[COMPARISON OF NUMA WITH LYKURGUS.]
I. Now that we have gone through the lives of Numa and Lykurgus, we must attempt, without being daunted by difficulties, to reconcile the points in which they appear to differ from each other. Much they appear to have had in common, as, for example, their self-control, their piety, and their political and educational ability; and while the peculiar glory of Numa is his acceptance of the throne, that of Lykurgus is his abdication. Numa received it without having asked for it; Lykurgus when in full possession gave it up. Numa, though a private man and not even a Roman, was chosen by the Romans as their king; but Lykurgus from being a king reduced himself to a private station. It is honourable to obtain a crown by righteousness, but it is also honourable to prefer righteousness to a crown. Numa's virtue made him so celebrated that he was judged worthy to be king, Lykurgus' made him so great that he did not care to be king.
Again, like those who tune the strings of a lyre, Lykurgus drew tighter the relaxed and licentious Sparta, while Numa merely slackened the highly strung and warlike Rome, so that here Lykurgus had the more difficult task. He had to persuade his countrymen, not to take off their armour and lay aside their swords, but to leave off using gold and silver, and to lay aside costly hangings and furniture; he had not to make them exchange wars for sacrifices and gay festivals, but to cease from feasts and drinking-parties, and work hard both in the field and in the palaestra to train themselves for war.
For this reason, Numa was able to effect his purpose without difficulty, and without any loss of popularity and respect; while Lykurgus was struck and pelted, and in danger of his life, and even so could scarcely carry out his reforms. Yet the genius of Numa was kindly and gentle, and so softened and changed the reckless fiery Romans that they became peaceful, law-abiding citizens; and if we must reckon Lykurgus' treatment of the Helots as part of his system, it cannot be denied that Numa was a far more civilised lawgiver, seeing that he allowed even to actual slaves some taste of liberty, by his institution of feasting them together with their masters at the festival of Saturn.
For this custom of allowing the labourers to share in the harvest-feast is traced to Numa. Some say that this is in remembrance of the equality which existed in the time of Saturn, when there was neither master nor slave, but all were kinsmen and had equal rights.
II. Both evidently encouraged the spirit of independence and self-control among their people, while of other virtues, Lykurgus loved bravery, and Numa loved justice best; unless indeed we should say that, from the very different temper and habits of the two states, they required to be treated in a different manner. It was not from cowardice, but because he scorned to do an injustice, that Numa did not make war; while Lykurgus made his countrymen warlike, not in order that they might do wrong, but that they might not be wronged. Each found that the existing system required very important alterations to check its excesses and supply its defects. Numa's reforms were all in favour of the people, whom he classified into a mixed and motley multitude of goldsmiths and musicians and cobblers; while the constitution introduced by Lykurgus was severely aristocratic, driving all handicrafts into the hands of slaves and foreigners, and confining the citizens to the use of the spear and shield, as men whose trade was war alone, and who knew nothing but how to obey their leaders and to conquer their enemies. In Sparta a free man was not permitted to make money in business, in order that he might be truly free.
Each thing connected with the business of making money, like that of preparing food for dinner, was left in the hands of slaves and helots. Numa made no regulations of this kind, but, while he put an end to military plundering, raised no objection to other methods of making money, nor did he try to reduce inequalities of fortune, but allowed wealth to increase unchecked, and disregarded the influx of poor men into the city and the increase of poverty there, whereas he ought at the very outset, like Lykurgus, while men's fortunes were still tolerably equal, to have raised some barrier against the encroachments of wealth, and to have restrained the terrible evils which take their rise and origin in it. As for the division of the land among the citizens, in my opinion, Lykurgus cannot be blamed for doing it, nor yet can Numa for not doing it. The equality thus produced was the very foundation and corner-stone of the Lacedaemonian constitution, while Numa had no motive for disturbing the Roman lands, which had only been recently distributed among the citizens, or to alter the arrangements made by Romulus, which we may suppose were still in force throughout the country.
III. With regard to a community of wives and children, each took a wise and statesman-like course to prevent jealousy, although the means employed by each were different. A Roman who possessed a sufficient family of his own might be prevailed upon by a friend who had no children to transfer his wife to him, being fully empowered to give her away, by divorce, for this purpose; but a Lacedaemonian was accustomed to lend his wife for intercourse with a friend, while she remained living in his house, and without the marriage being thereby dissolved. Many, we are told, even invited those who, they thought, would beget fine and noble children, to converse with their wives. The distinction between the two customs seems to be this: the Spartans affected an unconcern and insensibility about a matter which excites most men to violent rage and jealousy; the Romans modestly veiled it by a legal contract which seems to admit how hard it is for a man to give up his wife to another. Moreover Numa's regulations about young girls were of a much more feminine and orderly nature, while those of Lykurgus were so highflown and unbecoming to women, as to have been the subject of notice by the poets, who call them Phainomerides, that is with bare thighs, as Ibykus says; and they accuse them of lust, as Euripides says—
"They stay not, as befits a maid, at home,
But with young men in shameless dresses roam."
For in truth the sides of the maiden's tunic were not fastened together at the skirt, and so flew open and exposed the thigh as they walked, which is most clearly alluded to in the lines of Sophokles—