Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta

"I began talking about Paul Cartledge’s book and said I couldn’t do a list of five books about Sparta without having one by Paul. I similarly couldn’t have a list of five books about Sparta without having one by Steve Hodkinson. He’s the other doyen of the discipline, if it’s possible to have two. Steve’s written and edited seemingly countless volumes on Spartan society. I chose this one because it’s his big book, but it’s also a real game-changing book. One of the reasons I’m very happy to have chosen it is that it’s published by the Classical Press of Wales , which was founded by Anton Powell, who was another Sparta expert. Anton died just a few months ago, so it’s nice to be able to remember Anton in this conversation as well. “Infanticide was very much the norm in the ancient Greek world” Steve’s book is the crest of a wave that’s been sweeping over studies of Spartan society since the late 1980s, really. All the old stereotypes have been swept away by a series of studies. One of the most enduring stereotypes about Sparta was the idea that every Spartan was assigned a kleros (plot) of land at birth, once he’d survived an inspection. This book definitely debunks that idea. The idea that the Spartans were all very much against displays and wealth is something that is also completely unravelled throughout the book. It makes such a thorough examination of the literary and epigraphical sources, but also uses quantitative analysis, sociological theories and rips everything apart. The thing I always explain to my students—when I’m talking to them about what they should be finding in this book—is the sheer deluge of evidence about wealth in Sparta. The supposedly austere Spartans don’t have wealth, but there’s wealth everywhere in Sparta and Steve really emphasizes that in this book. It’s a wonderful reappraisal of how Spartan society really operated. It’s one of those works that has just changed how we view Sparta. Yes, I’m talking about luxury. Things like horse breeding and the sheer number of Spartans—men and women—who were engaged in horse breeding. There’s really obvious evidence—not just gold and silver—for extensive wealth in Sparta. One of the comparatively minor things that comes out is that the Spartan state is levying a lot of cash fines. There’s a wonderful moment in the 360s BC when Sparta is being attacked and one of the Spartans jumps up from exercising naked, grabs his spear and charges into battle and—as reported by Plutarch—the enemy weren’t sure whether he was a god or not and that’s how he survived. But, when he comes back, the Spartan authorities gave him a prize for bravery and then fine him 1,000 drachmas, which is an absolutely staggering amount of money. It’s three years’ labour for an ordinary worker in Greece and so, for a society that supposedly doesn’t have any cash, that man was being asked to pay a lot of money. It’s just such a thorough study. It digs into everything that we’ve got and picks out all of those pieces of evidence that run counter to the perceived view of Sparta. Yes, the only reason it didn’t make it into my top five is purely size and the finances of it. It’s 500-plus pages, two volumes. It is a snapshot of what this generation of academic experts thinks Spartan society was like. It’s got a chapter by pretty much anyone who’s written anything on Sparta, giving the latest state of play on all aspects of Spartan society. It’s got education, women, lifestyle. It’s got the myth of Lycurgus, who supposedly founded the Spartan regime. It’s got chronological coverage of Spartan history from the Archaic Period right through to the conquest by the Romans. If anyone wants to know more about Sparta and wants to really dig deep and has the time to devote themselves to it, it will have all of the answers. It’s done in thematic chapters. It goes right through to the reception of ancient Sparta in the modern world—what people thought of the Spartans in the French Revolution, in Nazi Germany, in popular film and television, that kind of thing. Well, several of the leading lights of the French Revolution wanted to recreate Sparta. Robespierre and Saint-Just thought they were going to be able to radically reshape French society to be more like Sparta. They wanted to redistribute the land as Lycurgus was supposed to have done and reconstitute the government in a Spartan style. As for the Nazis, Hitler was quite partial to Sparta’s eugenics. There was a sense that the Spartan way of doing things could be applied in the modern world. There’s a document from the 1940s that outlines a plan that said that the Germans would be the Spartans, the Poles could be the perioikoi and the Russians could be the Helots. That was how they were going to run the east of Europe. Fortunately, they didn’t get to continue their plans for a new Sparta in 20th century Europe. Hitler was talking in particular about the exposure of disabled children and said this was a wise racial policy. He approved of the brutal schooling, as well. Their idea that Spartan education could be mirrored in Germany was something that did happen. ‘Adolf Hitler schools’ were set up and they actually had a textbook that was about Sparta. It had a chapter on the Spartan war poet Tyrtaeus and his lines about how it was a beautiful thing to fight and die. This chapter was printed in extra-large font. Sparta has a murky modern history, to say the least. There is a suggestion that Sparta influenced them. The Blackwell Companion has a chapter about the English public schools and Sparta. And many English public schools had a motto that had Sparta in it. It’s a line of Cicero—I can’t remember it exactly—but something like ‘Sparta is yours now’. [Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna] There’s a long collapse. The reason I said at the beginning that Spartan greatness ends in the 370s BC is that Thebes invaded Spartan territory and liberated the Messenians. So they cut Spartan territory in half and deprived them of much of their estates and their labour force. There were still Helots working on estates in Lakonia, but they basically shattered the wealth of the Spartan citizens. That reduced Spartan power quite significantly and then it declined more and more over the ensuing generations until the Roman conquest. Not as an inspiration for how Greece should be. There’s a dark side in modern Greece in the veneration of Sparta by the by the far right party, Golden Dawn. They are effectively defunct as a political party now, but they had very strong Spartan leanings and held torch-lit ceremonies on the anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae and had political party songs about reclaiming Sparta’s great past. Modern day Spartans are also proud of their past. The current mayor of Sparta has been helping to run a series of events hosted by the University of Nottingham about Sparta over the course of the lockdown. He is keen for us to see Sparta as a forerunner for republican government, which is something that commentators in the 18th century would have been happy with. Even in antiquity Polybius compared Sparta, in terms of government, to Rome and said they were very similar, in that they had a council of elder statesman and two monarchs—consuls in Rome. So, Sparta as a republican role model is not entirely unheard of."