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* In quoting Plutarch I use North’s translation.
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the practice of it into Sparta: where setting the merchants, artificers, and labourers every one a part by themselves, he did establish a noble Commonwealth.» He made an equal division of lands among all the citizens of Sparta, in order to «banish out of the city all insolvency, envy, covetousness, and deliciousness, and also all riches and poverty.» He forbade gold and silver money, allowing only iron coinage, of so little value that «to lay up thereof the value of ten minas, it would have occupied a whole cellar in a house.» By this means he banished «all superfluous and unprofitable sciences,» since there was not enough money to pay their practitioners; and by the same law he made all external commerce impossible. Rhetoricians, panders, and jewellers, not liking the iron money, avoided Sparta. He next ordained that all the citizens should eat together, and all should have the same food.
Lycurgus, like other reformers, thought the education of children «the chiefest and greatest matter, that a reformer of laws should establish»; and like all who aim chiefly at military power, he was anxious to keep up the birth rate. The «plays, sports, and dances the maids did naked before young men, were provocations to draw and allure the young men to marry: not as persuaded by geometrical reasons, as saith Plato, but brought to it by liking, and of very love.» The habit of treating a marriage, for the first few years, as if it were a clandestine affair, «continued in both parties a still burning love, and a new desire of the one to the other»—such, at least, is the opinion of Plutarch. He goes on to explain that a man was not thought ill of if, being old and having a young wife, he allowed a younger man to have children by her. «It was lawful also for an honest man that loved another man’s wife . . . to intreat her husband to suffer him to lie with her, and that he might also plough in that lusty ground, and cast abroad the seed of well-favoured children.» There was to be no foolish jealousy, for «Lycurgus did not like that children should be private to any men, but that they should be common to the common weal: by which reason he would also, that such as should become citizens should not be begotten of every man, but of the most honest men only.» He goes on to explain that this is the principle that farmers apply to their live-stock.
When a child was born, the father brought him before the elders of his family to be examined: if he was healthy, he was given back to the father to be reared; if not, he was thrown into a deep pit of water.
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Children, from the first, were subjected to a severe hardening process, in some respects good—for example, they were not put in swaddling clothes. At the age of seven, boys were taken away from home and put in a boarding school, where they were divided into companies, each under the orders of one of their number, chosen for sense and courage. «Touching learning, they had as much as served their turn: for the rest of their time they spent in learning how to obey, to away with pain, to endure labour, to overcome still in fight.» They played naked together most of the time; after twelve years old, they wore no coats; they were always «nasty and sluttish,» and they never bathed except on certain days in the year. They slept on beds of straw, which in winter they mixed with thistle. They were taught to steal, and were punished if caught—not for stealing, but for stupidity.
Homosexual love, both male and female, was a recognized custom in Sparta, and had an acknowledged part in the education of adolescent boys. A boy’s lover suffered credit or discredit by the boy’s actions; Plutarch states that once, when a boy cried out because he was hurt in fighting, his lover was fined for the boy’s cowardice.
There was little liberty at any stage in the life of a Spartan.
Their discipline and order of life continued still, after they were full grown men. For it was not lawful for any man to live as he listed, but they were within their city, as if they had been in a camp, where every man knoweth what allowance he hath to live withal, and what business he hath else to do in his calling. To be short, they were all of this mind, that they were not born to serve themselves, but to serve their country. . . . One of the best and happiest things which Lycurgus ever brought into his city, was the great rest and leisure which he made his citizens to have, only forbidding them that they should not profess any vile or base occupation: and they needed not also to be careful to get great riches, in a place where goods were nothing profitable nor esteemed. For the Helots, which were bond men made by the wars, did till their grounds, and yielded them a certain revenue every year.
Plutarch goes on to tell a story of an Athenian condemned for idleness, upon hearing of which a Spartan exclaimed: «Show me the man condemned for living nobly and like a gentleman.»
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Lycurgus ( Plutarch continues) «did accustom his citizens so, that they neither would nor could live alone, but were in manner as men incorporated one with another, and were always in company together, as the bees be about their master bee.»
Spartans were not allowed to travel, nor were foreigners admitted to Sparta, except on business; for it was feared that alien customs would corrupt Lacedaemonian virtue.
Plutarch relates the law that allowed Spartans to kill helots whenever they felt so disposed, but refuses to believe that anything so abominable can have been due to Lycurgus. «For I cannot be persuaded, that ever Lycurgus invented, or instituted, so wicked and mischievous an act, as that kind of ordinance was: because I imagine his nature was gentle and merciful, by the clemency and justice we see he used in all his other doings.» Except in this matter, Plutarch has nothing but praise for the constitution of Sparta.
The effect of Sparta on Plato, with whom, at the moment, we shall be specially concerned, will be evident from the account of his Utopia, which will occupy the next chapter.
CHAPTER XIII The Sources of Plato’s Opinions
PLATO and Aristotle were the most influential of all philosophers, ancient, medieval, or modern; and of the two, it was Plato who had the greater effect upon subsequent ages. I say this for two reasons: first, that Aristotle himself is an outcome of Plato; second, that Christian theology and philosophy, at any rate until the thirteenth century, was much more Platonic than Aristotelian. It is necessary, therefore, in a history of philosophic thought, to treat Plato, and to a lesser degree Aristotle, more fully than any of their predecessors or successors.
The most important matters in Plato’s philosophy are: first, his Utopia, which was the earliest of a long series second, his theory of
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ideas, which was a pioneer attempt to deal with the still unsolved problem of universals; third, his arguments in favour of immortality; fourth, his cosmogony; fifth, his conception of knowledge as reminiscence rather than perception. But before dealing with any of these topics, I shall say a few words about the circumstances of his life and the influences which determined his political and philosophical opinions.
Plato was born in 428-7 B.C., in the early years of the Peloponnesian War. He was a well-to-do aristocrat, related to various people who were concerned in the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. He was a young man when Athens was defeated, and he could attribute the defeat to democracy, which his social position and his family connections were likely to make him despise. He was a pupil of Socrates, for whom he had a profound affection and respect; and Socrates was put to death by the democracy. It is not, therefore, surprising that he should turn to Sparta for an adumbration of his ideal commonwealth. Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals. It has always been correct to praise Plato, but not to understand him. This is the common fate of great men. My object is the opposite. I wish to understand him, but to treat him with as little reverence as if he were a contemporary English or American advocate of totalitarianism.
The purely philosophical influences on Plato were also such as to predispose him in favour of Sparta. These influences, speaking broadly, were: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Socrates.
From Pythagoras (whether by way of Socrates or not) Plato derived the Orphic elements in his philosophy: the religious trend, the belief in immortality, the other-worldliness, the priestly tone, and all that is involved in the simile of the cave; also his respect for mathematics, and his intimate intermingling of intellect and mysticism.
From Parmenides he derived the belief that reality is eternal and timeless, and that, on logical grounds, all change must be illusory.
From Heraclitus
