The bridegroom carried off his bride by a pretence of violence, and the bride cut her hair short and dressed like a man. There was no marriage feast; the young husband dined at his mess-table, visited his young wife by stealth, and returned to barracks. Sometimes a wife bore children to a man whose face she had never seen. The child was not considered to belong to his father, but to the city. “The Law-giver thought it absurd to take trouble about the breed of horses and dogs, and then let the imbecile, the elderly, and the diseased bear and beget children.” There was another celebrated Spartan repartee about adultery:
“We have no adulterers in Sparta.”
“Suppose you had, what is the penalty?”
“The fine is a big bull that jumps over Taygetus and drinks from the Eurotas.”
“My dear sir, how could there be such a monstrous animal?”
Plate Plate 23.—Running Girl.
Anderson.
“My dear sir, how could there be adultery at Sparta?”
At birth the babe was taken away from its parent to a hall where the elders of the tribe sat to examine it. If it was plump and strong they said, “Rear it.” If not it was exposed to die in a cleft of the mountain. “For they thought better, both for it and the city, that it should die than that it should live if it was not naturally healthy and strong. That was why the women washed it with wine instead of water as a test of its strength.” They had scientific methods of rearing babies, no swaddling-clothes, no fear of the dark or solitude. Foreigners used to hire Laconian women for their nurses.
As soon as they were seven years old the children were drafted off into “herds.” The most “sensible and combative” of each herd was made prefect, whose orders the others had to obey implicitly and suffer his punishments without wincing. The older men watched them at their play, and set them to fight one another. They learnt letters, but nothing else except music and drill. They walked without sandals, and generally played naked.
At the age of twelve they were allowed one mantle a year, no tunic. “They had no experience of baths and unguents; only for a few days each year they were allowed such luxuries.” They slept in their herds on rushes, which they had to cut from the river-banks. “In winter they used to mix thistles with their bedding, from the idea that there was some warmth in them.” At this age they began to associate with older youths on those curious terms of male love peculiar to the Greeks. Their elders would take a fatherly interest in the achievements of their beloved, chastise and encourage them.
Also, there was a public tutor appointed from among the grown-up nobles for each “herd,” as well as prefects from the wisest and most warlike of the youths of twenty. The latter had his “fags” entirely under his orders. Stealing of food was encouraged as a martial virtue likely to lead to sharpening the wits for warlike purposes. In a state which practised communism there was, of course, no dishonesty involved. If they were caught they were thrashed for their bad stealing. To encourage theft, their public rations were kept short. They were also thrashed for the good of their souls, to encourage endurance. “We have seen many of the youths die under the blows at the altar of Artemis the Upright,” says Plutarch, or rather the authority he is quoting. But modern students consider that this flagellation at the altar was probably a religious ritual, of which there are many other examples. If the beater spared his victim the goddess manifested her displeasure.
After mess, at which he was waited on by his fags, the prefect would address himself to their intellectual education. Some had to sing, to others he would put questions in ethical casuistry. “Who is the best of the men?” “What do you think of this or that action?” The answer had to be brief and pointed—“Laconic,” in fact. The boy had to give reasons for his answer. A bad answer was punished by a bite on the back of the hand, but if older men were present the prefect had to justify his punishments. If a boy cried out ignobly in fighting, his lover was punished also. But the real source of their education was in music, marching songs, and hymns in praise of the heroes of Spartan history. One such song is preserved:
“Old Men. We were warriors of old.
“Men. As we are. Who doubts? Behold.
“Boys. Some day we shall be more bold.”
Laconic, but Spartan!
The Spartan youths did not neglect their personal appearance, especially in the matter of fine armour. They prided themselves on their long and well-groomed hair. In the pass of Thermopylæ the Persian monarch was astonished to see the three hundred Spartans, who ought to have been trembling and saying their prayers, carefully combing their long hair. In war-time discipline was relaxed. When the line of battle was drawn up in the face of the enemy, first the king sacrificed a goat, and the warriors crowned themselves with garlands of flowers, while the flute-players played the song of Kastor. Then they stepped forward gravely to the sound of the marching pæan, all in step, without disorder or confusion, but “led gently and cheerfully by the music into danger.” There was no fear, for the hymn “made them feel that the god was with them.” When they had routed their enemy they only pursued so far as to assure defeat, “considering it neither gentlemanly nor Hellenic to cut and slay those who yielded and retired.” This was the spirit of all their warfare; they never destroyed a beaten city.
As soon as they were of military age the army and the secret police took most of their time and thought. Arts, crafts, and business they considered the work of slaves. Dancing, singing, modest banquets, and hunting were their relaxations. It was not until the age of thirty that a Spartan could go into the agora and enjoy his rights as a citizen. Even then lounging in the market-place was not encouraged; most of the day was spent in the gymnasiums and clubs. There was, of course, no private family life whatever. King Agis, coming back victorious from a campaign, asked permission to dine with his wife. It was refused by the Ephors, whose power, no doubt, was derived from their position as overseers of this singular disciplinary system. The old men were highly honoured, and the supreme object of an old Spartan’s ambition was a seat on the Senate.
And what sort of character did this strange system produce? Well, it produced the three hundred warriors who died to a man round their king Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylæ. It produced the Spartan king who refused the request of his allies to destroy Athens. It produced the women who mourned after the great defeat of Mantinea because no sons or husbands of theirs had died for Sparta. It produced the only good infantry of Greece, and the only stable form of government. It produced good men like Brasidas and Gylippus. Sparta was the state that swept tyranny out of Greece, and bore the brunt of the land-fighting against the Persians. But, on the other hand, the system encouraged that stupid and bigoted conservatism which ruined Sparta, partly through refusing to learn anything new in the art of warfare, and partly through declining to supplement the dwindling warrior caste by extending the franchise to the other inhabitants of Sparta. No doubt, also, the strict discipline of life in the city led to the moral breakdown of her victorious generals Pausanias and Lysander when they came in contact with the fascinations of Eastern luxury. It made the Spartans oppressive and unjust when they had to govern an empire. The typical Spartan is narrow-minded, superstitious, and covetous, but he is always brave, patriotic, and often chivalrous. Sparta has left us no art or literature, but she has left us an extraordinary experiment (for a warning) of aristocratic communism combined with unfettered militarism.