Institutions
Lycurgus is credited with the formation of many Spartan institutions integral to the country's rise to power, but more importantly its maintenance of a very idiosyncratic form of government and way of life. Perhaps most famously, he is credited with the basic Spartan institution of the sussita/syssitia, the practice that required all Spartan men to eat together in common messhalls. Plutarch describes the institution as consisting of companies ("syssitia," or "eating-together" groups) of about fifteen men, each bound to bring in and contribute each month a bushel of meal, 8 gallons of wine, 5 pounds of cheese, 2 and a half pounds of figs, and a small amount of money to buy meat or fish with. When any member made a personal sacrifice to the gods, he would send some portion to the syssition, and when any member hunted, he sent part of the animal he had killed, to share with his messmates. Personal sacrifices of this sort and hunting were the only excuses that allowed a man to justify eating at his own home, instead of with the messhall (syssition): otherwise, men were expected to eat daily with their syssition comrades. Even kings were apparently expected to take part in a messhall, and were not to eat privately at home with their wives. Spartan women apparently ate together with and spent most of their time with each other, and not their husbands or sons older than seven (see below on the "agoge").
Plutarch, in his "Life of Lycurgus," attributes to Lycurgus also a thoroughgoing reassignment and equalizing of landholdings and wealth among the population, "For there was an extreme inequality amongst them, and their state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should all live together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence..." (trans. Dryden) That is, Lycurgus is said to have been the originator of the Spartan "Homoioi," the "Equals," citizens who had no wealth differentiation among them, an early example of distributism, insofar as the citizens (not the Helots) were concerned. This radical lifestyle differentiated the Spartans once again from other Greeks of their time.
To support this new land division, Lycurgus was said to have divided the country all around Laconia into 30,000 equal shares, and the part attached to the city of Sparta in particular into 9,000; all shares were distributed among the Spartans. Helots (the population of the territories the Spartans had captured in their wars in Laconia) were attached to the land, not to individual owners; hence, all slaves were property of the state. Plutarch further reports that he divided up their movables as well, using the strategy of introducing money called pelanors made of iron which had been weakened by it being cooled in a vinegar bath after being turned red-hot, and calling in all gold and silver, in order to defeat greed and dependence on money. The new money, besides being almost intrinsically worthless, was also hard to transport. This move was seen by Plutarch also as a way of isolating Sparta from outside trade, and developing its internal arts and crafts, so as to prevent foreign influences and the decadence of markets.
As a measure against luxury, Lycurgus is prescribed with forbidding the use of any tools other than an axe and saw in the building of a house. This practice was consistent with Spartan moderateness in that it prevented the walls and ceilings of the home from being excessively embellished or superfluous, thus discouraging citizens from further adorning their homes with extravagant furniture or other decorations.
He was also credited with the development of the agoge. The infamous practice took all healthy seven year old boys from the care of their fathers and placed them in a rigorous military regiment. This system of education, famous in antiquity among the other Greeks, was one of the largest and most influential social institutions attributed to Lycurgus.
Lycurgus himself was said to be mild, gentle, forgiving, and calm in temper, even when attacked; he was thought to have been extraordinarily sober and an extremely hard worker, all qualities that other Greeks admired in the Spartans; in this sense he was also the "founder" of the admirable qualities displayed by contemporary Spartans of later ages.
Read more about this topic: Lycurgus Of Sparta
Famous quotes containing the word institutions:
“Unless we maintain correctional institutions of such character that they create respect for law and government instead of breeding resentment and a desire for revenge, we are meeting lawlessness with stupidity and making a travesty of justice.”
—Mary B. Harris (1874–1957)
“Good government cannot be found on the bargain-counter. We have seen samples of bargain-counter government in the past when low tax rates were secured by increasing the bonded debt for current expenses or refusing to keep our institutions up to the standard in repairs, extensions, equipment, and accommodations. I refuse, and the Republican Party refuses, to endorse that method of sham and shoddy economy.”
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“The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutions ... are as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)