Article's Index:
Introduction
Spartan Republic
References
Other Sources
It is Cicero that popularized the idea of ‘mixed’ government and gave it wide currency, influencing many during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Founding Fathers of America. Michael Grant explicates the significance of Cicero: “This ‘mixed’ constitution, previously admired by the historian Polybius (to whom Cicero’s debts were extensive), reappeared again and again in early discussions of the constitution of the United States of America, figuring prominently, for example, in John Adams Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787)” (Grant, 1993: 7)
In Tudor times, John Aylmer, an English classicist, saw the resemblance between his form of government and that of Sparta. Though he was on the fringe of English political thought, his insight of mixed government would influence greatly future English political thought (Mendle, 1995).
Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Plutarch, Dicaearchus of Messana, Cicero, John Aylmer, Niccolo Machiaveli and others have all recognized that Sparta had mixed government. Paul A. Rahe, in his three volume study of republics, categorically affirms the title of republic for Sparta.
That Sparta was of mixed government seems to have been common knowledge in Classical Departments around the turn of the 20th century. In the Sparta article of A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Prof. Leonhard Schmits writes, “In all the republics of antiquity the government was divided between a senate and a popular assembly…” which was the case of Sparta (1875: 1016-1022). The Harpers Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities’ article on Sparta recognizes her “mixed government” (Peck, [1896] 1962: 1493). A. H. J. Greenidge, in A Handbook of Greek Constitutional History, writes that Sparta and Britain had the same form of government: “History has shown that such forms of government (speaking about mixed government) are suited to a commonsense non-idealistic people: the Phoenicians of Carthage, the Dorians of Greece, Romans, and Englishmen have all developed this type of polity” ([1911] 2001: 76).
In conclusion, the Doric Greeks of Crete and Sparta developed a highly intricate and complex government form that best applied the principles of the Natural Order to bring about stability, longevity and effective government in a hostile world. They created a government that was not dominated by any single class but combined the special abilities of the different classes in a shared atmosphere. Their innovation of an upper body as the seat of wisdom and counsel of the aristocracy was to prove a checking balance on the demands of royalty and the commons. This system provided their societies with liberty and the attainment of the good. Knowing that the Roman institutions derived from that of the Doric Greeks, the translation of the word politeia as republic is not misleading but is proper and right. Sparta is a Republic and a Republic is mixed government.
