34 Paıdeía
heel. Any Spartan who managed to preserve his life by taking refuge in flight
was classed as a trembler. As such, he might as well have been dead.
The enviable reputation that they had earned greatly aided the Spartans in
the conduct of war. By the same token, when these men failed to live up to that
reputation, the event could have a devastating impact on the morale of the city
and of her allies as well. In 425, as we have already had occasion to note, when
the Lacedaemonian contingent on the island of Sphacteria surrendered to the
Athenians, a shudder ran through Greece. According to Thucydides, “the Hel-
lenes supposed that the Lacedaemonians would never surrender their arms in
response to starvation or to any other form of compulsion, but that they would
instead hold fast to their weapons, fight to the best of their abilities, and so give
up their lives. The Greeks simply could not believe that those who had surren-
dered were hómoıoı like those who had died.” To bring home to the prisoners
the enormity of what they had done, one citizen of a community allied with
Athens is said to have posed to one of the men captured on the island a simple
question—whether “those of the Lacedaemonians who had died were not the
elite—gentlemen both noble and good [kaloì kagathoí].” The arrow, he was told
in reply, that could pick out the brave men would be worth a great deal.^87
The presence of tremblers in substantial numbers could pose a serious
political problem for the Spartans. The men captured on Sphacteria returned
home just a few years later after the Peace of Nicias had been ratified. Though
the pólıs then suffered from an exceedingly severe shortage of manpower,
those taken prisoner in 425 were for a time deprived of their citizen rights.
Some of the captives had come from families of particular prominence, and
the citizens reportedly feared that out of bitterness at suffering disgrace these
men would be eager to start a revolution. In due course, therefore, the Spar-
tans reversed their decision,^88 but a certain sense of awkwardness must have
remained.
The same problem presented itself again after the battle of Leuctra in
371—but this time in a fashion far more severe. For the Spartan army itself
had on this occasion suffered a decisive defeat, and a very large proportion of
the surviving adult male citizen population had been guilty of flight. To inflict
on so many men the disabilities required by the law would be to risk revolution
at a time when the city itself might be in danger of being destroyed. The king
Agesilaus provided the solution, proposing simply that the laws be allowed to
sleep for a day but that they be enforced thereafter with the same rigor as in
the past.^89 Even then, the survivors could expect to be held in disgrace.