148 Notes to Pages 6–8
27.Customary discernment and caution: Christopher B. R. Pelling, “Plutarch’s Adaptation of
His Source Material,” JHS 100 (1980): 127–40, reprinted in Pelling, Plutarch and History, 91–115.
Note the difficulty that Claude Mossé, “L’Image de Sparte dans les Vies parallèles de Plutarque,” in
CASPTP, 303–13, has in squaring what we know concerning Plutarch’s consistently careful, judi-
cious treatment of the evidence available to him with the thesis that, in his treatment of Lacedae-
mon, the biographer somehow resolutely ignored that evidence. For a corrective, see Willem den
B o er, Laconian Studies (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing, 1954), 221, who observes, “Mod-
ern historians, though possessing no more material for interpretation than Plutarch, have all too
often disposed of the customs related by him as ridiculous concoctions offered by him or his
sources, and in so doing they have shown less modesty and historical discernment than Plutarch
commanded.” Plutarch’s debt to Plato and Aristotle is obvious and well known. On what he owed
Xenophon, see Philip Stadter, “ ‘Staying Up Late’: Plutarch’s Reading of Xenophon,” in Xenophon:
Ethical Principles and Historical Enquiry, ed. Fiona Hobden and Christopher Tuplin (Leiden: Brill,
2012), 43–62.
28.Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Duncan Forbes (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1966), 159.
- For a thorough survey of the issues and of the literature published on this subject prior
to the 1970s, see Pavel Oliva, Sparta and Her Social Problems (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert,
1971); for a more recent survey, see Jean Ducat, “Sparte archaïque et classique: Structures éco-
nomiques, sociales, politiques (1965–1982),” REG 96 (1983): 194–225. I cite, selectively, the more
recent literature in the notes below.
Chapter 1. Paıdeía
- This chapter and the succeeding chapter should serve, in part, as a refutation of Stephen
Hodkinson’s contention that Lacedaemon was an ordinary pólıs, which requires that, to a very
considerable extent, one disregard the sources: cf. Mogens Herman Hansen, “Was Sparta a Normal
or an Exceptional Polis?” with Stephen Hodkinson, “Was Sparta an Exceptional Polis?”; and see
Mogens Herman Hansen and Stephen Hodkinson, “Spartan Exceptionalism? Continuing the De-
bate,” all in SCA, 385–493. - Ethnographic description of Sparta: Hdt. 1.65.1–67.6, 82–83, 2.80, 5.39–42, 6.52–60,
106.1–107.1, 7.102–4, 206–9, 8.72, 9.7–11, 82, 85, with Rosalind Thomas, Herodotus in Context:
Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
102–34. Cf. Ellen Millender, “Herodotus and Spartan Despotism,” in SBM, 1–62, and “The Spartan
Dyarchy: A Comparative Perspective,” in SCA, 1–67 (at 1–18), who exaggerates Herodotus’ insis-
tence on Lacedaemonian alterity and then treats his observations as an echo of anti-Spartan Athe-
nian prejudice, with Edmond Lévy, “La Sparte de Hérodote,” Ktèma 24 (1999): 123–34, who thinks
him highly favorable to Lacedaemon and who takes his good humor in this regard as a sign that
Sparta was not as severe as it would become. I see no reason to entertain either hypothesis or to
suppose the historian’s assessment anything other than nuanced, balanced, and sound.
3.See Thuc. 1.77.6 and Xen. Lac. Pol. 1–10 with Ducat, SE, 1–22. Note also Pl. Leg. 1.634d–e
and Dem. 20.106 - City into camp, etc.: Pl. Leg. 2.666e, Isoc. 6.81, Plut. Lyc. 24.1. See Arist. Pol. 1324b5–9.
In this connection, see also Pl. Leg. 1.625c–626c, 628e, 633a–d, 3.688a–d. Cf. Stephen Hodkinson,
“Was Classical Sparta a Military Society?” in S W, 111–62. Prohibitions against travel and visita-
tion: Ar. Av. 1012–13; Thuc. 1.144.2, 2.39.1; Xen. Lac. Pol. 14.4; Pl. Prt. 342c–d; Isoc. 11.18; Arist.
F538 (Rose) = F543 (Gigon); Plut. Lyc. 27.6–9, Agis 10.3–8, Mor. 238d–e with Stefan Rebenich,
“Fremdenfeindlichkeit in Sparta? Überlegungen zur Tradition des Spartanischen Xenelasie,” Klio
80 (1998): 336–59, and Thomas J. Figueira, “Xenelasia and Social Control in Classical Sparta,” CQ
n. s. 53:1 (May 2003): 44–74. Note, however, Xen. Mem. 1.2.6. Pl. Leg. 12.949e–953e is a commen-
tary on and critique of this Spartan practice. Note the ironical discussion at Pl. Prt. 342a–d. See
David Whitehead, “The Lakonian Key,” CQ n.s. 40:1 (1990): 267–68. Intensive patriotism: Thomas
Babington Macaulay, The History of England (Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co., 1861), I 273. Rarely