Article's Index:
Introduction
Spartan Republic
References
Other Sources
This principle of the Golden Mean engraved upon their Doric Temple at Delphi, “Nothing too much”, is central to understanding their form of government. Plato argued that “Persia and Athens show the fundamental elements of all political life exaggerated as far as possible in one direction and the other (the one monarchical, the other democratic)...the merit of Sparta is that she has been trying to blend them, and has therefore maintained herself for a long time” (Plato Lg., cited in Jaeger [1939] (1945): III, 236). A republic is really the Golden Mean between the extremes of democracy and Asian monarchical despotism. (Military Manual TM 2000-25, cited Kuenhelt-Leddihn 1943: 11). Consequently, the Spartan republic was basically formed around the soldiering class in cooperation with the upper classes.
To the charge that Sparta is an oligarchy, Dicaearchus of Messenia, who intensively investigated the Spartan state, was to label his treatise the Tripoliticus. Even though this work is lost, just the title alone speaks volumes about the nature of the Doric Greek government of Laconia. This man had intimate knowledge of the Spartans and the title of his work alone whole-heartedly dispels any notion that the Spartan government was just a plain oligarchy or a democracy as many are now labeling it.
To the charge that Sparta is a democracy, Plutarch relates a story in his biography of Lycurgus: when asked why he didn’t form a democracy in Laconia, Lycurgus replied, “Begin, my friend, and set it up in your family first” (Plutarch, Vitae Parallelae).
Aristotle said Sparta was like an armed camp. But it was more than that. It was a Family. The Doric Greeks, being the most warlike of the Hellenic tribes, modeled their form of government upon the tripartite form found in their military institution. European militaries also exhibit a tripartite form. No doubt the Spartan army was no different and was organized with an officer corps, a non-commissioned officer corps and the regulars. This tripartite form is also inherent in the family structure. The family is composed of a father, mother and children. The paradigms of these two institutions, organic and natural, were copied into the Spartan state. The king as the Father, the middle rank, the mother, was the Aristocracy and the soldiers occupied the spot of the children. In the Dorian political viewpoint, the politeia was a family writ large. The Spartan State was conceived as a family unit and acted as such. Arius Didymus of Stobaeus uses the word “politeia” for the family; “So just as the household yields for the city the seeds of its formation, thus it yields the constitution (politeia)”.
“Connected with the house is a pattern of monarchy, of aristocracy and of democracy. The relationship of parents to children is monarchic, of husbands to wives aristocratic, of children to one another democratic” (Arius Didymus, cited Boring 1995).
He concludes his political philosophy with “The best constitution is some mixture of the good forms”, i.e. monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.
