by Oswyn Murray
This social system is often described as primitive or archaic, and has been seen as specifically Dorian in origin: the two views are obviously to some extent complementary. Greek sources themselves expressed the same attitude somewhat differently in claiming that the Spartan ‘constitution’ was related to that of Crete, whence Lykourgos had borrowed it; for this parallelism (if true) would tend to suggest, not so much conscious borrowing, as the survival of archaic Dorian features in two separated but equally conservative communities. Unfortunately the comparison between Sparta and Crete, which is found in detail in Aristotle (Politics 2.1269–72) and is implied in works like Plato’s Lates, seems to be misleading. ‘The Cretan constitution’ is itself an artificial construct (much favoured if not invented by Ephoros) for the purposes of making this specific comparison, in which the various institutions of different Cretan towns were combined precisely in order to emphasize the points of similarity with Sparta. The individual points of comparison tend either to exhibit important differences (for instance the status of land-serfs) or to be examples of institutions that were widespread in early Greek states, such as the common messes and the alleged similarities in political constitution. The Dorian origin of the Spartan social system is a myth.
That is not to deny that many Spartan institutions were primitive, or that some were Dorian; but what is of particular interest in the Spartan system is the preservation of these institutions through their transformation, the relationship between their survival and their function. The warrior bands disappeared elsewhere in Greece because they were no longer suited to the new hoplite warfare, which needed to incorporate those outside the aristocratic bands; in Sparta they survived to become the basis of hoplite warfare by being extended to the rest of the community. Similarly the syssitia may well have their origins in the common feasting of a warrior class widespread in early Greek society, and exemplified for the Dorians by the example of Crete. But the Spartan model has been adapted in two directions: its universalisation and its formal contributions to a common table presuppose the conquest of Messenia, and (unlike the Cretan version which retained the old custom of sitting) the syssition is a meal taken in the reclining position and divided into two parts, like the standard Greek symposion (below ch. 12); this relationship between reclining meal and military organization is reflected in Herodotus’ description (above p. 169) of the Spartan army as divided into the typical small ‘sympotic’ groups of fifteen and its multiples. Thus the syssition in its developed form cannot be earlier than the conquest of Messenia and the general acceptance of the reclining symposion in the seventh century: an older custom has been radically transformed.
The two aspects of function and survival have been illuminated by modern anthropology. The function of the Spartan system was unitary, the creation of a hoplite army; the pressures that caused this to become the sole function were both sudden and permanent. The essential impetus must have been provided by the experience of the newly created Equals in the second Messenian war, and the realization that the economic basis of their life could only be secured and maintained by continual military vigilance. The system may seem too complex to have been a sudden creation; that this is not necessarily so is shown by the many parallels which exist between hoplite Sparta and the Zulu state established at beginning of the nineteenth century by Shaka Zulu. The impetus was the same, a change in weaponry and tactics resulting in the massed phalanx; and the solution was also similar – by using the values, rituals and social groupings of a traditional society to create a mass military elite based on age groups, rites of passage, and the regulation of all aspects of adult life; within a few years Shaka controlled an empire of 80,000 square miles and an army of 30,000 men. The case of Sparta is different primarily in that we cannot know how sudden the transition was: since the Messenian problem was permanent, the immediate impetus to change and its continuing direction remained the same.
The problem of survival is more complex. Strictly no society can be archaic; in the words of the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, all societies ‘must have lived, endured, and, therefore, changed’. But an archaic society can be so regarded either in relation to its internal structure, as one whose institutions have changed little, or externally in relation to its neighbours, as one whose institutions are more primitive than theirs. In both respects it is clear that Sparta changed more, and more radically, than any other Greek state of the period. The fact that the change was mediated through precisely those ‘primitive’ elements that other states were discarding, is irrelevant. But it does pose a problem for the observer: since the Spartans continued always to express present changes in terms of a return to past institutions, in what sense can we distinguish Sparta from the true archaic society?
Two examples where something of the historical development can be reconstructed will show the problem. There was a primitive ritual connected with the shrine of Artemis Orthia, in which youths attempted to steal cheeses from the altar, while other youths defended it with whips and sticks: such ritual stealing is common; but at some point (perhaps very late) it developed into a rite of passage, and a famous endurance test witnessed by Plutarch and thousands of Roman tourists until as late as the fourth century AD: the tourists sat in a specially constructed stone theatre to watch the whipping of naked Spartan youths, ‘and I have seen many of them dying under the lash at the altar of Artemis Orthia’ (Plutarch Lykourgos 18). The transformation from primitive fertility rite to feat of endurance is typical of the way that Spartan festivals changed under the impact of the Lykourgan system: Plato makes endurance a characteristic of Spartan rituals (Laws 1.633).
The institution of the krypteia (secret society) shocked even Sparta’s admirers: a picked body of young men went out to live secretly in the countryside; they kept hidden during the day, but at night they emerged and killed any helots they could find (Plutarch Lykourgos 28). The custom is a typical adolescent rite of passage, in which young warriors undergo a period of isolation from the community, and often have to give evidence of manhood by various feats of courage or skill, or by killing their first man. Traces of the custom in less barbaric form can be found elsewhere in Greece: in Sparta it survived intact, or was intensified, because it could be directed to a socially useful end, the terrorization of the helot population.
Both these rites appear primitive, and are survivals in a certain sense; yet both of them have acquired a completely different function. Sparta was in fact a pseudo-archaic society: her institutions had been transformed to suit the hoplite state and its economic base. It is the coherence of aim in Spartan institutions which demonstrates most clearly their pseudo-archaism; for the true archaic or traditional state preserves customs for their own sake, and discards only what is positively harmful – the true archaic state is a mass of contradictions. Despite her alleged love of the past, Sparta could not afford to contradict herself.
As for the author of these reforms, we may end where Plutarch begins:
Concerning Lykourgos the lawgiver, absolutely nothing can be said which is not disputed.
He serves only to remind us that Spartan society had a beginning in time.
XI
Athens and Social Justice
THE ORIGINS of Greek justice are human, in the arbitration procedures of the elders described by Homer and Hesiod (p. 58); Zeus merely grants the sceptre which symbolizes the right to give judgement, and watches over the decisions. Greek law derives from the same source – not from any set of divine commandments, but from the human recognition that individual judgements ought to follow a pattern; law is essentially an attempt to limit the arbitrariness of the judge, and as such is an expression of discontent with the existing system. Hesiod had already voiced this discontent in the notion of the violence done to Dikē, daughter of Zeus and personification of the individual judgement, and in the claim that some judgements were ‘crooked’. With the spread of literacy it became possible to fix in writing the rules which the elders might apply, instead of relying on their
varying interpretation of customary law; the intention behind this move is made clear by the fact that it often coincides with the placing of other limitations on the powers of the elders, and with the assertion of equality before the law: as Solon says,
I wrote down laws alike for base and noble,
fitting straight judgement to each.
(Fragment 36. 18–30 = 24D)
For opposite reasons the same need was being felt in the new colonial foundations, which had to create artificially the constraints of customary law already existing in less equal but more traditional communities.
The figure of the lawgiver (nomothetēs) is a response to this double need to curb the power of the aristocracy and maintain the force of customary law. The lawgiver was chosen from among the class of experts, and could therefore be given absolute power to establish a written code: it is clear both that the people were not always pleased with the result, and that the lawgiver could change the system radically. Such freedom from public demands or the constraints of tradition engendered a remarkable self-confidence in the lawgiver: he appealed to no higher power other than his own sense of what was just, and the trust which the community had placed in him. He was regarded much as the founder of a colony, for he too was a semi-divine hero whose authority validated the institutions of the city.
Appropriately it was in the colonial world that the earliest lawgivers emerged, with Zaleukos of Locri and Charondas of Catana in the mid seventh century; no genuine information survives about their work. The myth of Lykourgos is modelled on the same conception. But it is not until the beginning of the sixth century at Athens that the principles and methods of the lawgiver become clear. The first Athenian lawcode was written by Drakon in 621/0, shortly after the failure of Kylon to make himself tyrant with the help of his father-in-law Theagenes of Megara (p. 137); this combination of events suggests that there was already discontent within Athens, and Drakon’s code may well have been part of an aristocratic reaction, for it is characterized as extremely harsh (hence the modern word ‘Draconian’). The code combined fixed fines, expressed in terms of oxen, with liberal use of the death penalty; otherwise its scope and nature are unknown, for (with the exception of his law on homicide) it was superseded within a generation by the code of Solon, who was chief magistrate (archon) in 594/3. In Athenian tradition it was Solon who was the founder of the Athenian state.
Much of Solon’s poetry survives, quoted in later sources; our evidence for his work is therefore better than for any other event of early Greek history. If there is still controversy about the nature of his reforms, it is because of the character of his poems. The use of poetry for political ends is itself a sign that Athenian society was still bound in many respects by oral modes of thought: Solon recited his words publicly, and intended them to be repeated by others – they were invested with the permanence and authority of poetry, but they were also meant to persuade in the present situation. They were therefore directly political: this is not to say that they were partisan, for the traditional role of the lawgiver was that of arbitrator between conflicting interests. But there is for instance an obvious concentration in the poems written before his reforms on the evils which need correction, and in those written afterwards on the rightness of his solutions: differences of purpose and occasion required differences in tone and emphasis which may be misleading. Moreover it was clearly Solon’s intention in communicating through poetry to subsume the problems of Athens under the eternal questions of justice and the good for the community; specific political issues and grievances are expressed in terms of the moral issues they raise. Since Solon would not have wished to reveal the details of his proposals beforehand, or have needed to do so afterwards, these details have to be inferred from other evidence, and then related to the principles expressed in his poetry.
The laws of Solon were written on the four sides of wooden tablets, which were set in wooden frames in such a way that they could be rotated; the two words used of the tablets, kyrbeis and axones (axles), perhaps reflect nothing more than their two main physical aspects of shape and ability to rotate. Despite modern sceptics, it is certain that these objects survived to be discussed by scholars as late as the third century BC; and Plutarch saw fragments of them three hundred years later, preserved in the council-office at Athens (Plutarch Solon 25). But the originals must have quickly become difficult to read because of the material used, the archaic letter forms, and the ancient style of writing ‘as the ox ploughs’ (boustropkēdon), alternatively in one direction and then the other; they were probably replaced for practical purposes by papyrus copies long before they actually became illegible. These copies will obviously have been reasonably accurate, and certainly both preserved the original layout and contained those laws which were obsolete. Laws could later be referred to as coming from the first, sixteenth, or twenty-first axon, or even ‘thirteenth axon, eighth law’ (Plutarch Solon 19); and archaic words or institutions survived along with ‘old laws’ or ‘laws no longer enforced’: Aristotle mentions that ‘in the laws of Solon which they no longer use it is written often “the naukraries shall levy” and “to disburse from the naukraric silver”’ (Constitution of Athens 8.3); the naukrariea were probably the original taxation system, paying for the provision and maintenance: of warships, and abolished by Kleisthenes or Themistokles before the Persian destruction of Athens. From Aristotle onwards, no less than four scholarly commentaries are known On the axones of Solon. From such evidence it is clear that Solon’s laws were both available and consulted by later writers.
Nevertheless a certain scepticism is still in order. Few ancient historians were legal experts or given to detailed research. Moreover the code was preserved for practical reasons, as the basis of Athenian law; it is at least probable that many copies were more or less modernized by the insertion of later monetary penalties and the addition of new laws or procedures, so that even a conscientious historian might be misled. This relates to a wider problem. Solon was the founder of Athenian democracy; and his lawcode remained the only codified body of law in Athens until it was officially revised at the end of the fifth century. Orators were therefore prone to refer to particular laws as laws of Solon to impress their audience, or in much the same way as the French legal code is called the Code Napoléon; the phrase ‘the laws of Solon’ came close to meaning ‘the laws of Athens’. It is therefore not possible to trust all ancient references to the laws of Solon, for a number of alleged laws are obviously later.
The same scepticism is appropriate in considering the narratives and interpretations of the two main sources, Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians and Plutarch’s life of Solon. The various local historians of Attica behind these accounts are known to have had strong political views; and, as the founder of Athenian democracy, Solon was still a political force when they wrote in the fourth century. Much of their time was taken up with disputes about which particular reforms or innovations should be attributed to him because they were democratic in the appropriately radical or moderate sense: the problem of debt is the moat striking example.
The Athenians liked to contrast themselves with the Dorian newcomers; their aristocracy was autochthonous, sprung from the soil. But Attica was also the route by which groups of refugees from the Dorians had passed to the islands and Asia Minor, during the Ionian migration in the early Dark Age; hence a tendency for families to trace their ancestry back to Homeric heroes from various parts of Greece. This picture of comparative continuity with the Mycenean world is supported by the archaeological evidence. The city of Athens remained a centre of occupation throughout the Dark Age, and from about 900 was the most prosperous and advanced community in Greece. Athens created the Geometric style in pottery, and produced its finest examples in the great amphorae of the Dipylon Master about 760–50 and his followers (pl. 2a). Eastern imports began as early as 850; Attic pottery is present in the lowest levels at A1 Mina, and in the early eighth century eastern goldsmiths were working in the city; one of
the masterpieces of orientalizing art is the group of ivory statuettes modelled by an Athenian craftsman on the Syrian figurines of Astarte around 730 (pl. 3a). But it was precisely at this time that the prosperity of Athens suddenly declined, and for the next century she was a cultural backwater; some have placed Pheidon of Argos at this date, and seen the cause of the change in the hostility of Argos and the rise of Aegina to naval control of the Saronic Gulf.