Paıdeía 35
Xenophon tells us that the news of the disaster at Leuctra reached Lace-
daemon on the last day of the festival of the Gymnopaidiai. Upon being in-
formed, the ephors chose not to suspend the choral performance of the men
which was then under way, but they did in due course report to the various
families the names of those who had lost their lives. The women were in-
structed at this time to make no lament and to bear the calamity in silence.
Xenophon’s description of what followed reads like an eyewitness report, which
it may well have been. “On the next day,” the Athenian observes, “it was pos-
sible to see those whose relatives were among the deceased walking about in
the full light of day, their faces bright and beaming. But one saw few of those
who had been told that their kin had survived, and these few were making
their way with countenances sullen and dejected.”^90 After a defeat in battle, the
Spartans were more likely to mourn the living than the dead.
The ancients wondered at this spectacle, and so should we. The first and
most important step that anyone can take in attempting to understand it is the
recognition that Pericles was correct when, in the funeral oration reported by
Thucydides, he singled out Sparta, from among all the Greek cities, as the pólıs
that went the furthest in promoting civil courage. By giving “to every citizen
the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests,” her social and
economic institutions were intended—as Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Poly-
bius point out—to foster that sense of solidarity and like-mindedness which
the Greeks called homónoıa and Sparta’s great admirer Jean-Jacques Rousseau
dubbed “the general will.”^91 As we shall soon see, Lacedaemon’s political con-
stitution served precisely the same function.