Key ideas: Under Lycurgus, citizens had neither the wish nor the ability to live for themselves. The individual did not exist in Sparta, only the collective, the state. Solon wanted Athenians to be free. He rejected tyranny and when asked if he had enacted the best laws for the Athenians, he replied, “The best they would receive.”
Travels
Before becoming the Spartan Lawgiver, Lycurgus travelled to Crete where he studied various forms of government.
From Crete, Lycurgus sailed to Asia with the desire of comparing the simple and severe Cretan civilization with the extravagan and luxurious Ionian civilization.
There, he made his first acquaintance with the poems of Homer. From Homer, Lycurgus copied and compiled the political and disciplinary lessons in order to take them home.
The Aegyptians think that Lycurgus visited them also, and so ardently admired their separation of the military from the other classes of society that he transferred it to Sparta.
Returning from his travels, Lycurgus at once undertook to revolutionize the civil polity.
Tthe first and most important was his institution of a senate. [28 sentators + 2 kings] it achieved the safest and the most orderly arrangement, since the twenty-eight senators always took the side of the kings when it was a question of curbing democracy, and, on the other hand, always strengthened the people to withstand the encroachments of tyranny.
The second measure was the redistribution of land equally among Spartans. Each lot was large enough to produce annually seventy bushels of barley for a man and twelve for his wife, with a proportionate amount of wine and oil.
Next, Lycurgus banned all gold and silver money and ordered the use of iron money only. Iron money was heavy and bulky requied a large store-rome in the house and a yoke of cattle to transport it. To make the iron worthless for any use, vinegar was used to quench the red-hot iron, which made it brittle.
Then Lycurgus banished superfluous arts and luxury. He introduced the institution of commen messes, so that all Spartans eat together and not take their meals at home.
This was a great achievement, but it was a still greater one to make wealth “an object of no desire,” as Theophrastus says, and even “unwealth"
Lycurgus carefullly regulated marriages and births.
He made the maidens exercise their bodies in running, wrestling, casting the discus, and hurling the javelin, in order that the fruit of their wombs might have vigorous root in vigorous bodies and struggle successfully and easily with the pangs of child-birth.
When some foreign woman, as it would seem, said to her: “You Spartan women are the only ones who rule their men,” she answered: “Yes, we are the only ones that give birth to men."
For their marriages the women were carried off by force, not when they were small and unfit for wedlock, but when they were in full bloom and wholly ripe.
Lycurgus did not regard sons as the peculiar property of their fathers, but rather as the common property of the state.
Newborn was taken to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant. If it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it.
if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so called Apothetae, a chasm-like place in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state.
Their nurses, too, exercised great care and skill; they reared infants without swaddling-bands, and thus left their limbs and figures free to develop; besides, they taught them to be contented and happy, not dainty about their food, nor fearful of the dark, nor afraid to be left alone, nor given to contemptible peevishness and whimpering.
When they were seven years old, Lycurgus ordered them all to be taken by the state and enrolled in companies, where they were put under the same discipline and nurture, and so became accustomed to share one another’s sports and studies.
They slept together, in troops and companies, on pallet-beds which they collected for themselves, breaking off with their hands — no knives allowed.
Their bodily exercises were less rigorous during their campaigns, and their young warriors were allowed a regimen which was less curtailed and rigid, so that they were the only men in the world with whom war brought a respite in the training for war.
*Lycurgus trained his people to have neither the wish nor the ability to live for themselves; but like bees they were to make themselves always integral parts of the whole community, clustering together about their leader, almost beside themselves with enthusiasm and noble ambition, and to belong wholly to their country.
Satisfied with system he created, Lycurgus wanted to make it immortal.
He assembled the whole people, and told them that the provisions already made were sufficiently adapted to promote the prosperity and virtue of the state, but he had consul the god at Delphi.
They must therefore abide by the established laws and make no change nor alteration in them until he came back from Delphi in person;When they all agreed, he exacted an oath from the kings and the senators, and afterwards from the rest of the citizens, that they would abide by the established polity and observe it until Lycurgus should come back; then he set out for Delphi.
In Delphi, Apollo answered that the laws which he had established were good. This oracle Lycurgus wrote down, and sent it to Sparta
But for his own part, he resolved never to release his fellow-citizens from their oath and to put an end to his life where he was.
He therefore abstained from food till he died, considering that even the death of a statesman should be of service to the state.
And he was not deceived in his expectations, for five hundred years the laws of Lycurgus, in which no one of the fourteen kings who followed him made any change, down to Agis the son of Archidamus.
Solon
Solon himself says that he entered public life reluctantly, and fearing one party’s greed and the other party’s arrogance. The rich accepted him readily because he was well-to do, and the poor because he was honest
For the first of his public measures was [to cancel] all existing debts and that in future no one should lend money on the person of a borrower.
He pleased neither party, however; the rich were vexed because he took away their securities for debt, and the poor still more, because he did not re distribute the land, as they had expected, nor make all men equal and alike in their way of living, as Lycurgus did.
Soon, however, the people perceived the advantages of his measure and appointed Solon to reform the constitution and make new laws.
In the first place, then, he repealed all laws of Draco, except those concerning homicide, because they were too severe. For one penalty was assigned to almost all transgressions, namely death.
(Draco himself, they say, being asked why he made death the penalty for most offences, replied that in his opinion the lesser ones deserved it, and for the greater ones no heavier penalty could be found.)
Then, wishing to leave all the magistracies in the hands of the well-to do but to give the common people a share in the rest of the government, Solon made an appraisement of the property of the citizens. People were divided in 4 categories. The poorest were not allowed to hold any office, but took part in the administration only as members of the assembly and as jurors.
This last privilege seemed at first of no moment, but afterwards proved to be of the very highest importance, since most disputes finally came into the hands of these jurors.
For even in cases which Solon assigned to the magistrates for decision, he allowed also an appeal to a popular court when any one desired it.
He also gave every citizen the privilege of entering suit in behalf of one who had suffered wrong.
Among his other laws there is a very peculiar and surprising one which ordains that he shall be disfranchised who, in time of faction, takes neither side.
In all other marriages he prohibited dowries. For he did not wish that marriage should be a matter of profit or price, but [...] of love and the getting of children.
Praise is given also to that law of Solon which forbids speaking ill of the dead. For it is piety to regard the deceased as sacred, justice to spare the absent.
Solon enacted a law that no son who had not been taught a trade should be compelled to support his father.
Solon’s laws concerning women seem very absurd. For instance, he permitted an adulterer caught in the act to be killed; but if a man committed rape upon a free woman, he was merely to be fined a hundred drachmas.
But the law concerning naturalized citizens is of doubtful character. He permitted only those to be made citizens who were permanently exiled from their own country, or who removed to Athens with their entire families to ply a trade.
All his laws were to have force for a hundred years.
No sooner were the laws of Solon put into operation he made his ownership of a vessel an excuse for foreign travel, and set sail, after obtaining from the Athenians leave of absence for ten years.
In this time, he hoped people would be accustomed to his laws.
But the people of Athens were again divided into factions while Solon was away.
Owing to his years he no longer had the strength or the ardour to speak and act in public as before.
Soon after he retired to his own house, took his arms, and placed them in the street in front of his door, saying: “I have done all I can to help my country and its laws."
From that time on he lived in quiet retirement.
Solon lived on after Peisistratus had made himself tyrant, as Heracleides Ponticus states, a long time; but as Phanias of Eresos says, less than two years.
Solon died in the archonship of Hegestratus, the successor of Comeas.
The story that his body was burned and his ashes scattered on the island of Salamis is strange enough to be altogether incredible and fabulous, and yet it is given by noteworthy authors, and even by Aristotle the philosopher.