The Laws of Lycurgus
Long before Adam Smith developed the idea that commerce was necessary for the accumulation of wealth, Lycurgus, the legendary Spartan lawgiver, had used this principle to curb the avarice of his countrymen, and laid down a constitution for one of the most eminent commonwealths in the ancient world. The Spartan Constitution, according to Plutarch, was also the model for Plato’s Republic.
After creating the senate to balance the power between the kings and the people, Lycurgus proceeded to eliminate inequality. For their state was overloaded with numerous indigent and necessitous persons, while its wealth had centered upon a very few. To expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he persuaded them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence.
1. Devaluation of Money
All gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was but very little worth. To lay up twenty or thirty pounds required a large closet, and, to remove it, a yoke of oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon. Who would take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any use to cut in pieces? For when it was just red-hot, they spoiled it in vinegar, and made it almost incapable of being worked.
2. Elimination of Commerce and Superfluous Arts
Iron was scarcely portable, neither would it pass amongst the other Greeks, who ridiculed it. So there was now no more means of purchasing foreign goods and small wares; merchants sent no shiploads into Laconian ports; no rhetoric-master, no itinerant fortune-teller, no harlot-monger or silversmith or jeweler, set foot in a country which had no money; so that luxury, deprived little by little of that which fed and fomented it, died away of itself. For the rich had no advantage here over the poor. Their wealth and abundance had no road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing nothing. By relieving the artisans of the trouble of making useless things, he set them to show their skill in giving beauty to those of daily and indispensable use.
3. Obligatory Communal Meal
They should all eat in common, of the same bread and same meat, and of kinds that were specified, and not spend their lives at home, delivering themselves up into the hands of their tradesmen and cooks, to fatten them like greedy brutes. Otherwise, they would ruin not their minds only but their very bodies, which, enfeebled by indulgence and excess, would stand in need of long sleep, warm bathing, freedom from work, as if they were continually sick.
4. Music and Poetry
Their training in music and poetry was as serious a concern as the emulous purity of their speech. Their very songs had a stimulus that roused the spirit and awoke enthusiastic and effectual effort; the style of them was simple and unaffected, and their themes were serious and edifying. They were for the most part praises of men who had died for Sparta, calling them blessed and happy; censure of men who had played the coward, picturing their grievous and ill-starred life; and such promises and boasts of valour as befitted the different ages.
The Spartans are at the same time most musical and most warlike; The rhythmic movement of their marching songs was such as to excite courage and boldness, and contempt for death. Lycurgus coupled fondness for music with military drill, so that the over-assertive warlike spirit, combined with melody, might have concord and harmony. In time of battle the king offered sacrifice to the Muses, so that those who fought should make their deeds worthy to be told and remembered with honour.
The Masterstroke
It was certainly an extraordinary thing to have taken away from wealth, as Theophrastus observes, not merely the property of being coveted, but the very nature of being wealth. For the rich, being obliged to go to the same table with the poor, could not use or enjoy their abundance, nor please their vanity by looking at or displaying it. The common proverb, that Plutus, the god of riches, is blind, was nowhere literally verified but in Sparta. There, indeed, he was not only blind, but like a picture, without either life or motion.
When asked why he allowed mean and trivial sacrifices to the gods, Lycurgus replied, “That we may always have something to offer to them”. That is, offer sacrifice, not from superfluity and pomp, but continuous devotion to and exercise in virtuous living.
Being consulted whether it were requisite to enclose the city with a wall, Lycurgus wrote, “The city is well fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick.”
References:
- Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives Volume 1. Trans. John Dryden. Ed. Arthur Hugh Clough. New York: Modern Library, 2001.
- Plutarch. “Lycurgus”. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed April 11, 2018. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0047.
- Plutarch. “Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans”. Ebooks @ Adelaide. March 06, 2014. Accessed April 11, 2018. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/plutarch/lives.