Document 4-2: Plutarch, Life of Cleomenes III (75 C.E.)

A Spartan King Pays Homage to the Past

PLUTARCH, Life of Cleomenes III (75 C.E.)

The rise of Macedonia did not result in the immediate elimination of Greek social and political traditions. The citizens of Greek city-states continued to believe in the ideal of the polis, and the outward forms of Greek government often remained in place. Nonetheless, the Greek world had changed. Increasingly, power was concentrated in the hands of kings and autocrats, even if a pretense was sometimes maintained that this was not the case. In the passages included below, the Roman historian Plutarch describes the lifestyle and political policies of Cleomenes III (r. 235–222 B.C.E.), a Spartan king who sought to reorganize the Spartan state, claiming greater power for himself in the process. As you read these excerpts, pay particular attention to Cleomenes’s use of the past. How did he seek to connect himself to older traditions?

Cleomenes’s Life Style and Manners

Cleomenes himself was an example to all; his own manner of life was plain, frugal and free from insolence or any affectation of superiority, and it was like a model of self-restraint for all. This gave him some influence over Greek affairs. For when people visited the other kings, they were not so much impressed at their wealth and prodigality as disgusted with their arrogant pretensions and the offensive and haughty way they answered those who met them. But when they came to see Cleomenes, a king in deed as well as in title, there were no purple garments or expensive clothes to be seen around him, no array of couches and litters. He did not surround himself with a crowd of messengers, porters and secretaries to make his approach a difficult and slow task to petitioners. They found him wearing everyday clothes and answering in person the greetings of his visitors, spending time in conversation with them in a cheerful and friendly way; they were charmed and won over by his popular manner, and called him the only true descendant of Heracles. His daily meals were reduced to three couches and were very strict and Spartan in style; if he was entertaining ambassadors or guests, two more couches were added and the servants would make the table look a little more brilliant, not by serving rich food and cakes, but by making the dishes more abundant and the wine more generous. He once rebuked one of his friends when he heard that he had entertained guests with black soup and barley bread as was customary at the public messes. He said that on such occasions when entertaining guests one should not behave in a too strictly Spartan way. Once the table was removed, a tripod was brought in with a bronze crater full of wine, two silver vases holding a pint each and very few silver cups; anyone who wished might drink from these, but no one was offered a cup which he did not want. There was no music and none was asked for; Cleomenes himself would entertain the company with his conversation, sometimes asking questions of others and sometimes telling stories; when he was serious his words were not lacking in charm, and when he was joking he did so with grace and without rudeness. For the hunt for men conducted by the other kings, who tempted and corrupted them with money and gifts, seemed to him crude and immoral. But to win over and attract those who met him by conversation and words that evoked pleasure and confidence seemed to him a most honourable course of action and one well worthy of a king. The only difference he could see between a friend and a hireling was that the former was won over by what you were like and what you said, the latter by your money.

PLUTARCH, Cleomenes 13

Cleomenes Justifies the Proscription of His Political Rivals

The next day Cleomenes proscribed1 80 citizens, who had to leave the city, and removed the ephors’2 chairs with the exception of one on which he intended to sit and give audience. He summoned an assembly and defended his actions. Lycurgus,3 he said, had associated the Elders with the kings, and for a long time the city was administered in his fashion, without the need for another magistracy. Later, as the war against the Messenians dragged on, the kings were kept busy by the campaigning and so chose some of their friends to administer justice, leaving them behind as their representatives for the citizens with the title of ephors. At first they continued for a long time to be auxiliaries of the king, then little by little they usurped authority and so turned themselves into an independent magistracy without anyone noticing. [ . . . ] So long as they acted with moderation, he said, it was better to put up with them, but when they usurped power and destroyed the ancestral form of government, and went as far as to exile some kings and execute others without trial, and to threaten those who longed to see again in Sparta the fairest and most divine constitution, it could no longer be tolerated. Had it been possible to remove without bloodshed those foreign plagues of Sparta, namely luxury, extravagance, debts and usury, and those still more ancient evils, poverty and wealth, he would have thought himself the happiest king of all to cure his native city painlessly like a doctor. But now, to excuse a necessary recourse to violence, there was the example of Lycurgus, who was neither a king nor a magistrate, but a private citizen, and who sought to act like a king and went to the agora in arms, which caused King Charillus to take refuge in terror at an altar. Charillus was a good and patriotic citizen and so quickly joined in Lycurgus’ enterprise and approved the change of constitution, but Lycurgus demonstrated by his action that it is difficult to change a constitution without violence and terror. He himself had made use of such means with the greatest moderation, he said, to remove those who were opposed to the safety of Sparta. To all the others he was now offering the whole land as common property and freeing the debtors from their debts; he would carry out an examination and inspection of the foreigners, so that the best of them may become Spartiates and save the city with their arms. ‘And so’, he said, ‘we shall no longer see Laconia4 being the prey of the Aetolians and Illyrians for want of defenders.’ Then Cleomenes was the first to give his property to the common stock, followed by Megistonous his father in law and each of his friends, then all the remaining citizens, and the land was divided up. He assigned a lot to each of the men he had exiled and promised to bring them back when the situation had calmed down. He filled up the citizen body with the élite of the perioikoi5 and raised a force of 4,000 hoplites,6 whom he taught to use the sarissa7 with both hands instead of the spear and to carry the shield by a band and not by a handle. He then turned to the education of the young and the so-called agoge,8 in the organisation of which he received considerable assistance from Sphaerus who was present in Sparta. The gymnasia and public messes soon recovered their decency and good order; a few submitted under compulsion to the simplicity of the old Spartan way of life, but the majority did so willingly. Nevertheless, to make the name of monarchy more acceptable, he appointed his brother Euclidas to be king with himself; this was the only time that the Spartans had two kings from a single royal house.

PLUTARCH, Cleomenes 10–11

From M. M. Austin, ed., The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 109–111.

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