The Spartan Economy

There are yet other customs in Sparta which Lycurgus instituted in opposition to those of the rest of Hellas, and the following among them.

In the generality of states, everyone devotes his full energy to making money.

• One man as a tiller of the soil
• Another as a mariner
• A third as a merchant
• others depend on various arts to earn a living.

But at Sparta, Lycurgus forbade his freeborn citizens to have anything whatsoever to do with the concerns of money-making.

As freemen, he enjoined upon them to regard as their concern exclusively those activities upon which the foundations of civic liberty are based.

Why should wealth be regarded as a matter for serious pursuit in a community where, partly by a system of equal contributions to the necessaries of life, and partly by the maintenance of a common standard of living, the lawgiver placed so effectual a check upon the desire of riches for the sake of luxury?

What inducement, for instance, would there be to make money, even for the sake of wearing apparel, in a state where personal adornment is held to lie not in the costliness of the clothes they wear, but in the healthy condition of the body to be clothed?

Nor again could there be much inducement to amass wealth, in order to be able to expend it on the members of a common mess, where the legislator had made it seem far more glorious that a man should help his fellows by the labour of his body than by costly outlay. The latter being, as he finely phrased it, the function of wealth, the former an activity of the soul.

He went a step further, and set up a strong barrier against the pursuance of money-making by wrongful means.

He established a coinage of so extraordinary a sort, that even 10 minas could not come into a house without attracting the notice, either of the master himself, or of some member of his household.

In fact, it would occupy a considerable space, and need a waggon to carry it.

Gold and silver themselves, moreover, are liable to search, (5) and in case of detection, the possessor subjected to a penalty.

In fact, to repeat the question asked above, for what reason should money-making become an earnest pursuit in a community where the possession of wealth entails more pain than its employment brings satisfaction?