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Spartan Austerity: A Possible Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. W. Stubbs
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Extract

There are three outstanding events in the internal history of Sparta during the sixth century. First, there is the constitutional settlement denning the functions of the Crown, the Senate, and the Assembly: this is now generally admitted to have taken place about 600 B.C. Secondly, there is the increase in the importance of the ephorate, a pseudo-democratic development associated with the ephor Chilon and the year 556. Thirdly, there is the decline in Spartan material culture; this process begins shortly after the turn of the century with the abandonment of gold and ivory work, and culminates shortly after the middle of the century in an almost total collapse of artistic and cultural standards.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 1-2 , January 1950 , pp. 32 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1950

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References

page 32 note 1 For the Eunomia see Wade-Gery, , C.Q. xxxvii. 62, xxxviii. 1 ff.Google Scholar; the attempt in C.A.H. iii. 558 to establish a direct and immediate connexion between the Eunomia and the Second Messenian War is now abandoned. For Chilon's reforms, Dickins, , J.H.S. xxxiiGoogle Scholar, ‘The Growth of Spartan Policy’, is still the most authoritative document. The status of the helots (see Kahrstedt, , Griechisches Staatsrecht, 57Google Scholar; Ehrenberg, , Hermes, lix. 39Google Scholar) seems to have been settled well before 600. For archaeological references see Orthia, Artemis, J.H.S. supplementary volume, 1929Google Scholar.

page 32 note 2 Lenschau, , Klio, xxx. 275Google Scholar; Berve, , Sparta, 38Google Scholar; Glotz, , Histoire grecque, i. 367–73Google Scholar; Bury, , History under of Greece, 130 ff.Google Scholar; Gomme, , Commentary on Thucydides, 105Google Scholar; Ehrenberg, , R.E., Reihe, Zweite, iii. 1380–3Google Scholar.

page 32 note 3 Wade-Gery, , loc. cit. xxxviii. 118Google Scholar; Ollier, , Le Mirage Spartiate, i. 15 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 32 note 4 Busolt, (Lakedaimonier, i. 238Google Scholar ff.) followed by Ehrenberg, (loc. cit. 1380, 10–30)Google Scholar deduces a great deal from Hdt.'s phrase τοὺς ἂλλους πολ⋯μους εὐτυχ⋯οντες (1. 65. 1); the reference to the subjection of τ⋯ πολλὰ τ⋯ς Πελοπονν⋯σου ni.68.6 does not necessarily refer to a period long antedating Croesus' appeal, unless we are to take ἤδη as referring to the situation during the war with Tegea; in which case it is rather an overstatement, for Argos and Arcadia were ex hypothesi still independent, and apart from Messenia in subjection and Elis attached by an alliance, and a possible (but completely undocumented) understanding with post-Cypselid Corinth, we have noindication of any large terrestrial confederacy.

page 33 note 1 There seems to be little justification for taking Hdt.'s ἦν (1.82.2) as a pluperfect (Rawlinson) or a remote past (Sleeman, Sayce); Macaulay and Godley take it as an ordinary imperfect describing the contemporary circumstances. Strabo (8. 3. 33) tells us that Pheidon had ‘restored the heritage of Temenus’, presumably from Spartan encroachment during the First Messenian War; nor do we hear of any Spartan recovery earlier than this, unless with How we date Pheidon in the early eighth century. Strabo's phrase ⋯ς πλε⋯ω μέρη has led most historians to suppose that Pheidon did little more than recover seceding fragments of the Argolid, but the ‘parts’ may well have included the stretch of Cape Malea removed by Spartan encroachment. The tripartite division of the Peloponnese should most naturally imply that each of the brothers was assigned one of the three capes. For Chilon's view cf. Hdt. 7. 235; Dickins, , op. cit. 24Google Scholar. See also Cavaignac, , Sparte, p. 33Google Scholar.

page 33 note 2 Hdt. 1. 82, 14153. 46; 4. 47.

page 33 note 3 The author of the Odyssey (21. 15–19) clearly visualizes Messenia as belonging to Sparta, and (4. 513 ff.) Sparta as the headquarters of the royal family; perhaps Aegisthus' semi-independent tenure of Malea may be taken as implying that in the poet's time Cape Malea was, or in the poet's opinion ought to have been, independentof Sparta? The narrative in 3. 255 ff. seems to show some confusion between Sparta, Mycenae, and Argos; 249 would seem to imply that Agamemnon and Menelaus lived together; such also is the most natural interpretation of Aeschylus, , Agamemnon, 410 ff., 618–19, 675 ffGoogle Scholar. The pro-Spartan passages might have been written between the First Messenian War and the battle of Hysiae, or after Pheidon's death; perhaps even after 546, though this would seem rather late for the insertion of passages which (especially 4.514) seem integral.

page 33 note 4 See Parke, , Delphic Oracle, 424, n. 3Google Scholar, for references to oracles ascribing masculine supremacy to Argos. These can hardly have been much earlier than Delphi's rise to panhellenic importance during the First Sacred War. It is odd, in view of this oracle and the story of Helen, that Homer only once (Od. 13. 412) applies the epithet καλλιγ⋯ναικα to Sparta.

page 33 note 5 Wace, , Artemis Orthia, pp. 250 ff., 270 ff.Google Scholar; plates cxciv, cxcvii.

page 33 note 6 Ziehen, , Hermes, lxviii. 218–37Google Scholar; minimized by Gomme, , op. cit. 133, 299Google Scholar. Cf. also Wade-Gery, , C.Q. xxxviii. 125Google Scholar, ad fin. It is also noteworthy that in Eupolis' time the Spartans had discarded the heraldic emblems on their shields, as shown on the Orthia figurines, and simply used the civic Lambda; Eupolis, f r. 359. Kock's supposition, that this referred to the Persian War, is unsupported by internal evidence.

page 33 note 7 See Kosten, Inquiritur quid Xenophontis Lac. Pol. valeat ad Lacedaemoniorum instituta cognoscenda, passim.

page 34 note 1 Hdt. i. 153.1; ibid. 2 shows that Herodotus himself quite clearly took this remark to refer to trade. Professor Wade-Gery, however, makes the interesting suggestion that the phrase ⋯μν⋯ντες ⋯ξαπατ⋯αι ought rather to refer to litigation: Cyrus, as the protector of religion, is avenging the gods against their blasphemers, and as a Mazdaist (Hdt. 1. 136. 2) is defending the Truth; and his reply is an insulting parody of Terpander's δ⋯κα εὐρν⋯γυια. It is true that the Spartan Agora was primarily a place of judgement (Pausanias 3. 11. 2, 10, 12. 1, 3), but the rigid division between a political and a commercial Agora was apparently confined to Thessaly (cf. Wycherley, , How the Greeks Built Cities, p. 67Google Scholar, or Ar. Pol. 1331a); the small-goods market in Pausanias 3. 13. 6 is not the only Spartan commercial centre. Furthermore, litigation was at least not unknown among Medes (Hdt. 1. 96.2) and, though the weakening effect of commerce was a commonplace, there are few other references to the incompatibility of litigiousness and military valour. Finally, even if Cyrus' reply has been generally misunderstood, a litigious Sparta is almost as remote from the customary idealization as a commercial Sparta.

page 34 note 2 Wade-Gery, op. cit.

page 34 note 3 Kahrstedt, , op. cit. 15Google Scholar; Hdt. 6. 56,57.1 ad fin. As every animal killed for eating was sacrificed (cf., among a multitude of instances, Romans p. 14. 2) this means that the kings had all the leather in Sparta except for the hides of animals which had died of old age or by accident.

page 34 note 4 This deficiency gives rise to some puzzling questions in connexion with Plut. Lysander 17, Diod. 14.10. 2, 15. 31. 2; was all the money spent locally? But it seems to be well documented— Plut. Ap. Lac. 217 b, Thuc. I. 80. 4 ad fin.—which, however, Kosten regards as an exaggeration. Cf. Petit-Dutaillis, , De Lacedaemoniorum Reipublicae Supremis Temporibus, 49Google Scholar.

page 34 note 5 This seems to me to be the likeliest explanation of the seventh-century disorders, though the δεσπ⋯συνοι of Tyrtaeus 6 (Bergk) seem to be, not the kings, but individual noblemen—for similar Brandschatz cf. Iliad 22. 120. The distribution of land-tax among the nobility, and its withdrawal from the Crown, would have originated the legends of Lycurgan communism. It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that the Egyptian model may have been copied in the seventh century as it certainly was in the third.

page 34 note 6 The Dorian story, briefly mentioned by Tyrtaeus, was not universally accepted.among the Western Greeks; Antiochus of Syracuse, F.H.G. 14, ascribes the beginning of helotry to causes very similar to those suggested by Kahrstedt, op. cit.

page 34 note 7 For differences in wealth see Kosten, , op. cit. 28–47Google Scholar, and references. Busolt, (Griechische Geschichte, i. 524)Google Scholar imagines private estates in perioecid territory; but the literary and archaeological evidence does not exclude privately owned property in the Eurotas valley itself.

page 35 note 1 Dickins, , op. cit. 19 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 35 note 2 Wade-Gery, , C.A.H. iii. 556Google Scholar; cf. also Ehrenberg, , Hermes, lxvii. 292Google Scholar; but, for Polydorus, cf. Pausanias 3. 3. 2, and Hermann, , De Statu Lacedaemoniorum ante Lycurgum (Marburg, 1840), pp. 23 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 35 note 3 Dawkins, , Artenmis Orthia, 214Google Scholar, and plates Cix–cx; though the thalassocracy is traditionally dated later; Eusebius, , ap. Myres, , J. H. S. xxvi. 99Google Scholar. The Desposionautae, like so many social groups in Laconia, are only a name to us.

page 35 note 4 Sparta does not seem to have taken any direct part in the Lelantine War or in the commercial and military relations with Egypt in which Corinth was so prominent: but the Spartan interest in Tarentum, Locri, and Cyrene implies either the benevolence of Corinth or sufficient strength at Sparta's disposal to neglect Corinthian hostility.

page 35 note 5 It is surprising that Argos, with its excellent harbour at Nauplia, and its virtual control of Aegina as well as Cythera, did not take more part in trade and diplomacy in the East. Can the Argos of the early sixth century have been what Sparta later became—a landlocked, unenterprising military oligarchy? For the importance of Thrace to the Athenian economy, and the later results of its loss, see Ar. Oecon. 1347s; Glotz, , Histoire grecque, i. 463Google Scholar.

page 35 note 6 Hdt. 1. 82, 83; their willingness to help Croesus contrasts oddly with their refusal (ibid. 152. 2) to give more than diplomatic aid to Ionia.

page 35 note 7 Myres, loc. cit.; Holm, , Hermes, xxci. 241Google Scholar.

page 35 note 8 For excellent workmanship in Spartan lead see Artemis Orthia, plates CXCIV ff. For gradual degeneration of pottery see Droop, ibid. 94–5, and B.S.A. xxv. ii. 46.

page 36 note 1 For the Cytherodices see Thuc. 4. 53. 2; Kahrstedt, , op. cit. 73, 229Google Scholar.

page 36 note 2 Plut. Lysander 17; Kosten, op. cit., chap. ii.

page 36 note 3 Thuc. 1. 6. 3–4. For Thracian gold-mines cf. Hdt. 6. 46. 3; 7. 112; 9. 75.

page 36 note 4 Hdt. 9. 7. 2; Thuc. 1. 69. 1, 71. 4; Epps, Preston, ‘Fear in the Spartan Character’, Classical Philology, xxvii. 12–29Google Scholar; Cavaignac, , op. cit., pp. 111 f.Google Scholar, etc.

page 36 note 5 For this well-known characteristic, see, for example, Leaf, , Homer and History, 262–3Google Scholar; Murray, , Rise of the Greek Epic, 268–74Google Scholar.

page 36 note 6 See Polybius, 4. 20, for the unexpectedly high cultural level of Arcadia.

page 36 note 7 Plato, , Laws 2Google Scholar. 656 d-e; Ollier, , op. cit. i. 58Google Scholar; Roussel, , Sparte, 194Google Scholar.

page 37 note 1 e.g. the doctrinaire hostility to commerce suggested by Blakeway, , C.R. xlix. 185Google Scholar, as a reason for their refusal to adopt a precious-metal currency.