On Sparta

This revised Penguin Classics edition collects several works by the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch (c. AD 50–120), along with an appendix by Xenophon, all focused on the society, leaders, and values of Sparta, a city-state in the southeastern Peloponnese renowned for its military discipline and austere way of life. The volume includes four biographical Lives, two compilations of sayings, and Xenophon's treatise on Spartan institutions.

The Life of Lycurgus opens with Plutarch's frank admission that almost nothing about the legendary Spartan lawgiver, from his ancestry to his death, is agreed upon by ancient authorities. Following the majority view, Plutarch places Lycurgus in the early eighth century BC and traces his lineage through the Eurypontid royal house, one of Sparta's two hereditary royal families. When Lycurgus' elder brother Polydectes died, Lycurgus became king but discovered the queen was pregnant. He declared the unborn child the rightful heir if male and served as guardian, ensuring the boy's safe birth despite the mother's secret offer to abort the child in exchange for marriage. He named the infant Charilaus and presented him publicly as king. Facing jealousy from the queen's relatives, Lycurgus traveled abroad, studying government in Crete, encountering Homer's poems in Ionia, and recruiting a poet-lawgiver named Thales to prepare Spartan citizens for reform through music.

Returning to find the populace eager for change, Lycurgus consulted the oracle at Delphi, where the priestess called him dear to the gods and promised his constitution would be the finest of all. He organized armed men to seize the agora (the civic center) at dawn, then instituted his central reform: the Gerousia, a council of 28 elders plus the two kings, designed to balance monarchical and democratic tendencies. Plutarch quotes an ancient document called the Great Rhetra, which established this council, organized the people into groups, and granted the assembly the right to respond to proposals, though a later supplement empowered the Gerousia to override flawed decisions. The ephorate, a powerful board of five annually elected magistrates, was introduced roughly 130 years later; Plutarch notably does not attribute it to Lycurgus.

Lycurgus then confronted extreme inequality by redistributing land into equal lots, invalidating gold and silver currency in favor of cumbersome iron money, and establishing common messes where citizens ate identical rations together. The wealthy revolted; a young man named Alcander struck Lycurgus and knocked out his eye. Rather than punishing him, Lycurgus made Alcander his personal attendant, and living together transformed the youth into a model citizen. Lycurgus also overhauled Spartan upbringing: girls trained physically to bear stronger children, and boys entered state-controlled training at age seven, learning obedience, endurance, and combat readiness over literacy. They were deliberately underfed to encourage resourceful theft, though beaten if caught. Lycurgus cultivated the famously laconic, or spare and pithy, style of speech, trained citizens in military music, and permitted burial within the city but forbade grave inscriptions except for men killed in battle or women who died in childbirth. Having made all citizens swear to maintain his constitution until his return from Delphi, Lycurgus obtained the god's confirmation of his laws, then starved himself to death so that Spartans could never be released from their oath.

The Life of Agesilaus covers the Eurypontid king whose reign of roughly 41 years (c. 400–360 BC) witnessed Sparta's dramatic decline. Agesilaus, a small, lame younger son, underwent the full agoge (the Spartan system of training and upbringing), an experience rare for a future king that gave him a lifelong respect for obedience. With the support of his former lover Lysander, he won the throne over Leotychidas, whose legitimacy was questioned because the Athenian leader Alcibiades allegedly fathered him. As king, Agesilaus cultivated the ephors and elders through deference, quietly increasing his authority through goodwill.

Leading a major expedition to Asia Minor against the Persians, Agesilaus systematically humiliated Lysander, whose overbearing reputation overshadowed the king's authority. He deceived the Persian satrap (regional governor) Tissaphernes through feints, won a significant victory near Sardis, and became the only man ever appointed to command both Spartan land and naval forces. Recalled to Greece when an anti-Spartan coalition formed, Agesilaus obeyed immediately, remarking that the Persian king was driving him out of Asia with 30,000 archers, a reference to the archer design on Persian coins used to bribe Greek leaders. At the battle of Coronea in 394 BC, he attacked the Thebans head-on rather than outflanking them, a mistake born of ardor that nearly cost him his life.

Agesilaus' implacable hatred of Thebes, rooted in the insult of Boeotian officials who threw his sacrifice off the altar at Aulis before his Asian campaign, drives much of the subsequent narrative. He supported the unauthorized seizure of the Theban citadel and forced the peace negotiations of 371 BC into collapse when the Theban general Epaminondas demanded that Spartan domination of its subject communities end. Twenty days later, the Spartans suffered a crushing defeat at Leuctra, losing 1,000 men including King Cleombrotus. Agesilaus suspended the laws disqualifying those who showed cowardice, declaring they must sleep for one day. When Epaminondas invaded Laconia with at least 40,000 troops, the first enemy force seen there in over 600 years, Agesilaus clustered his forces in the city center and endured taunts rather than risk open battle. Though Messenia, the territory that had sustained Sparta for centuries, was permanently lost, Agesilaus refused to accept this formally. Past eighty and scarred from wounds, he took mercenary service in Egypt, then died at age 84 during the return voyage.

The paired Lives of Agis IV and Cleomenes III recount the failed attempts of two third-century kings to restore the Lycurgan system. By Agis' time, only about 700 Spartiates remained, with wealth concentrated among a few. Agis proposed debt cancellation and land redistribution, offering his own vast property first. His uncle Agesilaus, motivated by personal debts, persuaded him to cancel debts first and delay redistribution, then exploited the office of ephor for personal gain. When the deposed co-king Leonidas II returned from exile, Agis took sanctuary but was lured out, dragged to prison, and strangled after a sham trial. His mother Agesistrata and grandmother Archidamia were executed alongside him, Agesistrata fitting the noose around her own neck with the words: "May this only be of service to Sparta" (97). Agis was the first reigning king at Sparta to be executed by ephors.

Cleomenes III absorbed Agis' vision through his forced marriage to Agis' widow Agiatis but acted with greater ruthlessness. After building military credibility through campaigns against the Achaean League (a federation of Peloponnesian city-states), he launched a coup, killing four of the five ephors and abolishing the office. He redistributed all land and trained 4,000 hoplites, or heavily armed infantry soldiers, in Macedonian style. His rapid conquests nearly dismantled the Achaean League, but his failure to extend social reforms to Argos prompted a revolt that unraveled his gains. The Achaean leader Aratus invited Macedonian king Antigonus III into the Peloponnese, and at the battle of Sellasia in 222 BC, Cleomenes lost all but 200 of his 6,000 Spartans. Fleeing to Egypt, he won initial respect from Ptolemy III but was placed under house arrest by the successor Ptolemy IV's advisers. He broke out with 13 companions and called the Alexandrian populace to liberty, but no one followed. Each companion killed himself. Ptolemy ordered the body hung up and Cleomenes' mother, children, and attendant women executed.

The Sayings of Spartans and Sayings of Spartan Women collect over 400 pointed remarks illustrating the values Sparta's admirers cherished: bravery, brevity, contempt for wealth, and devotion to the state. Famous examples include Leonidas I's response to Xerxes' demand to surrender arms at Thermopylae, "Come and take them" (171), and a mother handing her son his shield with the instruction "Son, either with this or on this" (187).

The appendix presents Xenophon's Spartan Society, a treatise of disputed authorship that attributes every Spartan institution to Lycurgus. It covers the agoge, common messes, property-sharing customs, and the army's organization into six regiments with detailed tactical maneuvers. A postscript acknowledges that Lycurgus' laws are no longer obeyed: Leading citizens now glory in possessing gold and seek foreign postings, and Greeks who once asked Sparta to lead them now conspire to prevent her rule.