Lycurgus

The Life of Lycurgus by Plutarch

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I read this for the Online Great Books program.

In general, I have found Plutarch's Lives to be a difficult slog. His biographies are so packed with detail that Plutarch feels compelled to offer without much of an overriding narrative that it is difficult to pick out the particularly important bits. Perhaps, it takes an effort of stepping back and considering the life as a whole.

So, we have Lycurgus, who founded the Spartan state. A guiding principle of Lycurgus' life was the elimination of luxury. He wanted his Spartans to be simple and uncorrupted so that they would be the military state par excellent. Plutarch explains that this principle determined what Sparta would use as money:

“Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of their movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or inequality left amongst them; but finding that it would be very dangerous to go about it openly, he took another course, and defeated their avarice by the following stratagem: he commanded that all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was but very little worth; so that to lay up twenty or thirty pounds there was required a pretty large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedæmon; for who would rob another of such a coin? Who would unjustly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any use to cut in pieces? For when it was just red hot, they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means spoilt it, and made it almost incapable of being worked.

Clough, Arthur Hugh. Plutarch's Lives (Volumes I and II) (p. 97). Digireads.com. Kindle Edition.

That will do it.

We also end up with a few stories of the insane adherence to duty that was said to have motivated the Spartans:

“To return from whence we have digressed. So seriously did the Lacedæmonian children go about their stealing, that a youth, having stolen a young fox and hid it under his coat, suffered it to tear out his very bowels with its teeth and claws, and died upon the place, rather than let it be seen. What is practiced to this very day in Lacedæmon is enough to gain credit to this story, for I myself have seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana surnamed Orthia.

Clough, Arthur Hugh. Plutarch's Lives (Volumes I and II) (p. 111). Digireads.com. Kindle Edition.

I've read that story before, but it seems that it comes from Plutarch.

Then, there is this:

“Hitherto I, for my part, see no sign of injustice or want of equity in the laws of Lycurgus, though some who admit them to be well contrived to make good soldiers, pronounce them defective in point of justice. The Cryptia, perhaps (if it were one of Lycurgus's ordinances, as Aristotle says it was), Gave both him and Plato, too, this opinion alike of the lawgiver and his government. By this ordinance, the magistrates dispatched privately some of the ablest of the young men into the country, from time to time, armed only with their daggers, and taking a little necessary provision with them; in the daytime, they hid themselves in out-of-the-way places, and there lay close, but, in the night, issued out into the highways, and killed all the Helots they could light upon; sometimes they set upon them by day, as they were at work in the fields, and murdered them. As, also, Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian war, tells us, that a good number of them, after being singled out for their bravery by the Spartans, garlanded, as enfranchised persons, and led about to all the temples in token of honors, shortly after disappeared all of a sudden, being about the number of two thousand; and no man either then or since could give an account how they came by their deaths. And Aristotle, in particular, adds, that the ephori, so soon as they were entered into their office, used to declare war against them, that they might be massacred without a breach of religion. It is confessed, on all hands, that the Spartans dealt with them very hardly; for it was a common thing to force them to drink to excess, and to lead them in that condition into their public halls, that the children might see what a sight a drunken man is; they made them to dance low dances, and sing ridiculous songs, forbidding them expressly to meddle with any of a better kind.

Clough, Arthur Hugh. Plutarch's Lives (Volumes I and II) (pp. 122-123). Digireads.com. Kindle Edition.

What we end up with is a kind of warts and all approach to history.