THE SCENE: The legendary lawmaker Lycurgus transformed the Spartan [aka Lacedemonian] people from an artistic people into the hardened militarists that they are remembered as today. According to the Sicilian historian Diodorus, the trigger for this change was a hard-edged prophesy.
THE TEXT: The same Lycurgus inquired of the Pythian priestess what sort of customs he should establish for the Lacedaemonians whereby they might receive the greatest advantage. When she replied that he should legislate in such fashion that the one group should govern fairly and the other group should obey those in authority, he inquired of her again, what should be done by those who were to govern fairly and by those who were to be obedient to men in authority. Whereupon the priestess delivered the following oracle:
Two paths there be which farthest parted are,
One leading on to freedom’s honoured halls,
The other to the house of slavery which
All mortals shun. The former path is trod
By those of manly soul and concord sweet;
And on this way I charge you to lead the folk;
The latter is the path of loathsome strife
And weak delusion: This the way which thou
Must guard against most carefully.
The sum and substance of the oracle was that the greatest attention should be devoted to concord and manly spirit, since it is by these alone that freedom can be maintained, and unless a man possesses freedom nothing he has is of use to him, nor indeed any good which the majority of mankind consider of value, seeing that he is the subject of other men. For all such things belong to those who hold authority, not to subjects; and so, if any man wishes to lay up the good things of life for himself, and not for others, to use, he must first of all win freedom. The oracle commanded that both possessions [good things & freedom] should be the concern of men, since neither one of them, without the other, can be of advantage to him who has won it; for there is no advantage to men to be brave if they are at odds among themselves, or to be wholly of one mind, if they are cowards.
The Lacedaemonians, by observing the laws of Lycurgus, from a lowly people grew to be the most powerful among the Greeks and maintained the leadership among the Greek states for over four hundred years, but after that time, as they little by little began to relax each one of the institutions and to turn to luxury and indifference, and as they grew so corrupted as to use coined money and to amass wealth, they lost the leadership.
– Bibliotheca Historica, Diodorus Siculus, 1st Century BC
[Image Credit: Spartan by Imad Ud Din]
