There was a prevailing idea
in ancient Greece
that progress for the sake of progress would bring about the end of
civilisation as they knew it. Due to
this idea, the Greeks tried to keep their culture, beliefs, and politics as
unchanged as possible. This was achieved
through the use of conservative politics, and the most conservative of the
Greeks around the 370s BC with this belief in mind, appear to have been the
Spartans. The cause of this mindset for
the Greeks was the belief that the world was created perfect, but with each
change[1] the
world got worse and therefore conservatism in policy was needed to keep things
standard and this would also keep the world from degrading any further.
Xenophon was full of high
praise for the Spartans and their way of life.
This is clearly evident when reading his works on the Lacedaimonian
Constitution. However, it has been said
that Xenophon was biased towards Sparta
because of the lands that he was given, and as such his accounts should not be
taken as complete fact. This would mean
that other sources, such as Plutarch, Aristotle, and Diodorus need to be
examined as well to gain perspective.
These sources, too, have a fault in that they were written many
centuries later and do not have first hand knowledge of the practices of Sparta at the time. Therefore, by examining all the sources and
relating them to methods of practice used by the Spartans, a reasonable
conclusion can be attained in relation to the use of conservative politics
within the Spartan culture.[2]
One method that the Spartans
employed to ensure continuity through conservatism can be seen in the family
arrangements that were made. The state
assumed certain levels of control or input into the familial lives of the
citizens, through regulation of a child’s education, stipulations on the manner
in which a couple could copulate and reproduce, and the manner in which women
were to conduct themselves. Xenophon starts
addressing these family and personal governance issues by addressing the
begetting of children. He does not just
address the regulations pertaining to the sexual congress of man and wife, but
talks also of the regulations on women to ensure that they are trained and
well-fed to be physically fit and hardy enough to be able to produce the
healthiest and strongest progeny. This
was done by having the slave women make the clothes and tend the houses in Sparta as the freeborn
female citizens of other Greek states did, which allowed the Spartan women to
engage in the physical training and trials as set out by the lawgiver Lycurgus.[3]
There were some aspects to
the lives of the women in Sparta
that were not conservative, however. The
fact that the women were treated and behaved very differently in Sparta as compared to the rest of Greece was not
conservative. The freeborn women in Greece
at that time were to stay home and make the clothes and take care of the house,
eat a very plain diet, and refrain from hard physical training.[4] As Cartledge points out, “[I]n other words,
the female citizen population of Sparta – or so it has seemed to non-Spartan
males from at least the sixth century B.C. – enjoyed the extraordinary and
perhaps unique distinction of both being ‘in society’ and yet behaving in a (to
them) socially unacceptable manner.”[5] This is in no way conservative, but rather
forward thinking and breaking with the social norm of Greece at the
time. Therefore, in relation to Sparta being politically
conservative in relation to the personal involvement of its female citizenry,
it actually was not.
An interesting bit of policy
that Lycurgus gave was that of communal wealth and ownership. This was done to eliminate the feeling of
greed and jealousy among the Spartans that develop when one person has more
than another. An example would be that
if a citizen owned a horse and another citizen did not, but needed to use a
horse, it was perfectly acceptable for the one in need to just take the horse
and use it provided that they treated it well and returned it when
finished. The same went for hunting
dogs, servants, and other belongings.[6] To further this idea of eliminating jealousy through
material things, the pursuit of money was also not allowed in Sparta.
With the society having communal responsibility for food, raiment, and
belongings, there was no need to pursue money.
Further, the system of money that was used was metal spikes, and large
and cumbersome enough that carrying them was impractical.[7] This was an attempt at conservativeness in
wealth which Xenophon praises as being very successful.
However, according to Plutarch,
Thucydides, and others as cited by de Ste Croix, Spartan wealth was very much
unbalanced. There was a marked
difference in wealth levels both pre- and post-Lycurgan, as noted by
designations of the ‘prosperous ones’, ‘those of good family, and wealth among
the first’, and ‘those who had great possessions’. It would appear that these were the Spartans
that were able to breed racing horses and compete in the games at Olympia, the ones that
were able to provide wheat for bread instead of just the common barley, and
owned the best lands. This is starkly
contradictory to what Xenophon wrote about the Spartans.[8]
It can be concluded from
these examples that while the Spartans had a very good and in many ways
conservative constitution, they did not always follow it. Further, it is evident that while Xenophon
was a contemporary of the Spartan culture and was writing from first-hand
knowledge of events in Sparta, he was also
biased and romanticised the state of Sparta. It is most probable that what Xenophon saw
and wrote about was true to a certain extent, but that his bias towards a
favourable view of Sparta
influenced his writing, and thus his view while positive, is not entirely fair
due to this bias.
Bibliography
Cartledge,
P. (1981). ‘Spartan Wives: Liberation of Licence?’, The Classical Quarterly, New Series,
Vol. 31, No. 1, pp 84-105.
Rice,
D. (1974). ‘Agesilaus, Agesipolis, and Spartan Politics,
386-379 B.C.’, Historia Zeitschrift fur
Alte Geschichte, Bd. 23, H. 2, 2nd Qtr, pp 164-182.
Whitby,
M. (2002). Sparta. ‘Trials
at Sparta’, (by
de Ste Croix, G). Edinburgh University
Press pp 69-77.
Xenophon. Constitution
of the Athenians in Marchant, E., and Bowersock, G., trans. (1925), Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 7, Harvard University Press. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=xen.+const.+lac.+1.1
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