Instituta Laconia

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).

It was not allowed them to go abroad, so that they should have nothing to do with foreign ways and undisciplined modes of living.[*](There are many references to the studied isolation of the early Spartans. The most important are Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xxvii. (56 c), and the Life of Agis, chap. x. (799 d); Xenophon, Constitution of Sparta, 14. 4; Aristophanes, Birds, 1012; Aristotle, Frag. 543 (ed. Rose). Cf. also the note on Moralia, 237 a, supra, and the references given in the Teubner ed. of Plutarch’s Lives (1926), iii. 2, p. 45 (Lycurgus, chap. xxvii.).)

Lycurgus also introduced the practice of banning all foreigners from the country, so that these should not filter in and serve to teach the citizens something bad.[*](See note c on previous page.)

Whosoever of the citizens would not submit to the discipline to which the boys were subjected had no participation in civic rights.[*](Cf. Xenophon, Constitution of Sparta, 3. 3.)