32 Paıdeía
community before or since, but they inevitably fell far short of that at which
they aimed. It is not at all surprising that Sparta eventually succumbed. Nor is
there anything odd in the fact that she lost her hold on Messenia just over a
generation after the ephor Epitadeus, who held office in the wake of the Pelo-
ponnesian War, persuaded his compatriots that it was perfectly proper for a
citizen to be able to give or bequeath his public allotment of land to whomever
he pleased. From the outset, the Spartan polıteía was fragile in the extreme,
and the oracle which is said to have warned that “the love of money and noth-
ing else will destroy Lacedaemon” was right on the mark.^81
The Spectacle of Courage
What is truly surprising, then, is not Sparta’s ultimate failure but, rather,
her long years of success. What was extraordinary was her capacity to produce
public-spirited men. When Isocrates wrote that the Spartans “think nothing
as capable of inspiring terror as the prospect of being reproached by their
fellow citizens,” he was not just mouthing a cliché. In 480, when Lacedaemon
consulted the Delphic oracle on the eve of Persia’s advance, she was told that
a king must die if the city was to be saved. The Spartans did not shirk what was
demanded, but dispatched Leonidas soon thereafter with the customary royal
bodyguard of three hundred, taking care only to preserve the number of citi-
zen households by enrolling as hıppeîs to accompany the king none but ma-
ture men blessed with surviving sons.^82 In sacrificing their lives for the city,
Leonidas and his companions did no more than their compatriots expected.
According to the fourth-century Athenian orator Lycurgus, there was a
law at Sparta “expressly stipulating that all those unwilling to risk their lives
for the fatherland be put to death.” The rationale behind the statute was straight-
forward. “The fear of one’s fellow citizens is strong,” Lycurgus explained. “It
will force men to undertake risks when confronted with the city’s enemies. For
who, seeing that the traitor is punished with death, would desert the father-
land in its time of peril? And who, knowing that this would be the punishment
awaiting him, would value his life contrary to the city’s advantage?”^83
One may justly wonder whether such a law existed or was even required.
Xenophon makes it clear that in Lacedaemon cowards were formally expelled
from the ranks of the hómoıoı, then generally shunned; and Plutarch tells us
that they were subject to assault from passersby and that, as a sign of their
degraded status, they were required to wear cloaks with colored patches and