CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Religious System at Sparta
Nicolas Richer
Writing in the fifth century BC, Herodotus of Halicarnassus explains how the
Lacedaemonians had been able to expel the Pisistratids from Athens. He says that
the Athenian Alcmaeonids bribed the Pythia. She had persuaded the Spartans to take
action against the Pisistratids, despite the ties of hospitality they maintained with
Laconia, by repeatedly instructing them to do so. In recounting the event the
historian notes that the Lacedaemonians ‘‘put considerations of the gods before
considerations of men’’ (5.63; cf. also Pausanias 3.5.4). In context, Herodotus’
judgment could be taken to indicate that Lacedaemonians had a religious sensibility
superior to that of the other Greeks, in degree if not in kind. We do indeed possess a
wealth of evidence, textual and archaeological, for Lacedaemonian religious practices.
(The Spartans were a subset of the Lacedaemonians, namely the ones that came from
Sparta itself, the principal city of Laconia. They controlled other free men, the
‘‘perioeci,’’ who lived in the area around the city and mobilized at the Spartans’
command. In ancient sources the term ‘‘Lacedaemonians’’ is clearly often used
to designate the Spartans, but it is preferable to preserve the terms employed in
ancient texts. On the distinction between the Spartans and the Lacedaemonians, see
Herodotus 7.234 and 9.70. In this instance, at 5.63, Herodotus says that the
Lacedaemoniansintervened in Athens as a result of the consultations made at Delphi
by theSpartans.)
Evidence for the Spartans’ religious beliefs and practices is quite plentiful, albeit
thinly spread. It is provided principally by the historians of the classical period,
Herodotus (ca. 484–420 BC), Thucydides (ca. 460–400 BC) and Xenophon
(ca. 430–354 BC), and by two authors of the second century AD, Plutarch (ca.
AD 50–120) and especially Pausanias Periegetes ‘‘the Traveler’’ (whosefloruitwas
ca. AD 160–180). Plutarch and Pausanias cite earlier authors and can combine
information bearing on the practices of the archaic and classical periods with material
from the hellenistic or Roman periods. Since the beginning of the twentieth century a
number of Greek and British excavations have brought artifacts and inscriptions to