Lives by Plutarch - 1 - Lycurgus
Lycurgus
Quote
"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."
Notes
Lycurgus is the son of a Spartan king, but he grows up in a period where people don't respect the king, and they don't respect the law. He becomes king after his father gets hit by a meat-cleaver and dies trying to stop a fight in the street.
Lycurgus has an older brother who is in line ahead of him, but he dies, too. However, his older brother's wife is pregnant. She tells Lycurgus she'll abort the baby if he marries her. He agrees to marry her, but he doesn't kill the baby. Instead he declares that the baby is the true heir to the throne and he agrees to cede authority.
People are still suspicious of Lycurgus and believe he's plotting to take over the kingship, so he leaves Sparta and travels around. He devotes a lot of his travels to studying different types of governments and borrows ideas from things he observes.
He also encounters Homer's epic poetry while traveling through Asia and loves it. He notices that throughout the passages designed for pleasure and entertainment there are political and educational elements as well, and so he has the poetry collected and written down so that they can be sent back to Greece. Even though some Greeks were vaguely aware of Homer before this, Plutarch says it's likely that "their fame is due above all to Lycurgus."
Back in Sparta, though, people want Lycurgus to come back and be king. Lycurgus understands the poor state that Sparta is in, and so he comes up with a plan "to effect revolution and bring about constitutional change." He gets together a small army of his close friends and supporters. They march into Sparta, Lycurgus takes back the throne, and he immediately begins instituting his reforms.
His first reform is to bring in a government of elders to serve as a balance between the extremes of tyranny by the kings and mob rule by the masses. With the elders he creates a mixed constitution which helps to stabilize the state.
Next, to deal with the out of control inequality of wealth, he carries out a massive redistribution of all the land in Sparta. It is a program of total redistribution to remove any and all inequality. From here on, the only way to gain status is through your reputation of excellence and good deeds, not wealth.
Lycurgus also completely changes the currency in Sparta as a further bulwark against greed and wealth inequality. He removes gold and silver and makes iron the new currency. And he vastly devalues it so that to try accumulate wealth or steal it involvse storing or transporting huge amounts of heavy iron.
This new currency also has the effect of getting rid of foreign traders since they have no interest in getting paid in iron. Lycurgus sees this as a good thing and doesn't want their corrupting influence. He also doesn't want Spartans to be seduced or distracted by luxuries. Instead they could focus their efforts on simpler, everyday things, and making them excellent.
His next major reform is to bring in the "common messes" to control people's indulgent eating habits. In these messes, all the rich and the poor eat the same food together in the same place. It is no longer allowed to eat on your own. This reform in particular makes the rich hate Lycurgus and one of the rich men attacks Lycurgus over it and knocks out his eye. However, Plutarch explains, Lycurgus eventually wins this rich man over by his honourable character.
He supports allowing women the same opportunities as men, at least in terms of their physical exercise and training. The women train naked, too, just like the men. Plutarch writes that "nudity accustomed them to simplicity and made them admire physical fitness." It also encouraged marriage.
The men can only meet their wives in secret without anyone else seeing them. During the day the men only spend time with other men. Lycurgus believes this, too, "stimulated desire and readiness for sex."
He is very interested in Spartans making lots of babies. Polyamory is allowed in certain cases if it will lead to good quality babies. In Lycurgus' vision, "children belonged to the state, not their fathers." The goal was to breed good stock.
Children are put together in "herds" where they can play and fight each other. Older men watch them and often encourage the fighting. The children also have to steal food to provide for themselves, and suffer either hunger if they fail, or brutal beatings if they're caught.
Lycurgus encourages a particular way to speak, too, "brusque but elegant." Plutarch writes that "Lycurgus may have made large amounts of iron coinage worth little, but he did the opposite with the coinage of speech." Another Spartan puts it, "People who know how to speak also know when to speak." That line itself is characteristic how the Spartans like to speak.
Lycurgus is satisfied with his reforms, but he announces to the Spartans that there is still one more thing left to be done. He says he has to go and consult the Oracle of Delphi, and while he's away, they have to promise they'll keep following his laws until he comes back. So he leaves and asks the Oracle what it thinks about his reforms. The Oracle says there good, and Lycurgus dies there and for the Spartans to keep the promise they made to him forever. Plutarch writes that Lycurgus "was of the opinion that even in death a statesmen should benefit the state."
Sparta becomes a state of immense power and a force for order in Greece. They succeed in "overthrowing tyrannies in various states, mediating in wars, and putting an end to civil strife."
Plutarch says that all the famous philosophers who later wrote about politics, like Plato, got their ideas from Lycurgus. "Lycurgus, however, left no mere words and ideas, but created an actual and unrivalled system of government."
Key Takeaways
Spartans did not think of themselves as individuals. Lycurgus thought individual freedom was dangerous for a society. He virtually got rid of money and bound everyone to a specific way of life. Their whole lives were dedicated to Sparta and they were always ready to die for it. Lycurgus himself gave his own life so that Sparta would stay loyal to his laws.
Anyone today would call a state like this totalitarianism. But Sparta was unified, powerful, and maybe even wise.
It's hard to think of the Spartans as prisoners of their state. It looks more like they felt genuine pride being part of it.