Sparta

For the Cyprian poems relate that Alexandrus reached Ilion with Helen in three days from Sparta, having a fair wind and a smooth sea;

After carrying off Helen from Sparta, Alexandrus sailed away for his own country;

It was when the Athenians had made their decision and were already on bad terms with Persia, that Aristagoras the Milesian, driven from Sparta by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, came to Athens, since that city was more powerful than any of the rest.

Now they did not even make the attempt to cross over by the bridge against Sparta, for in the sanctuary of Athena Alea the hoplites were to be seen, ready to oppose them;

It now seemed somewhat more certain that they would make no further attempt upon the city;

As for the people in the city, the women could not even endure the sight of the smoke, since they had never seen an enemy;

For if the city of the Lacedaemonians were laid desolate, and the temples and foundations of the public buildings were left, I think that when a long time had passed by, posterity would have great disbelief of their power in proportion to their fame.

When Pausanias the Lacedaemonian, after being sent for by the Spartans for the first time from his command in the Hellespont, and brought to trial, was acquitted by them as not guilty, he was not sent out again in a public capacity;

and when he went out the second time in the vessel of Hermione, without their orders, and appeared to be acting in this way, and did not return to Sparta when forcibly driven out from Byzantium by the Athenians after a siege, but news came of his being settled at Colonae in the Troad, and intriguing with the barbarians, and making his stay there for no good;

I will also conduct him to Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the return [ nostos] of his dear father - for this will give him genuine fame [ kleos] throughout humankind.

thence go on to Sparta and visit Menelaos, for he got home last of all the Achaeans;

Give me, then, a ship and a crew of twenty men to take me hither and thither, and I will go to Sparta and to Pylos to inquire about the nostos of my father who has so long been missing.

And if all the houses should fall by an earthquake, as once at Sparta, and all the sheep should perish, so that none had clothing in plenty, and not only Attica but Boeotia too and the Peloponnese and Thessaly should be overtaken by want, as they say happened once before, I shall live no worse nor more in want.

Neither, then, did those come to make war, nor any of the Lacedaemonians, but this too is false, that Menelaus led the Lacedaemonians and reigned over Sparta while Tyndareus still lived.

For he said that in Sparta there was Tyndareus, a wise man and a great king, and that he had of Leda two daughters, by the same names that we use, Clytemnestra and Helen, and two male children, twins, fair and great and far the best of the Greeks.

If, then, one views Athens in this light and compares her, not with any city chosen at random, but with the city of the Spartans, which most people praise moderately while some extol her as though the demigods had there governed the state, then Athens, in her power, in her deeds and in her benefactions to the Hellenes, will be seen to have outdistanced Sparta more than Sparta the rest of the world.

But at a later time, when the Persian War took place (Xerxes, who was then king, having gathered together a fleet of thirteen hundred triremes and a land force numbering five millions in all, including seven hundred thousand fighting men, and led this vast force against the Hellenes), the Spartans, although they were masters of the Peloponnesus, contributed to the sea-fight which determined the is …

For whenever they make such charges against us, to which the Lacedaemonians are more open than ourselves, we do not find it difficult to cite against Sparta a graver offence in each case than that which has been charged against Athens.

Therefore they cherish both the parts of these, as Rome, Athens, Sparta, Rhodes, and, of those cities, apart from the whole, single men, as in the war with Pyrrhus, Curius, Fabricius, Coruncanius;

As, then, we must hold that Athens and Lacedaemon were founded for the sake of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, and all the things that are in those cities are rightly said to belong to those peoples, so whatever things are in the whole world must be held to belong to the gods and to men.

Those, then, whom you called the sons of Tyndareus, that is, men born of man, and whom Homer, who lived not long after their age, says were buried at Lacedaemon — those you suppose to have come to meet Vatinius with white nags and no grooms, and to have announced the victory of the Roman people to Vatinius, a rustic, rather than to Marcus Cato, who was then the chief man?

For not only a frugal diet, but also a discourse plain and without superfluity, must be practised by the man who has taken up the true life — if indeed we decline luxury as deceitful and prodigal, just as the ancient Spartans declined perfume and purple, supposing rightly — and naming them rightly — the garments "deceitful" and the unguents "deceitful," since neither is that a noble preparing of f …

Plato, for instance, says that this manner was of old in vogue, commonly among all the Greeks, but especially among the Spartans and the Cretans, who had the best laws.

The Greeks say that, after Orpheus and Linus and the most ancient of the poets among them, the first to be admired for wisdom were the seven called the Sages.

And the place where the son of Maia first set the boundary to your course through the air, when he took you away from Sparta, stealing your body so that Paris would not marry you—I mean the island stretched like a sentinel along the coast of Attica—shall be called by your name among men for the future, since it welcomed you when you were stolen from your home.

Where in the world is there a Sparta, except by the streams of Eurotas, with its lovely reeds?

My own fatherland, Sparta, is not without fame, and my father is Tyndareus;

"My own three favorite cities," answered Hera, "are Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae.

And those that dwelt in Lacedaemon, lying low among the hills, Pharis, Sparta, with Messe the haunt of doves;

these were led by Menelaos of the loud battle-cry, brother to Agamemnon, and of them there were sixty ships, drawn up apart from the others.

To be sure, if we are in a mood not to defend our title to anything, not even if they demand that we abandon Sparta itself, it is idle to be concerned about Messene;

for never since we have dwelt in Sparta has any war or any peril come upon us in which so much has been at stake as in this question which we are now assembled to discuss.

For I declare that we must send our parents and our wives and children and the mass of the people away from Sparta, some to Sicily, some to Cyrene, others to the mainland of Asia, where the inhabitants will all gladly welcome them with gifts of ample lands and of the other means of livelihood as well, partly in gratitude for favors which they have received and partly in expectation of the return o …

and who, for all that, profess to follow the ways of Lacedaemon, when they practise the very opposite, and bewail the disasters of the Melians, when they have shamelessly inflicted irreparable wrongs upon their own citizens.

for it is not with the intention of stigmatizing the city of the Lacedaemonians in the eyes of others that I have spoken as I have about them, but that I may induce the Lacedaemonians themselves, so far as it lies in the power of words to do so, to make an end of such a policy.

for, starting with the advantage afforded by our succor of them, the descendants of Heracles—the progenitors of those who now reign in Lacedaemon—returned to the Peloponnese, took possession of Argos, Lacedaemon, and Messene, settled Sparta, and were established as the founders of all the blessings which the Lacedaemonians now enjoy.

for instance, there is concord in the state when the citizens unanimously decree that the offices of state shall be elective, or that an alliance shall be made with Sparta, or that Pittacus shall be dictator (when Pittacus was himself willing to be dictator).

But Sparta appears to be the only or almost the only state in which the lawgiver has paid attention to the nurture and exercises of the citizens;

Let the Athenian, then, follow the laws of Solon, and the Argive those of Phoroneus, and the Spartan those of Lycurgus;

Staphylus records that a certain Agamemnon is honoured as Zeus in Sparta;

among whom was Theopompus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, a noble victim.

no presents these I wear from the palace of Achilles or Peleus, but gifts my father Menelaus gave me together with a sumptuous dower from Sparta in Laconia, to insure me freedom of speech.

E’en now is he within, arrived from Sparta for this very purpose, while I in terror am come to take up a position here in the shrine of Thetis adjoining the house, if haply it may save me from death;

Is it that Laconias capital yields to Phrygia?

Then there came to Lacedaemon from the Phrygians the man who, Argive legend says, judged the goddesses’ dispute;

while she, who went astray, will return with her daughter, and live in happiness at Sparta.

for Hermione, the child she left at home when she sailed for Troy, the maid whom Menelaus brought from Sparta and entrusted to my mother’s keeping, is still a cause of joy to her and a reason to forget her sorrows.

but leave him to be stoned to death by the citizens, or do not set foot on Spartan land.

go and reign over the Spartan land, keeping it as the dowry of a wife who till this day never ceased causing you innumerable troubles.

and you, villain, left him behind in your house, and sailed away from Sparta to the land of Crete.

Never may he reach his home in Laconia or his father’s hearth and home, nor come to the town of Pitane or the temple of the goddess with the gates of bronze, having taken as his captive the one whose marriage brought disgrace on Hellas through its length and breadth and woful anguish on the streams of Simois!

Never, never let me see Eurotas’ swirling tide, hateful home of Helen, there to meet and be the slave of Menelaus, whose hand laid Troy waste!

So the Ephori of Sparta might put a citizen to death without the formality of trial.

The Lacedaemonians and the Athenians anciently claimed no farther dominion over conquered cities and states, than purely wishing them to adopt forms of government like their own, the Lacedaemonians living under an aristocratic, and the Athenians under a democratic system.

Polybius highly extols the merit and wisdom of Antigonus, who, having Sparta in his power, allowed the inhabitants to retain their national polity and freedom.

and after this, at Sparta, in the house of Menelaus and Helen, Alexander gives gifts during the feasting.

For Lichas used to entertain the strangers staying at Sparta during the Feast of the Dancing Boys;

Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian now — have you realised that he would not have made Sparta to differ from other cities in any respect, had he not established obedience to the laws most securely in her?

For instance, when a certain man had spoken in the assembly of the Lacedaemonians, a man of shameful life but an exceedingly able speaker, and when, we are told, the Lacedaemonians were on the point of voting according to his advice, a man came forward from the Council of Elders —a body of men whom they reverence and fear, whose age gives its name to that office which they consider the highest, an …

at the same time he called forward another of the Lacedaemonians, a certain man who was not gifted in speech, but brilliant in war and distinguished for justice and sobriety, and he ordered him to express as best he could the same sentiments that the former orator had uttered, In order, he explained, that a good man may speak before the Lacedaemonians vote, but that they may not even receive into …

while the bitter feeling of the allies will manifest itself directly there is a war at sea between Sparta and ourselves.

After the loss of our fleet, when there was a general desire to cripple Athens forever, the Spartans, although our enemies at the time, decided to spare her because of the valiant exploits of those heroes who had led the whole of Greece to freedom.

However, after you had come to terms with Sparta and demolished your walls, you allowed your exiles to return too.