160 Notes to Pages 28–29
held: Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1969), 256–60.
- Groups smaller than ten are often ineffective; those larger than twenty are subject to
faction: note the findings of E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social
Movements in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), 18–19,
and Bandits, second edition (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), 16, 20. Col. Nicholas G. L. Ham-
mond served behind the German lines in Macedonia during World War II. In a conversation held
on the twenty-second of March 1981, he remarked to me that in 1943 the standard number of men
assigned to a unit within the ELAS guerrilla army was fifteen. As the leaders of that body of sol-
diers understood, one critical factor is that the men be familiars in the full sense of the term: see
S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York:
William Morrow, 1947), 42, 123–56; Edward A. Shils and Morris Janowitz, “Cohesion and Dis-
integration in the Wehrmacht in World War II,” Public Opinion Quarterly 12 (Summer 1948):
280–315; Robert J. Rielly, “Confronting the Tiger: Small Unit Cohesion in Battle,” Military Review
80 (2000): 61–65, and Leonard Wong, Thomas A. Colditz, Raymond A. Millen, and Terence M.
Potter, Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Stud-
ies Institute, 2003). A sense of shared mission is no doubt essential as well: cf. Robert J. MacCoun,
Elizabeth Kier, and Aaron Belkin, “Does Social Cohesion Determine Motivation in Combat? An
Old Question with an Old Answer,” Armed Forces and Society 32:4 (July 2006): 646–54, who think
social cohesion inconsequential in comparison with a sense of shared commitment to the unit’s
mission, with Michael Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Trium
phalism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 159–63. - Spartiates never more numerous than nine or ten thousand: Arist. Pol. 1270a36–37;
Plut. Lyc. 8.3, 16.1. Spartan mother’s demand: Mor. 241f. According to Stobaeus (Flor. 3.7.29–30
[Hense]), Aristotle attributed this famous admonition to Gorgo, the daughter of Cleomenes and
wife of Leonidas, who figures prominently in Herodotus’ narrative (5.51, 7.205, 239); with one
exception, it is elsewhere attributed to an unnamed Spartan mother sending her son off to battle.
I see no reason to doubt that Aristotle could have been Stobaeus’ source, and I am therefore less
inclined than some scholars to suppose that, in his text, Aristotle is a corruption for Ariston. For
the most recent discussion of this scholarly problem, and for a useful list of the passages in which
this admonition figures, see Mason Hammond, “A Famous Exemplum of Spartan Toughness,” CJ
75 (1979–80): 97–109. For an examination of the larger issues, see Thomas J. Figueira, “Gynecoc-
racy: How Women Policed Masculine Behavior in Archaic and Classical Sparta,” in S B P, 265–96.
71.See Hdt. 7.101–4, which should perhaps be read in light of Timaeus Lexicon of Words in
Plato s.v. enōmotía; Suda s.v. enōmotía; Etym. Magn. s.v. enōmotía; Phot. Bibl. s.v. enōmotía. Cf.
Ellen Millender, “Nómos Despótēs: Spartan Obedience and Athenian Lawfulness in Fifth-Century
Thought,” in Oikistes: Studies in Constitutions, Colonies, and Military Power in the Ancient World,
ed. Vanessa B. Gorman and Eric W. Robinson (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 33–59, who reads this passage
ironically not as a well-informed and, for the most part, admiring description of the foundations
of Spartan steadfastness but as an echo of the criticism that Pericles is said by Thucydides to have
directed at Lacedaemon in the Funeral Oration (which she takes as a reflection of Thucydides’ own
considered opinion).
72.Mothers and sons: Plut. Mor. 240c–242b with Bella Zweig, “The Only Women Who Give
Birth to Men: A Gynocentric, Cross-Cultural View of Woman in Ancient Sparta,” in Wo m e n’s
Power, Man’s Game, ed. Mary Deforest (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1993),
32–53, and Pomeroy, S Wo, 57–63. Fathers and sons: Xen. Lac. Pol. 6.1–2; IG V i 213, 255. As will
become clear, I do not believe that to explain this one needs to suppose that, after a Spartan
reached the age of seven, the oîkos continued in practice to loom large within his daily experience.
It is, in my opinion, deprivation that produced this fierce reaction. Cf., however, Ducat, SE, 119–37
(with 92, 261).
73.Corruption and bribery, Hdt. 3.148, 5.51.2, 6.50.2, 72, 82.1, 8.5.1; Thuc. 1.76.4, 95, 109.2,
2.21.1 (note Plut. Pe r. 22.2 and Diod. 13.106.10), 128–30, 5.16.3, 8.45.3, 50.3; Ephorus FGrH 70
F193; and Plut. Pe r. 22.4, Lys. 16.1–17.1 in light of Thuc. 1.77.6; Eur. And. 451; Ar. Pax 623–24;
Xen. Lac. Pol. 14; and Arist. Pol. 1270b6–12, 1271a1–5, F544 (Rose) = F 430, 550 (Gigon). Note
Pausanias’ expectations at Thuc. 1.131.2. An exception to the rule was deemed worthy of note: