Polıteía 63
pears to have argued that the honors that Lycurgus received at Sparta, where
he was revered, were nonetheless inferior to those that Lacedaemon’s lawgiver
deserved. In his Rhetoric, the peripatetic singled out as an exemplary rhetorical
theme Alcidamas’ claim that “the Lacedaemonians flourished [eudaımónēsan]
as long as they employed the laws of Lycurgus.”^72
To understand fully the logic underpinning the remarkable regime that
Lycurgus is said to have founded and to grasp the implications of that logic for
the articulation of a grand strategy for Sparta, we will have to consider the
genesis of Lacedaemon. Then, we will have to examine her evolution early on
as a political community.