untitled

thought was the foundation of social discipline.’’ However, an admittedly widespread
attitude of great restraint did not prevent the Spartans from sometimes regarding
each other with suspicious eyes, as for example in the cases of Cleomenes I, who
was indicted for not having taken Argos in favorable circumstances in 494 BC
(Herodotus 6.82), and Pleistoanax, dethroned in 445 BC (Thucydides 2.21.1;
Plutarch,Pericles22).
In fact, all citizens were constantly judged on the merit of their actions (Plutarch,
Lycurgus25.2–3; cf. also 24.5), but only the better ones could be considered to act as
supernatural protectors after death. New protectors could be given to Sparta by virtue
of their behavior in accordance with accepted norms, measured by the yardstick of the
pathe ̄mata, and by virtue of the obedient and effective devotion they displayed
towards the city (as suggested by analysis of Xenophon’s portrait of Agesilaus: cf.
Richer 1998b:24–6). A virtuous dead man could be considered as a protector of the
community that he had served in life.

The Manufacturing of Heroes for the City:

The Dead Lacedaemonians

Royal funerals

Herodotus gives us a detailed description of the ritual of royal funerals at Sparta:

These are the rights that the Spartan community has bestowed upon its kings during

their lifetime, but they are given the following when dead. Horsemen convey the

message of what has happened all round Laconia and women go about beating cauldrons

in the city. Whenever this happens, it is required that two people from each house, a man

and a woman, adopt the defiled dress of mourning. Substantial penalties are imposed

upon those that do not do this. The Lacedaemonians have the same customs upon the

deaths of their kings as do the barbarians in Asia. Most of the barbarians employ the same

customs on the deaths of their kings. For whenever a king of the Lacedaemonians dies, a

certain number ofperioeci, drawn from the whole of Lacedaemon but excluding the

Spartans, are compelled to come to the funeral. These, the helots and the Spartans

themselves assemble together and, together with women, are many thousands in num-

ber. They beat their brows vigorously and wail at length. They claim that ever the latest

of the kings to have died was the best one. If one of their kings dies in war, they prepare

an effigy [eido ̄lon] of him and carry it out to burial on a richly decorated bier. When they

bury a king, they hold no market for ten days, nor any election of magistrates, but they

mourn for this period. (6.58)

The importance of the death of one of the two kings for the Lacedaemonian
community as a whole is demonstrated by the great number of participants and the
duration of the mourning. This death could take place in war, and in this case
Herodotus presents the manufacture of an effigy of the dead king as a general rule,
although it can only have occurred once in his own time, when Leonidas fell at
Thermopylae in 480 BC in such a way that his body could not be immediately
transferred back to Sparta (his remains were taken back there forty years after the
battle, according to Pausanias 3.14.1; cf. Richer 1994).

The Religious System at Sparta 249