Sparta

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

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

We Corinthians marvelled greatly when we saw that you were sending for Hippias, and now we marvel yet more at your words to us.

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;

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;

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.

and for this they think they were themselves also visited with the great earthquake at Sparta.

Wishing to be as little suspected as possible, and trusting to quash the charge by means of money, he proceeded to return the second time to Sparta.

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

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.

I suppose he thinks he can bring friends to help him from Pylos, or again from Sparta, where he seems bent on going.

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.

In return for these resources, had they reflected in the slightest degree, they should in all fairness have been grateful to us;

Nevertheless, in this supervision the Athenians surpassed the Lacedaemonians no less than in the deeds which I have just mentioned.

The Spartans remained at the head of Hellas hardly ten years, while we held the hegemony without interruption for sixty-five years.

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?

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.

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.

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 …

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.

She came here from the land of Lakedaimon.

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.

For what state in the Peloponnesus could withstand a war such as would in all likelihood be waged if we so willed?

But perhaps, you will object, they will join forces and with their united armies will follow us up and prevent us from doing them harm.

The fact is that if any of those who are accustomed to address you had spoken in a manner worthy of the state, I should strictly have held my peace;

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.

Is it that Laconias capital yields to Phrygia?

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;

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

for then they will be uprooted from Lacedaemon and the Argive gulf and Mycenae.

And having gone to share the home of the Lacedaemonians, in time they left to settle the island once called Calliste.

From Salamis I will win as my reward the gratitude of the Athenians, and in Sparta from the battles before Cithaeron —those battles in which the Medes with their curved bows suffered sorely;

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?

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 …

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 …

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