Article's Index:
Introduction
Spartan Republic
References
Other Sources
Spartan Republic
Plato in The Laws records how the Cretans and the Spartans could not classify their own form of government:
Megillus the Spartan: “Why sir, when I consider our Lacedaemonian constitution, I really cannot tell you offhand which would be the proper name for it. It actually seems to have its resemblances to an autocracy—in fact, the power of our ephors is astonishingly autocratic—and yet at times I think it looks like the most democratic of all societies. Again, it would be sheer paradox to deny that it is an aristocracy, while yet again a feature of it is a life monarchy, asserted by all mankind, as well as ourselves, to be the very oldest of such institutions.”
Clinias the Cretan: “I find myself in the same perplexity as you, Megillus. I am quite at a loss to identify our Cnossian constitution confidently with any of them.”
The Athenian (Plato): “That, my friends, is because you enjoy real constitutions, whereas the types we have specified are not constitutions, but settlements enslaved to the domination of some component section, each taking its designation from the dominant factor” (Plato Lg., 712d).
What is described above is the archetype of mixed government. Cicero labeled Sparta a Republic, i.e. respublica Lacedaemoniorum because it was mixed. (Müller 1839: II, 190 Rahe 1992: I 152, 169, 170)
Duties and responsibilities in the Spartan Republic are outlined in short verses called Rhetra (the constitution). These Rhetra are attributed to Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Lacedaemonians. The Spartan society consisted of two kings from two different royal families called the Agiads and the Eurypontids. There also existed from former times a royal council called the Gerousia (old men). Members of the Gerousia were appointed for life from the heads of the aristocratic families. The council was made of 28 aristocratic members with two kings sitting in making a total of thirty. Upon this basis did Lycurgus add the Rhetra c. 776 B.C. At some time, an oligarchic body with members elected from the citizen body for one year was introduced called the Ephors. It was the Ephors who presided over the assembly of all the Spartan citizens called Spartiates which could only shout approval or disapproval of measures presented by the two bodies, the Gerousia and the Ephors. The whole legislative process required two legislative bodies and the whole body of citizens to affirm it. Furthermore, the Lycurgan constitution spelled out that if the demos passed crooked rhetra the gerousia and the kings were to veto them. (Plutarch, Vitae Parallelae)
What it means to be mixed is that the abilities necessary for a government, Leadership, Counsel and Force, were divided amongst the three classes. The executive powers were held by the Kings who had the seat of Leadership. The ability of creating laws and direction of action was done by the Gerousia, the Aristocracy, the seat of counsel and of wisdom. The power to move was given to the assembly, the place of the soldiers.
The government of Sparta was trifunctional, a product of their cultural ways. Trifunctionality is an Indo-European trait (Dumézil, cited in Mendle 1985: 21-9). This trait evinced by the Doric Greeks was especially strong. They always migrated in groups of three; Hylleans/Dymanes/Pamphylians (Müller 1839:I, 32-3). The Dorians were so peculiar in this trait that in classical texts they were called the “Thrice-divided” Dorians (Müller 1839:I, 34). Wherever they migrated, the new land was divided into three parts (Müller 1839: I, 33). In Lacedæmonia, the Dorians not only divided themselves from the aboriginal peoples into a triad of Dorians/ Perioci/Helots, they also divided Doric society into three parts, royalty/aristocracy/equals (or similars). Furthermore, the tripod figured prominently in their religion of Apollo (Müller 1839: I, 14). It was natural then that their culture imprinted a tripartite form of monarchy/aristocracy/democracy upon their government.
The Greeks, especially the Doric Greeks, derived their philosophy, laws and institutions from Nature; the cosmos. They observed Order in the Cosmos and, as “lovers of reality” (realists), attempted to imitate that order in their lives and society (Hamilton [1930] (1993): 67-8 [1957] (1964): 18, 187). Hence, “doing politics” was about “ordering” the state in accordance with reason formed by precepts and maxims garnered from nature.
Furthermore, attuned to beauty, they, in everything they did, attempted to do it with proportion, harmony and symmetry; the laws of beauty. (Hesoid Op. 627)
As the cosmos had an established harmony that bestows an underlying universal law, the Greek conviction was that limits were good. Exaggeration was foreign to them; they detested extremes and the idea of the limitless repelled them. “Greek words which meant boundless, illimitable, and the like, had bad connotations” (Hamilton 1964: 18). Their idea of freedom was bound up in the word, “sophrosuné” which meant that in human society just as in nature, “it meant accepting the bounds of excellence laid down for human nature; restraining the impulses to unrestricted freedom, shunning excess, obeying the inner laws of harmony and proportion” (Hamilton 1964: 21). Therefore, their form of government was an expression of those inferences. Rejecting the extreme form of the simple forms of government, they developed a type that was the Golden Mean of all them; i.e., the μέσος πολίτης.
