1. Plato, Laws, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
| 635b. but in a friendly spirit. Ath. Good! But until I have investigated your laws as carefully as I can I shall not censure them but rather express the doubts I feel. You alone of Greeks and barbarians, so far as I can discover, possess a lawgiver who charged you to abstain from the greatest of pleasures and amusements and taste them not; but concerning pains and fears, as we said before, he held the view that anyone who shuns them continuously from childhood onward, when confronted with |
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2. Plato, Republic, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
| 545a. We have. Must we not, then, next after this, survey the inferior types, the man who is contentious and covetous of honor, corresponding to the Laconian constitution, and the oligarchical man in turn, and the democratic and the tyrant, in order that, after observing the most unjust of all, we may oppose him to the most just, and complete our inquiry as to the relation of pure justice and pure injustice in respect of the happiness and unhappiness of the possessor, so that we may either follow the counsel of Thrasymachus and pursue injustice |
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3. Xenophon, Constitution of The Spartans, 14 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
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4. Polybius, Histories, 6.45-6.46, 6.50 (2nd cent. BCE - 2nd cent. BCE)
| 6.46. 1. In all these respects the Cretan practice is exactly the opposite.,2. Their laws go as far as possible in letting them acquire land to the extent of their power, as the saying is, and money is held in such high honour among them that its acquisition is not only regarded as necessary, but as most honourable.,3. So much in fact do sordid love of gain and lust for wealth prevail among them, that the Cretans are the only people in the world in whose eyes no gain is disgraceful.,4. Again their magistracies are annual and elected on a democratic system.,5. So that it often causes surprise how these authors proclaim to us, that two political systems the nature of which is so opposed, are allied and akin to each other.,6. Besides overlooking such differences, these writers go out of their way to give us their general views, saying that Lycurgus was the only man who ever saw the points of vital importance for good government.,7. For, there being two things to which a state owes its preservation, bravery against the enemy and concord among the citizens, Lycurgus by doing away with the lust for wealth did away also with all civil discord and broils.,8. In consequence of which the Lacedaemonians, being free from these evils, excel all the Greeks in the conduct of their internal affairs and in their spirit of union.,9. After asserting this, although they witness that the Cretans, on the other hand, owing to their ingrained lust of wealth are involved in constant broils both public and private, and in murders and civil wars, they regard this as immaterial, and have the audacity to say that the two political systems are similar.,10. Ephorus actually, apart from the names, uses the same phrases in explaining the nature of the two states; so that if one did not attend to the proper names it would be impossible to tell of which he is speaking.,11. Such are the points in which I consider these two political systems to differ, and I will now give my reasons for not regarding that of Crete as worthy of praise or imitation. |
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5. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, 7.12.8 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 7.12.8. The Lacedaemonians, by observing the laws of Lycurgus, from a lowly people grew to be the most powerful among the Greeks and maintained the leadership among the Greek states for over four hundred years. But after that time, as they little by little began to relax each one of the institutions and to turn to luxury and indifference, and as they grew so corrupted as to use coined money and to amass wealth, they lost the leadership. |
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6. Plutarch, Alexander The Great, 69.4-69.7 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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7. Plutarch, Cicero, 49.2, 49.5-49.6 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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8. Plutarch, Cimon, 19.3-19.5 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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9. Plutarch, Comparison of Numa With Lycurgus, 1.1, 3.3 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 1.1. Now that we have recounted the lives of Numa and Lycurgus, and both lie clearly before us, we must attempt, even though the task be difficult, to assemble and put together their points of difference. For their points of likeness are obvious from their careers: their wise moderation, their piety, their talent for governing and educating, and their both deriving their laws from a divine source. But each also performed noble deeds peculiar to himself. To begin with, Numa accepted, but Lycurgus resigned, a kingdom. |
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10. Plutarch, Crassus, 33 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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11. Plutarch, Demetrius, 31.4-31.6 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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12. Plutarch, Demosthenes, 31.4-31.6 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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13. Plutarch, Fabius, 27.4 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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14. Plutarch, Lycurgus, 1.1, 3.1-3.5, 8.1-8.2, 13.1, 13.3, 25.5, 29.3-29.5, 29.10-29.11, 30.1-30.2, 30.5, 31.1-31.3 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 1.1. Concerning Lycurgus the lawgiver, in general, nothing can be said which is not disputed, since indeed there are different accounts of his birth, his travels, his death, and above all, of his work as lawmaker and statesman; and there is least agreement among historians as to the times in which the man lived. Some say that he flourished at the same time with Iphitus, and in concert with him established the Olympic truce. Among these is Aristotle the philosopher, and he alleges as proof the discus at Olympia on which an inscription preserves the name of Lycurgus. As joining with Iphitus in founding, or reviving, the Olympic games, in 776 B.C., the date assigned to the first recorded victory. Cf. Pausanias, v. 4, 5 f. ; 20, 1. A stay of hostilities was observed all over Greece during the festival. 3.1. Polydectes also died soon afterwards, and then, as was generally thought, the kingdom devolved upon Lycurgus; and until his brother’s wife was known to be with child, he was king. But as soon as he learned of this, he declared that the kingdom belonged to her offspring, if it should be male, and himself administered the government only as guardian. Now the guardians of fatherless kings are called prodikoi by the Lacedaemonians. 3.5. There was a party, however, which envied him and sought to impede the growing power of so young a man, especially the kinsmen and friends of the queen-mother, who thought she had been treated with insolence. Her brother, Leonidas, actually railed at Lycurgus once quite boldly, assuring him that he knew well that Lycurgus would one day be king, thereby promoting suspicion and paving the way for the accusation, in case any thing happened to the king, that he had plotted against his life. Some such talk was set in circulation by the queen-mother also, in consequence of which Lycurgus was sorely troubled and fearful of what might be in store for him. He therefore determined to avoid suspicion by travelling abroad, and to continue his wanderings until his nephew should come of age and beget a son to succeed him on the throne. 8.1. A second, and a very bold political measure of Lycurgus, in his redistribution of the land. For there was a dreadful inequality in this regard, the city was heavily burdened with indigent and helpless people, and wealth was wholly concentrated in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth 8.2. he persuaded his fellow-citizens to make one parcel of all their territory and divide it up anew, and to live with one another on a basis of entire uniformity and equality in the means of subsistence, seeking pre-eminence through virtue alone, assured that there was no other difference or inequality between man and man than that which was established by blame for base actions and praise for good ones. 13.1. None of his laws were put into writing by Lycurgus, indeed, one of the so-called rhetras forbids it. For he thought that if the most important and binding principles which conduce to the prosperity and virtue of a city were implanted in the habits and training of its citizens, they would remain unchanged and secure, having a stronger bond than compulsion in the fixed purposes imparted to the young by education, which performs the office of a law-giver for every one of them. 13.3. One of his rhetras accordingly, as I have said, prohibited the use of written laws. Another was directed against extravagance, ordaining that every house should have its roof fashioned by the axe, and its doors by the saw only, and by no other tool. For, as in later times Epaminondas is reported to have said at his own table, that such a meal did not comport with treachery, so Lycurgus was the first to see clearly that such a house does not comport with luxury and extravagance. 25.5. Again, Argileonis, the mother of Brasidas, when some Amphipolitans who had come to Sparta paid her a visit, asked them if Brasidas had died nobly and in a manner worthy of Sparta. Then they greatly extolled the man and said that Sparta had not such another, to which she answered: Say not so, Strangers; Brasidas was noble and brave, but Sparta has many better men than he. 29.3. When they all agreed to this and bade him set out on his journey, he exacted an oath from the kings and the senators, and afterwards from the rest of the citizens, that they would abide by the established polity and observe it until Lycurgus should come back; then he set out for Delphi. On reaching the oracle, he sacrificed to the god, and asked if the laws which he had established were good, and sufficient to promote a city’s prosperity and virtue. 29.4. Apollo answered that the laws which he had established were good, and that the city would continue to be held in highest honour while it kept to the polity of Lycurgus. This oracle Lycurgus wrote down, and sent it to Sparta. But for his own part, he sacrificed again to the god, took affectionate leave of his friends and of his son, and resolved never to release his fellow-citizens from their oath, but of his own accord to put an end to his life where he was. He had reached an age in which life was not yet a burden, and death no longer a terror; when he and his friends, moreover, appeared to be sufficiently prosperous and happy. 29.5. He therefore abstained from food till he died, considering that even the death of a statesman should be of service to the state, and the ending of his life not void of effect, but recognized as a virtuous deed. As for himself, since he had wrought out fully the noblest tasks, the end of life would actually be a consummation of his good fortune and happiness; and as for his fellow-citizens, he would make his death the guardian, as it were, of all the blessings he had secured for them during his life, since they had sworn to observe and maintain his polity until he should return. 30.2. While these remained in force, Sparta led the life, not of a city under a constitution, but of an individual man under training and full of wisdom. Nay rather, as the poets weave their tales of Heracles, how with his club and lion’s skin he traversed the world chastising lawless and savage tyrants, so we may say that Sparta, simply with the dispatch-staff and cloak of her envoys, kept Hellas in willing and glad obedience, put down illegal oligarchies and tyrannies in the different states, arbitrated wars, and quelled seditions, often without so much as moving a single shield, but merely sending one ambassador, whose commands all at once obeyed, just as bees, when their leader appears, swarm together and array themselves about him. Such a surplus fund of good government and justice did the city enjoy. 30.5. People did not send requests to them for ships, or money, or hoplites, but for a single Spartan commander; and when they got him, they treated him with honour and reverence, as the Sicilians treated Gylippus; the Chalcidians, Brasidas; and all the Greeks resident in Asia, Lysander, Callicratidas, and Agesilaüs. These men, wherever they came, were styled regulators and chasteners of peoples and magistrates, and the city of Sparta from which they came was regarded as a teacher of well-ordered private life and settled civil polity. 31.1. It was not, however, the chief design of Lycurgus then to leave his city in command over a great many others, but he thought that the happiness of an entire city, like that of a single individual, depended on the prevalence of virtue and concord within its own borders. The aim, therefore, of all his arrangements and adjustments was to make his people free-minded, self-sufficing, and moderate in all their ways, and to keep them so as long as possible. 31.2. His design for a civil polity was adopted by Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and by all those who have won approval for their treatises on this subject, although they left behind them only writings and words. Lycurgus, on the other hand, produced not writings and words, but an actual polity which was beyond imitation, and because he gave, to those who maintain that the much talked of natural disposition to wisdom exists only in theory, an example of an entire city given to the love of wisdom, his fame rightly transcended that of all who ever founded polities among the Greeks. 31.3. Therefore Aristotle says that the honours paid him in Sparta were less than he deserved, although he enjoys the highest honours there. For he has a temple, and sacrifices are offered to him yearly as to a god. It is also said that when his remains were brought home, his tomb was struck by lightning, and that this hardly happened to any other eminent man after him except Euripides, who died and was buried at Arethusa in Macedonia. The lovers of Euripides therefore regard it as a great testimony in his favour that he alone experienced after death what had earlier befallen a man who was most holy and beloved of the gods. |
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15. Plutarch, Lysander, 2.4, 30.3-30.5 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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16. Plutarch, Marcellus, 30 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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17. Plutarch, Marius, 46.3-46.5 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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18. Plutarch, Numa Pompilius, 20.8-20.12, 22.2 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 20.8. For possibly there is no need of any compulsion or menace in dealing with the multitude, but when they see with their own eyes a conspicuous and shining example of virtue in the life of their ruler, they will of their own accord walk in wisdom’s ways, and unite with him in conforming themselves to a blameless and blessed life of friendship and mutual concord, attended by righteousness and temperance. Such a life is the noblest end of all government, and he is most a king who can inculcate such a life and such a disposition in his subjects. This, then, as it appears, Numa was preeminent in discerning. 22.2. They did not burn his body, because, as it is said, he forbade it; but they made two stone coffins and buried them under the Janiculum. One of these held his body, and the other the sacred books which he had written out with his own hand, as the Greek lawgivers their tablets. But since, while he was still living, he had taught the priests the written contents of the books, and had inculcated in their hearts the scope and meaning of them all, he commanded that they should be buried with his body, convinced that such mysteries ought not to be entrusted to the care of lifeless documents. |
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19. Plutarch, Pelopidas, 35 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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20. Plutarch, Pericles, 39.3-39.4 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 39.4. The progress of events wrought in the Athenians a swift appreciation of Pericles and a keen sense of his loss. For those who, while he lived, were oppressed by a sense of his power and felt that it kept them in obscurity, straightway on his removal made trial of other orators and popular leaders, only to be led to the confession that a character more moderate than his in its solemn dignity, and more august in its gentleness, had not been created. |
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21. Plutarch, Phocion, 38.2 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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22. Plutarch, Romulus, 29.1-29.3 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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23. Plutarch, Theseus, 36.1-36.3 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
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