17 The Situation at Sparta (§§65-70)
Herodotus introduces his account of Sparta with its success in war against Tegea, a success that contrasts with an earlier persistent failure, but he quickly turns to early Spartan history. Sparta, he says, had had the worst laws of all Greeks until Lycurgus went one day to the oracle at Delphi. There the oracle addressed him most grandly, declaring its uncertainty as to whether he be a man or a god. Some unnamed people claim that the Pythian goddess dictated to Lycurgus the present constitution of Sparta; Spartans themselves claim that Lycurgus brought the constitution from Crete when his nephew Leobotes was king of Sparta and he became Leobotes’s guardian. Lycurgus, the Spartans say, is the one who made up all the rules about their military institutions and communal meals and about the ephors and council of elders (65). When he died, a statue was erected to him and he became the object of reverence.
The stories of both Athens and Sparta begin with references to prophecy. But what a contrast in the behavior of the two individuals! Athenian Hippocrates wholly ignored Chilon’s interpretation of the omen and seems to have sought no other interpretation at all. Spartan Lycurgus, who is shown the greatest respect by the oracle, may even be its pious agent. Croesus, who seems to care very deeply about predicting the future and about the Delphic Oracle, will surely not miss the significance of these details.
Croesus would do well to listen to the next part of the Spartans’ story, for it shows them making the exact same error that will cost him dearly.[1] Since the Spartans are themselves flourishing, they develop contempt for the weaker Arcadians and desire to conquer all of Arcadia. Their motive: they are no longer satisfied with peace and quiet (καὶ δή σφι οὐκέτι ἀπέχρα ἡσυχίην ἄγειν. They consult the oracle, which tells them:
Do you ask of me Arcadia? You ask me for something great.
I shall not give it to you.
In Arcadia are many acorn-eating men
Who will hinder you. But I do not begrudge you.
I shall give to you Tegea tapped by the feet to dance on [alternatively for ὀρχήσασθαι: to labor in the vine rows as slaves]
And a beautiful plain to measure with a measuring rod.
In pious response the Spartans decide to pass up most of Arcadia and to concentrate their efforts on primitive Tegea, presumably still in the primitive hunting/gathering stage of acorn-eaters. The Spartans are beaten badly, however, and forced to work the plains of Τegea wearing the very fetters they had aimed to use on the Tegeans and measuring the lands with the very measuring rods they had brought. Thus they work the soil with measured foot in a dance of servitude. Just as Croesus will understand his oracle in the wrong sense, so here do the Spartans. As the oracle to Croesus is rather more ambiguous than the oracle to the Spartans, and as this ambiguous oracle stands as a warning to him, one would presume that he would take more trouble to reflect on it. That he doesn’t is remarkable and is a melancholy reminder that humanity does not learn from history.
Constantly beaten by Tegea, at length Sparta asks Delphi which god to propitiate in order to win. Told to bring home the bones of Agamemnon’s son Orestes but unable to do so, they then ask the oracle where the bones are. The oracle answers cryptically about a place where blow rings in answer to blow, and the Spartans remain at a loss as to how to find the bones. Lichas, a Spartan ex-knight, at a time when communications with Tegea were free, comes upon a smithy there and in wonder watches him weld iron.[2] (So much for the primitivity of the acorn-eaters!) The smithy tells him that an even greater wonder is a huge corpse he had found in the ground earlier. He shows the bones to Lichas, who, linking the blasts of the smith’s bellows with blows spoken of by the oracle, concludes that he has come upon the bones of Orestes. Particularly clever is the interpretation of “evil on evil,” which he deduces to be iron since iron brings nothing but woes to humans. It is perhaps extraordinary that Herodotus should place so unwarlike an insight into the mind of a militaristic weapon bearing Spartan.[3] Lichas returns to Sparta, tells everything he has discovered and, in a plot benignly anticipatory of that of Zopyrus in the conquest of Babylon (3.154 ff.) and of Sextus Tarquinius in the conquest of Gabii (Livy, 1.54), contrives to be banished to Tegea. There he prevails upon the smithy to rent him the courtyard. He digs up the bones and takes them to Sparta, and from this time Sparta is victorious over her rival. Now she is in control of most of the Peloponnesus.
Croesus decides to ask the Spartans to be his allies. By now it should be obvious that the real strength of Sparta is not her military prowess but her recently acquired ability to work with the oracle at Delphi. First Delphi recognized the greatness of Lycurgus and either dictated to him the Spar tan constitution or inspired him with the self-confidence to bring it with him from Crete. Then, whatever difficulty Sparta may have had in under standing the first oracle about Tegea it overcame in understanding the second. Finally, with the aid of the oracle, Sparta defeated her stubborn enemy. Croesus perhaps identifies with Sparta’s situation: he too had misunderstood a prophecy, in his case the dream about Atys; like Sparta, by the extravagance of his gifts he has propitiated the god and can expect an outcome as satisfactory as Sparta’s. Moreover, the Spartans have no reluctance about waging aggressive wars of expansion; their motive in attacking the Arcadians and Tegeans had been discomfort with peace (66). For all these reasons they are more suitable than the Athenians as allies for Croesus’s purposes.
Croesus invites Sparta to become his ally (69) by means of messengers. The request appeals to Sparta’s vanity: in accordance with the oracle to seek out the preeminent power in Greece he is asking Sparta to be his friend and ally. The Spartans, who have heard the oracle, are very glad to become his ally. In addition, they remember an earlier act of generosity on his part, when they sent to Sardis to buy gold for a statue of Apollo. Instead of selling it to them, Croesus had made a gift of the needed gold. Herodotus states clearly that they accept the alliance because of Croesus’s earlier gift and because he had given them precedence over all the Greeks (70). As Sparta had advance notice of the oracle concerning an alliance, so too she must have known that the alliance was for the purpose of making war against Persia. That she would allow so critical a decision about war and peace to be made on the basis of flattery and Croesus’s prior gift does not speak very highly for her political sagacity.[4] That out of vanity Sparta was eager to ally herself with Croesus in a war of eastern expansion surely contrasts with the later wisdom of King Cleomenes, when he brusquely rejects Aristagoras’s importuning him to do the same (5.50-51). Perhaps Herodotus is trying to show that in the time of Croesus Sparta really lacked the political maturity to decide wisely. That Sardis had already fallen by the time Sparta was ready to help is perhaps an example of the gods’ charity. Herodotus’s contemporary readers would ask whether under their current circumstances they could take comfort from the tale of Lichas’s genius. The story teaches, after all, that oracles are dangerous things, willing to deceive. Spartans ought to think carefully before relying on oracles to make war; and surely too they ought to be careful of whom they choose for allies. The post-Persian War struggles of Athens with both Sparta and Persia pushed her two rivals together (culminating in their alliance late in the war).[5] This early story of the alliance with Croesus would surely have resonated in the minds of Herodotus’s audience.
The Spartans accept the alliance with Croesus and decide to give him a very large bronze bowl, but the bowl never reaches Croesus. Either the Samians sailed out and captured it or the Spartans, hearing that Sardis was lost, sold it in Samos and claimed back in Sparta that the Samians had stolen it. Herodotus does not know which tale is true, but in the telling of both possibilities manages to cast doubts upon the integrity of both Spartans and Samians.[6] Perhaps here Herodotus is appealing to Athenian ill will towards Samos after her ill-fated revolt against Athens in the Samian War of 440-439.[7]
- Cf. Flory, 107. ↵
- That the bones were found in Oresthasion and not in Tegea is the argument of G. Huxley, “Bones for Orestes,” GRΒS 20(1979): 145-148. Since, as Huxley says, Oresthasion was in the territory of Tegea, it does not seem to me to matter for Herodotus’s purpose if the exact spot was in Oresthasion, a town south of Arcadia near Megalopolis. ↵
- Herodotus does so again later: the once militarily successful Croesus explains to Cyrus the evils of war (1.87). ↵
- The story, like others, is similar to that told about Syloson (3.139-141). See the discussion above, pp. 42-43. ↵
- See Hammond, 316. ↵
- Flory (174) suggests that Herodotus’s method of telling two versions, both of which deprecate, may have influenced Tacitus. He also suggests that the stories contrast the “petty venality and quarrelling of the Greeks” with “the Lydian king’s suffering and ennoblement” (72). ↵
- These remarks, and those throughout this book, assume that Herodotus was reciting his History principally before Athenian audiences in the years 445-430 (see above, n. 19), the years leading up to the Peloponnesian War, a war which “was a death-blow to the ideals that Herodotus embodied in, and sought to commend by, his History” (How and Wells 9). The History mentions a number of events that take place in 430 and 431 (the Thebans’ attack on Plataea under Eurymachus: 7.233.2; the expulsion of Aeginetans in 431: 6.91.1; the sparing of Decelea in 431 or 430: 9.73.3; and the execution of Aristeas and the Spartan envoys in 430: 7.137.3 [these are cited by How and Wells]). So, it is not unlikely that Herodotus was performing at least up until these latter dates. It is natural to suppose that a contemporary audience would filter the history of past events through the awareness of current events. In much the same way, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when some were fearful of deterioration in the armed might of the United States, they wrote or sponsored books proposing that similar causes led to the fall of Rome. ↵
