INTRODUCTION

Plutarch wrote an article about the Spartans, as he tells us in his Life of Lysander, chap. xvii. (443 a). The only question, therefore, that can be raised is whether The Ancient Customs of the Spartans is that article. It is true that adverse judgement has been pronounced upon it, mainly because of some infelicities of language, and the character of the last chapter; yet, whether written by Plutarch or by another, it is in the main the work of Plutarch, and much of it comes from the same source as Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus. The body of facts and traditions here set down is, in great part, to be found scattered here and there in other writers, especially in the extant histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, to say nothing of other historians whose works are now lost. Much had been brought together, long before Plutarch’s time, in the Constitution of Sparta, which is printed among the works of Xenophon.

A hint that various sources were used in making this compilation may be found in the fact that some of the verbs are in the present tense and others in the past.

To each one of those who comes in to the public meals the eldest man says, as he points to the doors, Through these no word goes out. Cf. Moralia, 697 e; Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xii. (46 d); and the scholium on Plato’s Laws, 633 a.

A thing that met with especial approval among them was their so-called black broth, so much so that the older men did not require a bit of meat, but gave up all of it to the young men. It is said that Dionysius, the despot of Sicily,Plutarch, in his Life of Lycurgus, says one of the kings of Pontus. for the sake of this bought a slave who had been a Spartan cook, and ordered him to prepare the broth for him, sparing no expense; but when the king tasted it he spat it out in disgust; whereupon the cook said, Your Majesty, it is necessary to have exercised in the Spartan manner, and to have bathed in the Eurotas, in order to relish this broth.Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xii. (46 e), when a slightly different version is given, as also in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, v. 34 (98), and Stobaeus, Florilegium, xxix. 100.

The Spartans, after drinking in moderation at their public meals, go away without a torch. In fact, they are not permitted to walk with a light either on this route or on any other, so that they may become accustomed to travelling in darkness at night confidently and fearlessly.Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xii. (46 f); Xenophon, Constitution of Sparta, 5. 7; Plato, Minos, 320 a.

They learned to read and write for purely practical reasons; but all other forms of education they banned from the country, books and treatises being included in this quite as much as men. All their education was directed toward prompt obedience to authority, stout endurance of hardship, and victory or death in battle.Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xvi. (50 b); Isocrates, Panathenaicus, 209.