Prologue 5
the rhetorician Libanius could observe it in operation—it was at least in part
because the works of Critias, Xenophon, Ephorus, Aristotle, Dicaearchus,
Heracleides, and Sphaerus, in which it was described in some detail, were
available for consultation.^20 When, in an oration, Cicero briefly singled out for
praise “the discipline” instilled by the Lacedaemonians and asserted that “they
alone, in the earth entire, have lived for more than seven centuries with one
set of customs and unchanging laws,” he was exaggerating, as was his wont in
public discourse. But when, in a philosophical work aimed at a more learned
audience, he contended that “the laws of Lycurgus educate the young through
toil and distress by forcing them to hunt and run and by making them suffer
hunger, thirst, cold, and heat,” he is describing rigors that Spartans in the late
archaic and classical periods would almost certainly have recognized.^21 In an
account of classical Spartan customs and ways, the evidence from the Roman
period cannot be accorded as much weight as what we learn from earlier
sources of information, and it must be used with caution and care. But it can-
not simply be ignored.
Nor need we suppose that, in describing Lacedaemon, the ancient author-
ities blindly succumbed to adulation. Ephorus was not an admirer of Sparta;
and, as classicists are now, finally, beginning to recognize, Xenophon was a
writer of great subtlety, capable of intimating what it was imprudent and im-
proper for a beneficiary of Lacedaemonian patronage and a guest-friend of
one of Sparta’s kings openly to say: that, despite its obvious virtues, the Lace-
daemonian regime was fundamentally defective.^22 Plato and Aristotle were far
less reticent and reserved. As we shall soon have ample opportunity to ob-
serve, in the criticism they directed at Lacedaemon, these two philosophers
were unstinting, open, and refreshingly blunt.^23 Apart, perhaps, from Critias—
who was, indeed, an out-and-out partisan—none of the figures associated
with Socrates can be accused of having been mesmerized by Lacedaemon.
There is, moreover, no evidence that Theophrastus, Dicaearchus, Heracleides,
Sphaerus, or any of their successors fell into such a trap; and, in the absence
of such evidence, it is implausible to suppose that Aristotle’s peripatetic fol-
lowers, whose admiration for their master’s judgment knew few bounds, would
have done so.^24
Nor should we assume that in depicting the mores, manners, and political
institutions of the Lacedaemonians Plutarch in any way falsified the facts. Of
course, in his quest to keep alive the memory of ancient liberty, he did treat
Lacedaemon in a manner more sympathetic than had Ephorus, Xenophon,