The legislature of Lycurgus and Solon

. �The legislature of Solon and Lykurgus� is a classical constitutional comparison of two Greek societies.

The legislature of Lycurgus and Solon

 

Excerpt: on how Lykurgus was little concerned about morality, when it came about following his political goal.

 

 

Lycurgus worked still further towards the abolition of ostentation in another manner. He ordered that all citizens take their meals together in a public place and all of them should be sharing a prescribed food. It was not allowed to make use of profusion at home and to prepare in one’s own kitchen delicious plates. Everyone had to give, every month, a certain amount of money for the purchase of foods destined to the public meals, and through that end, he kept the cost from the burden of the state.

 

Regularly, fifteen people would be eating together in the same table and every guest must be having the consent of all the remaining companions in order to be accepted on the table. No one could leave the table without a valid excuse, this commandment would be so severely observed that even Aegis, one of the future Kings, as he returned to Sparta from a gloriously led war and wanted to take his meal alone with his wife, received a negative answer from the Ephores (the group in charge of the application of the rules, note of the translator). Among the dishes of the Spartans is the dark soup famous; a dish which would praise the bravery of the Spartans because dying was not more terrible than eating their black soup.

 

They would spend their mealtime in a joyous mood and jokingly, for Lykurgus himself was so much an amateur of joy in amicable company that he erected an altar to the god of laughter in his house. Through the institution of this habit of eating together, Lykurgus achieved a lot for the fulfilment of his goal. The fancy for luxury expressed in costly dinnerware ceased because people could not use such items on public table. Debauchery would be forever put to an end; healthy and strong bodies were the consequences of this restraint and order, and healthy fathers could be procreating healthy children for the state.

 

Eating together used the citizens to live with each other and to consider themselves as the members of the same state body – not counting that such a balanced way of living must have had an influence on a balanced disposition for the minds. Another law commanded that no one should have another roof than the one which would be constructed with an axe and no other door than the one made with the help of a saw. In such a poorly made house, no one would be inclined to create costly furniture; since everything must be in accord with the rest.

 

Lykurgus conceived well that it is not enough to create laws for his fellow citizens; he must also create citizens for these laws. In the minds of the Spartans, he must be securing forever his constitution, in these minds he must be ending the sensitiveness for foreign mental images. The most important part of his legislature was, in that respect, education and through this one, he resolved, so to speak, to define the circle in which the Spartan state should be acting. Education was an important duty of the state and the state was the enduring duty of this education. His concern for the well-being of the children stretched out to the source of procreation. The bodies of the young maidens would be strengthened through physical exercises, in order to make easy the bearing of strong and healthy children. They even live without any clothes on in order to resist all the fluctuations of temperatures.

 

They must be avoiding their bridegrooms and might only see them during the night and furtively. In that manner, both spouses remained in the first years of their marriage still not knowing one another and their mutual love remained intact and ardent. Jealousy itself would be banned in marriage. Everything, including decency, was submitted to the higher goal of the legislator. He assigned fidelity to the women in order to secure healthy children for the state. As soon as the child was born, it belonged to the state – father and mother have lost him. The child would be examined by the oldest members of the group whether he was strong and well constituted, people would, then, hand him over to a nurse; should the child be weak and deformed, then, people would throw him into a precipice situated in mount Taygetus.

 

The Spartan nurses would, because of the rigorous education which they gave to the children, become famous all over Greece and would be demanded in remote countries. As soon as a boy has reached his seventh year, would he be taken from his nurse and be raised, fed and taught with children of the same age. Early on in their life, people taught them to oppose defiance to any misfortune and to demand a domination of their own body through physical exercises. Should they reach adolescence, then, the noblest among them would hope to have friends among the adults who would be linked to them through an exalted love. The older persons were present during their playtime, observed the burgeoning genius among them and encouraged their sense for glory through praise or reproach.

 

If they wanted to eat to satiety, then, they would have to steal the food for that end and the one who lets himself be caught had to expect a severe punishment and shame. Lykurgus chose these means in order to use them earlier on in life to trickiness and intrigues – specificities which he believed to be equally important as physical strength and courage for the warring purpose for which he was forming them. We have seen already previously how little concerned Lykurgus was, in matter of morality, when it came about following his political goal.

 

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