We have few paintings of Sparta, Sparta was quite, well, Spartan. Thucydides was quite right when he observed, “Suppose the city of Sparta were deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. Their city is not built continuously and has no splendid temples or other buildings; it rather resembles a group of villages,” “and would therefore make a poor showing.”[1]
Sparta was the city-state that dominated the Peloponnese, the region that is separated from Athens and the rest of Greece by the narrow Isthmus at Corinth, and without that isthmus it would be an island to itself. Sparta was a traditional and conservative agricultural society that was not welcoming to foreigners, other than aristocratic guest-friends.
YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/_hYwZsxmC3s
YouTube script with book links: https://www.slideshare.net/BruceStrom1/unique-spartan-warrior-culture-and-history-plutarchs-life-of-lycurgus-lawgiver-of-sparta
The three levels of Laconian society, with population guesstimates about fifty years before the Peloponnesian Wars, are:
- Dorians, or the Spartan citizen class, 32,000, including men, women and children, who lived apart from the Helots and Perioeci in the villages in the Eurotas valley.
- Perioeci, 120,000, or four times as numerous, freemen living in many villages surrounding Sparta.
- Helot slaves, 224,000, or seven times as numerous, these were the equivalent of medieval serfs who worked for the Spartan citizens on various land holdings. They lived mainly in Messenia.
These guesstimates are from Will Durant’s book copyrighted in 1939. Professor Kenneth Harl argues that the commonly accepted ratios may be overdrawn, with current scholarship he suggests that the free and slave populations are about equal, and he is lumping the Spartan citizens in with the Perioeci free citizens. But these will never be more than guesstimates.
Will Durant says this, “the Dorians lived mostly in Sparta on the produce of fields owned by them in the country and tilled for them by Helots.” The freemen, or Perioeci, “lived in a hundred villages in the mountains or on outskirts of Laconia, or engaged in trade or industry in the towns: subject to taxation and military service, but having no share in the government, and no right of intermarriage with the ruling class. Lowest and most numerous of all were the Helots,” the conquered non-Dorian population or slaves captured in war.
Will Durant continues, “The Helot had all the liberties of a medieval serf. He could marry as he pleased,” “work the land in his own way, and live in a village with his neighbors, undisturbed by the absentee owner of his plot, so long as he remitted regularly to this owner the rental fixed by the government. He was bound to the soil, but neither he nor the land could be sold. In some cases, he was a domestic servant in the town. He was expected to attend his master in war, and, when called upon, to fight for the state; if he fought well, he might receive his freedom.”
“His economic condition was not normally worse than that of the village peasantry in the rest of Greece.” “He had the consolation of his own dwelling, varied work, and the quiet friendliness of trees and fields. But he was continually subject to martial law, and to secret supervision by a secret police, by whom he might at any moment be killed without cause or trial.”[2]
Professor Kenneth Harl states that the Spartan system of a Helot class may not be unique to Sparta, many Greek city-states had a hinterland where a subject population of slaves who helped grow the crops to feed the populace. He also points out there was some fluidity between these three classes, Perioeci could be promoted to citizenship for extraordinary service, or demoted to Helot status if they were troublesome.[3]
Another teaching company professor, Jeremy McInerney, discusses how changes wrought by the Messenian Wars fought in the centuries prior to the Peloponnesian Wars changed Sparta from an open society, thriving with learning and poets, into a closed militaristic society only focused on warfare, ignoring learning and philosophy. The ancestors of the Helots in Messenia were the legendary Agamemnon, and many of the kings who so nobly fought in the Trojan Wars. These Messenian Wars, where Sparta subjected the Helot population to a slavery of serfdom, were bitter wars fought over several decades.[4] Our major source for the history of these wars is Pausanius, who was a second century Roman who wrote a travelogue of the Greek sites, this is much shorter account than our other histories.[5]
During the late twentieth century, many historians tried to interpret the Peloponnesian Wars through the lens of the Cold War, equating Sparta with Russia, and Athens with America, which meant that the wrong side lost the war. This analogy was strained by the fact that Sparta fought the war with the slogan, Free the Greeks, or free the Athenian Allies from the tyranny of the Athenian Empire.
Like the British Empire, there some exploitation of the allies by Athens, though many allied states benefitted from the increased trade. There were real differences between the two city-states, Athens encouraged her allies to establish radical democracies, whereas Sparta encouraged her allies to establish oligarchies. But there more similarities than differences, Greek culture was a warrior culture, all Greek city-states had Assemblies where citizens voted on state policy, all Greeks shared the same gods and the same Greek culture, and they even called truces for all states to compete in Pan-Hellenic games.
Ancient historians had a different perspective: they admired the Spartan constitution and traditions, the ancients valued an orderly society and governance by good law, expressed as eunomia in Greek. They saw the wild and erratic Athenian democracy as dangerous. After all, didn’t the Athenians lose the Peloponnesian War after ousting their most successful general, and executing many generals after they won the battle? Didn’t the Athenian Assembly hastily condemn their beloved Socrates to death?[6]
PLUTARCH’S LIFE OF LYCURGUS
There are no unbiased accounts of Spartan society from Spartan writers, their culture did not promote philosophy and learning. When examining Spartan politics and culture, the primary source is Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus. Although he lived 450 years later, he consults Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, he also draws on many other sources that have been lost to modern historians.
Was there an actual Lycurgus, who was the original lawgiver of Sparta, bringing order to a society that was torn apart by violence? Plutarch repeats the legend that his very own father, King of Sparta, was struck down by a meat-cleaver when he tried to break up a fight. Whereas the lawgivers of Athens: first Draco of draconian fame, then Solon, likely were actual persons, we are less sure of Lycurgus, who may be the mythic depiction of the ideal Spartan.
One origin myth of Lycurgus demonstrated his innate virtue after he ascended to the throne of Sparta when both his father and his older brother passed away. When the widow of his elder brother discovered she was pregnant, she let Lycurgus know that she was willing to kill the infant and marry him to provide an heir. Maybe she thought her life was in danger since she had a potential usurper to the throne in her womb.
Lycurgus pretended to go along, but after the infant was born, he held him up in the air and announced, “Spartiates, a king has been born to you!” Plutarch recounts, “All the people were delighted,” “and were impressed by his high-mindedness and justice.”[7]
Legend suggests that Lycurgus had reigned as king for eight months, and to allay suspicions he decided to travel to various lands, like Solon did. Plutarch recounts that he discovered the poems of Homer while travelling in Ionia, that he brought back to further the education of the Greeks.[8]
REFORMS OF LYCURGUS
We read in Plutarch that Draco and Solon, the lawgivers of Athens, we selected by consensus by the Athenians to draft the law codes of Athens. How was Lycurgus selected? Plutarch says he formed a group of conspirators, and “thirty leaders advanced at dawn under arms into the city square, to terrify and intimidate his opponents,” which sounds like an unlikely beginning of a rule that support constitutional reforms.
Plutarch states that “among Lycurgus’ many reforms, the first and most important was the institution of the elders, who were, as Plato says, a source of security and restraint since they tempered the ‘feverish’ rule of the kings.” “The political system had previously been unstable,” sometimes dominated by the kings as a tyranny, other times dominated by democracy of the masses. This council of thirty elders, which included the two kings as elders, “restored the ship of state to an even keel,” sometimes “siding with the kings to resist democracy,” other times “supporting the people to resist tyranny.”[9] Will Durant says that “the powers of the kings were limited: they performed the sacrifices of the state religion, headed the judiciary, and commanded the army in war.[10]
The Spartans were known for being laconic, saying little. They were known for their pithy communications. When they planned to block the Persian army at the Pass of Thermopylae, in the Greco-Persian Wars, the Spartans were warned the Persian army was so numerous that their arrows would block out the sun. The Spartan Dieneces responded, “If the Persians hide the sun, we shall have our battle in the shade.”[11] In the Peloponnesian Wars, after a Spartan fleet was badly defeated by Alcibiades, an intercepted letter to the Spartan Assembly simply stated, “Ships lost. Mindarus dead. Men starving. Don’t know what to do.” The Spartans quickly sent supplies and reinforcements.[12]
Likewise, the Spartan Assembly was not like the raucous Athenian Assembly, where heated speeches filled up the proceedings. In the Spartan Assembly, Plutarch tells us that in Lycurgus’ system, which was a “mixed constitution,” part democracy, part aristocracy, part monarchy, “no one was allowed to express an opinion except the elders and the kings, but the people did have the authority to decide about the measures proposed by the elders and the kings.”[13]
All male Spartan citizens were admitted to the Assembly when they turned thirty.[14] The day-to-day government decisions were overseen by five ephors elected from the citizen body that also supervised the training of the young and public moral and religious life.[15]
Sparta suffered from the same social pressures as did Athens and many Greek city-states, the widening chasm between the rich and poor, which led to civil in many Greek city-states. Plutarch states that the “most revolutionary of Lycurgus’ constitutional reforms was the redistribution of the land. There was terrible inequality, crowds of paupers without property and without any means of support were accumulating in the city, and wealth was entirely concentrated in the hands of a few people. In order to banish arrogance, envy, crime, luxury, and those most chronic and serious political afflictions, wealth and poverty, Lycurgus persuaded them to pool all the land and then redistribute it all over again, so that everyone would live on equal terms and with the same amount of property to provide an income” in barley and fruit. Later in his life, Lycurgus comments that the “whole of Laconia looked like an estate which had recently been divided between a large number of brothers.” [16]
Lycurgus tried to pool and divide up their furniture, but that was too drastic for the Spartans, so he “attacked greed by political means. Lycurgus revoked all gold and silver coinage and iron the only legal tender;” and then he assigned to the “iron such a low value that ten minas’ worth needed a large storeroom in one’s house and a team of cattle to transport the wealth. Once this decree was in force, many types of crime disappeared in Lacedaemon.”[17] The money was too heavy and bulky to steal and carry! Will Durant said this was done to prevent the landowning aristocracy to be displaced by the mercantile classes, as was happening in the rest of Greece.[18]
Was this really true? Well, perhaps that is the legend that Plutarch repeats.
But Will Durant observes, “Human greed remained, however, and found an outlet in official corruption. Senators, ephors, envoys, generals, and kings were alike purchasable, at prices befitting their dignity.”[19]
Plutarch tells us, “Lycurgus then set about ridding the state of useless, superfluous professions,” forbidding citizens to engage in industry or trade. “Once luxury was deprived of the things that enliven it and nourish it, wealth gradually wasted away of its own accord, and there was no advantage in owning a great deal of property because wealth had no means of displaying itself in public but had to stay shut up in idleness at home.”[20]
This sounds like Plutarch was describing a utopia. Was this utopia a reality in Sparta? Who knows?
What was true was that without a thriving economy, foreigners did not seek to live in Sparta, preferring Athens. Athens was far more welcoming to workers from other city-states. As a result of this low immigration and her low birthrate, Sparta’s population never matched its influence in the Peloponnesian Wars. Sparta never recovered demographically from the earthquake early in the wars that wiped out an entire class of young Spartan soldiers.
During the Greco-Persian Wars, Demartus, the ex-Spartan king who fled to become an advisor to King Xerxes, said that “poverty is Greece’s inheritance from of old, but valor she won for herself by wisdom and the strength of the law. By her valor Greece now keeps both poverty and despotism at bay.”[21]
After Peloponnesian Wars, some Spartans did indeed have silver and gold coins. The Spartan general Gylippus was caught skimming out of the sacks of coins of war tribute. In response, the Spartans “declared that all the silver and gold should be sent away as mere ‘alien mischiefs.’”[22]
MILITARIZATION OF SPARTAN SOCIETY
The most fundamental reform credited to Lycurgus was the militarization of the Spartan state. The Spartan state resembles the story of a remote airbase and army outpost in the boondocks during the Vietnamese War. The airbase was there to protect the army outpost, and the army outpost was there to protect the airbase. In the case of Sparta, once she conquered and captured a Helot population far larger than her own, she chose to institute a military state where all male citizens were full-time soldiers, in part to prevent the Helots from rebelling!
Were there other reasons for this military training? We had an in-depth discussion of the hoplite infantry warfare in our video on Herodotus and the Greco-Persian Wars. The Greek hoplites fought in strict formation, with overlapping shields, and the line could not break, for if the line broke, the enemy would pursue and slaughter you.[23] I have not seen any mentions of this in the sources, but since hoplite warfare requires an orderly formation, the Athenians must have had some sort of refresher reservist training like the monthly drills our National Guardsmen participate in.
Although the Spartan reputation for excellent hoplite infantry soldiers was legendary, the Athenian hoplites were their equals in battle. In the first battles of the Greco-Persian Wars, the Battle of Marathon, the Athenian and Platean hoplites alone defeated the might Persian army under King Darius. Why? The Spartans were busy with a religious festival, they could not arrive in time.
The Spartans were embarrassed that they reached the battlefield after the battle was won by the Athenians, so when the son of Darius, King Xerxes, returned many years later with a much larger Persian army for revenge, it was the few thousand Spartan hoplites that held off the much larger hundred thousand Persian army at the Pass of Thermopylae. They held the Persians for many days, until they were defeated when the Persians were shown a mountain trail that bypassed the bottleneck pass.[24]
During the Greco-Persian Wars, the Spartan advisor Demartus says this to King Xerxes, “The Spartans, fighting singly, are as good as any, but fighting together they are the best soldiers in the world. They are free, yes, but not entirely free; for they have a master, and that master is Law, which they fear much more than your subjects fear you. Whatever this master commands, they do; and his command never varies: it is never to retreat in battle, however great the odds, but always to remain in formation, and to conquer or die.”[25]
The Persian spies saw the Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae relaxing, stripped for exercise, and combing their hair, and when they told this to King Xerxes, he was bewildered. He called his Spartan advisor Demartus for an explanation. “These Spartans have come to fight us for possession of the pass, and for that struggle they are preparing. It is the custom of the Spartans to pay careful attention to their hair when they are about to risk their lives.”[26]
Plutarch says that when men came of age at twenty, “they let their hair grow long, and used to look after it especially in times of danger, making sure that they kept it sleek and well combed, because they remembered something Lycurgus had said, that long hair increases the attractiveness of handsome men and the fearsomeness of ugly men.”[27]
MILITARY TRAINING OF SPARTAN BOYS
Spartan boys started their military training at age seven, they no longer lived at home, they lived in barracks in various herds, as Plutarch tells us, “so they become used to playing and learning together under the same rules and regimen. The boy who showed the greatest intelligence and fighting spirit was put in charge of his herd, and the rest kept their eyes on him, listened to his orders, and endured his punishments, so that their education was a training in obedience.”
Plutarch continues, “The boys learnt to read and write as much as they would need to get by, while all the rest of their education encouraged ready obedience, the capacity to endure hard work, and the ability to win in battle. That is why, as they grew older, their training was stepped up: their hair was cut short, and they became accustomed to go about barefoot and play naked.”
Plutarch continues, “At the age of twelve they stopped wearing tunics and were given one cloak a year,” which they wore both winter and summer. “They slept along with others from their unit or herd on straw mattresses they packed themselves.” They are under the command of an eiren, a twenty-year old recently graduated from this boyhood military regimen. Plutarch says this young commander “tells the sturdy boys to fetch wood and the smaller ones vegetables, and they go and get them by stealing. Some go to people’s gardens, while others with cunning and caution sneak into the men’s messes. Any boy who is caught is given a thorough thrashing for being a careless and incompetent thief. They also steal any food they can, and so learn the art of getting past sleeping people and careless guards. A boy goes hungry, as well as being beaten, if he is caught, because their meals are never generous, so that they learn to rely on themselves to ward off hunger by their own bravery and cunning.”[28]
Pseudo-Xenophon elaborates, “Clearly a prospective thief must keep awake at night, and by day practice deception and lie in wait, as well as have spies ready if he is going to seize anything. Clearly it was Lycurgus’ wish that by training the boys in all these ways he would make them more resourceful at feeding themselves and better fighters.”[29]
THE SPARTAN MILITARY LIFE
Once the boys graduated from their military training at twenty, they continued to dine in the common messes until they were thirty, another institution that was credited to Lycurgus. Men commonly married during this time, they would sneak out in the middle of the night for a tryst with their wives. Pseudo-Xenophon tells us that is “was a matter of disgrace that a man should be seen either when going into his wife’s room, or when leaving it.” Intimacy under such strained circumstances meant that “their desire for one another was bound to be increased, and any children born would be much sturdier than if they had exhausted each other.”[30] Likely, this odd arrangement hurt the birthrate of the Spartans, as many men likely chose to stay in the barracks to catch some sleep before the next day’s rigorous military training exercises.
The common meals were typically spartan, their famous black soup was boiled pork and blood, flavored only with salt and vinegar.[31] Plutarch says that when Alcibiades fled to exile in Sparta, he lived the life of a Spartan citizen, he “exercised, lived frugally, and wore a frown on his face.” He wore “his hair in need of a close cut, bathing in cold water, eating course bread, and supping broth.”[32]
Plutarch admiringly stated that these common messes “stopped them from spending time at home reclining at table on expensive couches, fattening themselves up like insatiable animals,” “ruining themselves morally as well as physically by indulging every whim and gorging themselves until they needed long sleeps, hot baths, a great deal of quiet, and daily nursing.” These messes were a great equalizer, “for when rich and poor ate at the same meal, the rich could not even use or enjoy, let alone gaze upon or display, all their paraphernalia” that their wealth acquired. “Thus, Sparta was the only city in the world where Wealth could be seen as truly blind.”[33]
Although Spartan men were permitted to live with their wives and families after they turned thirty, although their boys were often in training themselves at that time, they often took their meals as the common mess hall. They never completely left the military way of life. Plutarch tells us that the system set up by Lycurgus “did not allow them to become involved in manual work at all, and there was not the slightest need for them to engage in business” and accumulate wealth “because wealth was no longer something to be admired and respected. The Helots worked the land for them and paid them in tribute,” they did not have to work.[34]
This constant military training also made the Spartan officer corps skilled at military training, during the Peloponnesian War the Spartans excelled at improving the military standards of motivated allies. For example, in the doomed Sicilian Expedition, which led to the eventual downfall of Athens, the Athenians transported thousands of hoplites to Sicily. Sparta sent only a small contingent of hoplites, but the Spartan general Gylippus drilled the Syracusan forces to a high standard, and together the combined Spartan and Syracusan hoplites defeated the Athenian forces.
Plutarch says that the reform of the common messes angered the rich of Sparta. He recounts a story demonstrating the moral character of Lycurgus, and how he reacted when the young man Alcander attacked him with a stick, bloodying his face, and even poking out his eye. Lycurgus reacted like a pure stoic.
As punishment, Alcander was handed over to Lycurgus, who “dismissed his usual servants and attendants and told Alcander to attend to him instead. Because Alcander was a man of honor, he carried out his orders in silence. As he lived with Lycurgus and shared his life, he came to observe his self-possession and high-mindedness, his ascetic lifestyle, and his inexhaustible capacity for hard work, and he became extremely attached to him. He used to tell his friends and acquaintances that Lycurgus was not dour or surly but was uniquely gentle and even-tempered with others. So, this was Alcander’s punishment, and the penalty he had to undergo was to change from being an insubordinate, badly behaved young man to a very well-mannered and responsible adult.”[35]
As can be imagined, the Spartan lifestyle encouraged homosexual relationships, usually between older men and teens and pre-teens, these were both prevalent and condoned, although there is the admonition by the moralizing Plutarch that the older men sought to improve the character of their younger partners.[36] Pseudo-Xenophon expresses his reservations about this common Greek practice of pederasty as did Xenophon in his Symposium dialogue. “If out of admiration for a boy’s personality a man of the right character himself should seek to befriend him in all innocence and keep his company, Lycurgus would approve that and consider it the finest training. On the other hand, if someone was obviously chasing after a boy for his body, he regarded that as an absolute disgrace and laid it down that at Sparta lovers should refrain from molesting boys just as much as parents avoid physical intimacy between their children or brothers and sisters. It does not surprise me, however, that some people do not believe this, since in many cities the laws do not oppose lusting after boys.”[37]
PUZZLE OF THE SECRET POLICE IN SPARTA
One of the most bizarre of the Spartan practices was their krypteia, or secret police. Plutarch tells us that the young commanders would send the most intelligent of their teen soldiers into the countryside “with nothing more than a dagger each and a bare minimum of supplies. By day the young men spread out and found remote spots where they could hide and rest, but at night they came down to the roads and murdered any helots they caught. They often used to walk through the fields and kill the helots who were in the best shape and condition.”
Does this make sense? We read in Herodotus how part of the Spartan forces fighting the Persians included many Helots who were promised their freedom, and they fought valiantly, supposedly they were not cowed by their continual brutal treatment. Plutarch speculates that perhaps this was not an institution established by the virtuous Lycurgus, that perhaps it developed after the Helot uprisings after the severe earthquake that killed so many Spartan warriors in the early years of the Peloponnesian Wars.
The Spartans were often harshly cruel to the Helots, mistreating, intimidating, and shaming them. Plutarch tells us that the Spartans used to force the Helots “to drink large quantities of undiluted wine and then bring them in the common messes, to show the young men what it was like to be drunk. They also got the Helots to make fools of themselves by performing degrading songs and dances, while denying them the right to perform any which were suited to free men.”[38]
But Thucydides tells us of an incident in the Peloponnesians Wars when the Spartans were unsure if the helots would revolt when the Athenians had held the fortress at Pylos. They proclaimed that the helots should choose those among them who had fought the best on the battlefield for Sparta, “implying they would be given their freedom. This was a test to find the helots who showed the most spirit, those who came forward first to claim their freedom would be the ones most likely to turn against Sparta. Two thousand were selected, who put garlands on their heads and went round the temples under the impression they would be made free men.” Those were the helots the Spartans slaughtered.[39]
Modern historians are held hostage to their ancient sources. We cannot tell what life was actually like in ancient times, and practices vary from decade to decade in any society. We can only say what the sources tell us, and argue over the reliability of the ancient accounts, and how they are confirmed by inscriptions, coins, archeology, and other sources.
CONCLUSION: REFLECTIONS ON SPARTAN CULTURE
Plutarch tells us, “as a result of Lycurgus’ reforms, his fellow citizens lost both the will and the ability to live as individuals, Instead, they became accustomed, bee-like, to always being organic parts of the life of the community, to swarm around their leader in a state of near ecstasy induced by their eager desire for recognition, and to commit themselves wholly to their country.”[40]
Will Durant states that “health was one of the cardinal virtues in Sparta, and sickness was a crime.” “Fat men were a rarity in Lacedaemon; there was no law regulating the size of the stomach, but if a man’s belly swelled indecently, he might be publicly reproved by the government, or banished from Laconia.” There was little of the drinking and revelry that flourished in Athens.”[41]
Sparta had many admirers, including Plato, Plutarch, and Xenophon, but as Will Durant quips, “They could afford to praise Sparta, since they did not have to live there. They did not feel at close range the selfishness, coldness, and cruelty of the Spartan character; they could not see from the select gentlemen whom they met, or the heroes whom they commemorated from afar, that the Spartan code produced good soldiers and nothing more; that it made vigor of body a graceless brutality because it killed nearly all capacity for things of the mind.”[42]
[1] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (London, Penguin Classics, 1972, 1954, originally after 410 BC), Book 1.10, p. 41.
[2] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume 2, Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966, 1939), pp. 73-74 and Kenneth Harl, The Peloponnesian Wars, 2007, The Teaching Company, Lecture 3.
[3] Kenneth Harl, The Peloponnesian Wars, The Teaching Company, Lecture 10.
[4] Jeremy McInerney, Ancient Greek Civilization, The Teaching Company, 1998, Lecture 8, The Spartans.
[5] https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias4A.html
[6] Kenneth Harl, The Peloponnesian Wars, The Teaching Company, Lecture 3.
[7] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, translated by Robin Waterfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 1998, originally 100+ AD), Chapter 3, p. 11.
[8] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 4, p. 12.
[9] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 5, pp. 13-14.
[10] Will Durant, The Life of Greece, p. 79.
[11] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 7.226, pp. 494-495.
[12] Xenophon, Hellenica, History of Our Times, translated by Rex Warner (New York: Penguin Classics, 1979, 1966, originally after 362 BC), Book 1.1.23, p. 56.
[13] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 6, pp. 14-15.
[14] Will Durant, The Life of Greece, pp. 80.
[15] Kenneth Harl, The Peloponnesian Wars, The Teaching Company, Lecture 3.
[16] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapters 7-8, pp. 15-16.
[17] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 9, pp. 16-17.
[18] Will Durant, The Life of Greece, pp. 79.
[19] Will Durant, The Life of Greece, pp. 85.
[20] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 9, pp. 16-17.
[21] Herodotus, Histories, translated by Aubrey De Selincourt (London, New York: Penguin Classics, 2003, 1954, originally Fifth Century BC), Book 7.102, p. 448.
[22] Plutarch, Life of Lysander, p. 595.
[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplite
[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae
[25] Herodotus, Histories, Book 7.104, p. 450.
[26] Herodotus, Histories, Book 7.209, p. 489.
[27] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 22, p. 31.
[28] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapters 16-17, pp. 26-27.
[29] Xenophon, in collection Plutarch on Sparta, Spartan Society, translated by Richard Talbert (New York: Penguin Classics, 1988, 2005), Chapter 2, pp. 196-197.
[30] Xenophon, in collection Plutarch on Sparta, Spartan Society, Chapter 1, pp. 194-195.
[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_soup
[32] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Alcibiades, Chapter 23, pp. 241-242.
[33] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 10, p. 17.
[34] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 24, p. 33.
[35] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 11, pp. 18-19.
[36] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapters 17-18, pp. 26-28.
[37] Xenophon, in collection Plutarch on Sparta, Spartan Society, Chapter 2, pp. 197-198.
[38] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 28, p. 37.
[39] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book 4.80, p. 313.
[40] Plutarch, Greek Lives, Lycurgus, Chapter 25, p. 34.
[41] Will Durant, The Life of Greece, pp. 85-86.
[42] Will Durant, The Life of Greece, p. 87.
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