Constitution of the Lacedaimonians

In the following respects, again, his institutions differ from the ordinary type. In most states every man has control of his own children, servants and goods. Lycurgus wanted to secure that the citizens should get some advantage from one another without doing any harm. He therefore gave every father authority over other men’s children as well as over his own.

When a man knows that fathers have this power, he is bound to rule the children over whom he exercises authority as he would wish his own to be ruled.[*](The text of this sentence is open to suspicion. οὗτοι πατέρες can hardly be sound.) If a boy tells his own father when he has been whipped by another father, it is a disgrace if the parent does not give his son another whipping. So completely do they trust one another not to give any improper orders to the children.

He also gave the power of using other men’s servants in case of necessity; and made sporting dogs common property to this extent, that any who want them invite their master, and if he is engaged himself he is glad to send the hounds. A similar plan of borrowing is applied to horses also; thus a man who falls ill or wants a carriage or wishes to get to some place quickly, if he sees a horse anywhere, takes and uses it carefully and duly restores it.

There is yet another among the customs instituted by him which is not found in other communities. It was intended to meet the needs of parties belated in the hunting-field with nothing ready to eat. He made a rule that those who had plenty should leave behind the prepared food,[*](i.e., so much of it as remained over.) and that those who needed food should break the seals, take as much as they wanted, seal up the rest and leave it behind.

The result of this method of going shares with one another is that even those who have but little receive a share of all that the country yields whenever they want anything.

Nor does this exhaust the list of the customs established by Lycurgus at Sparta that are contrary to those of the other Greeks. In other states, I suppose, all men make as much money as they can. One is a farmer, another a ship-owner, another a merchant, and others live by different handicrafts.

But at Sparta Lycurgus forbade freeborn citizens to have anything to do with business affairs. He insisted on their regarding as their own concern only those activities that make for civic freedom.

Indeed, how should wealth be a serious object there, when he insisted on equal contributions to the food supply and on the same standard of living for all, and thus cut off the attraction of money for indulgence’ sake? Why, there is not even any need of money to spend on cloaks: for their adornment is due not to the price of their clothes, but to the excellent condition of their bodies.

Nor yet is there any reason for amassing money in order to spend it on one’s messmates; for he made it more respectable to help one’s fellows by toiling with the body than by spending money,[*](Agesilaus, 9.6.) pointing out that toil is an employment of the soul, spending an employment of wealth.

By other enactments he rendered it impossible to make money in unfair ways. In the first place the system of coinage that he established was of such a kind that even a sum of ten minae[*](Some 40 pounds about the year 1925;.) could not be brought into a house without the master and the servants being aware of it: the money would fill a large space and need a wagon to draw it.