40 Polıteía
leader able to benefit them or committed to the cause they espoused. They did
not join permanent associations, and—even when embroiled in conspiracy—
they never publicly admitted to partisan design. The ancient authors acknowl-
edge the political importance of the divisions defined by wealth and birth when
they refer to “the many” and “the few,” to “the commoners” and “the notables,”
to “the mob” and “the gentlemen both noble and good.” But when they wish
to identify the politically active groupings, these writers speak of “those about
Thucydides,” they contrast “the friends of Pericles” with “the friends of Cimon,”
or they offer remarks in a similar vein. Where such a political grouping was
aristocratic in character and had its origins as an exclusive social club, it might
also be referred to as a companionship or hetaıría.^12
Within this world, Lacedaemon formed something of an exception, and
she did so in precisely the fashion which Ferguson and Rousseau indicated.
On the whole, the Spartans of the sixth and fifth centuries really do seem to
have been indifferent to many of the ordinary motives for strife and disorder.
The politically disruptive social divisions within the citizenry, which so af-
flicted the other Greek cities, were apparently unknown in Lacedaemon. In
any case, we hear little of them. Their absence, however, did nothing to pre-
clude the give and take of political struggle and the fleeting formation of fac-
tions around prominent figures. There is no dearth of evidence for political
disputation at Sparta. The measures taken “to give to every citizen the same
opinions, the same passions, and the same interests” might reduce the bit-
terness of controversy, but they could not eliminate it altogether. Despite the
fundamental consensus regarding ends, the Spartans could always dispute
over means; and although the regime sought to channel ambition [phılotımía],
it did nothing to stifle that breeder of quarrels. Indeed, as Aristotle points out,
it made the citizens “greedy for honor [phılótımoı],” and Plutarch is surely right
when he contends that this was deliberate. “The Spartan legislator,” he ob-
serves, “seems to have introduced the spirit of ambition [to phılótımon] and
the fondness for strife into the regime as a fuel for virtue, supposing that there
should always be a certain disagreement and contest for superiority among
good men and believing that it was not right to call homónoıa that lazy com-
plaisance which yields without debate and contention.”^13
At least while the Atlantic and Pacific oceans sufficed to isolate and protect
it, the liberal republic established by the American Founding Fathers could
almost do without men of warlike demeanor. But to defend the city, Sparta
was always in need of spirited men—and to maintain solidarity within the