Lycurgus

So eager was Lycurgus for the establishment of this form of government, that he obtained an oracle from Delphi about it, which they call a rhetra. And this is the way it runs: When thou hast built a temple to Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, divided the people into phylai and into obai, and established a senate of thirty members, including the archagetai, then from time to time appellazein between Babyca and Cnacion[*](Probably names of small tributaries of the river Eurotas.) and there introduce and rescind measures; but the people must have the deciding voice and the power.

In these clauses, the phylai and the obai refer to divisions and distributions of the people into clans and phratries, or brotherhoods; by archagetai the kings are designated, and apellazein means to assemble the people, with a reference to Apollo, the Pythian god, who was the source and author of the polity. The Babyca is now called Cheimarrus, and the Cnacion Oenus; but Aristotle says that Cnacion is a river, and Babyca a bridge.

Between these they held their assemblies, having neither halls nor any other kind of building for the purpose. For by such things Lycurgus thought good counsel was not promoted, but rather discouraged, since the serious purposes of an assembly were rendered foolish and futile by vain thoughts, as they gazed upon statues and paintings, or scenic embellishments, or extravagantly decorated roofs of council halls. When the multitude was thus assembled, no one of them was permitted to make a motion, but the motion laid before them by the senators and kings could be accepted or rejected by the people.

Afterwards, however, when the people by additions and subtractions perverted and distorted the sense of motions laid before them, Kings Polydorus and Theopompus inserted this clause into the rhetra: But if the people should adopt a distorted motion, the senators and kings shall have power of adjournment; that is, should not ratify the vote, but dismiss outright and dissolve the session, on the ground that it was perverting and changing the motion contrary to the best interests of the state. And they were actually able to persuade the city that the god authorized this addition to the rhetra, as Tyrtaeus reminds us in these verses:—

1. Phoebus Apollo’s the mandate was which they brought from Pytho,
2. Voicing the will of the god, nor were his words unfulfilled:
3. Sway in the council and honours divine belong to the princes
4. Under whose care has been set Sparta’s city of charm;
5. Second to them are the elders, and next come the men of the people
6. Duly confirming by vote unperverted decrees.

Although Lycurgus thus tempered his civil polity, nevertheless the oligarchical element in it was still unmixed and dominant, and his successors, seeing it swelling and foaming, as Plato says,[*](Laws, p. 692 a.) imposed as it were a curb upon it, namely, the power of the ephors. It was about a hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus that the first ephors, Elatus and his colleagues, were appointed, in the reign of Theopompus.

This king, they say, on being reviled by his wife because the royal power, when he handed it over to his sons, would be less than when he received it, said: Nay, but greater, in that it will last longer. And in fact, by renouncing excessive claims and freeing itself from jealous hate, royalty at Sparta escaped its perils, so that the Spartan kings did not experience the fate which the Messenians and Argives inflicted upon their kings, who were unwilling to yield at all or remit their power in favour of the people. And this brings into the clearest light the wisdom and foresight of Lycurgus, when we contrast the factions and misgovernment of the peoples and kings of Messenia and Argos, who were kinsmen and neighbours of the Spartans.

They were on an equality with the Spartans in the beginning, and in the allotment of territory were thought to be even better off than they, and yet their prosperity did not last long, but what with the insolent temper of their kings and the unreasonableness of their peoples, their established institutions were confounded, and they made it clear that it was in very truth a divine blessing which the Spartans had enjoyed in the man who framed and tempered their civil polity for them. These events, however, were of later date.

A second, and a very bold political measure of Lycurgus, in his redistribution of the land. For there was a dreadful inequality in this regard, the city was heavily burdened with indigent and helpless people, and wealth was wholly concentrated in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth,