Institutions of Lycurgus
I shall therefore omit these, and proceed with my
note
description of the Laconian constitution. Now
it seems to me that for securing unity among
the citizens, for safe-guarding the Laconian
-- 499 --
territory, and preserving the liberty of Sparta inviolate,
the legislation and provisions of Lycurgus were so excellent, that I am forced to regard his wisdom as something
superhuman. For the equality of landed possessions, the
simplicity in their food, and the practice of taking it in common,
which he established, were well calculated to secure morality
in private life and to prevent civil broils in the State; as also
their training in the endurance of labours and dangers to make
men brave and noble minded: but when both these virtues,
courage and high morality, are combined in one soul or in one
state, vice will not readily spring from such a soil, nor will
such men easily be overcome by their enemies. By constructing his constitution therefore in this spirit, and of these
elements, he secured two blessings to the Spartans,—safety for
their territory, and a lasting freedom for themselves long after he
was gone. He appears however to have made no one provision
whatever, particular or general, for the acquisition of the territory
of their neighbours; or for the assertion of their supremacy; or,
in a word, for any policy of aggrandisement at all. What he
had still to do was to impose such a necessity, or create such a
spirit among the citizens, that, as he had succeeded in making
their individual lives independent and simple, the public
character of the state should also become independent and
moral. But the actual fact is, that, though he made them the
most disinterested and sober-minded men in
the world, as far as their own ways of life and
their national institutions were concerned, he
left them in regard to the rest of Greece ambitious, eager for
supremacy, and encroaching in the highest degree. note
