Companion to Sparta II

670 Haydn Mason 26.3  Mably and Rousseau With Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–85) we come to Sparta’s first whole‐hearted s­upporter: so much so that he is described in the Année littéraire (1776, vol. 4) as an ‘austère spartiate égaré dans les rues de Paris’ (‘an austere Spartophile, lost in the streets of Paris’). He apparently demonstrated his enthusiasm visibly by going about the capital wearing the Lykourgan cloak on his shoulders (Galliani, 3.181–9). An apologist for French absolutism in his early works, by 1750 he had become a classical republican, to whom Sparta and early Rome were to act as models. Mably saw Sparta as unique, above all because of Lykourgos’ genius. Like Montesquieu, he felt that the lawgiver had intu- ited the essential nature of the Spartans: ‘il descendit, pour ainsi dire, jusque dans le fond du coeur des citoyens’ (‘he penetrated, so to speak, right into the depths of the citizens’ hearts’), and ‘forced the Spartans to become wise and happy’ (Oeuvres complètes, iv. 16, 20). Following on Plutarch’s Life of Lykourgos, Mably is convinced that Lykourgos was uniquely responsible for the coherence that existed in Spartan institutions and manners; such could not have come about merely through a succession of reforms. The banning of gold and silver, the use of iron currency and the meals taken in common in public, all these rules helped to found a society that was to remain free from corruption for six h­ undred years. Money is replaced by freedom, love of country, justice, temperance, ­frugality (OC, ix. 97). Sparta declined only when people had become infected by greed as landowners (OC, ix. 118). Mably envisaged an idyllic existence, free from oppression and want but also from ennui, even though the citizens were forbidden to farm the land (which was left to the helots): Des hommes toujours occupés des exercices de la chasse … du pugilat, de la lutte, etc., se preparaient dans leurs plaisirs mêmes à devenir d’intrepides défenseurs de la patrie … Le temps fuyait rapidement pour les Spartiates; et au milieu de cette vie toujours agissante, comment les passions … auraient‐elles trouvé un moment pour tromper, séduire et corrompre un Lacédémonien? (Oeuvres complètes, x. 109) Men always occupied in hunting … boxing, wrestling, etc., were being prepared even in their pleasures to become intrepid defenders of the nation … Time flew by for the Spartans, and amid this ever‐active life … how would the passions have found a moment to deceive, seduce and corrupt a Spartan? This was the best of all possible worlds. But the chances of ever returning to such a state of prelapsarian innocence appear most unlikely: ‘viendra‐t‐il parmi nous un nou- veau Charlemagne? On doit le désirer, mais on ne peut l’espérer’ (Oeuvres posthumes, iii. 270) (‘will another Charlemagne come amongst us? It is desirable, but one cannot place any hopes on it’). Mably, however, is not solely consumed by futile nostalgia This evocation can also serve as a critique on which to base reformist appeals against the status quo, which threatened to decline into despotism in a corrupt age. He felt it might be possible to establish in France a republican framework such as England had known under Cromwell. For England still enjoyed, like Sweden, a form of ‘gouvernement libre’ in which the aris- tocracy worked harmoniously with an hereditary prince. Whereas the English had the

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 671 Magna Carta as a ‘compass’, no such fundamental law existed in France, nor any firm constitutional order (Observations sur l’histoire de France). In practice the best hope might be a recall of the Etats‐généraux, the assembly composed of the three Etats (clergy, nobility, commoners) which had existed from medieval times up to 1614. They might, he suggests, be assembled every two to three years, and should never be dissolved. For  ‘le parlement est le seul corps qui pourrait mettre quelques entraves au pouvoir ­arbitraire’ (Œuvres posthumes, iii. 280) (‘Parliament is the only body that could place some restrictions on arbitrary power’). As Mably sees it, the supreme aim of politics is a moral one, to ‘faire aimer la vertu’ (‘inculcate a love of virtue’). The full title of one of his most important works makes this clear. Entretiens de Phocion sur le rapport de la morale avec la politique (‘Phokion’s Conversations about the relation of Morality to Politics’) (1763). It is the function of the State to exploit Natural Law, according to which reason, virtue and happiness are closely linked. But Lykourgos had shown the citizens that morality was not earned so easily: ‘Il les endurcit au travail, à la peine, à la fatigue’ (v. 96). (‘He hardened them to labour, grief, fatigue’.) In his opposition to private property, Mably clashed with the Physiocrats, a group of economic thinkers who held that landed wealth was the keystone of the social order, with agriculture as the most effective vehicle of financial growth. So Antiquity had no part in all this, since it had ignored the importance of agricultural principles as the basis of material property. A leading Physiocrat, Pierre‐Paul Le Mercier de La Rivière, proposed in L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques (1767) that this ‘essential order’ was founded on property rights. Mably responded with a direct refutation, Doutes proposés à l’Ordre … (1768), in which he claimed that Spartans knew no such property rights, since they possessed only the usufruct of the land during their lifetime. Yet ‘hors de l’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés … Sparte a fait de plus grandes choses que les Etats que vous jugez plus sages qu’elle, et a joui d’un bonheur pendant six cents ans’ (OC xi. 6–7) (‘outside the natural and essential order of societies … Sparta did greater things than the States which you consider to be wiser than her, and enjoyed happiness for six hundred years’). Only when property rights were established did Sparta go into decline. Mably’s later years were clouded by pessimism, and at his death he was a forgotten figure (Wright (1997) 6). His hopes of a ‘révolution ménagée’ (‘controlled revolution’) on the model of the seventeenth‐century Dutch Revolution had come to naught, after the Maupeou coup of 1771 had overthrown (albeit temporarily) the Parlements. But with the recall of the Etats‐généraux in 1788, Mably’s views became again relevant to the changed times, and his influence as a Spartophile was to remain into the nineteenth century. Mably has encountered strong criticism from Grell, who sees his antithetic contrasts (virtue/vice; greatness/decadence; happiness/adversity) as simplistic (i. 473). But a dif- ferent perspective, less exclusively French and setting him in the line of the ‘Atlantic republican tradition’ which embraces the Netherlands, Cromwellian England and colo- nial America, suggests a greater solidity to his thinking. From a different viewpoint, he has been seen by Rawson and others as an early Communist. But as Wright shows (1997, 98–102), his objection to property does not cohere with the utopian socialism of such as Jean Meslier and Dom Leger‐Marie Deschamps, where the State is predicted to wither away when an authentic society is established.

672 Haydn Mason Mably and Jean‐Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) were at first on friendly terms, as one might expect from their similar views on Sparta. But in 1764, relations changed when Rousseau heard rumours that Mably was describing his Lettres écrites de la Montagne as ‘des clameurs d’un démagogue effréné’ (‘clamourings of a frenetic demagogue’). Things got worse when Rousseau claimed to find in Mably’s Entretiens de Phocion ‘une compilation de mes écrits, faite sans retenue et sans honte’ (Les Confessions, 735–6) (‘a compilation of my writings, put together in an uncontrolled and shameless manner’). Henceforth Rousseau viewed Mably as an enemy. Mably riposted in Sur la théorie du pouvoir politique: Rousseau, que nous avons tous connu, est un grand exemple et peut‐être unique, de tout ce que l’imagination peut produire à la fois de bien et de mal […] Il faut trancher le mot, quoiqu’il me paraisse dur: Rousseau, je le dis pour son bonheur, était fou dans toute la force du terme … un homme que j’ai connu, que j’ai aimé, qui a eu le malheur d’avoir une raison égarée. (Sur la théorie du pouvoir politique, 271–4) Rousseau, known to us all, is an example, great and perhaps unique, of what the imagination can produce for good and for evil … To speak plainly, though that seems harsh: Rousseau, I say it for his own good, was mad in the full meaning of that word … a man whom I have known, have loved, and who has been unfortunate enough to have a troubled mind. In fact, broad parallels conceal significant differences in philosophic attitudes. As Wright points out, the concept of ‘general will’ is absent from Mably, just as ‘mixed government’ does not figure in Rousseau. Whereas Mably accepted political representation, such a practice is denounced by Rousseau. Furthermore, the more limited vision of Mably makes little use of such concepts as ‘state of Nature’, ‘social contract’ and ‘sovereignty’. For Rousseau turns the myth of Sparta into a more fundamental debate about the values of an authentic society. Mably’s commentary stops short of articulating a wholly persuasive relationship between ‘man’ and ‘citizen’, while Rousseau was to address this from his very first essay, the Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750). Many others before him had explored the polarity between Athens and Sparta, as also the falsity of social appearances; indeed, the claim that we all wear a mask in society was scarcely new. (To  name but one, Jean‐Baptiste’s Molière’s Le Misanthrope (1666) had shaped his comedy around that self‐same theme.) But what made this Discours so special was the intensity of the onslaught upon the moral vacuity of contemporary manners. Into this attack, the picture that he paints of Sparta fits neatly, as a signal instance of happy and virtuous ignorance. That said, Sparta is only rarely singled out for specific mention, and republican Rome serves his purpose just as well. In fact, the first example cited of ancient purity is Egypt, ‘cette première école de l’Univers’ (OC, iii. 10) (‘that first school of the Universe’); and many other States are also mentioned. However, when Rousseau finally comes to Sparta, the appeal is clarion‐like. It is first alluded to in periphrasis, then apos- trophized, and finally contrasted with Athens. Space does not permit of a full quotation from this stylistically heightened passage; a few excerpts must suffice: Oublierais‐je que ce fut dans le sein même de la Grèce qu’on vit s’élever cette Cité aussi célè- bre par son heureuse ignorance que par la sagesse de ses Lois, cette République de demi‐dieux plutôt que d’hommes? Tant leurs vertus semblaient supérieures à l’humanité! (iii. 12–13)

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 673 How could I forget that, at the very heart of Greece, one saw the rise of this city, as renowned for its happy ignorance as for the wisdom of its Laws, this Republic of demigods rather than men? So much did their virtues seem superior to humanity! Sparta represents for Rousseau the most pure phenomenon of a way of life that once existed but exists no longer. During the quarrel that arose from publication of the Discours, he taunts his opponents with this indubitable fact: L’embarras de mes adversaires est visible toutes les fois qu’il faut parler de Sparte. Que ne donneraient‐ils point pour que cette fatale Sparte n’eût jamais existé? … C’est une terrible chose qu’au milieu de cette fameuse Grèce qui ne devait sa vertu qu’à la philosophie, l’Etat où la vertu a été la plus pure et a duré le plus longtemps ait été précisément celui où il n’y avait point de philosophes. (iii. 83) My opponents are visibly embarrassed every time Sparta is mentioned. What would they not give for this terrible Sparta to have never existed? … How dreadful that amid this wondrous Greece which owed its virtue solely to philosophy, the State whose virtue was the purest and the most enduring was precisely the one where there were no philosophers. The triumphalist note is all too clear. Rousseau goes on to point out that in theory Athens should have been the conqueror, since it was larger and wealthier, whereas in fact it was Sparta that won out. Such is Rousseau’s fascination for Sparta that he follows the Discours with a Parallèle entre les deux républiques de Sparte et de Rome. The two States receive equal praise (‘toutes deux brillèrent à la fois par les vertus et par la valeur’ (OC, iii. 539; ‘both shone alike in virtues and in valour’). But in particular the author insists upon the providential appear- ance of Lykourgos to hand down to Spartans their sublime institutions. He will go on to undertake an Histoire de Lacédémone (remarkable in that it is the only history Rousseau ever attempted), because of ‘un penchant presque invincible’ born of his admiration for ‘des hommes qui ne nous ressemblent en rien’ (iii. 544–5) (‘an almost unconquerable inclination … men unlike us in every respect’). Although the Histoire peters out, not even getting to Lykourgos, the very effort in an unusual genre testifies to Rousseau’s continuing admiration for the possibilities of human endeavour which Sparta had represented. Thereafter, the ancient city will appear only intermittently as a noble ideal. (Curiously, Sparta does not appear in the Rousseau Correspondence, except in letters written to Rousseau.) The Discours sur l’inégalité (often referred to as his second Discours) is in many ways a fuller development of the earlier Discours, so one might have expected an even greater emphasis on Sparta. But in fact mentions are few, with one important exception; when Rousseau contrasts Lykourgos with other legislators who had merely tinkered with their institutions, while he had ‘cleaned out the whole place’, before c­onstructing ‘a fine building’ (iii. 180). If one takes Judith Shklar’s view (1996) that Rousseau follows two ideals throughout his career, compatible but distinct: Sparta, and the Golden Age (the ‘state of Nature’), then the Inégalité clearly belongs to the latter, since the thesis that natural man was expelled from his original Paradise owes far more to the myth of Eden than to Sparta. A specific aspect of what Rousseau sees as a social falsehood will soon occur. In 1757, Volume VII of the Encyclopédie (see later) appeared. It contained the article ‘Genève’ by Jean d’Alembert, in which the author proposes the establishment of a permanent theatre

674 Haydn Mason in the city where once Calvin had held sway. It would, he claimed, bring together the wisdom of Sparta and the politesse of Athens. Rousseau’s hostile reaction was spontaneous. In three weeks he composed an extensive Lettre à d’Alembert – written, he says in his Confessions, while ‘je versai de délicieuses larmes’ (ed., 585) (‘I shed delicious tears’). He is opposed to theatre because he sees it as dependent upon a fraudulent relationship between the actors coldly calculating their effect on the audience and the spectators who, in their turn, are observing them in a state of voyeuristic alienation. But he is not against every form of spectacle. In place of conventional drama he advocates open‐air amateur entertainments, where all are actors and all spectators, the whole assembly coming together in a spirit of transparent integrity and total equality. This brings him to recall nostalgically ‘les jeux et les fêtes de ma jeunesse’ in Geneva; and that reminds him of a more ancient archetype: cette Sparte que je n’aurais jamais assez citée pour l’exemple que nous devrions en tirer; ainsi … le Spartiate ennuyé soupirait après ses grossiers festins et ses fatigants exercices. C’est à Sparte que dans une laborieuse oisiveté, tout était plaisir et spectacle. C’est là que les rudes travaux passaient pour des récréations, et que les moindres délassements formaient une instruction publique. C’est là que les citoyens continuellement assemblés, consacraient la vie entière à des amusements qui faisaient la grande affaire de 1’Etat, et à des jeux dont on ne se délassait qu’à la guerre. (v. 122) this Sparta, which I shall never have mentioned often enough for the example that we should draw from it; thus […] the Spartan when bored would yearn for his coarse feasts and arduous exercises. It was at Sparta that, in the midst of diligent idleness, all was pleasure and spectacle. There rough labours were thought of as recreations, and even the slightest diver- sions contributed to the public education. There the citizens, being continually called together, devoted their whole lives to entertainments that were the prime concern of the State, and games from which only war distracted them. Here, in a passage owing direct inspiration to Plutarch’s Life of Lykourgos, is the ­portrait of an ideal society in which work and play have achieved a perfect balance. But there can be no hope of resurrecting these mores. In one specific area, Rousseau is sure that this would be impossible. The spectacle of naked Spartan girls dancing in public would be too shocking for ‘tout peuple qui n’est qu’honnête’ (‘every nation that is merely honest’) (v. 122).2 In 1762 Rousseau’s Contrat social was published. Here Rousseau offers a remedy for the evils identified in the Inégalité, prescribing a basis for legitimate government in an authentic society based on a true ‘Contract’, where the citizen, enjoying perfect free- dom, is nevertheless at one with the General Will, which is sovereign and inalienable. The Legislator for this people will be an ‘extraordinary man’, fully cognizant of all human passions while impervious to them himself. The shadow of Lykourgos falls all too clearly across this figure. Sparta plays a key role in the Contrat, even though it is secondary to Rome. Their joint influence is fundamental, playing a decisive role in Rousseau’s political thought here and elsewhere. As in Sparta quite specifically, money‐making is to be avoided: ‘Ce mot de finance est un mot d’esclave; il est inconnu dans la Cité’ (iii. 429) (‘This word “finance” is a slave’s word; it is unknown in the City’). Yet it is not, as it tends to be with Mably, a nostalgic evocation. Rousseau inveighs against those who would relegate it, like Veiras’s Sévarambes, to ‘le pays des chimères… je peignais un objet existant’ (iii. 810) (‘the land of wild dreams … I was depicting an object which actually

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 675 existed’). As the opening paragraph of the Contrat indicates, he will consider ‘les h­ ommes tels qu’ils sont, et les lois telles qu’elles peuvent être’ (iii. 351) (‘men as they are, and laws as they can be’). This shows the delicate balance he will tread between reality and ­principle, which makes the Contrat so difficult to interpret. Yet Rousseau would write important works of political advice on the constitutions of Corsica and Poland, where again Sparta can be seen as a model. In the Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, Lykourgos reappears, as the man who imposed an ‘iron yoke’ but also ‘montra sans cesse la patrie dans ses lois, dans ses jeux, dans sa maison, dans ses amours, dans ses festins. Il ne lui laissa pas un instant de relâche’ (iii. 957) (‘unceasingly displayed the sense of nationhood through its laws, its games, its love affairs, its feasts. He did not allow it a single moment of relaxation’). It is out of this relentless constraint under which citizens were forced into civic morality that there emerged the ardent love of homeland which was always, he remarks, the strongest or rather the only passion of the Spartans, a passion which made them into superior beings (iii. 957). This is the same passion underlying the Contrat social, turning men into ­citizens through devotion to the common cause. By making sentiment an essential element in his thinking, Rousseau may be said to have brought patriotism into political philosophy. Conversely, the land‐sharing interests him little; legitimate property (as distinct from illegal possession) is an intrinsic part of the Social Contract. 26.4 The Encyclopédie As might be expected, Sparta finds its way into the Encyclopédie (1751–1772), that vast compilation of knowledge under the editorship of Denis Diderot and (until 1759) Jean d’Alembert. Even more adulatory of Sparta than Mably is the chevalier Louis de Jaucourt (1704–1779), workhorse of the Encyclopédie (he is credited with contributing the stupendous number of 17,000 articles to the work), who wrote no fewer than six articles on the city (‘Ephore’, ‘Géronte’, ‘Lacédémone’, ‘Lycurgées’, ‘Sparte’ and ‘Xénélasie de Lacédémone’). Without Jaucourt’s contribution on ancient Greece, the work might well have been rather slight in that area. A great classical scholar like Mably, Jaucourt was responsible for virtually all the articles devoted to Greek antiquity (other than literature) – which was just as well. Typical of the editors’ indifference towards Greek history, the article ‘Athènes’, which might have been expected to be a major piece, is of cursory length. But the volume containing it had appeared before Jaucourt’s involvement. While fascinated by every aspect of Greek culture, Jaucourt was fervently attracted to Sparta (‘je déclare … que je suis tout lacédémonien. Lacédémone me tient lieu de toutes choses’: art. ‘Lacédémone’; ‘I declare that I am totally Spartan; Sparta supplies me with everything’). This is borne out by the space which he gives to the city. The article ‘Lacédémone’ runs to nearly sixteen columns in the original folio edition; yet when, in alphabetical order, he moves on to ‘Sparte’, he allocates a further eight columns to a detailed account of its topography. Jaucourt shares Rousseau’s belief that the Spartans were unique. They carried within themselves, he felt, ‘des semences de l’exacte droiture et de la veritable intrépidité’: art. ‘Lacédémone’ (‘seeds of perfect integrity and undoubted fearlessness’). His account of

676 Haydn Mason Lykourgos’ reforms goes into far greater detail, to my knowledge, than that of any c­ontemporary writer. The lawgiver attains the role of a demigod, bequeathing to his people a legacy that he has charged them to observe ‘jusqu’à mon retour’ (‘until I return’). While the phrase makes literal sense in that he had retired to distant parts, never intending to come back to Sparta, the eschatological overtones of the Second Coming are inescapable. Jaucourt, exceptionally, contests the case that the Spartans were indifferent to culture, claiming that despite the austerity of their politics, their city contained eminent thinkers and writers and was embellished with statues, paintings and fine furniture. But he merely reports without comment the practice, considered ‘harsh and cruel’ even by Plutarch (Life, 28.4), whereby fathers deliberately debauched helots with drink so as to teach their children a moral lesson about such behaviour. As with most apologists for Sparta, the treatment of the helots is an indefensible embarrassment. Towards the end of this long account, Jaucourt compares Sparta with Athens, invariably to the advantage of the former (‘cette république célèbre, bien supérieure à celle d’Athènes’; ‘this famous republic, much superior to that of Athens’). Neat antitheses are devised to substantiate this claim; ‘A Athènes on apprenait à bien dire, et à Sparte à bien faire … Si la morale et la philosophie s’expliquaient à Athènes, elles se pratiquaient à Lacédémone’ (‘In Athens one learned to speak well, in Sparta to act well … Morality and philosophy may have been expounded in Athens, but in Sparta they were practised’). While Sparta lacked ‘le sel attique’ (‘Attic salt’), its discourse was also without Athenian ‘satires and raillery’, but characterized instead by ‘une certaine force, une certaine grandeur’. Nevertheless, Jaucourt nowhere proposes Sparta as a relevant phenomenon. Now f­orever lost, it can yet be admired as an example of what was once possible for mankind. He does, however, at one point admit to a rare moment of ambivalence: ‘les actions de bravoure des Spartiates passeraient pour folles, si elles n’étaient consacrées par l’admiration de tous les siècles’ (‘the courageous actions of the Spartan would be considered mad, had they not been hallowed by the admiration of every age’). This somewhat unpersuasive ­criterion ­permits him to arrive at a final encomium: ‘En lisant leur histoire, notre âme s’élève et semble franchir les limites étroites dans lesquelles la corruption de notre siècle retient nos faibles vertus’ (‘In reading their history, our soul rises up and seems to transcend the narrow limits within which the corruption of our age constricts our feeble virtues’). But Jaucourt’s passionate eulogy appears to have made little impression on the progress of the debate, even within the Encyclopédie. A brief anonymous article, ‘Ilotes’ (‘Helots’) censures Spartans for that aspect of their society which even to their supporters was the weakest link. Jean‐François de Saint‐Lambert’s ‘Luxe’ makes no mention of the city‐state. As the same author probably also wrote ‘Législateur’, where Sparta receives just two mentions and which ignores Lykourgos, it looks like a deliberate insult to the p­ro‐ Spartan lobby. 26.5 The Philosophes This stance of Saint‐Lambert serves to indicate the heterogeneous nature of the Encyclopédie. Whereas Jaucourt, at the heart of the Dictionary, was passionate about Sparta, most of the philosophes, a group loosely associated with the Dictionary, were

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 677 hostile: none more so than Voltaire (1694–1778). In the debate on luxury, which brought in Sparta, Voltaire stood firmly for a way of life that embraced cultural refine- ment. Influenced by Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (1714) and Melon’s Essai politique sur le commerce (1734), Voltaire’s two poems Le Mondain (1736) and Défense du Mondain (1737) came to be seen as the most effective apologies for the beneficial effects, both social and economic, of wealth. Melon had contrasted ‘la voluptueuse Athenes’ with ‘l’austère Lacédèmone’ and found Lykourgos’ sumptuary laws simply revolting. Trade was the key differentiating factor, bringing Athens closer to contemporaneous Amsterdam. Voltaire took the same line: ‘l’argent est fait pour circuler, pour faire éclore tous les arts, pour acheter l’industrie des hommes’ (‘money is made to circulate, to bring to fruition all the arts, to purchase men’s hard labour’). Hence Voltaire’s aggressive stance on Sparta: ‘Quel bien Sparte fit‐elle à la Grèce? Eut‐elle jamais des Démosthènes, des Sophocles? … Le luxe d’ Athènes a fait de grands hommes en tout genre; Sparte a eu quelques capitaines’ (Complete Works, 36. 326–7). (‘What good did Sparta do to Greece? Did she ever have men like Demosthenes, like Sophocles? … Athenian luxury created great men in every field; Sparta possessed a few captains’). A letter to Catherine II of Russia (D18078, 11 December 1772) shows his irritation with the Spartophiles: ‘Je ne sais pourquoi on ose encore parler de Lycurgue et de ses Lacédémoniens, qui n’ont jamais rien fait de grand, qui n’ont laissé aucun monument, qui n’ont point cultivé les arts’ (‘I do not know why … people still dare to talk of Lykourgos and his Spartans, who never did anything great, never left behind any monument, did not cultivate the arts’). In short, Spartan government was a complete irrelevance: ‘Les pauvres gens qui prétendent qu’on doit se gouverner à Paris comme à Lacédémone …’ (D9023, to J.F. de Bastide, c.1760) (‘The pathetic people who claim that we must govern ourselves in Paris as they did in Sparta …’). Doubtless, some animus against Rousseau as one of those ‘pauvres gens’ underlies this quite gratuitous sally. Even an apparent compliment to Lykourgos has to be treated with caution. Voltaire comments that the lawmaker ‘en fort peu de temps, éleva les Spartiates au‐dessus de l’humanité’ (ibid.) (‘in a very short space of time, raised the Spartans above humanity’). But one needs to read the whole letter to see that Voltaire is pouring scorn on such unre- alistically utopian enterprises and that ‘above humanity’ denotes an unnatural state of affairs. Natural law dictated true human motivation: ‘L’homme est né pour l’action, comme le feu tend en haut et la pierre en bas’ (Lettres philosophiques, ii. 205–6) (‘Mankind was born for action, as fire tends upward and the stone falls to the ground’). The pursuit of happiness grew out of this need for pleasurable activity. It therefore followed that Lykourgos had not understood the basics of human nature. Indeed, did Lykourgos ever exist? The evidence is scanty: ‘nous n’avons point les règlements de police de Lacédémone; nous n’en avons d’idée que par quelques lambeaux de Plutarque, qui vivait longtemps après Lyucurgue’ (OC, xxx. 419) (‘we do not have the Spartan laws of governance; we have some notion of them only through a few scraps from Plutarch, who lived long after Lykourgos’). Nor was Denis Diderot (1713–84) more favourably inclined to Sparta, for all his great love of ancient Greece. In his Encyclopédie article ‘Grecs (philosophie des)’, he treats Lykourgos most summarily: ‘Il était réservé à [Lycurgue] d’assujettir tout un peuple à une espèce de règle monastique’ (‘It was his task to subject a whole nation to a sort of monastic rule’). His Politique des souverains (1774) ironically ascribes to Frederick II of

678 Haydn Mason Prussia, whom he detested, a couple of Spartan reflexions: ‘Le seul bon gouvernement ancien est, à mon avis, celui de Lacédémone …Mes sujets ne seront que des ilotes sous un nom plus honnête’, OC, ‘Philosophie II’, 480; ‘The only good government in antiquity, I believe, is that of Sparta … My subjects will just be helots under a more polite name’). A letter to Catherine II follows along the same lines: ‘Lycurgue fit des moines armés; sa législation fut un sublime système d’atrocité’ (Correspondance, xiv. 82, 13 September 1774) (‘Lykourgos created monks bearing arms; his legislation was a sublime system of atrocity’). The closest that Diderot comes to a measured statement on Sparta occurs in a commentary on Claude‐Adrien Helvétius’s De l’homme: ‘Je ne blâme point les lois de Lycurgue, je les crois seulement incompatibles avec un grand Etat et avec un Etat com- merçant’ (‘Philosophie II’, 442) (‘I do not condemn Lykourgos’ laws, I simply consider them incompatible with a large State and a commercial State’). The parallel here with Montesquieu scarcely needs stressing. While Diderot is well aware of the inherent c­ontradictions within modern capitalism, he was convinced that the way to overcome them did not lie in a return to antique republics. Similarly hostile views are encountered amongst several philosophes, Luc de Vauvenargues (1715–47), while accepting the principle of total equality in Sparta, goes on to say, however, that ‘rien n’est plus impracticable et plus chimérique’ (Guerci, 40n.) (‘nothing is more impractical and more fanciful’). Anne‐Robert‐Jacques de Turgot (1727–81), a leading Physiocrat and sometime contrôleur‐général des finances, denounces Lykourgos’ esprit de système because it ‘détruit toute idée de propriété, viole les droits de la pudeur, anéantit les plus tendres liaisons de sang’ (Guerci, 42) (‘destroys every notion of property, violates the rights of modesty, annihilates the most tender blood‐relationships’). He poured scorn on the Spartan treatment of the helots. Likewise Paul Henri d’Holbach (1723–89) saw the Spartans as ‘des moines armés par un fana- tisme politique’ (Guerci, 195–9) (‘monks armed by political fanaticism’), though he allowed Lykourgos credit for employing public education in his own cause’ (Rawson, 258; Guerci, 195–90). François‐Jean de Chastellux (1734–78) wrote his treatise De la félicité publique (1772) as a riposte to Mably’s Entretiens de Phocion, though out of respect for the latter he played down the polemical aspect. His work, so admired by Voltaire that he adorned his own copy with bravos (Voltaire, Correspondence, D18067, letter to Chastellux, 7  December 1772), aims to demonstrate the superiority of modern to ancient times, since antiquity lacked the personal basis of contemporary society: family bonds, love and friendship, because everything had belonged to the State: ‘Qu’est‐ce donc que Sparte? Une armée toujours sous les armes, si ce n’est plutôt qu’un vaste cloître … les simulacres de guerre, le renoncement absolu aux arts, à l’agriculture, au commerce …la discipline austère, les macérations, les réfectoires, les cérémonies publiques […] on se croit dans la forteresse de Spandau’ (p. 79: cf. Rosso, 314–15) (‘What then is Sparta? An army con- stantly under arms, if it is not rather a vast monastery … war‐games, a total rejection of the arts, agriculture and trade […], severe discipline, self‐mortifications, refectories, public ceremonies … you think you are in the fortress of Spandau’.) Furthermore, the hunting‐down of helots, which Chastellux says is a regular exercise, is described in chill- ing detail (pp. 83–4). Despite a tribute to Lykourgos, the author considers the latter’s ideas as fundamentally flawed (pp. 90–2). Chatellux’s conclusions are trenchant: Sparta is both pernicious and of no consequence for modern society – any more than all the other Greek States of old.

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 679 Helvétius (1715–71) is a refreshing novelty to the embattled ranks of the pro‐ and anti‐Spartans. Although as much a materialist as Diderot and D’Holbach, he developed his conceptions of Sparta to reach different conclusions. All our faculties, in his opinion, are dependent on sensations: ‘L’âme […] se trouvera réduite à la seule faculté de sentir’, Correspondence, 441, 12 July 1759; ‘The soul … will find itself reduced to the single faculty of feeling.’ Human passions supply the essentials for our mode of life, whether it be learning, art, commerce or warfare. Morality was therefore founded uniquely on ­self‐ interest – even apparently disinterested love: ‘Aimer, c’est avoir besoin’, De l’esprit, 279 (‘To love is to need’). These sensations depend on the basic search for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. All our experiences are founded on that principle, not excluding boredom and curiosity. This reduction of ethics to such egoistical motivations troubled many of Helvétius’s friends, most notably Diderot. But Helvétius drew from it a set of deeply humanist convictions, on the premise that education was the key to all social betterment. These views led Helvétius to a distinctively original position on Sparta. At first sight his praise for Lykourgos may seem conventional: Ce grand homme, échauffé de la passion de la vertu, sentait que par des harangues, ou des oracles supposés, il pouvait inspirer à ses concitoyens les sentiments dont lui‐même était enflammé; que, profitant du premier instant de fureur, il pourrait changer la constitution du gouvernement, et faire dans les moeurs de ce peuple une révolution subite, que, par les voies ordinaires de la prudence, il ne pourrait exécuter que dans une longue suite d’années. Il sentait que les passions sont semblables aux volcans dont l’éruption soudaine change tout à coup le lit d’un fleuve … (De l’esprit, 247–8) This great man, fired with the passion for virtue, felt that by harangues or imaginary oracles he could inspire in his fellow‐citizens the feelings with which he was himself inflamed; that by exploiting the first passionate moment, he could change the constitution and bring about a sudden revolution in the ways of this nation that would be achievable only over a long period of years by the usual prudent methods. He felt that passions are like volcanoes, whose sudden eruption completely alters the course of a river … Mably would have assented to the point of view displayed here. But the language used by Helvétius to depict the seismic power of the passions is quite special. Here is no oppressive lawmaker obliging his nation to pursue a stoical denial of self‐interest, but rather a leader who, recognizing that ‘le plaisir est le seul moteur unique et universel des hommes’ (De l’esprit, 289), has tapped into that dynamic source. This approach becomes more explicit when Helvétius refers to those ‘fêtes solennelles’ (‘solemn festivals’) so troubling even to some admirers of Sparta, where ‘les belles et jeunes lacédémoniennes s’avancent demi‐nues, en dansant, dans l’assemblée du peuple’ (ibid.) (‘the beautiful young Spartan girls advance, dancing semi‐naked amid the assem- bled public’). Thereby these delectable women turn the young men into heroes, fired by ‘l’assurance de ces faveurs … Peut‐on douter qu’alors ce jeune guerrier ne fût ivre de vertu?’ (ibid.) (‘the assurance of these favours … Can one doubt that then this young warrior was intoxicated by virtue?’) The author’s provocative reference to ‘vertu’ suffi- ciently indicates his utilitarian application of moralistic discourse. (As we have seen, Rousseau interpreted this custom in a quite different spirit.) The treatise De l’esprit (1758) proved such a radical challenge to orthodox morality that its author chose not to publish again in his lifetime. The posthumous De l’homme

680 Haydn Mason (1773) pursues a similar line on Sparta, whose citizens are now seen as being ‘à peu près aussi heureux qu’un peuple peut l’être’ (ii. 95) (‘almost as happy as a people can be’). Helvétius rejects the view, almost a shibboleth among the philosophes, that Sparta was some dismal monastery. If ‘on est bien nourri, bien vêtu, à l’abri de l’ennui, toute occu- pation est également bonne’ (ii. 245) (‘if one is well fed, well clad, free from boredom, every way of life is equally good’). Yet it had to be faced that this happy state was not definitive. Poverty eventually became unbearable, the ‘clef de l’édifice’ (ii. 247) (‘the keystone to the building’) col- lapsed, and with it all the laws and customs. In any case, Spartan prosperity had been enjoyed at the expense of the helots, ‘les Nègres de la République’ (ii. 409) (‘the slaves of the Republic’). The citizens were free only at the expense of the rest: ‘la prétendue communauté de biens des Spartiates ne pouvait…opérer chez eux le miracle d’une f­élicité universelle’ (ibid.) (‘the so‐called communal property of the Spartans could not … achieve for them the miracle of universal felicity’). The pursuit of happiness must, alas!, be carried on by different means, in a vastly different world. Yet Sparta remains for Helvétius a magnificent model of political equality, to challenge the spectre of despotism in the world around him. 26.6  The French Revolution On the eve of the Revolution the abbé Barthélemy published a formidably erudite work of historical fiction, the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce (1788), which proved a great success. The work is an unconditional apology for Sparta, a city bent only on peace and justice, and for its great legislator. The huge popularity the book enjoyed is symp- tomatic of a new mood which was to gather force with the fall of the Bastille. At about the same time appeared a treatise violently attacking Sparta, Cornelius de Pauw’s Recherches philosophiques sur les Grecs, which sees the city‐state as a purely military society, driven by greed and malice. But it was the publication by the abbé Jean‐Jacques Barthélemy which took the public accolade; opinion was ready for a sympathetic review of how Sparta could fit the Revolutionary cause. The Revolutionary years up to Thermidor and the fall of Robespierre witness this wave of enthusiasm in France for Sparta, recalled by such leaders as Louis de Saint‐Just and, pre‐eminently, Maximilien de Robespierre. At first, as Rosso points out, ‘Sparte ne reste qu’un ornement ponctuel’ (424) (‘Sparta is no more than an isolated ornament’). It is only with the establishment of the Convention and the outbreak of war (1792) that a more radical national mood fully invokes the Lykourgan sense of patriotism, as the Revolutionary leaders seek a new source of legitimate authority; but even then Spartan sentiments are far from universally endorsed. Robespierre derives his admiration for the ancient republic from his more intense attraction to Rousseau as author of the two Discours and the Contrat social. For him Sparta was, in its glorious period, a democracy, and ‘le refuge par excellence de la vertu’ (ibid., 437) (‘the outstanding refuge of virtue’). So the newly‐born French republic must regenerate mankind, as Lykourgos had done. Furthermore, frugality is of its essence and the sole path to happiness, seeing that wealth engenders only corruption. Such was the message preached by Robespierre in the hun- dreds of political speeches which he tirelessly made during these tumultuous years. In his

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 681 own words, ‘Sparte brille comme un éclair dans des ténèbres immenses’ (Report to the Convention, 7 May 1794: cf. H. Morel, 308) (‘Sparta shines like a lightning‐flash amid vast darknesses’). However, Robespierre is by no means an unconditional supporter of Sparta. He views Revolutionary France as superior to every model from Antiquity. Nor does Rousseau’s hatred of luxury persuade him, any more than Rousseau himself, to espouse land‐sharing. What particularly attracts Robespierre is Lykourgos’ enterprise to infuse a new love of nationhood in his nation. As the political tension mounts to its climax, Robespierre is persuaded to equate ‘virtue’ with ‘terror’, a far cry indeed from the conventional image of Spartan ideals. But he is impressed, like many before him, by Lykourgos’ system of public education. In this his enthusiasm is shared by Saint‐Just, who goes further than Robespierre in contemplating the possibility of land‐shares. But by the time of his death in 1794, Saint‐Just was moving towards Athenian ideas. In any event, his downfall along with that of Robespierre signals the end of imitating Spartan philosophies in any shape or form; and with the arrival of Napoleon, Sparta becomes a distant memory (cf. Rosso, 490–502). As Victor Hugo put it, ‘Ce siècle avait deux ans! Rome remplaçait Sparte’, (Les feuilles d’automne: Rosso, 490). (‘This century was two years old! Rome was replac- ing Sparta’). This of course was not republican Rome, but the Roman Empire, revered by Napoleon. Sparta ceases to be an ideological football, becoming instead the object of impartial scholarly research. 26.6.1  Post‐revolution The debate over Sparta had been a new form of the Battle between the Ancients and the Moderns, between the defenders of civic patriotism and agrarian ideals on the one side and the upholders of individual liberties and a commercially‐based society on the other. After Thermidor, the Spartan ideals had become discredited by their association with blood‐letting. (Nazism was to discredit Sparta similarly in post‐1945 Germany.) The coup de grâce was effectively applied by Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) in a lecture delivered in Paris in 1819 (De la liberté chez les modernes). Constant established the distinction between pro‐ and anti‐Sparta in lucidly simple terms as between two concepts of liberty: popular self‐government, and private independence. In this alternative, he argued that any attempt to revive the ancient form of liberty could lead only to political brutality. Spartan patriotism would always risk veer- ing into xenophobia. But Constant also warns against the opposite danger, that, absorbed in the pursuit of our particular interests, we might renounce too easily our share in political power and the absolute necessity of justice. So he calls for a renaissance of the public spirit within liberal principles, steering a course between the loss of civic respon- sibility and an excess of politicization. For, in this view, limited government and self‐ government are mutually reinforcing. Constant felt some admiration for Rousseau’s attack on the Ancien Régime, but he also thought that that attack had failed to give a sufficient place to the role of the opposition. Even so, the idea of Sparta lived on into the nineteenth century, albeit in restricted form, appropriated by Right‐Wing and Socialist thinkers alike. Joseph de Maistre (1753– 1821), a noted Catholic Royalist, admired the martial vigour of the ancient city.

682 Haydn Mason A  similar devotion to Church and country informs Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) a century later, with specific attention given in Un voyage à Sparte (1905), following on his travels in Greece. Rejecting the admiration for Athenian rationality and justice shown by Ernest Renan (1823–92) in his Prière sur l’Acropole, Barrès discovers an extraordinary national energy in Sparta, born of its eugenic principles, which chimed well with his p­ rofoundly nationalist opinions, particularly with regard to his native Lorraine, occupied by Germany after the defeat of 1870. Such views, however, were more common in German literature from the nineteenth century on, culminating in the Nazi regime. On the Left, Emile de Laveleye (1822–92), an ardent Christian Socialist, admired Spartan land‐sharing in his De la propriété (1874) amongst other works. This aroused a riposte from Fustel de Coulanges (1822–92) who, in his Etude sur la propriété à Sparte (1880), denounced Spartan egalitarianism, maintaining that Lycurgus had inclined less to communist principles than to dictatorial methods (Christesen (2012)). In the twentieth century, Athens as the exemplar of freedom comes to dominate. One might suitably conclude this survey with Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), hero of World War I, defender of Alfred Dreyfus and ardent advocate of democratic self‐ government. Clemenceau saw collectivist thinking as a betrayal of individualism, the negation of the Rights of Man and 1789. The great achievement of Athens was to have developed a clear concept of personal values. A supporter of Sparta in the 1880s, Clemenceau evolved into a fervent advocate of Athens, his views only strengthened by the patriotic defence of France that the World War had nurtured. Thus the locus classicus of the debate on Sparta is the period of conflict in the eigh- teenth century, as a system of government increasingly wavered and eventually fell. Well before Constant’s lecture, Montesquieu had clearly discerned the political change taking place: Les politiques grecs, qui vivaient dans un gouvernement populaire, ne reconnaissaient d’autre force qui pût les soutenir que celle de la vertu. Ceux d’aujourd’hui ne parlent que de manufactures, de commerce, de finances, de richesses et de luxe même. (iii. 3) Greek politicians, living under popular government, recognized no other sustaining force than virtue. Today’s politicians speak only of manufactures, trade, finance, wealth and even luxury. The rights of the individual in relation to government were being increasingly debated in the period. Diderot’s Encyclopédie article ‘Autorité politique’ is a classic statement on the subject: ‘Aucun homme n’a reçu de la nature le droit de commander aux autres. La  liberté est un présent du ciel.’ (‘No man has received from nature the right to command others. Liberty is a gift from heaven.’) Yet total equality was not possible in the modern world. Even Jaucourt, fervent admirer of Sparta, had to concede that: ‘je connais trop la nécessité des conditions différentes, des grades, des honneurs, des ­distinctions, des prérogatives, des subordinations, qui doivent régner dans tous les gou- vernements’ (‘I know only too well the need for different conditions, grades, honours, distinctions, prerogatives, subordinations, which must hold sway in all governments’). But many were appalled by a society based on privilege and consequent social estrangement. Should not all honours be based on purely personal merit? Should concern for the public good not precede all thoughts of gain? Did not the manifold examples of injustice, already intolerable, threaten a decline into tyranny? Were there practical alternatives to a system of Divine Right monarchy? The diverse opinions about Sparta were embedded in

The Literary Reception of Sparta in France 683 this larger discussion, which would reach its conclusion with the fall of the Bastille. An understanding of pagan antiquity was essential to a Christian but increasingly secular society; and of that pagan antiquity Sparta was a vital and prominent part. NOTES 1 Rosso (2005) 142. This is the most complete work on the subject. Rawson (1969) also remains important. 2 This remark may appear mystifying, unless one remembers that Rousseau is making a distinc- tion between ‘honesty’ in the sense of ‘decency’, such as existed in contemporary Geneva, and the morality of ancient Sparta, which supplemented that ethic with the extra dimension of pro‐active ‘vertu’. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. PRE‐1800 Bayle, P. (1697), Dictionnaire historique et critique. Rotterdam. Bodin, J. (1580), Les six livres de la république. Lyon. Bossuet, J.‐B. (1862–3), Œuvres complètes. Limoges. Chastellux, F.‐J., marquis de (1822), De la félicité publique (ed. A. de Chastellux). Paris. Constant, B. (1980), De la liberté chez les modernes. Paris. Diderot, D. (1875–7), Œuvres complètes (ed. J. Assézat and M. Tourneux). Paris. Diderot, D. (1955–70), Correspondance (ed. G. Roth and J. Varloot). Paris. Diderot, D. and D’Alembert, Le Rond, eds (1751–72), Encyclopédie des sciences, des arts et des ­métiers. Paris. Fénelon, F. de Salignac de La Mothe (1820–30), Œuvres de Fénelon. Versailles and Paris. Helvétius, C.A. (1773), De l’homme. London. Helvétius, C.A. (1973), De l’esprit (ed. F. Châtelet). Paris. Mably, G.B., abbé de (1795), Sur la théorie du pouvoir politique (ed. P. Friedmann). Paris. Mably, G.B., abbé de (1796), Œuvres complètes. Lyon. Mably, G.B., abbé de (1798), Œuvres posthumes. Paris. Montaigne, M.E. de (1580), Essais. Bordeaux. Montesquieu, C.L. de Secondat, baron de (1961), De l’esprit des lois (ed. G. Truc). Paris. Rollin, C. (1883–4), Traité des études (ed. M. Letronne). Paris. Rousseau, J.‐J. (1959–95), Œuvres complètes. Paris. Rousseau, J.‐J. (1964), Les Confessions (ed. J. Voisine). Paris. Rousseau, J.‐J. (1965–96), Correspondance complète (ed. R.A. Leigh). Geneva and Oxford. Rousseau, J.‐J. (1972), Du contrat social (ed. R. Grimsley). Paris. Veiras, D. (1716), Histoire des Sévarambes. Amsterdam. Voltaire, F.M. Arouet de (1877–85), Œuvres complètes (ed. L. Moland). Paris. Voltaire, F.M. Arouet de (1964), Lettres philosophiques (ed. G. Lawson). Paris. Voltaire, F.M. Arouet de (1968–), Complete Works (ed. T. Besterman et al.). Geneva and Oxford. B. POST‐1800 Baker, K.M. (1990), Inventing the French Revolution. Cambridge. Cartledge, P. (2001), Spartan Reflections. London.

684 Haydn Mason Cartledge, P. (2002), The Spartans. London. Christesen, P. (2012), ‘Treatments of Spartan Land‐Tenure in 18th‐ and 19th‐Century France: from François Fénelon to Fustel de Coulanges’ in Hodkinson and Macgregor Morris, eds, 165–230. Cronk, N. (1999), ‘The Epicurean Spirit: Champagne and the Defence of Poetry in Voltaire’s Le Mondain’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 371: 53–80. Figueira, T.J. (ed.), Spartan Society. Swansea. Galliani, R. (1971), ‘Mably et Voltaire’, Dix‐huitième Siècle 3, 181–94. Ganzin, M., ed. (1996), L’influence de l’antiquité sur la pensée politique européenne. Aix and Marseille. Grell, C. (1995), Le dix‐huitième siècle et l’antiquité en France 1680–1789, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 330–1, 2 vols. Oxford. Guerci, L. (1979), Libertà degli antiche e libertà dei moderni: Sparta, Atene e i ‘philosophes’ nella Francia del Settecento. Naples. Haechler, J. (1995), L’Encyclopédie de Diderot et de … Jaucourt: Essai biographique sur le chevalier de Jaucourt. Paris. Harrow, S. and Unwin, T., eds, Joie de Vivre in French Literature and Culture. Amsterdam and New York. Hodkinson, S. (2000), Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. London and Swansea. Hodkinson, S. and Macgregor Morris, I., eds (2012), Sparta in Modern Thought. Swansea. Holmes, S. (1984), Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism. New Haven. Macgregor Morris, I. (2004), ‘The Paradigm of Democracy: Sparta in Enlightenment Thought’, in Figueira, ed., 339–62. Mason, H. (1978), ‘Voltaire and Luxury’, Studi filosofici 2: 183–201. Mason, H. (2009), ‘The State of Happiness? Ancient Sparta and the French Enlightenment’, in Harrow and Unwin, eds, 177–91. Morel, H. (1996), ‘Le poids de l’antiquité sur la Révolution française’, in Ganzin, ed., 295–316. Morize, A. (1909), L’apologie du luxe au XVIIIe siècle et ‘Le Mondain’ de Voltaire. Paris. Ollier, F. (1973), Le mirage spartiate. New York. Paradiso, A. and Canfora, L. (1992), Pierre Bayle: Sparta nel ‘Dizionario’, Palermo. Pocock, J.G.A. (1975), The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton. Rawson, E. (1969), The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford. Rosso, M. (2005), La renaissance des institutions de Sparte dans la pensée française (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles), Aix and Marseille. Shklar, J.N. (1966), ‘Rousseau’s Two Models: Sparta and the Age of Gold’, Political Science Quarterly 81: 25–51. Strugnell, A. (1973), Diderot’s Politics. The Hague. Touchefeu, Y. (1995), L’Antiquité et le christianisme dans la pensée de Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 372, Oxford. Trousson, R. (1969), ‘Diderot helléniste’, Diderot Studies 12: 141–326. Vidal‐Naquet, P. (1990), La démocratie grecque vue d’ailleurs. Paris. Vlassopoulos, K. (2012), ‘Sparta and Rome in early modern thought’, in Hodkinson and Macgregor Morris, eds, 43–69. Wright, I.K. (l997), A Classical Republican in Eighteenth‐Century France: The Political Thought of Mably. Stanford.

CHAPTER 27 Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe Stefan Rebenich In the last days of the Second World War, amidst the bloodstained collapse of the Third Reich, a fatally injured ex‐sixth‐former is brought to an emergency hospital close to the front line. Hastily carried through narrow corridors and crowded halls into the operating theatre, the wounded boy realizes that he is back in his school which only three months before sent him out to die in a futile fight. He recognizes the place from a truncated epigram which he had himself written seven times on the dirty blackboard of the ‘good old Humanist gymnasium’: ‘Traveller, if you come to Spa …’ (Wanderer kommst du nach Spa …). The German writer Heinrich Böll (1917–85), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972, published this story soon after the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (Böll 1950). He echoed the National Socialist use of a famous epitaph attributed to the Greek poet Simonides which glorifies the battle at Thermopylai fought in 480 bc by Leonidas and his brave comrades against the Persian host: Ὠ ξεῖν’, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι. (Hdt. 7.228) Foreigner, go tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here obedient to their commands. The Nazi elite had abused Simonides’ words and invoked supposed Spartan ‘virtues’ to drive army corps to their doom. In the last days of the battle of Stalingrad, the Reichs‐ Field Marshal Hermann Göring reminded the troops of the hopeless fight of Leonidas A Companion to Sparta, Volume II, First Edition. Edited by Anton Powell. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

686 Stefan Rebenich and his 300 comrades, pointed to this heroic example of ‘highest soldiership’ and p­ redicted a new reading of the epitaph: ‘If you come to Germany, tell them you have seen us fighting in Stalingrad, obedient to the law, the law for the security of our people’ (Kommst Du nach Deutschland, so berichte, du habest uns in Stalingrad kämpfen sehen, wie das Gesetz, das Gesetz für die Sicherheit unseres Volkes, es befohlen hat) (Watt (1985) 874; Albertz (2006) 296–7). On 20 April 1945, the cream of the Nazi regime met for the last time in Berlin to com- memorate the Führer’s birthday. It was a sad celebration in the air‐raid shelter underneath the Reichskanzlei, since the Red Army was inexorably marching on the capital. Hitler was contemplating retreat to the Alps, but then decided to stay in Berlin. ‘A desperate fight will always be remembered as a worthy example’, he said to Martin Bormann. ‘Just think of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans’ (Bormann (1981) 51; Fest (1973) 989). In the immediate post‐war years, Heinrich Böll, in his short story, did not eternalize the heroic self‐sacrifice of brave soldiers, but epitomized the interior monologue of a boy with torn‐off limbs and a bleeding body. Böll aptly chose the epigram – appropriately broken – as a symbol of a failed political morality and education, which has resulted in the useless destruction of the young. The comfortless fragment crystallized the rejection of classical education by German intellectuals and authors who, after thirteen years of Nazi barbarism and the holocaust, could no longer believe in the force of the humanist school training. Hardly any other ancient polity has been more admired or rejected in Germany than Sparta. From the revival of classical studies in the Renaissance until present times we can identify antithetic models of perception, which originate in the traditional dichotomy between Athens and Sparta. The latter evokes images and stories completely different from those associated with the Athenian democracy. German writers and artists praised the harsh Spartan education and the austere Spartan way of living, while philosophers and historians were intrigued by the mixed constitution and the class system of society. The conceptualization of Spartan history in general, and the interpretation of the battle at Thermopylai in particular, was determined by contemporary political, aesthetic, anthropological and philosophical ideas and ideologies. 27.1  Sparta Rediviva: The Early Modern Period The recovery of Greek and Latin authors in the Renaissance instigated a new interest in Spartan history. The works of Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch underpinned the discourse on the ideal state and the best education (Rawson (1969) 130–57). Martin Luther, the German reformer, referred to the toughness of the Spartan ‘ironmen’ (homines ferrei) (Weimarer Ausgabe, Schriften, vol. xliv, p. 564). More influential, however, was the emphasis in the context of republicanism on the Spartan ephors, who were understood as a controlling body limiting the kings’ power. In particular the Monarchomachs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who adopted Calvinist and, later, Lutheran doc- trines, integrated the ephors into their theories of tyrannicide and the right of rebellion. The tradition that in Sparta the kings exchanged oaths with the ephors each month, the kings swearing to rule according to the polity’s established laws, the ephors swearing on behalf of the polity to accept the king’s outstanding position so long as he observed the

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 687 laws (cf. Xen. Lak. Pol. 15.7), could be interpreted as a contract; whenever a monarch did not abide by the contract, the subjects were allowed to overthrow his government (Nippel (2008) 98–101). In Germany, the Calvinist jurist Johannes Althusius (1563– 1638), who was influenced by the Monarchomachs, systematized the diversification of competences between the monarch, the highest representative of the community, and the ephors, the second highest representative. He argued that the right of rebellion and the tyrannicide was institutionalized in the ephorate (cf. Rawson (1969) 166–7). In the eighteenth century, all over Europe Spartan history was connected with the ideals of liberty, virtue and patriotism. Republican debates about civic participation and political representation relied upon the Spartan model (MacGregor Morris (2004)). English and French literature had a strong impact on the reception of Sparta in early modern Germany. Richard Glover’s famous poem on Leonidas, composed in 1737, was translated into German four times, and two English editions were published to celebrate the Spartan king for having died for the salvation of his native land. The first German version appeared in Zurich in 1766; the preface was written by the historian and ­prospective publisher Johann Heinrich Füssli (1745–1832), who had studied with Jean‐ Jacques Rousseau in Geneva and travelled with Winckelmann through Italy; he was a member of the Zurich youth movement that attacked the moral corruption of the political elite and the commercialization of public life, advocated republican virtues and civil liberty and argued with examples derived from ancient and Swiss history. Füssli used Glover’s Leonidas to encourage the young to repel oligarchic oppression and to promote the moral and political modernization of state and society (Rawson (1969) 308; MacGregor Morris (2000) 211). Already two years earlier, in 1764, the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), then living in Zurich, had written a play entitled Agis about the Hellenistic King Agis IV, who ruled at a time of domestic crisis, tried to reform the state, but failed and was killed by his opponents. For Pestalozzi Agis stood for the Spartan youth, and in restoring the alleged Lykourgan order he wanted to overcome the severe crisis of his city and establish an egalitarian community among the citizens. The tragedy is a masterpiece of radical republican rhetoric written in support of the Zurich youth movement; it impugned the rotten elite, lamented the decline of patriotism, deplored the attrition of civil liberty, and ­culminated in a fiery vindication of tyrannicide. In 1745, the German author Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) composed his play Agis König zu Sparta (‘Agis, King of Sparta’), which heavily relied upon Plutarch’s Life of Agis, followed the laws of French classicism, exemplified the rules by which a perfect playwright should be bound and was meant to serve the purpose of the German stage. In his play, Gottsched encapsulated his criticism of contemporary abso- lutism; but in contrast to Pestalozzi he did not plead for far‐reaching political, economic and social reforms, but propagated the young king’s moral superiority, i.e. the idea of a ruler who is legitimized through moral perfection. Agis is to be read as a rather tradi- tional and sometimes even tedious work offering moral instruction for rulers and t­ransmitting Gottsched’s concept of political ethics. In the age of Enlightenment, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) developed the most influential theory of classicism, which advocated the idea that art has a fundamental and moral significance for life itself. He celebrated the edle Einfalt und stille Größe (‘noble simplicity and solemn grandeur’) of Greek works of art and demanded the

688 Stefan Rebenich Nachahmung (‘imitation’) of the Greeks in order to become great oneself. Winckelmann thought that in Sparta, due to the simple and natural way of life, the normative Greek concept of beauty had been unfolded which was the prerequisite for the perfection of Greek art. Although Sparta was described favorably, he gave his highest approval to the Athenian art which emerged after the fall of the tyrants during the rise of democracy. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) admired the political virtue and patriotism of the Spartans. But they also criticized the Lykourgan constitution and praised the enlight- ened citizenship of Athens. In an essay on Lykourgos and Solon, Schiller distanced him- self from the Lykourgan order, because it failed to meet the proper end of mankind (Zweck der Menschheit). ‘Since Lykourgos sacrificed all other qualities to patriotism, the durability of his institutions simply prevented progress and called a halt at immaturity and imperfection’ (Rawson (1969) 313). To Schiller we owe the well‐known German translation of Simonides’ epitaph quoted above (cf. Baumbach (2002)): Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta, verkündige dorten, du habest Uns hier liegen gesehn, wie das Gesetz es befahl. 27.2  The Rise of Altertumswissenschaften: Sparta in the Nineteenth Century About 1800, German writers, artists, scholars and philosophers were more interested in Greece than in Rome. The concentration on the Greeks intended to embrace Greek culture in its complexity and Greek character in its totality. In Germany, the reflexion on Greek history disseminated a new understanding of the notion of Bildung (‘education’) and Wissenschaft (academic study, scholarship, science), but also of nation, state, and society. The Neo‐Humanist ideology focused on the formation of individuality; educa- tion aimed at evolving talents and mastering the world. Under the influence of the French Revolution, ancient Greece became the most exalted historical showcase for reason‐based individuality. The concept of a politically active citizen and the model of a developing bürgerliche Gesellschaft (‘civil society’) was based upon an ideal projection of political activity in the Greek city‐states. This programme, on the one hand, postulated a non‐vocational scholarship and supported the rise of the historical disciplines at German universities, but on the other, it assessed the individual on the basis of cultural abilities, created new strategies of social inclusion and exclusion, and contributed considerably to the homogenization of the German bourgeoisie and to the constitution of a middle‐class mentality (Rebenich (2011)). The new German image of antiquity was characterized by a latent tension between neo-classical aesthetics and enlightening rationalism and wavered between the canonisa- tion of an idealized Greek antiquity and the acceptance of other cultures’ independence. The ‘classical’ German view of antiquity was inspired by Winckelmann, as Goethe’s (1749–1832) famous book on ‘Winckelmann and his century’ (Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert) demonstrated, published in 1805. For the representatives of German c­ lassicism (Weimarer Klassik) Athens was far preferable to Sparta. In Goethe’s Faust II Sparta is just the home of Helen, who symbolizes ideal Greek beauty.

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 689 Athens and Sparta represented the two eternal poles of human development, i.e. enlightenment and patriotism, as Herder already had emphasized. This polarized classification also characterized Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) approach, according to whom Athens was superior to Sparta. In Athens  –  at least in the fifth century bc – democracy, expressing the objective will, guaranteed individual freedom, strong community feeling and the active pursuit of beauty and truth, or in Hegel’s words: freie Individualität and Sittlichkeit. In Sparta, an artificial equality destroyed liberty, while an over‐powerful state suffocated civil responsibility and intellectual life. The Spartan character was shaped by inhuman severity, and the Spartan state was best described as a slave ship. In his lectures on the philosophy of history Hegel dedicated only a marginal note to Leonidas and Thermopylai when describing the Persian War as a battle of Asiatic despotism versus Greek culture and individuality (Sämtliche Werke, vol. xi, Stuttgart 1928, 335–6). Hegel’s dialectic rendering of the two Greek poleis is also to be read as a response to a new understanding of the Spartans proposed by the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) and, above all, by the classicist Karl Otfried Müller (1797–1840). The younger generation of German intellectuals reacted against Weimar classicism. They felt an ever stronger affinity to ancient Greece and struggled to compensate for the bloody consequences of the French Revolution and the national disintegration of Germany. This tradition of German Romanticism, which later became most influential in political theory and classical scholarship, perceived the Dorian tribe as the most authentic of all the Greeks. Sparta was the paradigm for reconstructing the institutions and customs of the older and purer Hellenic past. Hence the Spartans were converted into the Dorians par excellence. In Leonidas’ sacrifice Schlegel recognized not a patriotic deed, but a symbol of the Dorian obedience to law. ‘Their holy death was the pinnacle of all joy’ (Ihr heiliger Tod war der Gipfel aller Freude), he exulted (Kritische Friedrich‐Schlegel–Ausgabe, vol. i, Paderborn/Munich, Vienna 1979, 42). Müller adopted for his Geschichte hellenischer Stämme und Städte (‘History of Hellenic Tribes and Cities’) Schlegel’s concept of tribes (Stämme); part of this never‐­finished enterprise were two volumes on the Dorians (Die Dorier, 1824; 2nd edn 1844; English translation: The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, 2 vols, Oxford 1830). In his most important work Müller wanted to reconstruct the history, the religion, the politics, and the culture of individual Greek peoples. He distinguished the Dorians from the other Greeks and defined Dorian Sparta as a model Greek state, praised the subjection of the individual to the community, and emphasized the conservative orientation of Sparta’s institutions. His romantic idealization was successful in the first place because it echoed the new political feelings of his age, and also because he combined mythology and religion, archaeology and geography, philosophy and philology, political and institu- tional history (Calder and Schlesier, eds (1998)). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an aestheticizing enthusiasm for Greek antiquity, rational criticism as already developed by the Enlightenment, the apotheosis of the creative individual and an educational concept borrowed from Neo‐Humanism formed the basis for the interpretation of ancient Sparta. A new type of classical studies (Altertumswissenschaften) was committed to understanding and explaining the ancient world, and the scope of the material eligible for scrutiny was redefined; no longer was it to be solely a matter of textual evidence, but the totality of Greek and Roman remains

690 Stefan Rebenich was now eligible to be examined by the historical discipline of philology. The first modern, one may say ‘critical’, history was written by Johann Caspar Friedrich Manso (1760–1826), a Prussian schoolteacher and patriot (Sparta. Ein Versuch zur Aufklärung der Geschichte und Verfassung dieses Staates [‘Sparta: An attempt to Illuminate her History and Constitution’], 3 vols, 1800–1805). The author integrated the enlightened rationalism of the eighteenth century and the political liberalism of the nineteenth; Sparta was meant to be an instructive example for a Prussia fragmented as Greece in antiquity had been. But Manso did not present a harmonizing and idealized image of Sparta. On the one hand, he praised the perfect democracy the Spartan citizens could enjoy, on the other hand he severely criticized the most appalling despotism the helots had to suffer. Classical scholarship received an unparalleled impetus in the nineteenth century, which brought about internal differentiation and specialization. Ancient history split from both universal history and classical philology. Archaeology was founded as an independent discipline. The first systematic archaeological campaigns and an intensified Quellenforschung gradually transformed the picture of Sparta. A long series of ‘Histories of Greece’ tried to reintegrate the fragments generated by ever more specialized academic research. The historical narratives were based upon detailed source criticism and hermeneutic under- standing (Rebenich (2010)). There were, of course, different shades and emphases. Most German historians defended a pro‐Athenian perspective and were hostile to Sparta, as Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831) in his Lectures on Ancient History. Rather influential was the History of Greece (1846–1856) in twelve volumes by the London ex-banker George Grote (1794–1871), which was soon translated into German (1850–59). ‘Under Grote’s archonship a new era started’ in German‐speaking Europe, since ‘all […] studies on Greek history of the last fifty years of the nineteenth century are either for or against Grote’ (Momigliano (1955) 225). In accordance with Perikles’ funeral oration, which Thucydides, the greatest of Greek historians, reported, the most liberal of Victorian his- torians praised Athens and argued that the troubles of Athens originated not in too much democracy but in too little. Grote showed little sympathy for Sparta, criticized the educational system and the suppression of individual freedom, and questioned the equal division of land and property. Grote’s anti‐Laconian scepticism had a strong impact on the German perception of the ancient polity (Cartledge (2014)). Ernst Curtius (1814–1896), a pupil of K.O. Müller’s who later became Professor of Classical Archaeology at Berlin, wrote a somewhat rhetorical History of Greece (Griechische Geschichte, 3 vols, 1857–1861; 6th edn, 1887–1889), which was very popular among general readers in the nineteenth century while establishing a close relationship between classical Greece and contemporary Germany. Although Curtius formulated a moderate criticism of the Athenian democracy, he revered Perikles and the Athenian culture of the fifth century bc. The Spartan constitution, on the other hand, reflected the outstanding prudence of Lykourgos, but the military character of Spartan life caused narrow‐minded- ness, stiffness and rigidity, so that the city‐state was not able to unify Greece in the fourth century. For Curtius, Sparta could only take without giving anything. She knew per- fectly how to suppress free states with brute force and establish oligarchic governments. But Leonidas and his fighters were transformed into the embodiment of self‐sacrificing courage; their tomb was, according to Curtius, ‘an everlasting monument of heroic civic virtue’ (Griechische Geschichte, vol. ii, 5th edn, 70f.). The historian exemplifies the

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 691 reinterpretation of Thermopylai in the context of nationalism. Already in 1812, the poet Theodor Körner had praised the ‘bloody valley of Thermopylai’ (das blut’ge Tal der Thermopylen) to encourage his compatriots in their fight against Napoleon. While Georg Busolt (1850–1920), in his erudite but unexciting History of Greece (Griechische Geschichte, 4 vols, 1885–1904), used contemporary political terminology to describe Athens as ‘liberal’ and Sparta as ‘conservative’, Karl Julius Beloch (1854–1929), an ardent nonconformist and bête noire of the academic establishment (Polverini, ed. (1990)), disliked the polis on the Eurotas and deconstructed many certainties of classical scholarship. Lykourgos never lived, Beloch argued, and the Great Rhetra was a later invention. He also made a clean sweep of the legend of Thermopylai. His de‐mystification resulted in the conclusion: ‘The catastrophe at Thermopylai had only one advantage for the Greek cause: it liberated the Greek armed forces from an incompetent commander’ (Griechische Geschichte, vol. ii, 2nd edn, 104f.). Most of Beloch’s colleagues were indig- nant. Eduard Meyer (1855–1930), for example, who since 1902 had held the Chair of Ancient History at Berlin, refused any serious discussion of Beloch’s position. Instead, he celebrated ex cathedra Leonidas’ heroic death, which was ‘a shining example showing the nation the way it had to go; this example made men realize more deeply and more vividly than any words that the only choice was to gain victory or to die with honour’ (Geschichte des Altertums, vol. iv.1, 3rd edn, 1939, 361). The crisis that spread through the various fields of classical studies at the end of the nineteenth century had an effect on the perception of Sparta. Critical voices denounced classical studies that in their eyes only produced pale imitation and were in danger of fragmentation. Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) discussed the question of the correlation between historical research and living reality. They criticized the legitimacy of a classical discipline that saw its purpose in scholarly productivity and undermined the normative function of antiquity. Both advocated new approaches to the ancient world, which strongly influenced later perceptions of Greek and Roman history. Although they emphasized positive elements of Sparta, they did not admire its polity. Jacob Burckhardt, in his Griechische Kulturgeschichte (1898–1902), described Sparta as a nearly perfect Greek polis, admired the ephorate and extolled the homogeneity of the leading aristocratic class, but was full of distate for the educational system and its inherent brutality, denounced the concurrent oppression and exploitation of perioikoi and helots and accused the Spartans of blind egoism in the Persian War. They had deliberately sacrificed Leonidas so that Sparta could retain her honour and protect the main force of her army from being defeated. Nietzsche, following K.O. Müller, ­idealized the Dorian conditioning of Sparta, but he distanced himself from cruel features of society and the harsh education. New theoretical approaches were developed in leftist philosophy, where a sociocritical reading of antiquity was postulated. Marxist and socialist authors were fascinated by the egalitarian community in Sparta and discussed the form of property in the Dorian state and the organization of public life. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) discussed ancient Sparta in his treatise The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), as did the Marxist politician August Bebel (1840–1913), one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party in Germany. The latter also noted that ‘the free condition of women under the mother‐right promoted her beauty, raised her pride, her dignity and her ­self‐ reliance’ (Women Under Socialism, New York 1904, 42). Any such attempts at politi- cizing ancient Sparta were ardently rebutted by the conservative historian Robert von

692 Stefan Rebenich Pöhlmann (1852–1914), who, in his History of Ancient Communism and Socialism (Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und Sozialismus, 2 vols, 1893–1901) introduced a modern terminology into the writing of ancient history, but tried to prove that there is no evidence whatsoever for communist ideas in ancient Greece. Although he detested social reforms and economic equality, he closely analysed the ‘social revolution’ of the Hellenistic kings Agis and Cleomenes, whom he stigmatized as naive romantics who had failed because they ignored the harsh limits of reality. 27.3  The Hellas of the German People: The Image of Sparta from 1900 to 1933 The First World War intensified the crisis of classical studies. The military failure of the German Kaiserreich and the democratic revolution in November 1918 had deep conse- quences for the subsequent political, social and intellectual development of Germany. The old system had collapsed, a new one was to be built up. In this time of transforma- tion, historians and classicists categorically demanded a prominent position for their subjects as leading disciplines (Leitdisziplinen) to give guidance and orientation to the masses. The majority of university teachers did not identify with the Weimar Republic but advocated an anti‐parliamentary, autocratic system and glorified the Empire. At the same time, a large number of new approaches attempted to overcome the ethical relativism that was associated with classical and historical studies (Flashar (1995)). The var- ious disciplines were forced to confront the urgent question of how to bridge the gap bet- ween Wissenschaft and life. The majority of the concepts developed under this leitmotif shared a desire to re‐establish antiquity as a meaningful historical epoch but rejected a return to traditional scholarship. Classical philologists remembered Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘philology of the future’ and defended him against Wilamowitz’ verdict. Adepts of the Stefan George circle searched for ‘inner form’ and ‘spiritual’ substance. Historical under- standing of individuality and the ‘spirit’ was demanded in various studies. The criticism levelled against the supposed degeneration of scholarship and against the cult of individu- alistic subjectivity increased in the 1920s and 1930s. A deep‐rooted sense of crisis, the rivalry between the prevailing scientific and political, anti‐democratic and anti‐parliamen- tarian ideologies and the declining significance of antiquity caused some scholars to absorb nationalistic and even National Socialist ideas in their search for a new image of antiquity. The majority of German philhellenes of the nineteenth century had admired Athens: six years after the proclamation of the German Empire (Kaiserreich), in 1877, Ulrich von Wilamowitz‐Moellendorff (1848–1931) exalted the glory of the Athenian empire (‘Von des Attischen Reiches Herrlichkeit’, in Reden und Vorträge, Berlin 1901, 27–64), derided the intellectual culture in Sparta and denied any affinity between the Dorian and the German people. After the First World War, Sparta was rediscovered and became one of the most popular paradigms of classical antiquity, not only among professional historians. Political opposition against the democratic system of the Weimar Republic focused on the moral nobility and racial superiority of the aristocratic society of Sparta. The Athenian democracy, the cultural and intellectual centre of the enlightened Ionians, was obsolete. Instead Sparta was integrated into different models of a utopian state which were based upon anti‐modernism, anti‐parliamentarism and Social Darwinism. All these models shared the impetus to articulate a political and cultural critique of the present.

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 693 In the German Youth Movement (Jugendbewegung), the leader of which had returned disillusioned from the war, Nietzsche was read, archaic Greece rediscovered and heroic Spartan life revered. Some groups and associations yearned for the resurrection of German youth in the spirit of Dorian youth and idealized a competitive male community which practised eugenic selection and pederastic sexuality. The Hellas of the German people was sought under the olive trees of Sparta (Cancik (2001) 121). Many believed that in historical Sparta, that object of yearning, harmoniously educated Spartiates were characterized not just by physical prowess, but also by highest racial and moral standards. Spartan homosexuality, anti‐feminism, and heroism were also topics German authors dealt with. They turned to Sparta as an example of Dorian manhood and elitism. Here Theodor Däubler’s (1876–1934) essay on Sparta, written in 1923, should be men- tioned, which praised the fictitious homoerotic couples killed at Thermopylai for the sake of their country. Some years earlier, Erich Bethe (1863–1940), in his controversial article on Doric pederasty (‘Die dorische Knabenliebe – ihre Ethik und Ideale’, Rheinisches Museum 62 (1907) 438–475) had introduced this topic into scholarly discourse and struggled to overcome grand simplifications such as that of Karl Otfried Müller. The latter had ­suggested that the Dorians, in early times, considered an intimate friendship bet- ween males as necessary for their education, whereas Knabenschänderei (’pederasty’) was an un‐Hellenic habit introduced from Lydia (Die Dorier, vol. ii, 1824, 296). Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), a doctor of medicine and an influential poet, claimed lyrically in his essay on the ‘The World of the Dorians. An Investigation of the Relationship between Art and Power’ (Die Dorische Welt. Eine Untersuchung über die Beziehung von Kunst und Macht), that the Dorian’s ‘dream is reproduction and ever‐lasting youth, equality with the gods, strong will, strongest aristocratic belief in the race, care for the entire tribe’, and ‘Doric is pederasty […], Doric is love of fighting, such couples stood like a wall and fell’ (Das Hauptwerk, vol. ii, 1980, 151). Benn’s essay adopted categories of Nietzsche and Burckhardt and propagated a twisted image of Sparta, saluting Apollo as a quasi‐Fascist god and Sparta as the prototype of the new National Socialist community. But it was not only poets who adored the Soldatenstaat (‘soldier’s state’) and the Männerlager (‘men’s camp’) on the Eurotas. Sparta seems to have been a model for a whole generation of academics who were shaped by the terrible experience of the trenches in the First World War and could not accept the military defeat of Germany. At the same time, the battle at Thermopylai and the famous epigram were integrated in the political cult of the dead (Albertz (2006) 277–92). The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge), founded in 1919, transformed the historical event into a ubiquitous example of patriotism. The slogan ‘obedient to the orders’ reflected the code of honour of common soldiers and classically‐trained officers, who were ready to die for the sake of their fatherland. On numerous cemeteries com- memorating the dead of the First World War Simonides’ saying, in the original Greek and in German translation, gave sense to the doom of thousands and thousands of German soldiers. But the Spartan heroism of the perished regiments was for males only. It glorified the perfection of man’s existence in fighting and dying. At German and Austrian schools, too, the brave Spartan fighters were present. In the Bundesgymnasium Feldkirch in the western Austrian state of Voralberg, seventy‐two alumni and two schoolteachers, who were all killed in the First World War, were remem- bered on a stone tablet which was dedicated in 1922 and stressed the obedience of the Spartan soldiers who died at Thermopylai (see Figures  27.1a and 27.1b). The Greek

(a) Figures 27.1a and 27.1b  Memorial to the dead of the First World War, with Simonides’ lines commemorating the Spartan dead of Thermopylai. Courtesy of Gymnasium Feldkirch, Rebberggasse (Austria): photo Hans‐Peter Schuler.

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 695 epigram of Simonides was engraved underneath two figures. The stony scenery depicted a wanderer with pole and bag who listens to the message of the dying Spartan. The expiring soldier lies on the ground, holding his sword in his right fist, while, with his left hand, he seems to point to his dead fellow‐combatants. At the inauguration ceremony the director of the gymnasium drew attention to the ancient hero serving as a paragon of ­patriotism and dutifulness. In scholarship, however, the discourse about Sparta in the 1920s and 1930s was mainly influenced by the accounts of two ancient historians, namely Victor Ehrenberg (1891–1976) and Helmut Berve (1896–1979). Ehrenberg, a liberal Jew, had studied classics at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. In his research, he combined tradi- tional Quellenforschung and historical interpretations with new methods and approaches. Already as a young scholar he tried to synthesize political history and the history of ideas. He was influenced by his teachers Eduard Meyer and Wilhelm Weber, and by Jacob Burckhardt and Max Weber. Like so many other German classicists of the time, he was attracted by the male community of the Spartan citizens. In 1925 Ehrenberg published his book on Sparta, Neugründer des Staates, in which he developed the famous theory of a single Spartan legislator who in the 6th century bc refounded the polis on the Eurotas and, at the same time, attributed his legislative reforms to the statesman Lykourgos. He also wrote the historical part of the Pauly‐Wissowa article on Sparta. There one could read: ‘The one‐­sidedness of this race indicates its greatness. Never again has the ideal of disciplined ­manhood been set down in such purity. But the greatest achievement is that this masculine and soldierly society devotes itself to unrestricted service of the Nomos [“law, custom”], which as incarnation of their state, their religious belief, their customs and tradition is their only sovereign. Only thus was this society able to sacrifice almost entirely its individual existence to the state’ (P‐W iii.A.1, 1929, p. 1383). After the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, Ehrenberg, Professor of Ancient History at the German University in Prague since 1929, felt their impact on the social and intellectual life of Czechoslovakia. His family suffered from the effects of antisemitism, and it eventually became impossible for him to go on teaching at the u­ niversity. In 1939 he decided to emigrate to England. In the same year, in a radio talk in Prague, Ehrenberg sang the palinode of his colourful picture of a ‘totalitarian’ state in antiquity and warned the audience about contemporary representatives of totalitari- anism, who used Sparta as a model for their own inhuman policy (cf. ‘A Totalitarian State’, in id., Aspects of the Ancient World, Oxford 1946, 94–104). Ehrenberg’s famous theory of a single Spartan legislator met the immediate disap- proval of Helmut Berve, who held the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Leipzig from 1927. He declared: ‘The strange kosmos and the Spartan spirit […] were not made, but grew from the ultimate, timeless depths of a collective soul (Volksseele) […]’ (Gnomon 1 (1925) 311). Berve formulated his concept of Sparta in the twenties and popularized it in his Greek History (Griechische Geschichte), the first volume of which appeared in 1931. The brilliant and innovative historian successfully introduced the concept of the history of peoples (Volksgeschichte) into the historiography of the Greek world. At the same time, Berve’s view of Sparta depended on the idealizing tradition which derived from Schlegel and Müller and thus advocated a strict dichotomy between Dorians and Ionians. The battle at Thermopylai was the culmination of Doric identity: ‘The Spartans … sacrificed themselves deliberately, not only out of strategic necessity but for the law of Dorian manhood. With good reason they are considered as the true

696 Stefan Rebenich fighters at Thermopylai. They were the ones in whom autonomous Greek man c­ onsciously opposed fate, they were prepared to be defeated but were not prepared to submit themselves to their fate’ (Griechische Geschichte, vol. i, Freiburg im Breisgau 1931, 248–9). Many others besides Berve were influenced by Karl Otfried Müller’s book on Die Dorier. In the 1930s, the subject made a comeback and was now connected to the racial concept advocated by the Nazis (Losemann (1998) 333–8). The classicist Werner Jaeger (1888–1961), who developed a programme of ‘Third Humanism’ (Dritter Humanismus) to preserve the traditional humanistic Gymnasium, advocated the Spartan educational system, which was controlled by the state, praised the ‘ethical greatness of the Dorian people’ and pointed to the sharp distinction between ‘the nature of the Dorians and the Ionians concerning the character of their states’ public life and the spiritual physiognomy of the polis’. He explained that the poet Pindar, who was not a Dorian, represented the archetype ‘of the Hellenic aristocracy of race’ and that ‘the Dorian race gave Pindar his ideal of the blond high‐racial type of man’ (Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen, vol. i, Berlin 1934, 115f. 118. 271). One may add that, in the English version of the book which was published after the author’s emigration to the United States in 1936, some observations have been differ- ently translated: for instance, das Ideal des blonden hochrassigen Menschentypus (‘the ideal of the blond, ethnically‐superior, human type’), which the Dorian race suggested to Pindar, was altered into the ‘ideal of the fair‐haired warrior of proud descent’ (Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. i, Oxford 1939, 81). Jaeger’s concept of παιδεία and his Third Humanism ‘served – in the short run – German philhellenism less by politicizing classical studies than by dehistoricizing the Greeks’ (Marchand (1996) 329) and reflected the aristocratic creed of an elitist scholar, which glorified Sparta as an Aryan‐Nordic warrior state and matched Nazi ideology (von See (2003) 84–8). 27.4  Adolf Hitler’s Sparta: The Dorian Polity in National Socialist Germany National Socialism provides the most striking examples of political promotion and exploitation of the supposedly Spartan way of life. The ancient city was now thought to form an important paradigm for the individual and collective existence of Germans in the future. So it is hardly surprising that already in the 1930s British intellectuals noted anal- ogies between Sparta and Nazi Germany (Hodkinson (2010)). Between the North Sea and the Alps, the Dorian polity was transformed into a utopian model for racist and eugenic projects and for ‘blood and soil’ programmes (D’Onofrio (2007)). Politicians and scholars applauded an effective militarism, the disciplinarian educational system and the subordination of the individual to the state. As major symbol of Spartan ‘virtues’ the myth of Leonidas was exploited in National Socialist Germany. The city state on the Eurotas was integrated into the concept of Nordic world history (Nordische Weltgeschichte) and a pseudo‐scientific biologistic approach propagated close racial relations between Deutschtum and Hellentum (Losemann (2012)). Adolf Hitler approved of Sparta (Näf (1986) 117). His admiration is evident in his written work, but also in some of his public speeches. While spelling Spartiates as

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 697 ‘Spartjaken’, he was fascinated with Spartan birth policy, since ‘the exposure of sick, weak and deformed children, i.e. their eradication, was the best example of the racial policy in the earliest racially pure state’ (G.L. Weinberg, ed., Hitlers Zweites Buch. Ein Dokument aus dem Jahr 1928, Stuttgart 1961, 56). In Sparta, Hitler found the proto- type of a society that executed eugenic selection, the military education of the young generation, the ideal of preserving a small ruling warrior class of best racial quality, and the readiness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the country (Christ (1986) 51; Demandt (2002) 293). In the Second World War the Führer observed that 6000 Spartan families, i.e. a small aristocratic elite, dominated 340,000 slaves; Germany corresponded to the Sparta of the Spartiates, while the helots were foreign peoples who should be enslaved. Thus ancient Sparta, ‘the purest racial state of history’, became an example for the future structure in eastern Europe (Losemann (2007a) 449–50). Although the Nazi leadership propagated rather disparate attitudes towards history, Hitler’s main conviction was never disputed: that the key to world history was the racial question. The Reichsbauernführer (Imperial Farmers’ Leader) and Minister of Agriculture, Richard Walther Darré (1895–1953), saw Sparta as a model for the new state, as he had explained in his book Das Bauerntum als Lebensquell der Nordischen Rasse (‘The Peasantry as the Life‐Source of the Nordic Race’), published in 1929 (Losemann (2017) 175–212). Darré proposed the idea that Sparta was not a state of warriors but rather one of farmers. He thought that the decline of Sparta was not caused by military defeats so much as by the abandonment of Nordic laws which had guaranteed that the Spartans were tenants of inalienable and indivisible state‐owned lots. Economic deterioration started at the moment when individual Spartans were allowed to acquire more than one lot and became large landholders. The process resulted in biological dis- integration, since with the concentration of land the number of births declined, and the decreasing number of children made ‘health‐bringing selection’ impossible (Hodkinson (2000) 14; Losemann (2007b) 310–1). Darré’s views on Spartan land tenure strongly influenced the Nazi Reichserbhofgesetz (Imperial Law of Hereditary Entailment), which, in 1933, introduced state control over peasant farms, interdicted sale, and established single‐heir inheritance (D’Onofrio (1997); Losemann (2005)). Richard Walther Darré’s blood and soil mysticism, and his interpretation of Sparta as an ideal peasant society (Bauernstaat) not only corresponded to the ideology of some members of the Nazi elite, but influenced an academically trained public. In 1937, Hans Lüdemann, a member of Darré’s staff in the Ministry of Agriculture, wrote a book on the peasant state entitled Sparta. Lebensordnung und Schicksal (‘Sparta: Way of Life and Fate’), and in the following years a whole range of monographs discussed ancient Sparta referring to Darré’s theories (Losemann (2007a) 453). But scholarly discourse about Sparta was shaped by Helmut Berve. Although some Nazi bureaucrats had personal res- ervations about Berve’s political loyalty, he identified himself entirely with the ‘national revolution’ of 1933 and strongly influenced the academic development and profile of his discipline in the Third Reich (Losemann (1977); Rebenich (2001)). He became first Dean (1933–5), then Prorector (1936–9) and finally rector magnificus (1940–3) at the university of Leipzig and was appointed Kriegsbeauftragter der deutschen Altertumswissenschaft (War Representative of German Classics). But the historian, who had warmly welcomed the National Socialist re‐evaluation of history, did not hesitate to criticize the eccentric con- cepts of Darré’s lesser followers and other ignorant zealots (cf. Gnomon 17, 1941, 1–11).

698 Stefan Rebenich At the same time he, like Fritz Schachermeyr, Hans Oppermann, Joseph Vogt and others, adopted racist categories, developed by Hans F.K. Günther (1891–1968), the notorious Rasse‐Günther, to interpret ancient history (cf. H.F.K. Günther, Rassengeschichte des h­ ellenischen und römischen Volkes, Munich 1929). In his little book on Sparta, which was aimed at a general audience, published in 1937, reprinted in 1944 and in 1966 (H. Berve, Gestaltende Kräfte der Antike, Munich1966, 58–207), Berve depicted Sparta as an ideal historical model for National Socialist government. He conjured up the Nordic spirit embodied in the aristocracy of Sparta and idealized the institutions and customs of the Dorian polis, above all the racial laws which were consequently applied, and the elitist tribalism which efficiently suppressed every individualistic notion. Consequently, he eulogized the heroism of the 300 Spartiates who were killed at Thermopylai; their eternal glory was based upon the fact, ‘that they, far away from their home, at a place where the command had put them, took their stand for no other reason but the command’. And Berve continued: How could a Lacedaemonian king, how could troops of Spartiates have left their post to save a life whose highest fulfilment was to stand in battle regardless whether they won or died! Unthinkable the return of such a company! Certainly, the sacrifice was of no avail for central Greece and the Lacedaemonians themselves, whose aristocratic troops lost one twentieth of their numbers; but he who, in this case, asks for such a shallow benefit or even bases his judgement upon it, misunderstands Spartan warfare and fails to appreciate the strength which finally enabled Hellas to gain the victory over the Persian. The greatness as well as the impact of the deed lay in its futility (Wie die Größe, so lag auch die Wirkung der Tat gerade in ihrer Nutzlosigkeit. (Sparta, Leipzig 1937, 78–9) German historiography, after the hiatus of the First World War, unanimously trans- formed the polity on the Eurotas into a positively‐viewed historical model of a Führerstaat. After 1933 scholars who identified themselves with the new regime defined Sparta as a quasi‐National Socialist institution. The former pluralism of approaches and judgements was liquidated, academic discourse was allowed only within the ideological lines of the system. Sparta barely mattered as historical formation, but was integrated by intellectuals into a religious system which, as Arnaldo Momigliano once put it, ‘had its major sanctu- aries at Dachau and Auschwitz’ (Momigliano (1966) 707–8). Berve, like other prominent German Ancient Historians, was prepared to offer an interpretatio fascistica of Spartan history which corroborated the ‘Aryan’ and ‘Nordic’ view of the past and was easily adopted by schoolteachers and classicists who hastily embraced the National Socialist Weltanschauung, ardently advocated racist theories and opportunistically emphasized the central importance of antiquity for the proper educa- tion of German Volksgenossen (Apel and Bittner (1994)). In those days pupils had to write essays on ‘Xenophon in the Anabasis and Adolf Hitler in his struggle for and in power’ or ‘The heroism in the Odyssey and today, especially as embodied in the Führer of ancient and modern times’ (cf. Deutsches Philologenblatt 42, 1934, 148–9). The warrior state of Sparta was an important subject in history teaching. Contemporary curricula reflected the relevance of Sparta to Nazi Germany. The tough military aristocracy com- manded respect. Sexual asceticism and the bringing up of children were praised, the laws concerning marriage were approved as an outstanding means of eugenics. Scholars pointed to the freshness and youth of an uncivilized ‘barbarian’ community, but

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 699 homoerotic and pederastic relations were only briefly mentioned or completely ignored, and Sparta’s fall was reduced to the process of degeneration (Entartung) and denordici- zation (Entnordung). Already in 1934, Berve had postulated that a classical education ought to produce a man like Leonidas (cf. ‘Antike und nationalsozialistischer Staat’, Vergangenheit und Gegenwart 24, 1934, 270). In the same year, a teacher at a Humanistisches Gymnasium interpreted Greek history as the grand fight of the Nordic race against the aliens from Asia and Africa and praised the spirit of Leonidas and his followers: ‘Spirit of the spirit of our youth who, at Langemarck, died for Volk und Reich, spirit of the spirit of the heroic souls who, in the last fifteen years, have sacrificed blood and life to the revival of the German nature’ (H. Holtorf‚ ‘Platon im Kampf gegen die Entartung der nordischen Rasse’, Deutsches Philologenblatt 42, 1934, 270). Thermopylai was compared with Langemarck in Flanders where in the autumn of 1914 thousands of badly‐trained and poorly‐equipped young German soldiers were sent to their slaughter. One year later, 1935, in an official journal, it was suggested that of all political o­ rganizations in Greece Sparta, under the aspect of racial history, must be most carefully scrutinized (‘Deutsche Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung’, Amtsblatt des Reichsministeriums für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung und der Unterrichtsverwaltung der Länder 1, 1935, 28). At the Nazi elite school in Weimar, the Adolf‐Hitler‐Schule, an essay was written shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, which was entitled ‘Spartan Pimpfe’; the ‘Pimpfe’ were the youngest subsec- tion of the Hitler Youth. There one could read: ‘After lunch, which consisted of a simple blood soup, they used to steel their bodies in sporting competition. One of them was missing. He had been bloodily whipped, because he had been caught stealing. […] The boys perhaps did not yet know why they enjoyed such an education. But we know that Sparta remained strong, as long as the young people were educated in that way’ (Losemann (2007a) 454–5; Roche 2013). The case of Sparta clearly proves the influence of a Nazified classical scholarship on school teaching in the Third Reich. Berve also provided the ideological legitimation for teaching pupils the new image of ancient Sparta, since as he wrote in the preface of his little book on Sparta: ‘The education of youth, the spirit of community, a soldierly way of living, integration and heroic testing of the individual, tasks and values indeed which have again arisen for ourselves, seem to have been coined here in such lucidity, and became infused so deeply and absolutely, that how this unique state was created is a vital topic for us to study’ (Sparta, Leipzig 1937, 7). Hence W. Schröter, Studienrat at the Altes Gymnasium in Bremen, collected, in 1937, the most important sources for the battle of Thermopylai; the booklet, entitled ‘Leonidas’, was published as the third volume in the series Führergestalten des Altertums. Finally in 1940, the archaeologist Otto Wilhelm von Vacano (1910–1997) edited the pamphlet Sparta: Der Lebenskampf einer nordischen Herrenschicht (‘Sparta: The Struggle for Existence of a Nordic Master Race’), which was meant to be a textbook for the Adolf‐Hitler‐schools and gave Leonidas’ final struggle a most prominent place. His example was exploited to justify heroic self‐ sacrifice and to encourage last‐ditch resistance. Among the contributors were Richard Harder, Franz Miltner and Helmut Berve. Following the end of the First World War, in German historiography the pluralist interpretation of Sparta, which had characterized earlier research, was abandoned.

700 Stefan Rebenich German over‐enthusiasm for Sparta was based on the conviction that the peoples on the Rhine and on the Eurotas were racially closely connected and had a common Nordic background. It was argued that the ancient Spartans liked a strong state and took care of the Volk as the modern Germans did. However, the new image of Sparta, which was pop- ularized through a flood of racist and völkisch publications (Puschner (2016)), was not the result of the ‘national revolution’ of 1933, but emerged from a complex amalgam of ideas and ­ideologies which were virulent long before the Nazis came into power. The vision of Sparta, propagated in the Third Reich, was essentially influenced by the adaptation of obscure racial categories, the revival of the Romantic dichotomy between Dorians and Ionians, the idealization of military duty and sacrifice after the military disaster of the First World War, the yearning for a strong Führer instead of a democratic government and the glorification of the Volk. Professional historians and classicists painted the new picture of Sparta as a proto‐National Socialist state. 27.5  A Topic for Very Few Specialists: Sparta after 1945 Helmut Berve announced his last lecture on Sparta on 2 May 1945 (Losemann (1977) 231). It was never delivered. As Moses I. Finley argued in a radio talk in 1962, entitled ‘The Myth of Sparta’ and broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, there had been a deliberate revival of the myth of Sparta in Nazi Germany: A number of Spartan qualities were singled out: the sharp division between a ruling élite and a subject population; total control by the state of all aspects of life and the suppression of all opposition; the rejection of ‘softness’, the conscious encouragement from childhood onwards of the need to be hard toward oneself, toward subject peoples, toward the enemy; the insistence that the state was an entity outside and above its individual members, with absolute priority in interests and demands over any and all requirements or desires of the individuals; the idea that a Heldentod, a hero’s death, was the highest achievement to which a man could aspire. (cf. Hodkinson 2010) After the failure of the Third Reich the racist manipulation and ideological monopoliza- tion of Spartan history was de‐legitimized. In German scholarship Sparta was not very popular after 1945. For the majority of historians the history of the Athenian democracy was now far more interesting. It was not until 1983 that a professional historian wrote a concise ‘History of Sparta’ in German (Clauss (1983)). In the years between, some older contributions, e.g. Berve’s Griechische Geschichte (2 vols, Freiburg im Breisgau 1951–52), were reprinted, even translated into other European languages, and were not warmly welcomed everywhere. Momigliano for instance harshly attacked Berve in his review of the Italian version of the latter’s Greek History (cf. Momigliano (1966) 699–708). But at Erlangen, where Berve taught Ancient History in the 1950s and early 1960s, and once again secured a leading position in the field, a younger generation of academics wrote some important studies on Sparta (Christ (1986) 222–3; Rebenich (2017)). The National Socialist manipulation of history led scholars back to specialized research; Quellenkritik instead of ideology and political commitment were now

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 701 demanded. At the same time, the traditional Volksgeschichte, the ‘history of peoples’, was transformed into structuralist and social history. That process is reflected in Franz Kiechle’s (1931–1991) postdoctoral dissertation (Habilitation) on Sparta and Laconia (Kiechle (1963)), where the ethnic and social structures of early Sparta and the interde- pendencies between political, social, constitutional and economic developments are reconstructed. Kiechle emphasized the social differences within the Spartan elite, advo- cated the existence of a Spartan aristocracy, questioned the otherness of Sparta in the archaic age, discussed the relation between social diversity and political chance and argued that the transformation of the Spartan kosmos was a result of inner tensions. In short, he supplied the missing link between traditional Volksgeschichte and modern social history in German historiography on Sparta. Some years earlier, Detlef Lotze (born 1930) had written his doctoral thesis on the dependent rural population in Greece (Lotze (1959)). The author discussed the legal status of helots and other similar groups and described the situation of helotry as a form of collective slavery. Although Berve supervised graduate students from the university of Jena in East Germany, Lotze, who was an independent scholar, was strongly influenced by Finley and materialistic theories of history. Kiechle’s and Lotze’s approaches were innovative, but isolated. Textbooks and general accounts of Greek history normally pre- sented an old‐fashioned image of Sparta. Only in the 1990s did a new generation of German historians rediscover ancient Sparta, adopting perceptions and ideas which were now introduced to the international discourse mainly by French and British scholars. Through the pioneering studies of Karl Christ (1923–2008) the reception of Sparta in German scholarship also became a topic in the history of historiography (e.g. Christ (1986); Christ (1999); Losemann (2003); Losemann (2007a); Rebenich (2002)). Well before classical scholars, other writers reflected upon the deliberate revival and excessive instrumentalization of Sparta in Nazi Germany, as Roderick H. Watt has shown. Here ‘we find the paradox that for the generation of writers who had experience of Nazi Germany the epitaph for the Spartans originally perceived as a monument to willing self‐sacrifice for a common ideal transcending narrow national interests, has become a leitmotif, indeed a literary commonplace, to express dismay at the misrepresentation of that spirit by a militant nationalism and warped patriotism in the cause of a totalitarian ideology’ (Watt (1985) 877). In other parts of German‐speaking Europe the handling of Spartan history was less inhibited. ‘The ancient ideal encapsulated in the myth of Thermopylai’ was still present: ‘it is the concept that there are some values that are worth dying for, as well as living for’ (Cartledge (2006) 213). In Switzerland, in 1951, a booklet for young people was published which praised the Spartan state as a factory (Werkstätte) for the formation of man. Modern youth was encouraged to internalize Spartan virtues. The historical background of the story was the Persian War, when ­passionate patriotism (leidenschaftliche Vaterlandsliebe) defended freedom against blood- sucking imperialism (blutsaugerischen Imperialismus) (Schläpfer (1951)). But there are less martial reminiscences of the Greek city. On 6 June 1946, the academic football club ‘SC Sparta Bern’ was founded in the Swiss capital. The club members addressed each other as ‘Spartans’ and published a newsletter, also entitled ‘Spartaner’. Unfortunately, the club did not win its last battle; after the season 1993/94 it merged with another football club and the name disappeared. At least in Bern, Spartans are no longer fighting for victory on the field.

702 Stefan Rebenich BIBLIOGRAPHY Albertz, A. (2006), Exemplarisches Heldentum. Die Rezeptionsgeschichte der Schlacht an den Thermopylen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Munich. Apel, H.J., and Bittner, S., Humanistische Schulbildung 1890–1945. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der altertumskundlichen Unterrichtsfächer. Cologne. Baumbach, M. (2002), ‘“Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta …”. Zur Rezeption des Simonides‐ Epigramms’, Poetica 32: 1–22. Berve, H. (1937), Sparta. Leipzig (repr. 1944). Berve, H. (1966), Gestaltende Kräfte der Antike. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur griechischen und römischen Geschichte, 2nd edn. Munich. Bialas, W., Rabinbach, A., eds (2007), Nazi Germany and the Humanities. Oxford. Birgalias, N., Buraselis, K., Cartledge, P., eds (2007), The Contribution of Ancient Sparta to Political Thought and Practice. Athens. Böll, H. (1950), Wanderer kommst du nach Sparta. Opladen (English translation by M. Savill: Traveller, if You Come to Sparta. London 1956). Bormann, M. (1981), Hitlers politisches Testament. Die Bormann Diktate vom Februar und April 1945. Hamburg. Buschmann, N., and Langewiesche, D., eds (2003), Der Krieg in den Gründungsmythen europäischer Nationen und der USA. Frankfurt a.M. Calder, W.M., and Schlesier, R., eds (1998), Zwischen Rationalismus und Romantik. Karl Otfried Müller und die antike Kultur. Hildesheim. Cancik, H. (2001), ‘Jugendbewegung und klassische Antike’, in Seidensticker and Vöhler, eds, 114–35. Cartledge, P. (2006), Thermopylae: The Battle that Changed the World. London. Cartledge, P. (2014), ‘Grote’s Sparta/Sparta’s Grote’, in Demetriou, ed., 255–72. Christ, K. (1986), ‘Spartaforschung und Spartabild. Eine Einleitung’, in Christ, ed., 1–72 (= id., Griechische Geschichte und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Stuttgart 1996, 9–57; ‘Nachträge’ 219–21). Christ, K., ed. (1986), Sparta. Darmstadt. Christ, K. (1999), Hellas. Griechische Geschichte und deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft. Munich. Clauss, M. (1983), Sparta. Munich. Demandt, A. (2002), ‘Klassik als Klischee: Hitler und die Antike’, Historische Zeitschrift 274, 281–313. Demetriou, K.N., ed. (2014), Brill’s Companion to George Grote and the Classical Tradition. Leiden. D’Onofrio, A. (1997), Ruralismo e storia nel Terzo Reich. Il Caso ‘Odal’. Naples. D’Onofrio, A. (2007), Razza, sangue e suolo. Utopie della razza e progetti eugenetici nel ruralismo nazista. Naples. Fest, J. (1973), Hitler. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt a.M. Figueira, T.J., ed. (2004), Spartan Society. Swansea. Flashar, H., ed. (1995), Altertumswissenschaft in den 20er Jahren. Neue Fragen und Impulse. Stuttgart. Hodkinson, S. (2000), Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. London and Swansea. Hodkinson, S. (2010), ‘Sparta and Nazi Germany in Mid‐Twentieth‐Century British Liberal and Left‐Wing Thought’ in Powell and Hodkinson, eds, 297–342. Hodkinson, S., and Macgregor Morris, I., eds (2012), Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History and Culture. Swansea. Kiechle, F. (1963), Sparta und Lakonien. Untersuchungen zur ethnischen Struktur und zur poli- tischen Entwicklung Lakoniens und Spartas bis zum Ende der archaischen Zeit. Munich. Lianeri, A., ed. (2011), The Western Time of Ancient History: Historiographical Encounters with the Greek and Roman Pasts. Cambridge. Losemann, V. (1977), Nationalsozialismus und Antike. Studien zur Entwicklung des Faches Alte Geschichte 1933–1945. Hamburg. Losemann, V. (1998), ‘Die Dorier im Deutschland der dreißiger und vierziger Jahre’, in Calder and Schlesier, eds, 313–48.

Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe 703 Losemann, V. (2003), ‘Sparta’, in Der Neue Pauly. Rezeptions‐ und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 15.3: 154–72. Losemann, V. (2005), ‘“Ein Staatsgedanke aus Blut und Boden”: R.W. Darré und die Agrargeschichte Spartas’, Laverna 16, 67–120. Losemann, V. (2007a), ‘Sparta in the Third Reich’, in Birgalias, Buraselis and Cartledge, eds, 449–62. Losemann, V. (2007b), ‘Classics in the Second World War’, in Bialas and Rabinbach, eds, 306–40. Losemann, V. (2012), ‘The Spartan Tradition in Germany, 1870–1945’, in Hodkinson and Macgregor Morris, eds, 253–314. Losemann, V. (2017), Klio und die Nationalsozialisten. Wiesbaden. Lotze, D. (1959), METAΞY EΛEYΘEPΩN KAI ΔOYΛΩN. Studien zur Rechtsstellung unfreier Landbevölkerungen in Griechenland bis zum 4. Jh. v. Chr. Berlin. MacGregor Morris, I. (2000), ‘“To Make a New Thermopylae”: Hellenism, Greek Liberation and the Battle of Thermopylae’, Greece & Rome 47: 211–30. MacGregor Morris, I. (2004), ‘The Paradigm of Democracy: Sparta in Enlightenment Thought’, in Figueira, ed., 339–62. Marchand, S.L. (1996), Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970. Princeton. Momigliano, A. (1955), ‘George Grote and the Study of Greek History’, in Contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Rome, 213–31 (= id., Studies in Historiography, London and New York). Originally an Inaugural Lecture delivered at University College London, in 1952. Momigliano, A. (1966), Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico. Rome. Näf, B. (1986), Von Perikles zu Hitler? Die athenische Demokratie und die deutsche Althistorie bis 1945. Bern and Frankfurt a.M. Nippel, W. (2008), Antike oder moderne Freiheit? Die Begründung der Demokratie in Athen und in der Neuzeit. Frankfurt a.M (revised English translation Cambridge 2016). Polverini, L. (1990), Aspetti della storiografia di Giulio Beloch. Perugia. Pothou, V. and Powell, A., eds (2017), Das antike Sparta. Stuttgart. Powell, A., and Hodkinson, S., eds (2002), Sparta: Beyond the Mirage. London and Swansea. Powell, A., and Hodkinson, S., eds (2010), Sparta: The Body Politic. Swansea. Puschner, U. (2016), ‘Sparta – “Lichtblick in der Menschheitsgeschichte”: Völkische Perspektiven’, in M. Schuol et al., eds., 139–152. Rawson, E. (1969), The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford (paperback 1991). Rebenich, S. (2001), ‘Geschichte in Demokratie und Diktatur. Der Fall Helmut Berve’, Chiron 31: 457–96. Rebenich, S. (2002), ‘From Thermopylai to Stalingrad: The Myth of Leonidas in German Historiography’, in Powell and Hodkinson, eds, 323–49. Rebenich, S. (2010), ‘Historicism’, in Brill’s New Pauly (www.Brillonline.com). Rebenich, S. (2011), ‘The Making of a Bourgeois Antiquity: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Greek History’, in Lianeri, ed., 119–37. Rebenich, S. (2017), ‘Alter Wein in neuen Schlaü chen? Das Spartabild in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung nach 1945’, in Pothou and Powell, eds, 111–32. Roche, H. (2013), Sparta’s German Children. Swansea. Schläpfer, L. (1951), Eurytos der Spartaner. Einsiedeln. Schuol, M. et al., eds (2016), Exempla imitanda. Mit der Vergangenheit die Gegenwart bewältigen? Göttingen. Seidensticker, B., and Vöhler, M., eds (2001), Urgeschichte der Moderne. Die Antike im 20. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart. Von See, K. (2003), ‘Der Arier‐Mythos’, in Buschmann and Langewiese, eds, 56–97. Watt, R.H. (1985), ‘“Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta”: History through Propaganda into Literary Commonplace’, The Modern Language Review 80: 871–83.

CHAPTER 28 Reception of Sparta in North America Eighteenth to Twenty‐First Centuries Sean R. Jensen The history of the reception of Sparta in North America covers a wide array of social and cultural contexts, from the discussions of the Framers of the American Constitution to the popular appreciations of twenty‐first-century moviegoers. Conceptions of Sparta in the United States and Canada have generally followed broader North American social and political trends. Although it is difficult to gauge the exact degree of impact that Spartan history has played on American thought such as in the debates surrounding the drafting of the American constitution in 1787 or justifications for social and political institutions like slavery in the antebellum South, its presence as a reference, inspiration, and topic of intellectual and popular interest is undeniable. Even though classical learning dominated the curriculum in American colleges and universities until the end of the nineteenth century, scholarship on Sparta in North America historically lagged behind that of Europe, a situation prevailing in many other fields of classical studies. Only at the turn of the twentieth century did North American scholars of Sparta generally embark on lines of research after their European counter- parts had broken ground. Still, North American scholars are to be counted as some of the most important historians of Sparta in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. In other respects ancient Sparta has achieved significant public visibility in the latter half of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty‐first, especially with the success of classically‐themed novels and films. With the popularity of Frank Miller’s graphic novel, 300, and its film adaptation, the battle of Thermopylai hit the mainstream of ordi- nary consciousness and certain lines from the film have even become part of the modern American idiom.1 Beginning in the early twentieth century throughout the United States A Companion to Sparta, Volume II, First Edition. Edited by Anton Powell. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The Reception of Sparta in North America 705 and Canada, university and high‐school sports teams have adopted the “Spartans” as their name, often using a presumed personification or iconic image of a Spartan as their mascot. The contemporary interest in, or even popularity of, ancient Sparta has generated other media applications and popular histories of the ancient city. 28.1  Reception of Sparta in the Eighteenth Century In the eighteenth century, Americans generally learned their ancient history through the ancient authors themselves, whether in the original languages or in translation, and from popular British or European histories of Greece. Americans had yet to engage much in classical scholarship. Thus, histories of Greece and Rome had to come to the English colonies from Great Britain and the Continent. Some examples of such popular works of Greek history are Temple Stanyan’s Grecian History (1739), Oliver Goldsmith’s Grecian History (1774), and Charles Rollin’s Histoire Ancienne des Egyptiens, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Mèdes, et des Perses, des Macédoniens, et des Grecs (1730–38) (Winterer (2002) 20). Important European intellectuals such as Montesquieu were also influential in shaping colonial views of the ancient world (Reinhold (1984) 97). In general, educated Americans were introduced to the classical languages at an early age, and the curriculum in early colonial colleges like Harvard and Yale was heavily centered on the instruction in Greek and Latin as a part of the traditional study of the liberal arts (Reinhold (1984) 25–8 and Ziobro (2006) 18–28). According to Carl Richard, in the colonial period students usually began learning ancient languages at age eight either from grammar school instruction or from private tutors (Richard (1994) 1). By the time students were ready to enter college, they had already become acquainted with many of the authors that were part of the standard humanistic curriculum. However, the quality of such instruction was often poor (Richard (1994) 21). Emphasis was placed primarily on translation and broad knowledge of basic grammatical principles (Reinhold (1984) 26). Although ancient history was not a major part of the curriculum of the colonial college, many of the leaders of the Revolution and founders of the new American government in the 1780s were well acquainted with Greek and Roman history through explication of school texts and imported histories, and it was in the political sphere that ancient Sparta had its most discernible and lasting impact in North America in the eighteenth century. Sparta, Athens, and especially Rome were viewed as early experiments in republican government by many of the most important Founders of the United States who sought historical parallels for the young American nation. Great importance was attached to examining the history of these early republics in order to understand the basis of their success, as Gordon Wood has observed: “The Americans’ compulsive interest in the ancient republics was in fact crucial to their attempt to understand the moral and social basis of politics” (Wood (1969) 50).Views of Sparta among the Founders were mixed. Spartan austerity and discipline, as exemplified in the ancient sources, most of all Plutarch, were appealing to some of the most prominent early Americans. For example, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, delegate both of the Continental Congress and of the Constitutional Convention, the so‐called “Penman of the Revolution”, praised Spartan courage in battle:

706 Sean R. Jensen To such a wonderful degree were the ancient Spartans, as brave and free a people as ever existed, inspired by this happy temperature of soul that rejecting even in their battles the use of trumpets and other instruments for exciting heat and rage, they marched up to the scenes of havoc and horror, with the sound of flutes, to the tunes of which their steps kept pace – “exhibiting,” as Plutarch says, “at once a terrible and delighted sight, and proceeding with a deliberate valor, full of hope and good assurance, as if some divinity had sensibly assisted them”. 2 The prominent Boston Son of Liberty, Samuel Adams, cousin of John Adams, hoped that Boston would become a “Christian Sparta,” implying that pre‐Christian Sparta represented admirable forms of virtue and piety (Rahe (1992) 58). Even the famous critic of the classical education, Benjamin Rush, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, praised the plain “black broth” of the Spartan diet (Richard (2008) 31). At the same time, colonial Americans criticized the militaristic and collective nature of the Spartan social system. Thomas Jefferson referred to the Spartan system as “the rule of military monks over the laboring class of the people, reduced to abject slavery” and Alexander Hamilton (first Secretary of the Treasury, 1789–95) in Federalist No. 6 stated “Sparta was little better than a well‐regulated camp.”3 Along with the militarism asso- ciated with the ancient Spartan state, the Spartan rejection of commercial activity was also criticized. For example, John Adams (second President, 1797–1801) argued for American pursuit of commerce by asserting that emulation of the “Spartans in their Contempt of Wealth” should be avoided (Rahe (1992) 325). Although Adams in his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States (1787–88) mixed praise with criticism of the Spartan system (see later), he particularly found fault with the strict control over the citizenry that Lykourgos supposedly instituted, even faulting the motivation of the legendary lawgiver after a description of the various prohibitions such as the laws against travel and use of coined money: “he shackled the Spartans to the ambitious views of his family for fourteen successions of Herculean kings, at the expence of the continual disturbance of all Greece, and the constant misery of his own people.”4 In the Adams family, criticism of Sparta was not limited to John. In a 1786 debate at Harvard, his son, the young John Quincy Adams (sixth President, 1825–29) claimed: The fine feelings of the Heart which render human Nature amiable, were entirely excluded from the system of Lycurgus. Many of his Laws display a barbarous Cruelty, and beauteous Science, whose persuasive Voice, calms the impetuous Passions of Youth, sooths the cares, and asswages the infirmities of age, was discarded from within the walls of Sparta by this savage Legislator.5 In general, the most influential source on Sparta for colonial Americans was Plutarch’s biography of Lykourgos, the mythical early lawgiver and architect of the Spartan constitution (Reinhold (1984) 250, 253). Plutarch’s biographies, read both in the original Greek and in translation, were greatly responsible for forming these sometimes contradictory views of ancient Sparta (Reinhold (1984) 253). At times, the heavy moralistic tone of Plutarch’s biography of Lykourgos and particular conception of the Spartan state were especially appealing to colonial Americans seeking appropriate models of behavior for citizens of the young Republic, while they also engendered criticism both from the Republican Jefferson and the Federalists, Adams and Hamilton.

The Reception of Sparta in North America 707 Together with Republican Rome, Sparta played an important role as a direct source for the political structure of the United States. The theory of the separation of powers was a dominant issue in the midst of the debates before and during the Constitutional Convention. Ancient theory of the “mixed constitution” developed by Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius had greatly influenced Western thinkers from the Middle Ages through colonial America.6 The Framers drew many of their notions of Sparta’s stability, strong agrarian culture (as opposed to commercial Athens), and celebrated mixed constitution from these ancient theorists. Sparta was a source for much of the current political theory about the balance of institutional powers, and John Adams was a particularly enthusiastic proponent of the idea of mixed government during the debates surround- ing the Constitution. In his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Adams praised the stability of the Spartan constitution attributed to Lykourgos: Six kinds of government must be allowed: kingly government and monarchy, aristocracy and oligarchy, democracy, and the government of the multitude. Lycurgus concluded, that every form of government that is simple, by soon degenerating into that vice that is allied to it, must be unstable. … Lycurgus to avoid these incoveniencies [sic] formed his government not of one sort, but united in one all of the advantages and properties of the best governments; to the end that no branch, by swelling beyond its due bounds, might degenerate into the vice which is congenial to it …7 The Spartan model was also referenced to support the establishment of an American senate. In Federalist No. 63, James Madison (“Father of the Constitution”; later fourth President, 1809–17) cited ancient Sparta along with Rome and Carthage as examples of successful republics with a strong senate, writing, “It adds no small weight to these considerations, to recollect that history informs us of no long‐lived republic which had not a senate. Sparta, Rome, and Carthage are in fact, the only states to whom that character can be applied.”8 Although Adams and Madison were drawn to the longevity and stability of the Spartan constitution, Polybius’ version of the Roman Republic as the ideal example of a mixed constitution seems to have had a greater influence on the Framers (Richard (2008) 97). Adams considered the Roman Republic to be the ideal mixture of the aristocratic, executive, and democratic branches stating: All three principal orders of government were found in the Roman commonwealth; every- thing was constituted and administered with that equality and propriety by these three, that it was not possible, even for a Roman citizen, to assert positively, whether the government, in the whole, was aristocratical, democratical, or monarchical.9 As debates surrounded the drafting of the constitution of the United States arose, so did discussions concerning the proper role of women in the new republic. In this debate, the women of Sparta made famous in the pages of Plutarch were natural reference points for a culture well‐versed in classical literature. In particular, the brave Spartan woman selflessly sending her son to battle and preaching an unbending patriotism to the state or as a soldier herself were the models that appealed in this period (Winterer (2007) 71–9). For example, the notable early feminist Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820) in the last decades of the eighteenth century advocated the equality of women. In The Gleaner (1798)

708 Sean R. Jensen she referenced the women of Sparta as an example of feminine strength and patriotism who even suppressed their natural duties as mothers for the greater good of the state: The character of the Spartan women is marked with uncommon firmness. At the shrine of patriotism they immolated nature. Undaunted bravery and unimpeached honour, was, in their estimation, far beyond affection. The name of Citizen possessed, for them, greater charms than that of Mother; and so highly did they prize the warrior’s meed, that they are said to have shed tears of joy over the bleeding bodies of their wounded sons! (Skemp (1998) 186) Murray was particularly notable in her call for gender equality during the birth of a new country. The theme of the powerful and independent Spartan woman has been popular throughout American history and evolved with the times, even appearing in the culture of the modern US military and among modern historians, as will be discussed later below. In the end, the unique nature of the Spartan social system was perceived as too brutal and too unlike the world of eighteenth century America, thus limiting Sparta’s influence on the Constitution (Richard (2008) 32, 97). Hamilton’s statement that Sparta was a “well‐regulated camp” coupled with Jefferson’s view that Spartans were “military monks” helped to ensure that Rome would have greater lasting impact on the early United States. At the same time, other examples of cooperative government drawn from ancient Greece were also studied by the Founders, such as the federal leagues and the Amphictyonic League.10 Though admired for her great cultural achievements, Athens was generally rejected as a political model because she was historically perceived as hav- ing been too unstable and feckless.11 In Federalist No. 55 which emphasized the capri- cious nature of popular assemblies, Madison wrote of Athens: “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” Yet, it was not universally agreed that ancient republics were natural sources for constructing a modern one. Hamilton, as early as 1782, denied the utility of employing ancient Greece and Rome as models for the “modern” world (Reinhold (1984) 255–6). Charles Pinckney of South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 declared, “Can we copy Greece and Rome? … We surely differ from the whole. Our situation is unexampled” (Reinhold (1984) 215). In the early nineteenth century, John Taylor, a constitutional theorist and politician of Jeffersonian affinity, leveled criticism at John Adams for employing ancient Sparta as an example of a politically balanced republic, and observed that, in general, lessons from antiquity had no real value for the modern world (Reinhold (1984) 107). Some of Taylor’s most strident criticism was targeted at the Lykourgan constitution: Lycurgus, by the influence of a bought and lying oracle, placed the government in the hands of a minority, excused this minority from labour and taxes, and supported it by the labour of the majority. The Helots, who were the slaves of the government but not of individuals, filled the place of every majority, however denominated, subjected to the will of an aristocracy … This emblem of Mr. Adams’s system, commenced in fraud; flourished, a tyrant; and died, a traitor.12 For Taylor, the Spartan system was not a model of balance but of oppression and inequality.

The Reception of Sparta in North America 709 Overall, the Founding Fathers identified both strengths and weaknesses in the ancient accounts of Sparta. Dickinson’s praise of Spartan courage and discipline was typical of the Founding Fathers’ admiration of the Plutarchan version of Sparta, while others viewed the unique nature of the ancient city as an inappropriate source of inspiration for the new nation, both politically and culturally. These often contradictory views of ancient Sparta render it difficult to gauge the extent of its influence on colonial America. However, it is fair to say that the collective nature of Spartan society and the perceived rigidity of the Lykourgan system were ultimately deemed unsuitable for a growing liberty‐minded young republic or perhaps even for a democracy. 28.2  Reception of Sparta in the Nineteenth Century In the first decades of the nineteenth century, Hellenism grew increasingly popular in the United States. For instance, Greek architecture largely replaced the Roman‐influenced style and the study of Greek language and literature grew in importance in college curricula.13 The War of Greek Independence (1821–29) played an important role in popularizing Hellenism in the United States, and Americans traveled in increasing numbers to Greece throughout this period (Winterer (2002) 63). Much of American interest in the War of Greek Independence lay with sympathy to the Greek struggle for liberty under the Ottomans (Winterer (2002) 63). In the American South, classical learning especially thrived in the antebellum period (Miles (1971) 262). Knowledge of the classical languages and ancient history were seen as characteristics that defined a refined and learned gentleman in a culture of elite leisure based on slave labor.14 As cultural divisions between the North and South intensified in the antebellum period, the heightened popularity of classical tradition in the South was seen by many prominent Southerners as a mark of distinction from the more commercially‐ oriented northern half of the country (Miles (1971) 258, 262–3). The city‐states of Classical Greece and the period of the Roman Republic became the favorite models for Southerners seeking ancient parallels for their cultural and political outlook.15 Pro‐ slavery theorist George Fitzhugh even asserted that Southerners were descended from the Romans through the Jacobites and Huguenots (Miles (1971) 264). Athens was especially appealing to Southerners drawn to Athenian‐style democracy and cultural achievements (Winterer (2002) 66). Athens was generally considered the closest and most desirable parallel for the South. One writer in the Southern Quarterly Review in 1847 praised Athens in these terms: “In the whole course of history, ancient and modern, there is no period to which we revert with fresher interest or more underlying enthusiasm, than to the short era of Athenian ascendency in Greece” (Miles (1971) 27). Less often, Southerners referenced Sparta as a particularly successful state.16 One of the most notable comparisons Southerners made with Greek and Roman antiquity concerned the existence of slavery. As the issue of slavery gradually became divisive in the United States, the examples of slavery systems in the ancient world were often used as a defense for the South’s “peculiar institution.” In seeking these justifi- cations in the historical tradition for the practice of human bondage, appeal was most frequently made to the Bible (Faust (1981) 10–11). Nevertheless, the examples of Greece and Rome were also popular with apologists of slavery (Faust (1981) 12).

710 Sean R. Jensen In particular, Greece and Rome were often cited to argue that slavery was integral to the success of these civilizations (Faust (1981) 12). Naturally, Sparta was included among the Greek states, cited by defenders of slavery along with Athens. Examples of this type of historical justification referencing Sparta can be found in the writings of notable apologists of slavery including Thomas Roderick Dew, William Harper, and James Henry Hammond. Born in 1802 in Virginia, Dew was educated at the College of William and Mary (Faust (1981) 21). There he became a prominent professor of political law, eventually rising to the presidency of the college in 1836 (Faust (1981) 21). Dew was inspired to respond to the climate of support for emancipation that f­ ollowed Nat Turner’s 1831–32 slave uprising in Virginia (Faust (1981) 21). His Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831–2 was highly influential throughout the South (Faust (1981) 21). The following quotation comes from a piece published in the American Quarterly Review entitled “Abolition of Negro Slavery” (September 1832). In the essay, Dew looked to Sparta for evidence of the compatibility of slavery with a free society: 3dly. It has been contended that slavery is unfavorable to a republican spirit: but the whole history of the world proves that this is far from being the case. In the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, where the spirit of liberty glowed with the most intensity, the slaves were more numerous than the freeman. Aristotle, and the great men of antiquity, believed slavery necessary to keep alive the spirit of freedom. In Sparta, the freeman was even forbidden to perform the office of slaves, lest he might lose the spirit of independence. (Faust (1981) 66) William Harper, born in Antigua in 1790, hailed from South Carolina. A lawyer by trade, he eventually became an outspoken supporter of states’ rights and Nullification (the doctrine that states had the right to negate federal legislation that violated their priv- ileges) (Faust (1981) 78). Harper’s essay entitled Memoir of Slavery (1838) cited Sparta to support the argument that slavery was beneficial for the instruction and upbringing of the young: “It was not without a knowledge of nature, that the Spartans exhibited the vices of slaves by way of negative example to their children” (Faust (1981) 116). Here, Harper is presumably speaking of the humiliating treatment of the state‐owned slaves (Helots), who were forced to become drunk and to dance absurdly by the Spartan ruling class during the common meals called syssitia. For Harper, the case of Sparta demon- strated the educational benefits for a society owning slaves. Finally, James Henry Hammond, born in South Carolina in 1807, was himself a lawyer, congressman, governor of South Carolina, and senator, known as an ardent supporter of slavery (Faust (1981) 168). In his “Letter to an English Abolitionist” (1845), he argued that, contrary to some judgments, slavery did “not weaken Rome, nor Athens, nor Sparta, though their slaves were comparatively far more numerous than ours, of the same color for the most part with themselves, and large numbers of them familiar with the use of arms”(Faust (1981) 178). For apologists of slavery, the examples of Greece and Rome provided evidence of the compatibility of a bondage system with a “free” republic. As we have seen, the cult of Greece as the home of small republics flourished in the South throughout the first half of the nineteenth century where local communal identification was strong. The popu- larity of classical learning in the South during the antebellum period was certainly a

The Reception of Sparta in North America 711 factor in the use of Sparta and Athens as historical parallels, though the knowledge of ancient Sparta was still rather superficial even among the educated southern elite. For instance, there was no real effort to distinguish between the different types of human bondage practiced in Greece, such as Helotage in Sparta, a system in which the slaves were tied to the land in a serf‐like status, and chattel slavery at Athens. Nonetheless, the wealth of references to Sparta reveals the continued importance of antiquity as a paradigm in American political life. At the same time, abolitionists drew on ancient Greece for their own understanding of slavery in the nineteenth century. The well‐known abolitionist Lydia Marie Child (1802–80) frequently drew upon Sparta in her own writings against slavery.17 In her An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans called Africans (1833), Child referred to the slave systems of antiquity including Sparta to support her argument that the freer the state, the harsher the treatment of slaves: it is worthy of remark that the conditions of slaves has always been worse just in proportion to the freedom enjoyed by their masters. In Greece, none were so proud of liberty as the Spartans; and they were a proverb among the neighboring states for their severity to slaves.18 Here again Sparta is regarded as a paradigm of a free republic, yet for Child the lesson drawn from Spartan history is the exact opposite of the one drawn by pro‐slavery advo- cates of the period. Child’s historical novel Philothea (1836) is set in classical Greece where Athens and Sparta represent the North and South of the antebellum period. Sparta is portrayed as a particularly cruel slave society and is contrasted with an enlight- ened version of Athens (Winterer (2007) 173–4). Child, like the apologists of slavery with whom she battled, regarded ancient Sparta as a society very much defined by slavery. In 1861, the outbreak of Civil War in the United States offered another opportunity for nineteenth century America to refer to antiquity as a model for the present day. Parallels were made between the American conflict and the Peloponnesian War fought by Athens and Sparta in the late 5th century bc. During the American Civil War, the South was generally perceived as resembling the Spartans, particularly by Southerners. For example, the great nineteenth‐century classicist Basil Gildersleeve wrote on the current popularity of making comparisons between the two wars in an essay entitled “A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War” and in other writings from the period. In 1863, Gildersleeve observed: “First we had the Peloponnesian war, in which Athens was made to represent the North, and Sparta the South, in which Pericles was degraded into similitude with Seward; Nicias with McClellan” (Briggs (1998) 119). Gildersleeve also identified similarities with his own time in the geographical position of the two antag- onists of the Peloponnesian War: We must acknowledge that the general outlines of the two wars actually present some striking and instructive points of comparison: such a point is the geographical position of the combatants, the one in the North, the other in the South – although Canada is not arrayed against New York as Boeotia was against Athens … (Briggs (1998) 119) Not only was Athens’ progressive democracy seen as a parallel to the North’s, while Sparta’s conservative agrarian‐based economy seemed to have similarities with plantation

712 Sean R. Jensen culture of the South, but Gildersleeve compared the course of the Civil War to that of the Peloponnesian War: The revolt of Lesbos from the Athenians presents a wonderful analogy to the uprising of the Marylanders – if they had only risen up – the capture of the “full‐blooded” Spartans on Sphacteria, is an exact parallel to the taking of Roanoke Island and the Richmond Blues – only the Spartans held out longer. (Briggs (1998) 120) Finally, in Gildersleeve’s article “A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War”, he made the comparisons between the two wars explicit: The Peloponnesian war, like our war, was a war between two leagues, a Northern Union and a Southern Confederacy. The Northern Union, represented by Athens, was a naval power. The Southern Confederacy, under the leadership of Sparta, was a land power. The Athenians represented the progressive element, the Spartans the conservative. The Athenians believed in a strong centralized government. The Lacedaemonians professed greater regard for autonomy. (Briggs (1998) 398) Strikingly perhaps, Gildersleeve failed to note any parallel for the most obvious and significant feature of the war, namely its origin in a secession or rebellion. Still, the American Civil War offered the opportunity to Americans to see their own conflict as a modern Peloponnesian War, with the South taking on the role of Sparta in place of Athens, which had been the preferred choice for many Southerners in the antebellum period. The cultural impact of Sparta throughout the nineteenth century is also evident in other ways. As settlements were founded in the new United States and Canada, many communities chose such names as “Sparta” or “Spartanburg” or “Laconia”. Cities called Sparta are spread from the eastern United States to the Pacific Ocean. Examples of these communities include: Sparta Township in New Jersey; Sparta, North Carolina; and Sparta, Oregon. The county and city of Spartanburg were founded in South Carolina, while a Laconia was established in New Hampshire. In Canada, the community of Sparta was founded in the province of Ontario in the early nineteenth century. The profusion of cities named Sparta should not seem unusual considering the popularity of naming communities after famous European and Near‐Eastern cities, including other prominent Greek and Roman cities as well as places named in the Bible. The classical education of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century here played a clear role.19 28.3  Popular Reception in the Twentieth and Twenty‐First Centuries Beginning in the early twentieth century, Sparta has become a popular source for the eponyms or mascots of high school, college, and university sports teams. Notable examples include Michigan State University founded in 1855 and San Jose State University founded in 1857. Michigan State adopted the nickname “Spartans” in 1926 while San Jose State students selected the “Spartans” as their mascot in 1942.20 Numerous other

The Reception of Sparta in North America 713 colleges and universities have adopted the Spartan mascot including Case Western Reserve University, Norfolk State University in Virginia, and the University of North Carolina‐Greensboro. Countless high schools across North America have also adopted this nomenclature for their athletic teams. The courage and sense of duty attributed to the Spartan hoplite soldier have traditionally been valued by athletic teams seeking inspiration and models for competition and teamwork. Like other popular mascots for sports programs and franchises named after other warrior groups (e.g., the Vikings or the Trojans), the imagery generally employs popular markers to convey the fearsome aspects of the Spartan hoplite. For example, Michigan State, San Jose State, and Case Western Reserve University employ as a logo variations of the Corinthian style hoplite helmet topped with a distinctive crest. Their mascots are often caricatures of a Spartan hoplite given an affectionate name such as Michigan State’s “Sparty” and San Jose State’s “Sammy.” Sparty is characterized as an absurdly muscular soldier in hoplite armor, and Sammy is likewise a cartoonish representation of a Spartan warrior. Thus, these mascots combine the characteristics of fearsome hoplite warrior with those of a jovial puppet. The widespread popularity of the ancient Spartans as a source of sports mascots reflects common notions of Sparta in the United States and Canada. It is notable that this popular appreciation does not extend to other notable ancient Greek states such as Athens. In particular, Sparta is associated with a militaristic ethos shared with other groups such as the Vikings or Native American warriors who provide totemic names for sports teams in North America. One might be tempted to trace this phenomenon to the depiction of the Spartan upbringing and of its ethos of testing and acculturation through athletic competition, so prominent in the accounts of Plutarch. There may be a tendency to lump the Spartans with Vikings, Trojans, and various Native American “avatars”, unfortunate since these warrior groups are distinct in many ways. Nonetheless, the particular view of the Spartans as embodying the characteristics of strength, bravery, and competitive élan is also evident in other areas of American popular culture in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. The most popular aspect of ancient Spartan history in the United States and Canada in the latter half of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty‐first has probably been the depiction of the last stand of the Spartans at Thermopylai in 480 bc against an invading Persian army. The events surrounding the defeat of the Greek force led by King Leonidas have been celebrated since the colonial period. In general, the popular legend of the battle of Thermopylai has had an impact on American notions of liberty and self‐ identity as a free, self‐governing people. As early as the late eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson and the other founders praised Leonidas and the 300 just as they had other aspects of Sparta (Richard (1994) 73). In the twentieth century, the legend of the “300” hit the mainstream of public consciousness. Books, Hollywood films, and video games have all frequently captured the theme of the last stand of the 300 Spartans. Go Tell the Spartans, a 1978 film, recounted the experiences of American soldiers in Vietnam. The title of the film is a rendering of the opening line of the poet Simonides’ famous epitaph for the Spartans who died fighting Xerxes’ army: ῏Ω ξειν̃ ’, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις. Popular novels based on the battle of Thermopylai include Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae (1998) and Frank Miller’s 300 (1998). Although Nicholas Nicastro’s Isle of Stone: A Novel of Ancient Sparta (2005) does not have Thermopylai as its theme, instead favoring the Peloponnesian War, it certainly

714 Sean R. Jensen reflects a popular interest in Spartan military history and shares many of the same ideas. Pressfield’s novel is a fictional account of the lone survivor of the battle. Pressfield has written other novels that have popularized ancient Greek military strategies and conquests such as Tides of War (2001) and The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great (2005). Frank Miller’s work has also achieved a great deal of success while gener- ating much controversy. As a stylized account of the battle in comic book form, there is little attempt to portray the battle of Thermopylai accurately. Yet, the graphic novel has achieved widespread success even spawning a wildly successful film. Miller was inspired by an earlier film The 300 Spartans (1962), an international production with some American leads that was presented by Twentieth Century Fox. These popular works about Sparta reflect an enduring interest in ancient Greek w­ arfare in the context of a heroic final stand. In both Europe and North America, the moral success of the small Greek force against vast odds has been interpreted as symbolic of a larger struggle of liberty against tyranny. Sparta is often portrayed as a republic fighting for the preservation of the freedom of all of Greece. Two major American films have been based on the battle of Thermopylai, The 300 Spartans (Twentieth Century Fox, 1962) directed by Rudolphe Maté and 300 (Warner Bros., 2007) directed by Zach Snyder. The 1962 film shot on location in Greece starred Richard Egan and boasted an international cast.21 Although the film’s setting was the Persian invasion of 480 bc, it reflects in some ways the contemporary Cold War b­ etween the United States and the Soviet Union (Clough (2004) 375). The Spartan sacrifice is portrayed as part of a larger struggle for the freedom of the West against the tyrannical East. 300, based on Miller’s novel and starring Gerard Butler, led to a good deal of controversy around the world. The struggle in the film between the Greeks and the Persians has been seen as representative of the modern‐day conflict between the West and Iran (possibly representing Islam), while also incurring some criticism for its lack of historical accuracy, in particular in the portrayal of ancient Persians. In general, the representations of the Persians and Greek hoplites are more impressionistic than his- torical with the character Xerxes, played by Rodrigo Santoro, especially fanciful. The Great King is depicted as a half‐naked hairless giant, who at one point in the film attempts to seduce Leonidas in an erotic fashion in an attempt to convince him to surrender. Throughout the film the effeminate, almost androgynous, Xerxes is con- trasted with the masculine Spartan king. Moreover, great effort is made to contrast the combatants by emphasizing the courage and prowess of the Spartans at the expense of the Persians. The Spartans fight with bare torsos instead of donning breastplates, which has the effect of revealing the muscular chests of the hoplites. The blockbuster success of 300 even inspired a popular parody entitled Meet The Spartans (Twentieth Century Fox), released in 2008. The popularity of the novels and films surrounding Thermopylai has also led to numerous television documentaries on Spartan history and Leonidas’ last stand. The general resurgence of classical antiquity in the popular sphere in the early twenty‐first century, witnessed by the film Gladiator (2000) and the HBO series Rome, is connected with a thriving market for classically‐themed films. At the same time, military strategy‐ themed video games form a new market for ancient Sparta. Notable Spartan‐themed games include Ancient Wars: Sparta (2007, Playlogic), Great War Nations: The Spartans (2008, Dreamcatcher), and Spartan (2004, Graphsim Entertainment).

The Reception of Sparta in North America 715 As during the American Civil War, the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta was viewed by many in the twentieth century as a parallel for major conflicts of the era.22 Some prominent American politicians, journalists, and political scientists looked to the origins and course of the Peloponnesian War as a helpful guide to understanding and predicting the long Cold War between the Soviet Union and United States. Thucydides was an important source for these comparisons and was mined for relevant theory.23 At the same time, Thucydides’ characterization of Athens and Sparta in large part deter- mined the modern identifications of the United States and Soviet Union with their ancient Greek counterparts. Each side of this conflict was portrayed as either the modern Athens or Sparta, sometimes even by the statesmen shaping the events. For example, Henry Kissinger once compared the United States to Athens and the Soviets to Sparta.24 However, it should be noted that analogizing Sparta as the Soviet Union was mainly a later development and did not immediately commence when the Cold War began in the late 1940s.25 On the surface, the Cold War and Peloponnesian War did share some sim- ilarities. The two sides in the Cold War were very much ideological rivals, as were Athens and Sparta. Athens was a progressive democracy that favored democrats throughout the Greek world, while Sparta represented, at least in the pages of Thucydides, a conserva- tive oligarchic state, backward intellectually and economically. Furthermore, the Western allies, including the United States, were market‐based economies, which were integrated in material terms by an ever‐intensifying commerce (whose later manifestations we now recognize as globalism). In this sense, the United States as the exemplar of western democracy was seen as a modern‐day Athens, while the authoritarian Soviets seemed to resemble Thucydidean Sparta. The secretiveness of the Spartan state compared to the openness of Athens was another point of similarity with the Soviet Union. Moreover, the belief that the Peloponnesian War was a bipolar conflict defined by two camps domi- nated by Athens and Sparta was also influential.26 An example of this type of analysis can be seen in the work of the prominent American political scientist Robert Gilpin. Gilpin explicitly links Athens with the United States and the Soviet Union with Sparta, although admittedly exercising some caution: The similarities between fifth‐century b.c. Greece and the closing decades of the twentieth century are indeed striking. Two former allies, having defeated the common enemy, turn on one another. On one side, the protagonist (the United States, like Athens) is democratic, commercial, and a sea power. The other side (the Soviet Union, like Sparta) is authoritarian, autarchic, and a land power.27 Scholars of ancient Greece have also contributed to such comparisons. Notable American historians such as Donald Kagan and Alvin Bernstein have made connec- tions between the antagonists of the Cold War and the Peloponnesian War. Reflecting some common conceptions of the similarities between the two conflicts, Kagan wrote in 1995: In fundamental ways the new situation resembled the structure of international relations in the Hellenic world after the Peloponnesian War, a similarity often remarked upon dur- ing the Cold War. The world was “bipolar”, divided into discrete blocs led by powers of very different kinds, rivals for the leading position, fearful and suspicious of one another. It was common in the West to identify the open, individualistic, democratic society of

716 Sean R. Jensen Athens with the similar one of the United States and the closed, communal, statist society of Sparta with Russia but, as we have seen, although the analogy between the internal character of the societies is reasonable, it breaks down when applied to external affairs. In ancient Greece, Sparta led a coalition of states, many of whom were quite independent, that resembled NATO more than the Warsaw Pact, and its policy was essentially static, intended to maintain the status quo that preserved its primacy and security. It was democratic Athens that was the dynamic, disruptive state, whose expansion and power the Spartans found threatening. The Delian League, which really had become an Athenian Empire, more closely resembled the Warsaw Pact, which badly disguised a Soviet Empire. In the twentieth century it was the Soviet Union, like Athens after the Persian Wars, that had used its victory swiftly to expand its territory and power, which challenged and alarmed the United States, a state, like Sparta, generally satisfied with the status quo and eager to preserve its advantages. (Kagan (1995) 444) Bernstein has commented on the similarities between the Soviet and Spartan economies, writing: The Soviet economy, unlike ours but like the Spartan, thoroughly entwined its defense sector in the economy at large so that defense spending could not stand out as an identifiable, discrete subsector. In effect, both Sparta’s and the Soviet Union’s economies responded to the dictates of those in control rather than to the market, were not subject to the laws of supply and demand, and were designed to endure the priority of security.28 Although all of these historians have cautioned those analogizing the Peloponnesian and Cold Wars, nonetheless, they have noted parallels between the two conflicts and even between the actors themselves. The influence of Sparta can also be traced in the contemporary culture of the US military. The National Infantry Association awards the Shield of Sparta‐Heroine of the Infantry to spouses of members of the US Infantry. According to the National Infantry Association website, the award is presented to: a spouse who has contributed significantly to the Infantry. The NIA’s goal is to recognize spouses of Infantrymen and other esteemed ladies, in support roles, whose contributions deserve special recognition by the National Infantry Association and the Infantry community. The award is a token of appreciation for the sacrifice and commitment demanded of the wives and supporters of Infantrymen. It further symbolizes these women as true patriots with selfless ideals and the courage to send their Infantrymen into harms [sic] way.29 This award recognizing the importance of women “in the support roles” seems to reflect the strong position of women in Spartan society recorded in ancient historiography. In particular, Plutarch provides many of the famous portraits and quotations of anonymous Spartan women who, dutifully following the strict Spartan ethos, demanded from their sons and husbands the same level of commitment to duty and sacrifice. For instance, one anonymous Spartan mother is said to have told her son when handing to him a shield for battle “child, this or on it”, τέκνον, ε῎φη, η῍ ταν̀ η῍ ἐπὶ τα̃ς, implying that he is to return victorious with his shield or carried back on it as a fatality of war (Plut. Mor. 241F16).

The Reception of Sparta in North America 717 The American service academies have also historically drawn on certain conceptions of ancient Sparta as part of their institutional identity. The academies have attempted to balance what are generally referred to as “Athenian and Spartan” cultures. The struggle between a culture that promotes military discipline and training associated with Sparta and one that also emphasizes intellectual growth is a natural result of inherent tensions within institutions devoted to military education. Sparta and Athens seem to be natural reference points. Both historians of the service academies and academy officials themselves have characterized the evolution of these institutions in these terms.30 For example, John P. Lovell, political scientist and graduate of West Point, has described the tension between these cultures as a struggle between Athenian and Spartan ideals: The terms Spartan and Athenian are used here metaphorically rather than literally. The Spartan ideals are those of the noble warrior: austerity, discipline, the comradeship of arms, devotion to the state, and, above all, a commitment to heroic deeds and a love of glory. Athenian ideals, in contrast, are especially those of culture and learning. It is not necessary to argue that service academy officials consciously sought to emulate their classical forebears in Sparta to recognize these ideals have been important elements of the academy subcultures. (Lovell (1979) 16) Lovell makes explicit the comparison with the supposed Athenian and Spartan cultures in the development of the curriculum of the academies: From the nineteenth century until the eve of World War II, the trade school orientation of the academies, the emphasis on “building character” and instilling discipline as the primary mission, insured that a commitment to Athens would remain comfortably subordinated to a commitment to Sparta. However, the combination of accreditation requirements gener- ated by authorization to award the baccalaureate degree, beginning in the 1930s, and the widespread recognition at the end of World War II of the complexity of professional demands in the postwar environment, led to an increase in emphasis upon the academic component of the academy mission. (Lovell (1979) 253) Thus, after the Second World War, this issue became increasingly important and the institutional trend of the service academies was toward a more “Athenian” academic culture, but not with the total exclusion of the “Spartan” emphasis on traditional military instruction. The historical view of Sparta as the exemplar of a uniquely military society and Athens as the source of western humanism has even informed the development of military education in the United States. 28.4  North‐American Scholarship The literature on Sparta is vast, but historically has been dominated by European scholars, and it is difficult to trace the study of Sparta among North American histo- rians before the twentieth century. Nevertheless, by the first half of the century,

718 Sean R. Jensen North American scholars had begun to contribute significantly to the subject. One of the earliest and most important American historians of Sparta was J.A.O. Larsen, who published a series of articles on the Spartan‐led Peloponnesian League and political structure of the state in the 1930s.31 Larsen is probably best known as an authoritative scholar of Greek federalism. Though active at Cambridge University in England for most of his career, another important American historian who studied Sparta was M.I. Finley, generally regarded as one of the most important historians of Greece of the twentieth century. Like Larsen, Finley is mainly known for his work on other areas of Greek history, particularly social and economic history, but still con- tributed some signal scholarship on Sparta.32 His article entitled “Sparta” published in 1968 examined the major social and political features of the so‐called “Spartan Revolution” of the archaic period. Donald Kagan, successively professor of Greek history at Cornell and Yale, has been an influential historian of the causes and course of the Peloponnesian War, and of numerous other important aspects of fifth‐century Spartan history.33 His work entitled “The Outbreak of The Peloponnesian War” (1969) has been instrumental in setting much of the scholarly debate concerning the controversial issues of the war and, in particular like Larsen, the structure of the Spartan‐led Peloponnesian League. Since the 1970s, American and Canadian scholars have become increasingly interested in Spartan history, which now challenges that of Athens in its received importance. Important examples include contributions of Thomas Figueira, Charles Hamilton, and Nigel Kennell. Figueira has tackled a variety of issues ranging from the size of the Spartan economy to the complicated issue of Messenian identity.34 The supposed uniqueness of the ancient Spartan state, and especially the role of women, continue to interest students of Sparta today just as it did in antiquity. North American scholars Sarah Pomeroy and Ellen Millender have been some of the leading international figures in the study of Spartan women. Pomeroy’s Spartan Women (2002) is the first book‐length study devoted to the subject and she has been a pio- neer in the field of women in antiquity since the 1970s.35 Her book on the women of Sparta is heavily influenced by contemporary feminist theory in the United States and argues that Spartan women had a place in society unusual for its time in the Greek world. Millender is noteworthy for challenging ancient and modern notions of a Spartan “difference.”36 Popular scholarly works touching on Sparta have become more available in the first decade of the twenty‐first century. Certainly, the success of classically‐themed movies and novels is partly responsible for the popularity of this tendency in scholarship. Victor Davis Hanson’s works on Greek warfare including A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (2005) have had broad appeal both to historians and the wider public. Hanson’s expertise in Greek military history is well‐established. Though he does not hail from North America, Cambridge University’s Paul Cartledge has recently authored popular books on Sparta such as The Spartans: The World of the Warrior‐Heroes of Ancient Greece (2003) and Thermopylai: The Battle That Changed the World (2006), which have found a ready audience in the United States and Canada. It is clear that ancient Sparta continues to be an intriguing subject to North Americans. Whether it is the battle of Thermopylai or the Peloponnesian War, the modern North American continues to be fascinated by the Spartans as much as by their ancient Athenian counterparts.

The Reception of Sparta in North America 719 28.5 Conclusion The influence of Sparta in North America has been visible in many areas of life ranging from politics and education to popular entertainment. The concentration on the classics in education in the colonial period created an educated class of political leaders who employed ancient Sparta as a model for the new American republic. The courage and dis- cipline attributed to Sparta were appealing to men such as John Dickinson and Samuel Adams, while the harshness of the Lykourgan system was criticized by other leaders such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. In the first half of the nineteenth century, classical learning continued to thrive in the United States, conspicuously in the South where knowledge of the classics was seen as characteristic of a southern gentleman. The Old South also looked to ancient Greece and Rome for parallels to its own political culture with its emphasis on the defense of slavery. However, Sparta’s influence was limited as Athens was generally preferred by Southerners drawn to Athenian democracy and cultural achievements. Apologists of slavery throughout the antebellum period held up Sparta as an example of a successful slave‐owning republic, while the famous aboli- tionist Lydia Marie Child referred to Sparta for the opposite conclusion. During the Civil War, Americans saw similarities between their terrible conflict and the Peloponnesian War. In this case, Sparta was equated with the South while the North was seen as a modern day Athens. Later, Americans would compare twentieth century conflicts with the Peloponnesian War. Political scientists and ancient historians saw many parallels between the antagonists of the Cold War and the Peloponnesian War. In most analyses, the Soviet Union was viewed as a modern‐day Sparta since both societies were secretive and closed off from the wider world while also enjoying conservative, highly controlled economies. In the twentieth‐ and twenty‐first centuries, Sparta began to penetrate popular culture in new ways. Many college and high‐school athletic teams both in the United States and Canada have adopted the Spartan hoplite as a spirited mascot. The last stand of Spartans at Thermopylai has been particularly influential in the American conception of self‐sacrifice for liberty as far back as the colonial period. Finally, North Americans have emerged as some of the most important scholars of ancient Sparta, making notable contributions on the history of Spartan women and Spartan economy. Although Rome historically has had a greater influence on North America, ancient Sparta has left a major imprint that has been to a large extent interpreted depending on the concerns of the moment. It is worth noting that throughout the course of American history Sparta has had particular appeal in times of social and political crisis. As discussed above, the influence of Sparta is noticeably visible in the early days of the formation of the United States, during the slavery debate, and the Cold War of the twentieth century. The revered stability and longevity of the Spartan social and political institutions seem to have offered comfort and hope for Americans in such times of drastic change and uncertainty. It did not matter whether the Sparta of John Adams, Thomas Roderick Dew, or the American Cold War warriors conformed to reality, but that the ancient city offered some insight to the course of human events. No matter one’s view of Sparta, whether as a mixed constitution, slavery‐practicing republic, or early totalitarian state, the city not only survived but thrived for centuries as a leading state in Greece. Sparta’s resilience, in over- coming military crises such as the great Persian invasion, and also in withstanding the pressure for revolution so widespread in ancient Greece, has given hope to those of the modern era confronting similar challenges.