The Rise of Sparta: Spartan Constitution and Spartan Way of Life

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The Rise of Sparta Spartan Constitution and
Spartan Way of Life
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Geography Location
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Geography Location
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Introduction

• Websters has defined Spartans as warlike,
  brave, hardy, stoical, severe, frugal, and highly
  disciplined.
• Even till today, calls up images of military
  strength and prowess, and of a way of life
  devoted single-mindedly to patriotic duty,
  characterized by patriotism, courage in battle,
  and tolerance for deprivation.

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Introduction

• Admired in peace and dreaded in war
• The most powerful and the most important state
• The polis was the center of a Greek mans life
• Became a sort of a model for the philosophers
  (Plato and Aristotle)
• The leading power of the first international
  organization

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1.Brief History

• Dorian newcomers from the north (10th) entered
  the plain Laconia
• Local inhabitants were reduced to a status of
  slaves called Helots.

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• Three traditional divisions of Greeks,
  distinguished by the different dialects of Greek
  they spoke
• The Dorians,
• The Ionians,
• and the Aeolians.

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1.Brief History

• Troubled by difficulties in satisfying its needs
  from its own territory, the Spartans sought a
  military answer to their problems
• (1)Started the first Messenia War (730 710
  B.C.) Messenia became subject to Sparta, the
  local people became perioikoi, or helots. (turned
  into one of largest of Greek states (over 3,000
  square miles)
• (2) This is a whole people with a sense of
  themselves, who think of themselves as
  Mycenaeans. They are conquered and enslaved and
  they become a critical part of the Spartan
• (3) The Second Messenian War (640-630 B.C.).

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• The potential risks of the helot system
• They are permanently dissatisfied, angry
• They are permanently thinking about somehow
  getting free and permanently, therefore,
  presenting a threat to whatever the Spartan
  regime is at the time.

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2. The Helots

• The Helots led a miserable life as described by
  the poet Tytaeus who fought in the Messenia War
• Like asses exhausted under great loads under
  painful
• Necessity to bring their masters full half the
  fruit their
• Ploughed land produced.

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• Sparta becomes a slave holding state like no
  other Greek state.
• Now, there was slavery all over the ancient
  world. There was no society that we know of in
  the ancient world that was without slavery and
  Greece was no different, but in the period we're
  talking about there were not very many slaves
  among the Greek states as a whole, and there was
  certainly nothing like what the Spartans did.
• To have a system of life that allowed the Spartan
  citizens not to work in order to live no other
  Greek state would have that. If you want to think
  about Greek slavery in the seventh century B.C.,
  think about farmers who themselves worked the
  fields, and are assisted in their work in the
  fields by one or two slaves.

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3. Insecure Foundation

• Sparta rested on insecure
  foundations. The Helots later outnumbered the
  Spartans.
• The large number of the helot
  workers, Spartas absolute dependence on them,
  and the fear of a helot rebellion led to
  extremely harsh measures. Helots were allowed to
  be killed without a penalty. Deprived of their
  freedom and fertile territory, the Messenian
  helots were ever after on the lookout for a
  chance to revolt against the Spartan overlords.
  Civil unrest was a threatening factor.

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• The Spartan system will be Spartans at home,
  training constantly for their military purposes,
  never working any fields, never engaging in trade
  or industry, others doing that for them.

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3. Lycurgus

• 3.1 Background
• After the Second Messenian War, Sparta
  fell into social chaos. Amid such social
  surroundings, Lycurgus reformed the Spartan
  system and founded the typical Spartan
  institution. This is the institutions which made
  Sparta so successful for so many centuries from
  the eighth century BC right down to the time of
  Alexander the Great, almost 500 years.

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3.2 Lycurgus Greek Great Lawgiver

• Lycurgus was a great lawgiver and one
  of the seven wise men in Greek history. Lycurgus
  himself was not the royal blood but was the uncle
  of the King of Sparta and acted as his regent.
  Lycurgus was said to be a man of enormous
  integrity and both Lycurgus and Solon set the
  model of Nothing in Excess and Never to Abuse
  Power.

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Lycurgus

• Biography (800 BC730 BC)

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Reform of Lycurgus

• Bas-relief of Lycurgus, one of 23
  great lawgivers depicted in the chamber of the
  U.S. House of Representatives.

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3.3 Travelling

• And so Lycurgus was asked to undertake his
  reforms.
• Now realizing that Sparta was in need of
  reform, Lycurgus set off a series of travels and
  went first to Crete. The Cretans were related to
  Spartans both of them were Dorians and came from
  the northern Greece to the South after the fall
  of the Mycenaean. Lycurgus studied the
  characteristic institutions of Crete.
• Then he went to Ionian, Asia Minor where
  the Iliad was composed, and there he also studied
  their Greek institutions and compare the softness
  of love of luxury that characterizes the Ionians
  with the rigorous war-like society of Crete.
• And then he also went to Egypt. He then came
  back to Sparta and carried out his reforms.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• 4.1 The ideal of reform
• From the very start, reforms
  undertaken by Lycurgus rested upon the ideal of
  achieving absolute equality among all Spartans.
  In the Archaic Age, the bane of almost all Greek
  city-states was civil war brought about by
  economic and social disparity. Lycurgus therefore
  sought to avoid this through his reforms by
  making every Spartan equal. He aimed to establish
  a balanced constitution and it was this very
  balanced constitution of Sparta attributed to
  Lycurgus was very much admired by the founders of
  many later countries.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• Balanced in itself all the elements essential to
  government monarchy (, democracy, and
  aristocracy
• Monarchy Rule by one individual, answers the
  need for strong unified executive authority. In a
  time of crisis of warfare, every government has
  the need for strong executive authority for a
  single individual to be able to hold the reigns
  for the central power.
• Democracy Answers the need for a broad base of
  popular support. Such a broad base of public
  support serves the unity of the central power.
• Aristocracy There must be the room for the
  guidance of the state by a collection, a small
  collection of best individuals. This is
  aristocracy, rule by the best which answers the
  need for the making of policy by a small group of
  outstanding citizens, the best morally, and the
  best intellectual.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• 4.3 Three Parts of Sparta Constitution
• This balanced institution was
  considered by many, including Plato and
  Aristotle, to be a model for other poleis. The
  Spartan constitution or rhetra in Greek language,
  in its developed form had three parts
• (1) The dual kingship
• (2) The council of elders,
  or Gerousia
• (3) And the Assembly.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• 4.3.1 The Dual Kinship The Monarchy
• (1)Two kings from separate royal families
  equal power and held office for life.
• (2) The kings power in domestic matters was
  strictly limited. But in time of war, the kings
  were commander-in-chief invested with enormous
  power. They had the right of announcing a war
  upon whatever country they chose, and in the
  field they exercised unlimited right of life and
  death and had a bodyguard of 100 men.
• (3) Later, however, their power was further
  restricted by a reform that allowed only one of
  them, chosen by the people, to lead the army in a
  given campaign, and held him responsible to the
  community for his conduct of the campaign. The
  kings held certain important priesthoods, but
  they did not have judicial power over criminal
  cases.
• (4)Their main source of income was from
  royal land that they held in the territory of the
  perioikoi. They were ceremonially honored with
  the first seat at banquets, were served first,
  and received a double portion. One king acted as
  a check on his colleague.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• 4.3.2 The Assembly Democracy
• The Assembly of all Spartans was the
  ultimate sovereign it decides all matters of war
  and peace.
• It was made up of Spartan male citizens over the
  age of thirty.
• Citizenship depended upon successful completion
  of the course of training and education which was
  provided by the state, and upon election to, and
  continuing membership in a mess .
• The Assembly elected the Gerousia the
  Ephorate and the other magistrates , decided
  disputed successions to the kingship, and
  determined matters of war and peace and foreign
  policy.
• Debate was not allowed, only assent or
  dissent by acclamation to measures presented by
  the Gerousia. Thus, theoretically Sparta was a
  democracy, but the power of the people in the
  Assembly was strictly limited, and the Assemblys
  decisions were subject to overturn by the
  Geriousia.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• 4.3.3 The Gerousia Aristocracy
• The Gerousia guided policy, particularly foreign
  policy.
• The Gerousia elected by the Spartan Assembly
  consisted of thirty members, including two kings.
  
• This was the Senate of Sparta, literally the
  Council of Old Men for members had to be over
  sixty years of age and were chosen for their
  outstanding abilities and service to Sparta. They
  served for life.
• The Gerousia acted as a supreme court. It could
  declare a law passed by the Assembly as
  unconstitutional. And if the decision of the
  Assembly was unjust, the Gerousia had the power
  to overturn it.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• 4.3.4 the EphorsThe Guardians
• Another ruling entity was formed after
  Lycurgus the Ephors. Five Spartans were elected
  annually for a one-year term. They were the
  guardians of the rights of the people and a check
  on the power of the kings. So, the creation of
  ephors further limited the power of the two
  kings. They also enforced the Spartan way of life
  and its educational system. Although a variety of
  duties came to be assigned to the ephors in
  classical times, the most basic of their duties
  reveals the primary function of the office. This
  was the monthly exchange of oaths between the
  ephors and the kings the ephors swore to uphold
  the rule of the kings as long as the kings kept
  their oath, while the kings swore to govern in
  accordance with the laws. Thus they provided a
  check on the power of the two kings.

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4. The Reform of Lycurgus

• 4.4. Result Balanced Constitution
• By the Classical period, these
  constitutional reforms had resulted in a balanced
  constitution that combined the merits of
  monarchy, democracy, and aristocracy. The ability
  to compromise and to bring into harmony the
  interests of competing groups had enabled the
  Sparta to avoid the phase of tyranny through
  which many other Greek poleis passed in order to
  achieve similar reforms. Spartas balanced
  constitution was the admiration of other Greek
  cities and of the Founders of the United States.

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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.1 Civil Virtue
• Lycurgus understood that even the best
  constitution will fail unless it is vitalized by
  civic virtue. He defined civic virtue as the
  willingness of the individual to subordinate his
  interest to the good of the community. To
  instill civic virtue was the goal of the
  educational system the Spartan way of life
  attributed to Lycurgus.

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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.2 Childhood
• In the Spartan system, the polis and its
  welfare was all in all. Individual and family
  interests and ambitions were to be put aside to
  create a society focused on the common good. A
  Spartan newborn had first to be formally
  recognized by the five Ephors. Unrecognized and
  very sick infants were exposedabandoned to
  die. Recognized infants were given a plot of
  land, to be worked by slaves (helots). A Spartan
  child was raised by his mother until the age of
  seven.

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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.3 At Seven
• At seven, the child began to be educated
  in a system called the agoge (the Greek word
  comes from the verb ago, to lead, and denoted a
  system of training and a way of life). The agoge
  was carefully planned to weaken ties to family
  and to strengthen a collective identity. When
  they entered the agoge, boys were divided into
  age groups and lived under the immediate
  supervision of older boys. Although they were
  taught the rudiments of reading and writing, the
  focus of the agoge was on rigorous physical
  training to develop hardiness and endurance. They
  were also acculturated to Spartan values by
  listening to patriotic choral poetry and tales of
  bravery and heroism at the common meals.

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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.4 At Twelve
• At age twelve, the agoge became
  increasingly more military in form and more
  demanding. The boys were allowed only a single
  cloak for winter and summer, required to sleep in
  beds that they made themselves from rushes picked
  from the Eurotas River, and fed meager rations
  that they were expected to supplement by stealing
  (if caught, they were whipped for their failure
  to escape detection). On occasion they attended
  the mens messes in preparation for their later
  election to one of these groups. To further their
  acculturation, they were expected to develop
  homosexual mentor relationships with one of the
  hebontes, men between the ages of twenty and
  thirty who played a quasi-parental role in
  socializing their young charges.

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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.5 At Eighteen
• At eighteen, Spartan boys were sent
  out on a mission to prove their manhood by
  killing the largest helot they could find. For
  those who successfully completed the agoge, the
  next step was to gain acceptance in the
  fundamental institution of adult Spartan male
  life, the mess, or sysitia. A mess consisted of a
  group about fifteen men of mixed ages who ate and
  fought together throughout their lives, and who
  lived together until the age of thirty, when they
  were allowed to set up their own households.
  Entry into a mess required unanimous vote by its
  members. It was a crucial vote, for full
  citizenship depended upon membership. Those who
  failed to be elected were relegated to an
  inferior status, possibly to be indentified with
  the hpomeiones, literally inferior.

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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.5 At Eighteen
• Upon election to a mess, the young men,
  now classed as hebontes, were still not in
  possession of full citizenship rights. While they
  could probably attend the Assembly and vote, they
  remained under the close supervision and control
  of the paidonmos. The hebontes were encouraged to
  marry, but they were not permitted to live with
  their wives until they reached the age of thirty.
  As a result, they spent for more time and
  developed closer emotional ties with their young
  male charges, than with their wives. This was the
  period in which they were most active in military
  service, and, as we saw above, they were also
  subject to serve in the Krypteia.

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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.6 At the Age of Thirty
• At the age of thirty, the Spartan
  became a full citizen and was expected to move
  out of the barracks and set up his own
  households. He also became eligible to hold
  office. But he continued to take his main meal in
  his mess, and his military obligations continued
  until the age of sixty. At that time he became
  eligible for the Gerousia and no longer had
  military obligations. He still ate in his mess,
  however, and was expected to participate actively
  in the training and disciplining of the younger
  men and boys.

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Marble statue of a helmed hoplite (5th century BC)
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5. The Spartan Way of Life

• 5.7 All in all
• It would be seen that the entire Spartan
  way of life was directed toward keeping the
  Spartan army at tip-top strength. It became a
  warlike society in which equality was at the
  center of the Spartan way of life. All Spartans
  owned the same amount of land and a set number of
  helots. Personal possessions were freely shared.

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6. The Spartan Women

• 6.1 The Spartan Girl
• Spartan girls were educated in the same
  ideals as Spartan boys, which is quite different
  from other poleis. For example, in Athens, girls
  were not educated, and historical evidence shows
  that Athenian women lived so completely separated
  from the men that they even had their own
  dialect. Spartan women enjoyed a status, power,
  and respect that were unknown in the rest of the
  classical world.

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6. The Spartan Women

• 6.2 Households
• With their husbands so rarely at
  home, Spartan women directed the households,
  which included servants, daughters, and sons
  until they left for their communal training. They
  controlled their own properties, as well as the
  properties of male relatives who were away with
  the army. Unlike women in Athens, if a Spartan
  woman became the heiress of her father because
  she had no living brothers to inherit (an
  epikleros), the woman was not required to divorce
  her current spouse in order to marry her nearest
  paternal relative. Unlike Athenian women who wore
  heavy, concealing clothes and were rarely seen
  outside the house, Spartan women wore short
  dresses and went where they pleased rather than
  being secluded in the home. Nor did the Spartans
  follow the customary practice of most poleis of
  marrying girls at puberty in Sparta marriage and
  childbearing were put off until girls reached
  physical maturity (at eighteen to twenty years
  old), again in order to ensure the best
  reproductive outcome.

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6. The Spartan Women

• 6.3 Marriage
• The girl was carried off, her hair was
  cut, and she was dressed as a boy by her
  bridesmaids she was then left in a dark room
  where her husband-to-be would visit her. If
  pregnancy resulted, the marriage was valid, but
  the husband continued in his mess until he
  reached the age of thirty, visiting his wife only
  at night and by stealth. The ancient sources
  report that this regime was adopted to heighten
  sexual attraction and increase the vigor of any
  resulting infants. Another view is that it would
  ensure that the couple would see each other
  primarily as sexual partners and that the husband
  would not invest himself emotionally in the
  welfare of his wife and family to the detriment
  of his military duties.

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6. The Spartan Women

• 6.3 The Marriage Description by Plutarch
• Plutarch reports the peculiar customs
  associated with the Spartan wedding night
• The custom was to capture women for
  marriage(...)The so-called 'bridesmaid' took
  charge of the captured girl. She first shaved her
  head to the scalp, then dressed her in a man's
  cloak and sandals, and laid her down alone on a
  mattress in the dark. The bridegroomwho was not
  drunk and thus not impotent, but was sober as
  alwaysfirst had dinner in the messes, then would
  slip in, undo her belt, lift her and carry her to
  the bed.

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6. The Spartan Women

• 6.4 The Concept of Adultery
• In Spartan law and practice, the
  concept of adultery did not exist. It was
  acceptable for a husband to loan his wife to his
  friends if he wanted no more children himself, or
  to borrow the wife of another men for
  reproductive purposes. Old men with young wives
  were expected to provide a young man as a sexual
  partner for their wives. Such practices of course
  fostered reproduction the potential of female
  fertility was fully exploited even when the luck
  of the marriage draw did not favor it. Other
  Greeks looked askance at these practices and at
  the freedom allowed to Spartan women and viewed
  Spartan women as licentious. But it was not the
  women who were in control in each case, it was
  the husband who arranged for and sanctioned such
  extramarital relationships. These relationships
  can be looked upon as logical extension of the
  general Greek conception of women as property, in
  the context of the Spartan practice of sharing
  resources.

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6. The Spartan Women

• Spartan women ran the farm and
  disciplined the helots. In Sparta, commerce is
  forbidden. No gold or silver was permitted and
  Luxuries were banned. There were no written laws
  and, hence, no lawyers. All Spartan citizens were
  expected to put service to their city-state
  before personal concerns because Spartas
  survival was continually threatened by its own
  economic foundation, the great mass of helots.

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7. The Cost of Utopia Martial State

• Reforms by Lycurgus resulted in a
  powerful Sparta. In the Classical Period, Sparta
  became the preeminent military power in Greece
  its fighting force was remarkably disciplined and
  obedient to the dictates of the Spartan state.
  This contributed a lot to the success of the
  Greek army against the Persians which we come
  back in the later chapters. The Spartans were
  also very much admired and respected as the
  champions of liberty in Greece and also for their
  military skill and courage in battles. Their
  alliance with other Greeks (the Peloponnesian
  League) made them the most formidable military
  power in Greece. But even more important was the
  Spartan success in achieving good government
  through the institutions of Lycurgus. In
  antiquity the Spartan were widely admired for
  their courage and military prowess, and my Greeks
  and later, Romanshad a romantic fascination
  with the Spartan way of life. Many followers
  often adopted Spartan fashions in dress and the
  long hair that was Spartan custom. Among these
  admirers were some of our most important sources
  Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch. For
  example, Plato based his ideal state on certain
  characteristics of Sparta.

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7. The Cost of Utopia Martial State

• Viewed from the standpoint of the
  values of Athens and other, more liberal
  societies, there were definite weakness in the
  Spartan way of life.
• First, the Spartan paid a high price
  for their security. Their way of life was marked
  by extreme austerity. They were notorious for the
  simplicity of their meals consisting of barley,
  cheese, figs, and wine, and supplemented by
  occasional bits of meat. In order to ensure
  absolute equality, commerce is forbidden. No gold
  or silver was permitted and Luxuries were banned.
  
• Second, Spartan society was, as might
  be expected, quite conservative innovation and
  foreign influence were firmly resisted. In
  contrast to the Athenian fascination with the
  poetry of tragedy and comedy and the love of
  rhetorical display, the Spartans took pride in
  laconic (terse) habits of speech and confined
  their literary and music appreciation to
  patriotic songs, such as those of Tyrtaeus. By
  the Classical period the earlier achievements in
  the crafts had disappeared even monumental
  public building had ceased. Third, the Spartan
  way of life is incompatible with their own aims.
  The agoge, with its emphasis on strict control
  and obedience, did not foster the development of
  individual judgment, and we shall see in later
  Greek history many instances of Spartan at a loss
  to handle unusual situations. Nor were the
  Spartans immune to the temptations of luxury.

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7. The Cost of Utopia Martial State

• Another thing which has much to do
  the Spartan lifestyle is its demographic
  difficultiesa shrinking population. Sparta was
  the only Greek state in which male infanticide
  was institutionalized. Moreover, many deaths can
  be explained by the Spartan soldiers obligation
  to stand his ground and give his life for his
  country, rather than surrender. This ideal was
  reinforced by peer pressure, epitomized by
  statements attributed to Spartan women such as
  that of the mother who told her son as she handed
  him his shield to come home either with this or
  on this.
• In addition to high rate of infant
  and juvenile mortality found throughout the
  ancient world, the Spartan problem was aggravated
  by their unusual marriage practices. Women
  married only several years after they became
  fertile opportunities for conjugal intercourse
  were limited husbands were continuously absent
  at war or sleeping with their army groups when
  wives were in their peak childbearing years and
  both sexes engaged in a certain amount of
  homosexual, nonprocreative sex. Spartas
  population problem was also accelerated at times
  by natural disaster, economic problems, and the
  emigration of men.

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• Lycurgus was the son of the king
  Eumenos. After the death of his father, his older
  brother Polydektes took the throne. Not much
  later, he also died and Lycurgus became king. The
  widow of his brother, an ambitious and
  unhesitating woman, offered him to marry her and
  kill her unborn child. Lycurgus, knowing her
  character and being afraid for the life of the
  child, pretended to accept her offer. He said to
  her to bear the child and he would disappear it,
  as soon as the child was born. But when the time
  came, he took the infant boy at the Agora, 
  proclaimed him king of the Spartans and gave him
  the name Charilaos (Joy of the people). When the
  widow learned what happened, she started plotting
  against Lycurgus, who left Sparta in order to
  avoid bloodshed.

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He first went to Crete and then to Asia and
Egypt and later to Libya, Spain and India. In
every country that he visited, he studied their
civilization, history and constitutions.

• After many years Lycurgus returned to
  Greece and visited Delphi to question the oracle,
  if the constitution he had prepared to apply in
  Sparta was good and received approval with the
  answer that "he was more God than man".  He then
  returned home and found his nephew Charilaos, a
  grown man and king of Sparta.

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• In order to persuade the Spartans to
  accept his laws, which demanded a lot of
  sacrifices, he bred two small puppies, the one
  indoors with a variety of foods and the other he
  trained it for hunting. He then gathered the
  people and showed them that the untrained dog was
  completely useless.

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• But if Lycurgus succeeded to persuade
  the poor people, he did little for the rich, who
  tried everything to oppose him.  One of them, a
  youth named Alkander, in the Agora tried to hit
  him with his stuff and when Lycurgus turned his
  head, he was hit in the eye and lost it. Lycurgus
  did not prosecute him, but took him as his
  servant, giving him the opportunity to discover
  his character. Indeed Alkander became later a
  devoted disciple.

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• When his laws were accepted, he made
  Spartans swear that they would not be changed
  until he returns and left again.He never came
  back, making sure that his laws would not change.
• He died at Delphi and according to some
  in Crete and it is said that before his death, he
  asked his body to be burned and the remains to be
  scattered in the wind. Lycurgus thus did not
  permit even his dead body to return.

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The End