The traditional figure of Lycurgus, the Great Rhetra, and the reforms attributed to him, including the eunomia, the institutional changes, and the historiographical question of whether Lycurgus existed

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe the traditional figure of Lycurgus, the institutional content of the Great Rhetra (the founding charter of the Spartan constitution), the reforms attributed to Lycurgus, the concept of eunomia ("good order") that defined Spartan ideology, and the modern debate over whether Lycurgus was a historical figure or a foundational myth.

The answer

The figure of Lycurgus

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]."

Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus is the fullest biographical source but was written around AD 100, nearly a thousand years after the supposed events. Plutarch drew on Xenophon, Aristotle's lost Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, and other earlier sources.

The Lycurgan biography included travel to Crete (where he supposedly studied the laws of Minos), Egypt, and Ionia; a consultation with the Delphic oracle that produced the Great Rhetra; the establishment of the political institutions, the agoge, the syssitia, and the equal land allotments; and a final journey from which he never returned, asking the Spartans to swear an oath not to change the laws until his return.

The Great Rhetra

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:

"Having founded a temple to Zeus Syllanius and Athena Syllania, having divided the people into phylai and obai, and having established a gerousia of thirty including the kings, then from time to time apellazein between Babyka and Knakion. So to bring in and divide [proposals]; but the demos to have the kratos and the kratos."

The Rhetra established:

• A temple to Zeus and Athena Syllania
• The tribes (phylai) and local divisions (obai)
• The gerousia of 30 (28 elders plus the two kings)
• The right of the apella to vote on proposals
• The location of the assembly (between Babyka and Knakion, two streams near Sparta)

A "rider" or amendment is also recorded in Plutarch: "If the people choose a crooked decision, the elders and the kings shall be removers." This gave the gerousia and kings the power to dissolve the apella if it tried to amend a proposal.

The poet Tyrtaeus (7th century BC) refers to the Rhetra in fragment 4 West, providing the earliest extant evidence for the institutional arrangements and dating the Rhetra at the latest to the 7th century BC.

The eunomia

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.

The eunomia gave classical Spartans the rhetorical framework within which they justified their distinctive way of life. Foreign visitors (Xenophon, Critias of Athens) and later admirers (Polybius) treated the eunomia as Sparta's unique gift to Greek political thought.

Other reforms attributed to Lycurgus

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

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

The syssitia. 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.

Equal land allotments (kleroi). 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.

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

Sumptuary regulations. Restrictions on luxury in clothing, housing, and food.

The historicity question

Modern historians divide on whether Lycurgus was a historical figure.

W.G. Forrest (A History of Sparta, 1968) treats Lycurgus as a partly historical figure of the early 7th century BC, the actual reformer who instituted the gerousia and the apella after the Second Messenian War.

Paul Cartledge (Sparta and Lakonia, 1979) treats "Lycurgus" as a foundational myth attaching diverse reforms accumulated over generations to a single eponymous lawgiver. Cartledge notes the parallels with other Greek lawgivers (Solon at Athens, Zaleucus at Locri) and treats Lycurgus as a similar legendary type.

Stephen Hodkinson (Property and Wealth, 2000) argues the supposed Lycurgan equality of land was an ideology developed in the late 5th and 4th centuries BC, retroactively projected onto an earlier reformer. The actual Spartiate landholding was unequal throughout the classical period.

Anton Powell treats the Rhetra itself as historical (probably 7th century BC) but the figure of Lycurgus as the legendary embodiment of the eunomia, not a single historical lawgiver.

Importance of the Lycurgan tradition

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.

Lycurgus at a glance

How to read a source on this topic

Section II sources on the Lycurgan reforms typically include extracts from Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus, Xenophon's Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, Tyrtaeus, Aristotle's Politics, or Herodotus 1.65-66. Three reading habits.

First, date the source carefully. Tyrtaeus (7th century BC) is contemporary. Xenophon (early 4th century BC) is close. Plutarch (around AD 100) is centuries later. The further from the events, the more layered the tradition.

Second, distinguish the institutional from the moralising. The Great Rhetra is an institutional document. Plutarch's stories of Lycurgan austerity (the iron currency, the black broth) are moralising tales. Both reflect Spartan ideology but at different levels.

Third, watch for retrospective projection. The "Lycurgan" equality of land in Plutarch reflects 4th-century BC reformist ideology (the agrarian programs of Agis IV and Cleomenes III in the 3rd century BC) projected back. Hodkinson is the key reference here.

Common exam traps

Treating Lycurgus as straightforwardly historical. Modern scholarship divides. State the debate.

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

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

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

In one sentence

The Lycurgan tradition attributed Sparta's distinctive institutions, the gerousia, the apella, the agoge, the syssitia, and the supposed eunomia of equal land allotments, to a single lawgiver of around 800 BC whose Great Rhetra (preserved in Plutarch, Lycurgus 6, and referenced by Tyrtaeus in the 7th century BC) is the most concrete artefact of the Spartan ideology, though Cartledge treats "Lycurgus" as a foundational myth and Hodkinson exposes the supposed Lycurgan equality as a 4th-century BC projection.