¹ Thucydides reckoned that Sparta had, by the end of the great war, possessed the same form of government for more than 400 years (1.18.1). Powell dismisses this ‘uncharacteristically credulous’ notion as a ‘grand Spartan falsehood’ peddled by ‘Spartan authorities nervously aware of the exact opposite, that their constitution was in fact neither old nor secure’ (A. Powell, ‘Mendacity and Sparta's Use of the Visual’, in his [ed.] Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success [London, 1989], 186). See also n. 3.

² I can only acknowledge the rife methodological difficulties in this area, without much hope of resolving anything. The ‘synchronic’ approach that Kennell denounced to such lasting effect would indeed look as ‘absurd and demonstrably false’ as he makes it out to be if anyone really were in the habit of approaching Spartan society in so blithe a manner as to assume ‘that absolutely no change occurred for over half a millennium’ (N. M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue [Chapel Hill, 1995], 7). In fact, those more inclined to ‘methodological holism’ (as per Paul Cartledge's kinder formulation in his review of The Gymnasium of Virtue, ‘Spartan Upbringing’, CR 47 [1997], 100) are not likely to claim much ascertained historical authenticity for their work; they will merely point out, in mitigation, that where so little can be known for sure we have no choice but to work with what we've got, inadequate as it may seem, and that we will have to suspend disbelief somewhere if we want to have anything to say (cf. P. Cartledge and P. Debnar, ‘Sparta and the Spartans in Thucydides’, in A. Rengakos and A. Tsakmakis [eds.], Brill's Companion to Thucydides [Leiden, 2006], 560, on reading Thucydides ‘with charity’). Even inscriptions, by Kennell's own admission, can provide only ‘a modicum of information, if squeezed correctly’ (Kennell, 27, italics added). And there's the rub: some ‘squeezing’ seems quite inevitable whichever side of the methodological tube one may consider the most propitious. As for Kennell's wider argument, I remain as unconvinced as Ducat that Plutarch, just because he happened to write in the Roman imperial period, could only have described what existed in his own times (cf. J. Ducat, Spartan Education. Youth and Society in the Classical Period [Swansea, 2006], xvi, with his references in n. 16, and 27–9, 161) and I too cannot help feeling that ‘when, at the end of his perilous enterprise, [Kennell] finally reaches the classical period, he has nothing much to say’ (ibid., xvi, cf. Kennell, 7, on his method ‘bringing some losses in its wake’). For a qualified defence of reading ancient texts with a measure of credulity, see also Pellerin, D., ‘Winding Ways of Eros in Plutarch's Sparta’, HPTh 42 (2021), 196–8Google Scholar.

³ That is, by proceeding upon the recognition that the most strident assertions and exertions often hide fears to the very contrary, and that, with respect to the argument here, ‘Sparta's fears, and thus Sparta's history, are there to be discovered in her own propaganda’ (A. Powell, chapters 1 and 11 in his [ed.] Companion to Sparta [Hoboken, 2018], 1.15, italics added; cf. 1.18–19, 22, 11.294).

⁴ Cf. G. E. M. Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), 89 and 96, and P. A. Rahe, The Spartan Regime (New Haven, 2016), esp. 122, ‘The Spartan perch was precarious, etc.’, on the collective side, with Grundy, on the individual: ‘The Spartan's life had to be sacrificed in order that it might be preserved’ (G. B. Grundy, ‘The Population and Policy of Sparta in the Fifth Century’, JHS 28 [1908], 82).

⁵ Cf. Powell, A., ‘Information from Sparta: A Trap for Thucydides?’, in Powell, A. and Debnar, P. (eds.), Thucydides and Sparta (Swansea, 2021), 233 (with references)Google Scholar.

⁶ Thus Grundy (n. 4), 82 (cf. 94–5): ‘The Spartiate lived face to face with a danger so great that it would have been dangerous to confess its magnitude to the world. Sparta could not wholly conceal the truth, but she dare not let it all be known.’

⁷ Cf. Van Wees, H., ‘Luxury, Austerity and Equality in Sparta’, in Powell, A. (ed.), A Companion to Sparta (Hoboken, 2018), vol. 1, 205Google Scholar, and the implication of D. Kagan, ‘Sparta’, lecture 9 of Introduction to Ancient Greek History (Open Yale Courses, CLCV205, Fall 2007), part 1.

⁸ See Powell (n. 3), 1.3–28, especially the extraordinary density of references to major Spartan fears on pp. 15–19, 22. The important reminder, so convincingly insisted upon by Powell, that Thucydides was facing a ‘monumentally secretive’ (Cartledge and Debnar [n. 2], 586), highly manipulative, and often outright mendacious society (cf. Powell [n. 1], 186 [‘masters of deceit and secrecy’], 178–84, and [n. 3], 1. 8–10, 15, 24–27) was remarked upon by the historian himself with evident frustration (Thuc. 5.68.2) and forms an important part of the argument to be made here, especially in section VI. The most pressing question for us, however, in judging Thucydides’ work, is not so much whether he was perhaps led on here or there, which may seem probable but of which we can never be sure either way; what we need to ask before all else is who could possibly have been better placed to look behind the façades than our Athenian exile with his ample military credibility, his excellent connections to both camps, his mixed politics and excellent reasons not to sympathize unduly with any of the contenders, and, above all, his self-awareness, disinclination to partisanship or lecturing and moralizing, and general acumen and astuteness (cf. Powell [n. 3], 1.7, 10, and [n. 5], 221, 254; Thuc. 1.22.3).

⁹ Pl. Leg. 776c.

¹⁰ Cf. Ste. Croix (n. 4), 89, and P. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, second edition (London, 2002), 27.

¹¹ Ste. Croix (n. 4), 90. Cf. D. M. Lewis, Greek Slave Systems in the Eastern Mediterranean Context (Oxford, 2018), 132–3: ‘Ste. Croix was not exaggerating when he characterized the Spartan citizen body as perched atop a human volcano…The helots could not be managed like any other slave population in Greece, and the methods of control the Spartans employed are a monument to brutal creativity.’

¹² Thuc. 4.80.3, Arist. Pol. 2.6.2 (1269a). On their chronic apprehensions, see also Thuc. 5.14.3.

¹³ Grundy (n. 4), 82–3. Cf. also Arist. Pol. 8.3.3 (1338b); Ste. Croix (n. 4), 91; Powell (n. 3), 1.19; J.-P. Vernant, ‘Between Shame and Glory’, in F. Zeitlin (ed.), Mortals and Immortals. Collected Essays (Princeton, 1991), 241–2.

¹⁴ Epps speaks of the Spartans as ‘innately and essentially a most fearful people with a strong and perpetual tendency to become terrified and to act accordingly’ (P. H. Epps, ‘Fear in Spartan Character’, CPh 28 [1933], 12, cf. 25).

¹⁵ Cf. P. Debnar, ‘Βραδυτὴς Λακωνική: Spartan Slowness in Thucydides’ History’, in Powell and Debnar (n. 5), 23, 25, 29.

¹⁶ Cf. Powell (n. 3), 1.11, 15–19, 22, on the reciprocal relationship between Sparta's vulnerabilities and fears.

¹⁷ Trans. R. J. A. Talbert, On Sparta (London, 2005), 104.

¹⁸ Cf. Xen. Lac. 8.1–2; Thuc. 1.84.3; Hdt. 7.104.4; Lendon, J. E., ‘Spartan Honor’, in Hamilton, C. D. and Krentz, P. (eds.), Polis and Polemos (Claremont, 1997), 118Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Cf. Güntert, M. M., ‘Sparta – ein Ethos im Widerstand gegen sich selbst’, Saeculum 66/II (2016), 316, 318–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 326, 331, 336; also Powell (n. 3), 1.16: ‘They evidently had reason to fear that the highest military standards would not be maintained.’

²⁰ Cf. Hdt. 7.104.4; Güntert (n. 19), 338; Powell, A., Athens and Sparta, second edition (London, 2001), 100Google Scholar.

²¹ Cartledge, P., ‘What Have the Spartans Done for Us?’, G&R 51 (2004), 173Google Scholar.

²² Cartledge, P., ‘The Politics of Spartan Pederasty’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 27 (1981), 21, 26–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kennell, too, emphasizes how long the journey was, and how high and potentially devastating the ever-present risk of failure: ‘The ruthless and ultimately self-defeating ethos of Spartan education allowed for no deficiencies’ (Kennell [n. 2], 132–4).

²³ Cf. Vernant (n. 13), 231 and 240, and Powell (n. 5), 258, on the purposive exaggeration of the possibility of failure at Sparta.

²⁴ Cf. Epps (n. 14), 24.

²⁵ Xen. Lac. 11.7; Humble, N., ‘Why the Spartans Fight So Well, Even if They Are in Disorder: Xenophon's View’, in Hodkinson, S. and Powell, A. (eds.), Sparta and War (Swansea, 2006), 227Google Scholar.

²⁶ Humble (n. 25), 228–9.

²⁷ See Powell (n. 1), 173–5; (n. 3), 1.27, 11.292, 305; (n. 5), 221.

²⁸ Hodkinson, S., ‘Social Order and the Conflict of Values in Classical Sparta’, Chiron 13 (1983), 265–7Google Scholar, 269, 271, 273.

²⁹ Epps (n. 14), 14, cf. 26. Cf. especially Hodkinson (n. 28), 267 (cf. 272). To speak of a ‘childlike dependence on the approval of others’ may sound unduly harsh, but it is perhaps not altogether unwarranted (Powell [n. 20], 238).

³⁰ Hodkinson (n. 28), 273.

³¹ Ibid., 273–6, especially 276: ‘Given their dependence upon continual affirmation of policies, divine support, the ultimate form of approval, was essential.’ Cf. also Paus. 3.5.8 (trans. W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod, Description of Greece, vol. 2 [London, 1926], 33): ‘More than any other Greeks were the Lacedaemonians frightened by signs from heaven.’ Their failure to come to the other Greeks’ aid at Marathon was justified by religious scruples (Hdt. 6.106.3), and there were many instances when earthquakes, in particular, made them abandon their projects in mid-march. (On their seismic and helot terrors of c. 464, see esp. Thuc. 1.101.2, 1.128.1; cf. P. Cartledge, Spartan Reflections [London, 2001], 149.) For related dreads, cf. Thuc. 3.89.1, 6.95.1, 8.6.5.

³² R. Parker, ‘Spartan Religion’, in A. Powell (ed.), Classical Sparta. Techniques Behind Her Success (London, 1989), 160, 162.

³³ Their slowness to respond, during the fifty years after the defeat of Persia, to the Athenians’ rise in power was commonly attributed, by Thucydides for one, to their traditional reluctance to go to war ‘except under the pressure of necessity’ (Thuc. 1.118.2), and their unwillingness to court danger except where reassured by a decisive superiority of power was thought such a marked trait of the Spartans that the Athenians could use it as an argument for crushing the hopes of their desperate Melian colonists (Thuc. 5.107, 109).

³⁴ Cf. Thuc. 8.96.5. Epps speaks of ‘their notable reluctance to begin war together with a like indifference in prosecuting it’ (Epps [n. 14], 18, with plenty of instances cited on pp. 19–21). Consider especially Thuc. 2.18, 3.29.1, 4.108; Agis’ failure to do anything noteworthy with ‘the finest Hellenic army every yet brought together’ (Thuc. 5.60.1–3); and perhaps above all else, the Spartans’ tarrying before finally sending support to Syracuse, which very nearly led to the surrender of the city (Thuc. 6.103.3). Such episodes can be variously interpreted, of course, and Paula Debnar's challenges to what she calls the ‘monochromatic’ perspective (Debnar [n. 15], 36) are astute and worth pondering, even to the detriment of my argument here. To the Spartans themselves, their own caution might with some justification have appeared a virtue: hence Archidamus’ argument that their slowness and procrastination were not weaknesses but warlike marks of a wise moderation (Thuc. 1.84.1–3; cf. Debnar [n. 15], 25 and 40, on the much-criticized ‘slowness’ of the Spartans as sound strategy and ‘intelligent good sense’). Concessions will also need to be made, no doubt, to Powell's forceful argument that the Spartans were not so much slow to act as careful to choose their moment – that is, to act in accordance with military opportunity, or kairós. Since their strategy principally amounted, in Powell's telling, to a predisposition for attacking only in moments of signal weakness on the other side, however, one may perhaps observe (as against what savvy and economy may have to say, cf. Powell [n. 3], 11.302, 305; [n. 5], 235) that courage and valour are not as a rule understood thus in the world, and that Sparta's friends and foes alike might have found something to complain about if such an opportunist's eye for the weaknesses of others was really what the vaunted Spartan military spirit came down to in the end (cf. Powell [n. 1], 183, 186; [n. 3], 1.5, 26–7 [‘consistent collective mentality’], 11.298, 302, 305–6; [n. 5], 234, 236, 239–40).

³⁵ Cf. Thuc. 6.16.6, 6.88.10, 6.91.4–7, 6.93.1.

³⁶ Cf. Debnar (n. 15), 23.

³⁷ Debnar provides plenty of convincing instances when Spartan ‘slowness’ has been exaggerated, and I have no objection to such astute corrections of received perceptions. As she concedes herself, however, her argument does not go so far as to ‘deny that the Spartan character, upbringing, and institutions inclined them to excessive deliberateness and caution’ (Debnar [n. 15], 41).

³⁸ See Thuc. 1.70.2–3. For other moments when the Spartans became strikingly unnerved, see Thuc. 4.55.3–4, 5.66.1–2, and Xen. Hell. 1.1.23.

³⁹ Cf. Powell (n. 3), 1.12 (cf. 1.21, 26, 11.309): ‘Sparta's reputation on the battlefield was a precious military and political asset, useful for demoralizing the opponent’.

⁴⁰ Cf. Arist. Pol. 8.3.4 (1338b) and The Works of Lord Macaulay, edited by Lady Trevelyan (London, 1866), 7.671.

⁴¹ Cf. G. Rechenauer, ‘Körper und Macht: Zur Konzeption der Körperlichkeit im antiken Sparta’, in V. Pothou and A. Powell (eds.), Das antike Sparta (Stuttgart, 2017), 25–6.

⁴² Cf. Cartledge (n. 22), 21, 28 and (n. 21), 172–3; Powell (n. 3), 11.295; Vernant (n. 13), 240. Also Ducat's ‘seething with competitiveness, from top to bottom’ (Ducat [n. 2], 172).

⁴³ Cf. Vernant (n. 13), 230.

⁴⁴ Vernant (n. 13), 240, italics added; cf. Plut. Lyc. 16.5. Davies speaks of the Spartan upbringing as ‘a platform for observation’ and points out that by the age of twenty, a Spartiate youth would have been closely supervised by more than fifty educational officers (P. Davies, ‘Equality and Distinction within the Spartiate Community’, in A. Powell [ed.], A Companion to Sparta [Hoboken, 2018], vol. 2, 484, 489). See also Ducat (n. 2), 162: ‘Education took place manifestly under the gaze of the whole city’.

⁴⁵ Humble (n. 25), 224–5.

⁴⁶ Parker (n. 32), 152. Even Kennell, though arguing in a very different spirit, concedes that what the Spartans learned was essentially ‘to feel comfortable as small cogs in a big machine’ (Kennell [n. 2], 121).

⁴⁷ Cf. N. Richer, ‘Spartan Education in the Classical Period’, in A. Powell (ed.), A Companion to Sparta (Hoboken, 2018), vol. 2, 534–5. On being beaten half to death by other boys, see Plut. Lacaen. Apoph. 240f (Gyrtias 1). On accidental killings, cf. Xen. An. 4.8.25. Ducat sees ‘no serious reason’ to believe that physical punishments were unusually harsh in Sparta, but his scepticism requires ‘not taking literally’ what Xenophon has to say and not giving much weight to the more informal ‘punishments’ meted out in fights (Ducat [n. 2], 162–3).

⁴⁸ See Plut. Ages. 1.2, cf. Pl. Leg. 666e.

⁴⁹ Cf. Talbert (n. 17), 227, Cartledge (n. 31), 83, and his The Spartans. An Epic History, revised edition (London, 2013), 28. Whether the term in question is classical in origin has, like so much else, been much debated (cf. Kennell [n. 2], 38, 120; Ducat [n. 2], 78; Richer [n. 47], 528). To see ‘pastoral imagery’ here (Kennell [n. 2], 38) is surely to miss the tenor of such designations, however long-established they may or may not have been.

⁵⁰ Kennell (n. 2), 124–5, 129; see also his comparison with American street gangs, p. 146. There is much to think about in Kennell's interpretation of the violence and depravation visited upon the young Spartans as largely a stylized affair that should be understood in terms of a complex set of religiously sanctioned rituals of initiation (Kennell [n. 2], 71–6, 123, 128, 142). According to Kennell, the Spartan boys must have only stolen at particular times, for example, and not whenever they could, because continual thievery would have been too subversive of so structured a society; likewise, they went barefoot and were made to fast, not as a matter of soldierly hardiness, as has traditionally been thought, but on religious occasions. Yet the whole point of the boys’ stealing, as it is presented in Xenophon, was that they must not let themselves be caught, presumably as part of their training in cunning for war (cf. Powell [n. 1], 185–6, Ducat [n. 2], 9–10; for some difficulties presented by the ‘military interpretation’ of Spartan education, see Ducat [n. 2], 139–47; for more on the stealing regimen, Ducat [n. 2], 201–7).

⁵¹ Ducat (n. 2), 75.

⁵² A nicely nuanced account is offered by Ducat (n. 2), 333: ‘All this was only a part of the reality: the most sensational part, certainly, and the most distinctively Spartan, but not necessarily the most important’ (cf. also Ducat [n. 2], 25–7 on how to think of Plutarch). Although he doubts that punishments in Sparta were as harsh as the infamous ‘whip-bearers’ might suggest, he does not dispute that it was an ‘education for violence’ that ‘took place in an atmosphere of physical brutality and near-savagery’ (Ducat [n. 2], 207–14).

⁵³ Kennell (n. 2), 34.

⁵⁴ Cf. Plut. Lyc. 1.1, 3, ‘such a muddle’ or ‘such a maze’.

⁵⁵ As against Kennell (n. 2), 23–4, 32.

⁵⁶ Cf. J. F. Lazenby, The Spartan Army (Mechanicsburg, 2012), 4, 47.

⁵⁷ Pl. Ap. 28e–29a being perhaps the most famous instance. Since the Spartan soldiers were sworn to the other members of their unit with an oath to the gods, any stepping out of line might even be construed as an act of impiety (cf. A. J. Bayliss, ‘Using Few Words Wisely? “Laconic Swearing” and Spartan Duplicity’, in S. Hodkinson [ed.], Sparta. Comparative Approaches [Swansea, 2009], 233).

⁵⁸ See P. Krentz, ‘The Nature of Hoplite Battle’, Cl. Ant. 4 (1985), 59, and Cartledge (n. 31), 161–2.

⁵⁹ P. Cartledge, ‘Hoplites and Heroes: Sparta's Contribution to the Technique of Ancient Warfare’, JHS 97 (1977), 15–16.

⁶⁰ Vernant (n. 13), 220; cf. Hdt. 7.231. 9.71.2–4.

⁶¹ See E. David, ‘Suicide in Spartan Society’, in T. J. Figueira (ed.), Spartan Society (Swansea, 2004), 26, 36; Lazenby (n. 56), 72–3. Cf. also Powell (n. 3), 1.15: ‘The individual “similar” had to be ready to die for the community, but only as carrying out collective activity as ordered’.

⁶² Vernant (n. 13), 220.

⁶³ Vernant (n. 13), 239–40. Also Xen. Lac. 4.4–6, especially his lively description of the brawls between contenders for membership in the elite corps of the Three Hundred.

⁶⁴ Thus Thuc. 4.108.7. Cf. Cartledge (n. 22), 28, ‘Sparta was a quintessentially agonal society, permeated with ambition, envy, and distrust’, and Hodkinson (n. 28), 279, ‘Individuals of outstanding energy and ambition were a threat’. See also Powell's reflections on how shabbily the Spartans often treated their leading generals (Powell [n. 20], 103–6; cf. [n. 3], 11.295: ‘The very military virtues that Sparta required and revered tended to bring their most noted possessors to destruction’).

⁶⁵ Lendon (n. 18), 120; cf. Plut. Lyc. 27.2, Rechenauer (n. 41), 22–3. The classical method of honouring fallen heroes was collective interment in a public tomb on the battlefield, with a monument erected at public expense (van Wees [n. 7], 222–3). The remains of Leonidas, however, are said to have been brought home about forty years after his famous last stand, and Pausanias tells of a conspicuous tomb and a slab inscribed with the names of all who had fallen beside him at the Thermopylae (3.14.1). Given that the Sparta of Pausanias’ day had been transformed into a prominent tourist attraction, one may doubt the historical authenticity of these showy displays; even so, it is clear that the Spartans dwelt all their lives amidst countless memorials and markers dedicated to the slain heroes of the past – and none else, save their gods and demi-gods, and a few legendary figures. Kennell speaks of a ‘cult of the dead at Sparta’ (Kennell [n. 2], 139; cf. Powell [n. 1], 181, [n. 5], 244).

⁶⁶ Powell (n. 3), 11.313.

⁶⁷ F. B. Jevons, ‘The Spartan Constitution’, in A Manual of Greek Antiquities, second edition (London, 1898), 428.

⁶⁸ Cf. Talbert (n. 17), 183–8.

⁶⁹ Plut. Apophthegmata Laconica 240f. (Gyrtias 1).

⁷⁰ Cf. Il. 5.311–430; Plut. Instituta Laconica 28, Apophthegmata Laconica 232d (Charillus 5); Paus. 3.15.10, 3.17.5; F. Graf, ‘Women, War, and Warlike Divinities’, ZPE 55 (1984), 245, 248–9.

⁷¹ E. David, ‘Laughter in Spartan Society’, in A. Powell (ed.), Classical Sparta. Techniques Behind Her Success (London, 1989), esp. 4–5; cf. Lendon (n. 18), 112. Cf. also T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, 1994), 1.6.39, 42 (pp. 31–2).

⁷² Plut. Lyc. 12.4, 14.3.

⁷³ Xen. Lac. 9.4.

⁷⁴ Plut. Lyc. 28.3. The subject of the krypteía has long been an object of particular fascination; unfortunately no fruitful discussion of its complexities, or those of the debate around it, is possible within the already strained confines of this article.

⁷⁵ Xen. Lac. 2.2; cf. Plut. Lyc. 17.2–3, Lendon (n. 18), 119 and 121, and Powell (n. 20), 236. The less sanguinary provenance of the rite, which had something to do with dexterously pilfering bits of cheese, looks no less melancholy if we take it as a reminder that the Spartan boys were not only raised on cunning and thieving, but on hunger as well (cf. Xen. Lac. 2.6–9).

⁷⁶ Plut. Lyc. 28.2; cf. L. Thommen, Sparta. Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte einer griechischen Polis, second edition (Stuttgart, 2017), 104 (verschworene Gemeinschaft) and 114 (eingeschworen), with notes, in the German, of conspiratorial doings (Verschwörung).

⁷⁷ Cf. Hdt. 7.104.5, Plut. Instituta Laconica 4.

⁷⁸ Thuc. 4.40.2.

⁷⁹ Powell (n. 3), 11.308–9.

⁸⁰ Hdt. 7.229–32, 9.71.2–4. Powell interprets the unfortunates’ treatment (‘so harsh as to be suspicious’) as a political contrivance to ensure that no rival accounts of what happened at the Thermopylae could get back to Sparta (Powell [n. 3], 1.24).

⁸¹ Thus Agesilaus’ pronouncement, after the disastrous battle of Leuctra, that the law must stand but be allowed to sleep for a day (Plut. Ages. 30.4), though by then Sparta's perennial demographic challenges had gone from being serious to being catastrophic. (See the estimates provided by Cartledge [n. 10], 264: from perhaps 8,000 Spartiates in 480 bc to around 5,000 in 479, from 3,500 in 418 to 2,500 in 394, and finally down to no more than 1,500 by 371.)

⁸² Cf. also Lendon (n. 18), 111.

⁸³ Pl. Lyc. 18.4, Ages. 30.3; Xen. Lac. 9.4.

⁸⁴ As against Powell (n. 20), 256; (n. 3), 1.27, 11.310; (n. 5), 231.

⁸⁵ Hence David (n. 61), 33, cf. Xen. Lac. 9.6.

⁸⁶ Thorstein Veblen's stark reflections on the predatory life could hardly be more apposite than when it comes to how Spartan society habituated those operating under its bellicose frame of mind to the infliction of injury by force or fraud as a matter of course, in a mental landscape where worthy employments positively required able-bodied men to reap where they had not strewn, as Veblen put it; where ‘honourable’ ultimately connoted nothing else than the assertion of superior prowess, and thus an honorific action little more than a successful act of aggression; where it was therefore a man's accredited purpose in life to kill, destroy, and subjugate others; where, in sum, ‘the high office of slaughter’, as an expression of the slayer's prowess and preponderance, cast its specious glamour over every bloody action (T. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, ed. Martha Banta [Oxford, 2009] 11, 15–18). Hence also Schopenhauer's diatribe against the archaic logic of honour in chapter 4 of his Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, ed. Franco Volpi (Stuttgart, 2007), 95–127, and Hobbes (n. 71), 1.10.48, p. 54.

⁸⁷ Cf. Ducat (n. 2), 337–8. Powell speaks of the ‘moral pleasure’ of the Spartans in their sense of recognized superiority (Powell [n. 3], 1.22; cf. [n. 20], 100), not to be mistaken for ‘moral courage’, in which Powell takes the Spartans to have been conspicuously deficient (Powell [n. 3], 11.304).

⁸⁸ Cf. Powell (n. 3), 11.310 and Epps (n. 14), 21 (cf. esp. nn. 50–4).

⁸⁹ For a nuanced treatment of this complex issue, see A. S. Bradford, ‘The Duplicitous Spartan’, in A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds.), The Shadow of Sparta (London, 1994), esp. pp. 70, 77. Valid as concerns about the tendentiousness of our sources may be when it comes to areas of invidious comparison, they seem markedly less pertinent to me where such comparisons are not at issue. It is not enough to say that the Spartans were regularly cast as the dramatic foils of the Athenians; one would need to offer some evidence that the Spartans would have objected to such characterizations, and that they would not rather have relished their assigned role of being the Athenians’ opposites. In the area with which Ellen Millender's argument is most specifically associated, Spartan women (‘Athenian Ideology and the Empowered Spartan Woman’, in S. Hodkinson and A. Powell [eds.], Sparta. New Perspectives [Swansea, 1999], 355–91), the case rests on firmer ground; but even there, I see much more at work than Athenian spin, as I show in my ‘Winding Ways’ (n. 2).

⁹⁰ On the rooster and the ox, see Plut. Instituta Laconica 25 and Apophthegmata Laconica 218f. (Archidemus 5, trans. Talbert [n. 17], 156): ‘It would be better if our intelligence were beating them rather than our strength.’ For the spill-over effect, see Powell (n. 1), 178.

⁹¹ Plut. Apophthegmata Laconica 229b (Lysander 2–4, trans. F. C. Babbitt, Plutarch's Moralia, vol. 3 [London, 1961], 373, with interesting cross-references). For ‘rogue Spartan’, see Parker (n. 32), 161.

⁹² Plut. Vit. Comp. Lys. et Sull. 3.1. Cf. Powell (n. 3), 1.9: ‘Efficient lying may not have been seen by Spartans as negative; it was apparently something they prided themselves upon.’ Indeed, according to Powell, they were ‘not even averse to being lied to in what they considered a good cause’ (Powell [n. 3], 1.19 [my emphasis], cf. 1.8 on Xen. Hell. 1.6.36–7, 4.3.13–14).

⁹³ Plut. Lyc. 18.1. The question of how hungry one would have to be to crave such fare is raised by Kagan (n. 7), part 3, but quite apart from the fact that the shame of detection was always the main thing, fox meat really does appear to have been a delicacy in the ancient world (Galen, De alimentorum facultatibus 3.1.665 and Oribasius, Collectiones 2.68.11).

⁹⁴ Powell (n. 1), 179.

⁹⁵ Xen. Lac. 10.8.