The Continual Cultivation Of Virtue

That too was a happy enactment, in my opinion, by which Lycurgus provided for the continual cultivation of virtue, even to old age.

By fixing (1) the election to the council of elders (2) as a last ordeal at the goal of life, he made it impossible for a high standard of virtuous living to be disregarded even in old age.

(So, too, it is worthy of admiration in him that he lent his helping hand to virtuous old age. (3)

Thus, by making the elders sole arbiters in the trial for life, he contrived to charge old age with a greater weight of honour than that which is accorded to the strength of mature manhood.)

Assuredly such a contest as this must appeal to the zeal of mortal man beyond all others in a supreme degree. Fair, doubtless, are contests of gymnastic skill, yet are they but trials of bodily excellence, but this contest for the seniority is of a higher sort—it is an ordeal of the soul itself. In proportion, therefore, as the soul is worthier than the body, so must these contests of the soul appeal to a stronger enthusiasm than their bodily antitypes.

He saw that communities exist where those who are willing to make virtue their study and delight fail somehow in ability to add to the glory of their fatherland. (4)

That lesson the legislator laid to heart, and in Sparta he enforced, as a matter of public duty, the practice of virtue by every citizen. And so it is that, just as man differs from man in some excellence, according as he cultivates or neglects to cultivate it, this city of Sparta, with good reason, outshines all other states in virtue; since she, and she alone, as made the attainment of a high standard of noble living a public duty.

(4) Is this an autobiographical touch?

And was this not a noble enactment, that whereas other states are content to inflict punishment only in cases where a man does wrong against his neighbour, Lycurgus imposed penalties no less severe on him who openly neglected to make himself as good as possible? For this, it seems, was his principle: in the one case, where a man is robbed, or defrauded, or kidnapped, and made a slave of, the injury of the misdeed, whatever it be, is personal to the individual so maltreated; but in the other case whole communities suffer foul treason at the hands of the base man and the coward. So that it was only reasonable, in my opinion, that he should visit the heaviest penalty upon these latter.

Moreover, he laid upon them, like some irresistible necessity, the obligation to cultivate the whole virtue of a citizen. Provided they duly performed the injunctions of the law, the city belonged to them, each and all, in absolute possession and on an equal footing. Weakness of limb or want of wealth (5) was no drawback in his eyes. But as for him who, out of the cowardice of his heart, shrank from the painful performance of the law’s injunction, the finger of the legislator pointed him out as there and then disqualified to be regarded longer as a member of the brotherhood of peers. (6)

This code of laws was very ancient. Lycurgus himself is said to have lived in the days of the Heraclidae. (7)

But being of so long standing, these laws, even at this day, still are stamped in the eyes of other men with all the novelty of youth. And the most marvellous thing of all is that, while everybody is agreed to praise these remarkable institutions, there is not a single state which cares to imitate them.