Spartan Constitution Research Articles

Lysander, Serapis and the School of Theophrastus

The aim of this article is to draw attention to two stories found in the works of Plutarch. These are Lysander’s last efforts to obtain oracles and overthrow the Spartan Constitution and the Sinopic tradition about the aetiological myth of the introduction of Sarapis’ cult in Alexandria. There are several common points between the two: Plutarch, kingship, the young boy and his divine paternity, the Black Sea area, the travel by sea, Delphi, Apollo and oracles. After analyzing and comparing these common points, we argue for a shared cultural background in the early Hellenistic period. This background consists of the work of a historian and a philosopher of this period, Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic School. Plutarch mentions that the story he narrated in Lysander’s Life about the admiral’s last effort to obtain oracles from Delphi and to make a change in the Spartan constitution by introducing the election of the king from thearistoi goes back to a philosopher and historian. We know that he considered Theophrastus to be both a philosopher and a historian. The most famous pupil of Theophrastus, Demetrius of Phaleron, moved to Alexandria after 307 BC, became a worshipper of Serapis and wrote books about Serapis. Other students of Theophrastus were also great worshippers of this newly created god. This combined evidence permits us to advance the hypothesis that the story of Lysander served as a model for the construction of the Sinopic tradition about the introduction of Serapis’ cult in early Ptolemaic Egypt.

The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon

The article which was published for the first and single time in 1939, is the starting point of Leo Strauss’ “esoteric” scholarship. While devoted to the investigation of Xenophon’s treatise called Constitution of the Lacedemonians the article, using it as an example, shows reasons, techniques, and the meaning of writing “between the lines”. Strauss sequentially shows how Xenophon hides his critique of the Spartan constitution behind the facade of an encomium. But what may be even more important, in the piece Strauss clearly tries to overcome the established 19th-century view that Xenophon was a mediocre and charged with laconophilia historian; he tries to reinstate Xenophon’s position as that of a serious thinker: a Socratic philosopher. He shows how meticulously Xenophon studies the Spartan constitution and that this apparently very successful and very stable regime, in fact, deserves serious politico-philosophic critique. Thereby he partially reveals the essence of classical political philosophy to careful readers.

Spartanski ustav i vaspitanje

Ancient Sparta is generally recognized as a Greek polis with specific and non-typical state system determined by firmly established set of laws, commonly considered (by Spartans and other Greeks of the time) as a constitution of lawgiver Lykourgos. Spartan constitution was the essence of the state, and this work reviews some of the main institutions established by the constitution. Principal section of the text is dedicated to the basic element and the major purpose of the state and the constitution itself - namely, to the spartan education. It is the peculiar Spartan education and training system called agōgē that particularly enabled ancient Spartans to maintain their durable military might and decisive influence in classical period. Lawgiver of Sparta dedicated primary function in the arrangement of the state itself to the educational system, principally focused on physical and moral education. Capital purpose of educational system was character forming of young Spartans who were expected, mainly on a battlefield in a hoplite phalanx formation, to materialize Spartan ideal of a paramount skilled combatant and fearless warrior.

Xenophon and the Nazis: a case study in the politicization of Greek thought through educational propaganda

In National Socialist Germany, radical reinterpretations of Classical texts were always on the agenda. The Reich Education Ministry decreed unequivocally that only those ancient texts which could serve the regime’s new ‘national-political’ education should be taught in schools, and many school-teachers were all too eager to follow this prime directive. This article will consider a number of articles on Xenophon published in the Nazi Teachers’ League (NSLB) Classics journal, Die Alten Sprachen , in order to illuminate the ways in which aspects of Xenophon’s thought could become ‘politicized’. Thus, one article takes selected passages from Xenophon’s Hellenica and weaves them into a treatise on ancient and modern political theory, condemning individualism and providing a systematic indictment of the dangers of democracy, while another elevates aspects of the Spartan constitution to the status of contemporary political principles, placing Sparta (rather than Athens) at the centre of the German political imagination. As a whole, the article seeks to reveal the contingency of political analysis based on the ancient world, and the ways in which, in certain circumstances, almost any aspect of Greek thought can become ‘political’. An authoritarian regime can just as easily style itself as an heir to the legacy of ancient politics as a democratic one, and Greek thought can ultimately be mobilized for almost any ends — however attractive or rebarbative these might seem to observers in today’s society.

Sparta and the English Republic

In 1659–60, James Harrington and Henry Stubbe, two republican authors, engaged in a bad-tempered pamphlet debate about the constitution of classical Sparta. This took place in the context of political collapse after the fall of the Cromwellian Protectorate, as republicans desperately attempted to devise safeguards which could prevent the return of monarchy. Questions of constitutional form were not always at the forefront of 1650s English republicanism, but Harrington's ideal constitution of ‘Oceana’ brought these questions to the fore in 1659's discussions. Sparta formed a key plank of the ‘ancient prudence’ which supported Harrington's theory, and like Stubbe he drew on Nicolaus Cragius' De Republica Lacedaemoniorum (1593) for evidence, and was attracted to some of the more apparently ‘aristocratic’ elements of the Spartan constitution. However, classical texts and modern scholarly authority, such as Cragius', were not the only ingredients in the English version of the ‘classical republican’ tradition; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political thinkers and current exigencies also shaped Harrington and Stubbe's arguments. Both Harrington and Stubbe ended up challenging the scholarly and ancient consensus that Sparta was an aristocracy or mixed polity, Harrington reinterpreting it to assimilate it to ‘democracy’, and Stubbe attempting to rehabilitate a model of benign ‘oligarchy’.

Xenophon und die spartanische Nauarchie

Xenophon generally considered Sparta to have been a well organized, ideal city-state, which fact he attributed to the presumed lawgiver Lycurgus. By contrast, he saw the Sparta of his own time as having gone awry in several ways, especially due to the undertakings of leading Spartans towards other Greek cities, which lead to the corrupting influx of gold as a symbol of prestige ( Lac . 14). These misguided Sparta big-power policies were associated with the harmosts, who served as magistrates in foreign areas and were not provided for in the Lycurgan system. Not mentioned in this context are the nauarchs, who served in overseas areas as ship’s captains, and could also, like the harmosts, be involved in political operations and thus win power not only for Sparta but also for themselves. In my opinion, the reasons for this silence regarding the nauarchia become evident from an analysis of the concrete actions of nauarchs in Xenophon’s Hellenika . There, as we shall see, the nauarchs are on official missions as elected magistrates, responsible to the polis, who generally worked for the strength of Sparta. Although the same persons are often involved, the nauarchs, unlike the harmosts, assumed no permanent foreign positions of rulership, which, according to Xenophon, was what was the cause of Sparta’s undoing. The nauarchs – by contrast with the harmosts – occupied individual positions, which caused fewer problems and which were not suited to maintain any permanent rulership. Therefore, Xenophon had no immediate reason to include the nauarchs in his critique of the contemporary Lakedaimonion politeia . The main thrust of his argument was rather that the role of a long-term hegemonic power in the Aegean was one that overtaxed the powers of Sparta, for the often ruthless behavior of the magistrates sent abroad was what sparked the resistance against Spartan rule. By contrast to Athens, Sparta could conduct no successful imperial policy, and only brought itself into danger. Thereby Xenophon does not take into consideration the fact that Sparta, as a land power, was dependent on a certain maritime strength and presence as well, and hence needed the right kind of commanders. Therefore, he ultimately prefers not to mention the nauarchs in connection with the ideal Spartan constitution, and to connect the city’s imperial misbehavior only with the harmosts.

Double Standards? Aristotle's Critique of Plato's Republic and the Spartan Constitution

In Politics II, Aristotle articulates and makes use of several criteria in his examination of existing and proposed constitutions thought to be best or well-governed. At first glance, the distinction between existing constitutions, such as those of Sparta, Crete, and Carthage, and proposed constitutions, such as those of Plato’s Republic, Laws, Phaleas of Chalcedon, and Hippodamus of Miletus, appears to be the difference between what is theoretically best (or even utopian) and what is practically best — a reification, as it were, of the double standard between theory and practice. But a careful examination of the arguments in Politics II shows that Aristotle critiques both existing and proposed constitutions on the basis of the same four criteria, namely (a) how well they compare with actual practices, (2) how they compare with the notion of the best regime, (3) whether their social and political institutions are consistent with their “hypotheses” or fundamental principles, and (4) whether their hypothesis are correct. A close examination of Aristotle’s critiques of Plato’s Republic and the Spartan constitution shows that he does not embrace a double standard of what is best in theory versus what is best in practice; rather, Aristotle uses the same criteria to evaluate both existing and proposed regimes, and his consideration of both serves as a repository for his own articulation of that regime which is best “according to one’s prayers” in Politics VII-VIII.

PLUTARCH, PLATO AND SPARTA

In the Life of Lycurgus, Plutarch appears to say that Plato embraced the Spartan constitution as a socio-political ideal. This claim generates a puzzle. On the one hand, the Republic’s preferred form of government, a meritocratic aristocracy, is incompatible with the ‘mixed’ Spartan constitution, which balances power between different organs of state; on the other, the ardent Platonist Plutarch cannot reasonably be thought to have misunderstood the fundamentals of his teacher’s political philosophy. This paper explores possible resolutions of the antinomy. It is concluded that while the Platonic republic can be regarded as an extension and idealisation of Spartan socio-economic arrangements, the cities’ formal governmental structures are irreconcilable. Plutarch’s attribution of the Spartan constitution to Plato is not strictly correct; the question of whether its assertion can be explained in terms of literary and rhetorical goals is left for future research.

The Problem of the Partheniae in Aristotle’s Political Thought

This article examines Aristotle’s discussion of the Spartan revolt of the Partheniae in Politics V.7. Aristotle appears to use the Partheniae as examples of two sources of instability within so-called aristocracies, but the analysis of this case raises delicate interpretive issues. Sections I–III draw upon surviving accounts of the Parthenian revolt from Antiochus, Ephorus and Myron of Priene in order to illuminate the significance of this example for Aristotle’s ethical and political thought. Section IV reconstructs the state of the Spartan constitution around the time of the revolt in order to understand what Aristotle might have thought about what precipitated the revolt. This article argues that generational politics is at stake in the revolt, and Section V locates the revolt’s politics within its broader historical and cultural context. In the end, this article finds that Aristotle may have intended to leave the interpretation of this example ambiguous due to his own unresolved views towards the politics at stake in this revolt.

3. The origins, development and reliability of the ancient tradition about the formation of Spartan constitution

[No abstract]

Spartan Justice: The Conspiracy of Kinadon in Xenophon’s Hellenika

Xenophon presents his perplexing account of the conspiracy of Kinadon and its suppression in the midst of his portrait of Spartan imperial power at its zenith in the Hellenika. While the political relevance of this conspiracy has long been assumed by scholars, the labyrinthine structure of Book III obscures the centrality of the account in Xenophon’s examination of Spartan imperialism and Spartan justice. Attention to the details in the conspiracy account and its place within the narrative reveals the source of corruption and decline inherent in the Spartan regime: an unexamined, and fatally deficient, view of justice as a virtue. Imperialism is not the cause but a symptom of the corruption rooted in fundamental defects of the Spartan constitution. Thus understood, the account of Kinadon’s conspiracy in the Hellenika constitutes a compelling critique of Spartan justice and helps to establish the overarching Socratic character of Xenophon’s political thought.

Legislation in Sparta

IF WE BELIEVE that the rhetra quoted by Plutarch in Lycurgus 6 either is or reflects' a genuine enactment of the seventh, or an earlier, or even a later, century B.C., and that the Spartan constitution remained unchanged paper until the third century B.C., except, perhaps, for the addition of the rider to the rhetra which Plutarch also quotes, it follows that any examples we have of Spartan legislation, or any comments on Spartan legislation, from the centuries between should either match the procedure of the rhetra (plus rider) or be explicable as natural developments from it. The cases known to me are:

The Spartan Rhetra in Plutarch, Lycurgus VI C. What is the Rhetra?

In the foregoing parts of this paper I have sought, first (in A. Plutarch's Text) to recover Plutarch's text of the Rhetra, which I believe to be also Aristotle's text. It is evident that Aristotle knew and commented on this Rhetra: I take it as my hypothesis that his account of it in his Spartan Constitution was substantially the same as what Plutarch gives us.