Dystopia is different from tyranny. It is cruel, but its cruelty does not define it. Still less is it defined by greed, stupidity, corruption or egotism. Caligula’s Rome was presumably a terrible place, but it was not dystopian. The distinguishing feature of the societies depicted in such classics as Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four is that they are, in fact, utopias. Whatever irony one might find in this observation is visible only from the outside.
To say this is to do more than to repeat the aphorism that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The founders of dystopias know what road they are going down. They have a vision for what society should be, and of how to make people conform to it. Orwell’s Oceania was well on its way to becoming the nation its ruling Party set out to create. Its ideology worked as advertised.
To criticize a dystopia effectively, one must think differently from the people who organized it. This is easier said than done, because most dystopias worthy of consideration are logically thought out. What is more, most dystopias worthy of consideration embody ideals which we ourselves may find resonant. Oceania’s ideology was called English Socialism, and Orwell was a real-life English Socialist.
Dystopian fiction, then, invites us to explore the ideas and attitudes which make it possible to see through the persuasive arguments of totalitarians. This is a major theme in my fantasy series Mara of the League. Readers meet Mara as an introspective eleven-year-old who challenges things grown-ups take for granted. The series follows her life as she grows to adulthood, becomes ever more deeply involved in her world’s political intrigues, and continues to ask questions.
For much of the series, Mara works to thwart the machinations of a dystopian state known as Waan. In writing about Waan, I took inspiration from real-life accounts of the ancient Greek city-state known as Lacedaemon, or Sparta. What remains of this essay will explore some of the issues I found most interesting in my research. The next section reviews the institutions which made Sparta what it was. A third section evaluates Sparta’s legacy. The conclusion suggests that the example of Sparta challenges us to think carefully about what we ourselves believe in.
Sparta as Dystopia
Before accusing the Spartans of unsavory practices, one should note that our histories of ancient Greece are unreliable. Twenty-first century historians have only a handful of primary sources on Spartan society, most penned by non-Spartans. Therefore, we must regard beliefs about Sparta as containing an element of folklore. With these caveats, one may go on to note that our best available information depicts the Spartans as a people who sacrificed their own freedom in order to take freedom from others.
Classical Spartan society took shape on the Peloponnese peninsula between the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. During this era, the victors in a period of civil strife instituted laws and practices designed to maintain themselves and their descendants as a warrior elite, known as the spartiates. These laws designated other Peloponnesians as second-class citizens known as perioikoi and yet others as helots, or slaves. The Peloponnesian people recognized these reforms as a break with tradition, and as a deliberate attempt at social engineering.
The fourth-century BCE historian Thucydides claimed all Sparta’s policies revolved around keeping the helots from rising up. Since the bondservants outnumbered their masters by an estimated seven to one, this was a significant challenge. The spartiates introduced a variety of measures to address this problem. Each year, for instance, their magistrates declared war on the helots, so that full citizens might kill them without violating moral codes.
Spartiates participated in a secret society dedicated to assassinating helots, not only to eliminate known malcontents, but to keep the subject population in a state of terror. The ancient Greek writer Myron of Priene suggested that Spartan law required overseers to kill any bondservants who seemed excessively strong, spirited or intelligent. Thucydides documented an incident in which the spartiates armed bondservants to fight a foreign enemy and promised that the bravest would receive freedom. The two thousand helots who distinguished themselves fighting for Sparta died mysteriously shortly afterward.
The spartiates also flogged helots on a regular basis. Once again, their object was less to punish individual misdeeds than to promote a servile mindset. Myron of Priene may have embellished his point when he accused the spartiates of forcing the helots to wear humiliating dogskin costumes. Nevertheless, it seems plausible that bondservants wore distinctive outfits making it easier to identify them as members of the ill-favored caste. The historian Plutarch relates that the spartiates used helots as laughingstocks at parties, forcing them to drink excessively and perform lewd dances.
Every free citizen needed to be ready to suppress rebellious helots at any time. To this end, the spartiates structured their own lives around military preparedness. Sparta’s semi-mythical lawgiver Lycurgus was said to have decreed that this process should begin at birth. Children, Lycurgus allegedly declared, belonged not to their parents, but to the state.
Plutarch wrote that Spartan authorities inspected newborns and killed those deemed too sickly to become warriors. (Modern archeologists have questioned this claim.) Lacedaemonian wetnurses followed a prescribed regimen to strengthen infants. The Spartans separated boys from their families at seven and subjected them to communal education. Girls lived with their mothers, but they also went through an indoctrination program.
Spartan education was brutal. Although the Spartans presumably believed that beatings and privation would weaken bondservants, they seemed to believe that this treatment would make their own youths stronger. Just as the spartiates whipped and murdered helots without regard to any offences victims may or may not have committed, they subjected their children to intentionally perverse rules. Spartan instructors famously deprived students of food and clothing to force them to steal, but then whipped those caught stealing, occasionally to death. This presumably trained future warriors in stealth, and undoubtedly also dispelled any expectations youths might have harbored about just treatment.
After their meager suppers, youths engaged in an exercise designed to mold their mental habits and attitudes toward others. The iren, or instructor, would call upon boys to criticize peoples’ personalities. If a boy hesitated, offered an unorthodox judgment or failed to express his thoughts in the prescribed form of words, the iren would punish him by biting his thumb. Occasionally senior officials would observe these sessions to assess the ideological purity of the instructors themselves. It may go without saying that irens who deviated from the approved doctrine were themselves chastised.
When a man reached twenty, he became subject to laws governing reproduction. The Spartans ritually shamed those who failed to marry and produce future warriors. Young men were, however, still wards of the education system, and forbidden to leave their barracks. Just as they had to steal food, they had to sneak out illicitly to visit their wives. Spartan marriages were monogamous, but the authorities reserved the right to breed individuals deemed to possess superior traits to other peoples’ spouses.
At age thirty, men left the school system and became private citizens. Plutarch emphasizes, however, that they were still not free live as they wished. State authorities continued to supervise all their activities. It was illegal for them to engage in manual labor or to take up most professions. Instead, the state issued each citizen a plot of farmland, along with a contingent of helots to work it.
Sparta’s founders had been determined to prevent citizens from weakening themselves by indulging in luxuries. They had also viewed inequality as socially divisive. Therefore, they not only limited citizens’ sources of income, they regulated what people could do with it. The goal, to paraphrase one ancient author, was not merely to confiscate wealth, but to make wealth lose its value. Pastimes and possessions deemed unnecessary were illegal. This regulation prohibited most forms of art.
To prevent citizens from accumulating savings, Sparta’s authorities minted their currency in the form of bulky iron ingots. Even small sums were difficult to transport or store. Lest any think of forging the ingots into weapons or tools, the authorities treated the iron with vinegar to make it brittle. Foreign merchants refused to accept this money, and this helped guarantee that no Spartan would engage in trade.
Another law required citizens to construct their dwellings from rough-hewn timbers. Plutarch suggests that Sparta’s founders intended this regulation to suppress other domestic luxuries as well, since there was presumably no point in decorating a house which was irredeemably ugly. Nor were there many opportunities for male citizens to enjoy home comforts, since further laws required men to eat their meals in communal mess-halls. These facilities served a prescribed menu of plain fare, and since they charged substantial fees, they served as yet another brake on any citizen’s ability to accumulate wealth. Collective meals also offered an occasion for citizens to monitor each other, and to bully those who failed to conform to social expectations. The dining-halls were not the only places in which Spartans engaged in mutual surveillance—Plutarch tells us that their main pastime in the public marketplace was passing judgment on one another.
Other laws prohibited citizens from associating with foreigners. Thucydides cynically declared that the Lacedaemonian authorities were afraid of letting their people learn anything to their own advantage. Plutarch defends the Spartan practice. Nevertheless, both authors agree that Lacedaemon’s founders viewed outside ideas, as contagious illnesses which could infect Spartan citizens and cause them to question their regime.
Just as Lacedaemon’s laws dictated every aspect of a citizen’s life, they also governed its end. Sparta’s founders wished to accustom citizens to the presence of corpses, and to dispel superstitions regarding the dead. Therefore, they placed graveyards in public places and forbade elaborate burial rites. Only priestesses and those who fell in battle were entitled to have their names inscribed on monuments. All others were to be forgotten.
Sparta in Hindsight
Sparta’s policies resemble those of famous twentieth-century dictatorships. Nevertheless, whereas people typically disavow modern totalitarianism, numerous commentators from ancient Greece to the present day have presented Sparta as a role model. Despite the city-state of Athens’ long rivalry with Sparta, many Athenians viewed the Lacedaemonian way of life as superior. Robespierre spoke enthusiastically about Spartan ideals. A relief portrait of Lycurgus adorns the United States Capitol Building and the popular 2006 movie 300 depicted the Spartans in a heroic light.
There are a variety of reasons for this. One is that whatever one thinks of the morality of the Lacedaemonian state, it was competent. Machiavelli exaggerated when he wrote that the Spartan regime thrived for eight hundred years, but a more plausible estimate of three hundred to five hundred is still impressive. Thucydides documents how the Spartans accurately assessed the shifting balance of power in Greek politics, learned new ways of fighting and conquered the Mediterranean world.
One might note that Lacedaemon’s militaristic way of life played only a secondary role in its victories. Other city-states with different lifestyles also fielded effective armies. Indeed, for much of ancient Greek history, Sparta’s rivals possessed military capabilities which Sparta did not. The Lacedaemonians performed poorly in sieges and took centuries to develop a fleet.
Sparta’s successes do not justify the belief that totalitarianism is a military advantage. Nevertheless, they warn us against assuming that totalitarian regimes are unstable and hidebound. Sparta’s greatest strength may have been that its rulers and its people were relatively successful at remaining focused upon their goals. Putatively democratic Athens was not.
A second reason to give Sparta’s regime a degree of credit is that it recognized the equality of the genders. In an age when upper-class Athenian women were effectively prisoners in their husbands’ houses, Spartan women dressed in practical clothing, spoke on matters of public importance, managed economic enterprises, sang love-songs to each other and had houses of their own. The fact that Lacedaemonian men spent so much of their lives as soldiers and wards of the education system left most productive activities in women’s hands. Aristotle appears to have found this scandalous, and he warned his fellow Athenian males against the dangers of allowing women to rule over men.
Lacedaemon, like Minoan Crete, demonstrates that gender roles have differed in different civilizations. It reminds us that the male-dominated way of life which has prevailed in much of the world in recent centuries is but a social construct. Whether Sparta’s practices regarding gender in any way justify the Spartan regime is less clear. Lacedaemonian women experienced something approximating equality, but this does not mean they were free.
Just as Sparta’s founders sought to break down men’s sense of identity and capacity for independent thought, they did the same to women. Plutarch, for instance, describes a practice in which the authorities forced people of all genders to assemble naked in public. Although men took part in this exercise, it was aimed at women. Its purpose was to teach female citizens austerity, to overcome their inclination to protect their bodies, and to “take away” their “womanishness.” (1) One might think twice before describing this as feminism.
Conclusion
Indeed, studying Lacedaemon should prompt us to think twice about a great many things. A final reason why people continue to admire Sparta is that even in modern liberal democracies, quasi-Spartan ideals coexist with our own. Many Americans who pledge allegiance to a republic promising liberty and justice for all also revel in saying that life is not fair. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek probably spoke for a great number of moviegoers when he praised 300 for urging modern society toward a Spartan notion of discipline. (2)
300 included the line, “freedom is not free.” (3) This is, indeed, a pertinent observation. The price of freedom, others tell us, is eternal vigilance. (4) Part of that vigilance lies in keeping sight of the fact that however satisfying some might find the idea of an austere warrior nation, Sparta’s way of life was the antithesis of liberty. The more any political philosophy resembles the law-codes attributed to Lycurgus, the warier we should become.
Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, John Dryden translator, available on-line at http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/lycurgus.html, accessed August 10, 2021).
Slavoj Zizek, The True Hollywood Left, https://www.lacan.com/zizhollywood.htm, accessed August 12, 2021.
This phrase was widely used long before the movie. Wikipedia discusses its history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_isn%27t_free, accessed August 12, 2021.
There is some controversy over the origins of this quotation. See This Day in Quotes, January 28, 2018, on-line at http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/01/eternal-vigilance-is-price-of-liberty.html, accessed August 12, 2021.
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