Thus far we have followed Plutarch; now let us see what modern authority will say of the influence of Lycurgus.
The best commentary on the laws of Lycurgus is the history of Sparta; let us read it and judge the tree by its fruits.
Lycurgus, if we unite under his name all the laws mentioned, without pausing to make sure that they are rightfully attributed, had operated with rare sagacity to render Sparta immutable and its constitution immortal. But there exists an arch-enemy to the things of this world that call themselves eternal—the old man with the white beard and denuded scalp that antiquity armed with a scythe. Legislators like, no better than poets, to take him into account; they are ready enough to declare that they have erected an edifice more solid than brass. Time advances and the whole structure crumbles to the earth. Sparta braved him through several centuries, by sacrificing the liberty of her citizens whom she kept bowed under the severest discipline. She lasted long, but never truly lived. As soon as her inflexible, and in some respects immoral, constitution, established outside the usual conditions under which society exists, was shaken, her decadence was rapid and irrevocable.
Lycurgus had desired to make fixed, population, lands, and the number and fortune of citizens; as it turned out never was there a city where property changed hands more frequently, where the condition of citizens was more unstable, or their number subject to more steady diminution. He had singularly restricted individual property rights to strengthen the power of the state; and Aristotle says: “In Sparta the state is poor, the individual rich and avaricious.” He had failed to recognise the laws of nature in the education and destiny of women; and Aristotle, charging the Spartan women with immorality, with greed, and even calling into question their courage, sees in the license they allowed themselves one of the causes of Lacedæmon’s downfall.
He made the helots tremble under his rule, and finally sent them back to their masters. He prohibited long wars; but he had made war attractive by freeing the soldiers from the heavy rules laid upon the citizen, and it was by war and victory that his republic perished. He withdrew from his fellow-citizens all power of initiative, assigning to each moment of their lives its particular duty; in a word, to speak with Rousseau, who was also a master of political paradox, “His laws completely changed the nature of man to make of him a citizen.” Yet Sparta, become a revolutionary city, perished for want of men. He proscribed gold and silver that there might be no corruption, and nowhere since the Median wars, was venality so pronounced and shameless.
He banished the arts, except for the adornment of his temple of Apollo at Amyclæ; and in this he succeeded. Pausanias makes note of some fifty temples in Lacedæmonia, but not a stone of them remains. Rustic piety and not art erected them. Save for a certain taste in music, the dance, and a severe style of poetry, Sparta stands alone as a barbarian city in the middle of Greece, a spot of darkness where all else is light; she did not even know thoroughly the only art she practised, that of war; at least she always remained ignorant of certain features of it.
As Aristotle says: “Trained for war, Lacedæmonia, like a sword in its scabbard, rests in peace.” All her institutions taught her to fight, not one to live the life of the spirit. Savage and egotistical, she satisfied the pride of her children, and won the praise of those who admire power and success, but what did she do for the world? A war machine perfectly fitted to destroy but incapable of production, what has she left behind her? Not an artist nor a man of genius, not even a ruin that bears her name; she is dead in every part as Thucydides predicted, while Athens, calumniated by rhetoricians of all ages, still has to show the majestic ruins of her temples, source of inspiration to modern art in two worlds, as her poets and philosophers are the source of eternal beauty.
To sum up, and this is the lesson taught by this history: rigidly as Lycurgus might decree for Sparta equality of possessions, an end contrary to natural as to social conditions, nowhere in Greece was social inequality so marked. Something of her discipline subsisted longer, and it was this strange social ordonnance that won for Lacedæmon her power and renown, striking as it did all other populations with astonishment.
The Spartans have further set a noble example of sobriety, and of contempt for passion, pain, and death. They could obey and they could die. Law was for them, according to the felicitous expression of Pindarus and of Montaigne: “Queen and Empress of the World.” Let us accord to them one more virtue which does them honour, respect for those upon whose head Time has placed the crown of whitened locks.
The aristocratic poet of Bœotia who like another Dorian, Theognis of Megara hated the masses, admired the city where reigned under a line of hereditary kings, “The wisdom of old men, and the lances of young, the choirs of the Muse and sweet harmony.” Simonides more clearly recognises the true reason of Sparta’s greatness; he called Lacedæmon “the city which tames men.” Empire over oneself usually gives empire over others, and for a long time the Spartan possessed both.[d]