Quick questions on Lycurgan reforms and the Great Rhetra: HSC Ancient History

Tradition assigned the foundation of the Spartan way of life to a single lawgiver, Lycurgus. The ancient sources disagree about his dates: Aristotle placed him around 884 BC (the start of the Olympic Games tradition); Plutarch around 800 BC; Thucydides (1.18) gave a vague "for more than four hundred years before the end of this war [c. 405 BC]."

The most concrete artefact of the Lycurgan tradition is the Great Rhetra, preserved in Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus 6). The text is short, oracular, and ancient in form:

The Lycurgan reforms were collectively called the eunomia ("good order"). Tyrtaeus uses the term to describe Sparta's institutional stability in contrast with the social and political turmoil of other Greek poleis in the 7th century BC.

Ancient tradition attributed a wide range of social and economic reforms to Lycurgus.

Modern historians divide on whether Lycurgus was a historical figure.

Whether or not Lycurgus existed, the Lycurgan tradition was vital. It gave Spartans the ideological framework for their institutions; it provided foreign admirers (and critics) with a personal hero or villain; and it shaped the way the Greek world thought about constitutional reform.

State-run military education from age 7. (See the dot point on the army and the agoge.)

Military messes of around 15 men, into which every Spartiate had to be elected and to which he contributed a fixed monthly food allowance from his kleros.

Lycurgus supposedly redistributed Spartan land into 9,000 equal plots for Spartiates and 30,000 for Perioikoi. Modern historians treat this as a later invention.

Sparta retained iron spits (obeloi) as currency, allegedly to prevent the accumulation of personal wealth. The story is preserved in Plutarch.

Restrictions on luxury in clothing, housing, and food.

Modern scholarship divides. State the debate.

The Rhetra is the political charter (gerousia, apella). The agoge is the educational system. Both attributed to Lycurgus but distinct.

His 7th-century BC reference to the Rhetra is the strongest evidence for early dating.

Plutarch's 9,000 kleroi were never a historical reality. Hodkinson's revision is now standard.