Spartan Legendary Lawgiver(Lycurgus)

Laws of Lycurgus and the Spartan Society

Every explorer or Spartan society should bear in mind that Spartan own sources are unavailable for researchers , if they at all ever existed Our ideas of Sparta as a ruthless contribute to Greek culture and philosophy rest mostly on the writings of the enemies of Sparta , like Athenians who have lost wars to Spartans and could hardly tell the whole truth of their foes . Talbert correctly notes that Plutarch attempted to be as objective as possible , yet he could not have avoided subjectivism since all the

sources available for him were subjective to this or that extent (Plutarch Talbert , 17 Thus in may evaluation of the Spartan society I shall rely on facts provided by Plutarch and not on estimations or opinions . I shall attempt to find out what was different in a Spartan society that made it so unusual for other Greeks

Perhaps the most frequent answer is that Sparta was a society where men were only warriors and women were only mothers , and this society rested on harsh exploitation of helots . To this it would be added that Spartans were not interested in philosophy or art , and their city is interesting for nothing except for military campaigns . Yet this view proves to be completely wrong if Plutarch 's work is read carefully .Concerning slightly more democratic than...