The Lycurgean Reform at Sparta

Abstract

Prior to 1918 the so-called Lycurgean reform at Sparta was dated not later than the ninth century B.C. AS Grote aptly said, ‘it would seem, in the absence of better evidence, that a date [about 830–820 B.C.] … is more probable than any epoch either later or earlier’. In 1918 Wilamowitz-Möllendorff published what he considered to be better evidence—a fragmentary poem which was ascribed by him to Tyrtaeus and which was believed to indicate that in the latter part of the seventh century B.C. the Spartan army was still brigaded by the three Dorian tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyloi, and Dymanes. In the light of this new evidence—new, that is, to us but not to the ancient authorities—he and other scholars have shifted the date of the reform by a couple of centuries or more into the late seventh or middle sixth century. The shift of date flouts all the other evidence of the ancient authorities (Tyrtaeus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plutarch, etc.); in consequence these authorities are held to be mistaken, their manuscripts to be corrupt, their meanings to be other than they appear, or their views to be due to misconceptions which modern scholars can dispel. The result is that the ancient evidence has been severely tousled. The more logical the scholar is, the further he is impelled to discountenance all the other ancient evidence—once he has accepted Wilamowitz-Möllendorff's interpretation of the meaning of the new fragment. In this paper the view is advanced that the ancient authorities are in general sound both in manuscript and in meaning and that the new fragment does not yield the conclusive evidence for a late dating which has been supposed. It should also be noted that two of the supports on which the late dating once rested have been undermined by the re-dating of the archaeological evidence at Sparta and by the realisation that hoplite warfare commenced at Sparta c. 700 B.C. In Part I of the paper the ancient evidence is re-considered and in Part II the general conclusions are stated.