(This is Part I of a
two-part series. See HERE for Part II.)
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| Professor Stephen Hodkinson |
Today we have a guest
post by Professor Stephen Hodkinson, BA, PhD, FSA, Professor of Ancient History
and Director of the Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies at the
University of Nottingham.
Professor Hodkinson is
a world leader in the history of Sparta, and edited and helped write (along
with co-author Ian Macgregor Morris) “Sparta
in Modern Thought.” Dr. Hodkinson
was even made an Honorary Citizen of the modern city of Sparta in Greece for
his academic contributions to the history of Sparta.
As I expound upon in Part II, a common slogan among the more extremist groups of U.S. pro-gun activists
is "Molon labe!" (ancient Greek for “Come and take them”), a phrase
which was supposedly spoken by King Leonidas I after Xerxes I commanded him to
lay down his arms and surrender, at the Battle of Thermopylae (as written by
the ancient historian Plutarch, who was a Greek Roman). Pro-gun activists
in the U.S. use the cry as a sort of code phrase to oppose any and all gun
regulation, with the fallacious assumption that, no matter how commonsense the
regulation may be, it would eventually lead to complete confiscation of all
civilian firearms (and thus they would utter the phrase upon any attempt to
take them away).
But I wondered how
appropriate such a slogan was. Though it fit the idea of surrendering
arms, I wanted to delve a bit deeper. As I understood it,
the Sparta of Leonidas was deeply stratified and had some very profound rules about earning honor
and rigorous military training.
Thus, I was curious,
and hoped Dr. Hodkinson could help answer some questions: Could anyone in
Sparta possess weaponry? Were Helots or the others banned from owning
weapons? Did you have to earn the right, even as a Spartiate? At
what age could you possess a weapon? Were women allowed to be armed?
Once earned, could anyone carry a weapon anywhere they wished in society?
My main goal was to
compare and contrast the reality of arms control between that of Sparta in the
time of Leonidas and the U.S. of today, and see if the utterance of "Molon
labe!" is really pertinent to the modern pro-gun movement or is simply a
shallow and narrowly-focused slogan.
So I wrote Dr.
Hodkinson with these questions. Below
was his academic response. In Part II I
will then evaluate his response in light of the gun control and pro-gun
movements.
From Dr. Hodkinson:
Did Sparta exercise arms control in its society?
(Academic opinion in
response to a query from Baldr Odinson)
Professor Stephen
Hodkinson. BA, PhD, FSA
Professor of Ancient History and Director, Centre for Spartan and
Peloponnesian Studies
University of Nottingham
Preliminary note
My comments here derive from my
research over the last few years on the role of war and military elements in
Spartan culture. I have published an early version of my findings in an
article, “Was classical Sparta a military society?”, in Stephen Hodkinson and
Anton Powell (eds.), Sparta and War
(Classical Press of Wales, Swansea, 2006), pp. 111-162.
Historical Context
My comments deal with ancient
Sparta in the Classical period of Greek history: i.e. the 5th and 4th
centuries BC. This was the period when Sparta was at the peak of its power:
when it led the Greek resistance to the Persian invasion (480-479 BC, which
included the battle of Thermopylae), when it fought the Peloponnesian War
against Athens (431-404 BC), and when it controlled a short-lived empire, which
collapsed after Sparta’s defeat at the battle of Leuktra in 371 BC.
Spartan society was highly
stratified and, in discussing the question of access to arms, we need to
distinguish several different groups. Traditionally, there were three main
groups:
- The Spartiates (nowadays, in
popular parlance, simply called the ‘Spartans’). This was the elite group of
full citizens. They lived in the five central villages of Sparta and were a
leisured elite of landowners. Their country estates, which occupied the most
fertile plains within Sparta’s quite large territory, were cultivated by an
unfree population, the helots (see below). Spartiate boys went through the
public upbringing from age 7 and Spartiate men alone exercised political
rights. Spartiate girls also received some form of public physical training
before marriage.
- The perioikoi (‘dwellers
around’). This was another group of free men and women. They lived in a number
of self-governing villages or small towns scattered around Sparta’s territory.
Economically, they ranged from wealthy leisured landowners to ordinary working
farmers and craftsmen etc. They were not full citizens like the Spartiates
(they did not exercise any political rights in Sparta itself or go through the
Spartiate upbringing), but they did have some form of subsidiary membership of
the broader political community. The ancient term for the Spartan state, ‘the
Lakedaimonians’, embraced both the Spartiates and the perioikoi.
- The helots. These were an
unfree population who farmed the Spartiates’ country estates and were also
servants in the Spartiates’ households in Sparta itself.
There were also a number of other
groups in the society. The people in these groups were free, but not full
citizens. Over the course of the Classical period, two of these other groups
became numerically significant:
- The Inferiors. These were
Spartiates who had lost full citizen status for various reasons: most notably
impoverishment which prevented them from making their compulsory food
contributions to their common mess, which led to loss of Spartiate status.
- The neodamodeis. These were
former helots who had been given their freedom in return for military service
in Sparta’s armies. This status was probably created during the Peloponnesian
War in the 420s BC.
A couple of further minor groups
are worth mentioning:
- The mothakes. Exactly who these
were is debated. In my view, these were boys from former Spartiate families
which had lost full citizen status, but who were sponsored through the public
upbringing by wealthy Spartiates and on successful completion could regain
Spartiate status.
- The nothoi (‘bastards’). These
were probably sons of Spartiate fathers by helot women.
Ownership of and
access to arms: military weapons
The phrase “molon labe” (“come
and take them”) ascribed to King Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae relates to
military arms used in warfare. Most soldiers in Sparta were heavy-armed
hoplites, whose offensive weapons were a spear and a short sword (shorter than
the sword of hoplites from other Greek states). Hoplite service was normally
reserved to adult males (i.e. men aged 20 and over). Among the Spartiates the
age of retirement from hoplite service was age 60.
Of the groups listed above, the
Spartiates, perioikoi, Inferiors, neodamodeis and nothoi are all attested as
fighting as hoplites in Sparta’s armies. (Nowadays, we talk loosely about the
‘Spartan army’; but Sparta’s army was never composed solely of Spartiates. The
‘Lakedaimonian army’ would be more accurate and closer to ancient usage.) We
can reasonably assume that adult male hoplites from all these groups of free
persons had legitimate personal ownership of military weapons, which they would
typically store at home when not on active service.
The situation regarding the
helots is slightly more complex. (Peter Hunt’s controversial book, Slaves, Warfare and Ideology in the Greek
Historians, argues that the helots had a larger military role than most
scholars believe.) In my view, they
did not normally have an active fighting role. There were occasional
exceptions: in the crucial battle of Plataia in 479 BC, the final battle of the
Persian War, 35,000 helots participated as light-armed (not hoplite) troops;
and modest numbers of helots sometimes fought on overseas campaigns during the
Peloponnesian War. But these were exceptional occasions. Each Spartiate was
normally accompanied on campaign by a helot personal servant; but there were
strict precautions to prevent these helots gaining access to usable arms. So
there is every reason to believe that within Spartan territory helots would
normally have been prevented from owning or gaining access to military weapons
– or at least to spears (see below).
Returning to the various groups
who are attested as fighting as hoplites, did they have to earn the right to
bear and own arms? Again, there is no text that specifies the exact legal
position; but there were certain hoops that men from the different groups had
to go through. A Spartiate boy almost certainly had to fulfil all the demands
of the upbringing, in order to be allowed to join the army at age 20; the same
surely also applied to young mothakes. The neodamodeis had to agree to perform
military service for Sparta in return for being granted their freedom. As for
members of the perioikoi, on reaching adulthood they had to be accepted as
legitimate citizens in their own local communities and they probably also had
to have sufficient wealth to afford the hoplite equipment – as was the case in
most other Greek states.
Gender. No women from any of the
groups in Spartan society fought in the Lakedaimonian army or had any guard
duty roles, so they probably had no right to own or use military weapons.
Age. As already indicated, for
the Spartiates (and probably for the other groups too) eligibility for hoplite
service began at age 20. Whether or not a Spartiate teenager possessed his own
weapons before he started hoplite service is not mentioned in any ancient
source. It may be that youths in their late teens, soon about to become
hoplites, did so, but it is very difficult to demonstrate. In Athens, and
possibly in other Greek states, 18-19-year-olds from citizen families who could
afford it (families had to pay their teenagers’ costs) could serve as ephebes,
being assigned static guard duties inside Athenian territory. Athenian
teenagers would necessarily have their own weapons during this period of
service. However, no source mentions anything parallel in Sparta (on the
enigmatic Krypteia, see below). Contrary to popular opinion, Greek hoplite
fighting, even in Sparta, involved remarkably little specialised prior training.
It was generally assumed that using spear or sword was such a natural activity
that it required little formal training, and in other states one has references
to youths just grabbing their father’s weapons stored at home and playing at
fighting. In Sparta, of course, boys were away from home in the public
upbringing from age 7, so one might imagine that training teenagers for combat
would have been more organised. However, none of the evidence for the Spartiate
public upbringing makes any mention of specialised military training: either
practice in the use of spear or sword or practice in group combat. The only
implied reference to formal military training (and this was for hoplites
generally, not specifically part of the upbringing) is to formation drill:
coordinated manoeuvres to get the phalanx into the right position before or
during battle. It would be reasonable to assume that 18-19-year-old Spartiates
were included in this formation drill training in preparation for when they
turned age 20; and also that it was probably practised spear in hand, to make
it more realistic. However, this is only assumption and it cannot be used to
infer that boys below age 18 had access to military weapons. (In an incident
discussed below, when one boy accidentally killed another, he did so with a
whittling knife, not a military weapon.)
Use of military
weapons in everyday peacetime life
There were
certain specific occasions in everyday peacetime life when men who had
legitimate ownership of military weapons could take them out of storage at home
and make use of them in public situations. One was for the formation training
mentioned above. Another was for hunting expeditions in the countryside, for
which spears were used. Yet another may have been for certain types of public
dances: notably the so-called pyrriche, which mimicked combat movements and was
conducted bearing one’s shield – and possibly one’s spear (the evidence differs
on this point).
However, apart
from these specific occasions, the Spartiates (and no doubt the other groups
who fought in the army) normally went about their daily lives unarmed: i.e.
without carrying weapons. This point is attested by two contemporary writers:
Thucydides, writing about Greece in general in the late 5th century;
and Xenophon, writing specifically about Sparta in the early 4th
century.
Thucydides
(1.5-6) says that in certain (less civilised) parts of Greece – he mentions
various peoples in central Greece – the old practice of carrying arms still
survives because of the continuing danger of piracy. The clear implication is
that in more secure and civilised Greek states people no longer carried weapons
in everyday life; and this is confirmed when he goes on to say that the
Athenians were the first to give up the habit of carrying weapons and also to
adopt the fashion of wearing luxurious dress. He then says that the
Lakedaimonians (i.e. Spartans) were the first to dress more simply in accord
with modern taste. The implications are: (1) that by the time of their shift to
simpler dress the Spartans had already followed the Athenian example of not
carrying arms in everyday life; (2) that the Athenians and other civilised
Greeks then adopted the Spartan example of simple dress, so that by Thucydides’
time in the late 5th century they all dressed simply and without
carrying arms.
Xenophon, in his Hellenika (3.3.7), gives an account of a
planned conspiracy in Sparta around 400 BC whose leaders hoped to recruit
various non-Spartiate groups – the helots, neodamodeis, Inferiors and perioikoi
– to revolt against the Spartiates. The conspiracy was nipped in the bud
because an informer brought it to the attention of the authorities and reported
a conversation he had had with the conspiracy’s leader, a certain Kinadon. When
the informer asked Kinadon where the rebels would get arms, this is how
Xenophon reports Kinadon’s words and actions (I quote):
“Those of us who are in the army, of course,
have arms of our own. As for the mob, I will show you.” He had then taken him
into the iron market and pointed out to him the great supply of knives, swords,
spits, axes, hatchets and sickles. “And tools”, he said, “which are used for
work in agriculture, forestry or stonework are also weapons, and most of the
other industries, too, use implements which are perfectly good weapons,
especially against unarmed men.”
From this evidence we can deduce
that: (1) various types of everyday sharp and bladed implements (but not
spears), were available for purchase in the market and for use by all sorts of
subordinate groups – whether the swords mentioned in the passage would have
been sold to helots is an interesting but unanswerable question; (2) despite
this easy availability of dangerous implements to potential rebels, the
Spartiates went about their daily lives unarmed.
Earlier in the episode Xenophon
gives a series of snapshots of Spartiate daily life. He depicts around 75
Spartiates doing business in the agora surrounded by more than 4,000
non-Spartiates; other Spartiates walking about the streets in ones and twos,
also outnumbered by non-Spartiates; finally, individual Spartiates out on their
country estates supervising a mass of helot labourers. So we can’t account for
the fact that the Spartiates didn’t carry arms by arguing that they were always
massed in a group, giving them strength in numbers. Xenophon implies that a
Spartiate remained unarmed even when on his own out on his country estates,
separated from his fellow citizens. Some TV programmes about Sparta, such as
the History Channel’s The Rise and Fall
of the Spartans (2002), show images
of helots working the fields supervised by Spartiates standing over them fully
armed in military gear. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The only occasion when certain
Spartiates are said to have gone out among the helots armed with a military
weapon was as part of the infamous Krypteia. According to Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus ch. 28), reporting
information from Aristotle (probably a work written by Aristotle’s students
within his collective research into Greek constitutions), a select group of
young Spartiates was sent out carrying the short Spartan sword, the encheiridion, with the brief to kill
helots. This, however, was a very limited occasion. According to the latest
study, Jean Ducat’s Spartan Education (2006,
ch. 9), it took place for a limited
period perhaps only once a year, involving a very small number of young
Spartiates, perhaps only a dozen or so (possibly 18-19-year-olds, possibly
young men in their 20s: the evidence is ambiguous). It does not represent
normal everyday Spartan practice.
Use of non-military
‘weapons’ in everyday life
As the Xenophon passage shows,
everyday life in a pre-industrial agrarian society like Sparta necessarily
involved the regular use of a wide range of sharp and bladed implements which
would have been available to men and women from all groups in the society.
This included not just adults but
also boys. In his Anabasis – his
account of the expedition of the Greek mercenaries known as the ‘Ten Thousand’
into the Persian Empire – Xenophon (4.8.25-6) mentions that one of the troops
was a Spartiate called Drakontios who had been exiled from home as a ‘boy’
because he had accidentally killed another boy with the stroke of a xyele. (In a Spartan context, the Greek
term for ‘boy’ (pais) could mean
anything from age 7 to 14.) The xyele
was a curved knife, a Lakonian speciality, used especially for whittling, not
specifically for fighting; but obviously its availability could prove tragic in
the wrong circumstances. We don’t know anything more about the precise
circumstances of this accidental killing. What’s interesting is the severe
punishment of exile meted out by the Spartan authorities to the boy Drakontios
for the crime of accidental homicide. This was the same punishment as was meted
out to Spartan kings who were convicted of taking bribes against Sparta’s state
interests whilst on campaign.
“Molon labe”
Finally, some comments on the
“molon labe” phrase ascribed to Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae in 480
BC. It does not appear in Herodotus’ account, written in the later 5th
century, which records the witty sayings of another member of the 300,
Dienekes. Neither does it appear in accounts of the battle deriving from
Ephorus, who wrote in the 4th century and who himself drew upon a
contemporary poem about the battle by Simonides. To my knowledge, the only
appearance of the phrase in all the ancient evidence about Thermopylae is in a
work by Plutarch, writing in the early 2nd century AD: the Apophthegmata Lakonika (Sayings of Spartans), which is part of
Plutarch’s Moralia. It is no. 11 out
of fifteen sayings ascribed to Leonidas.
The Sayings of Spartans was not an original work by Plutarch himself,
but a personal compilation of sayings already in circulation (perhaps already
collected into earlier compilations) which Plutarch put together for his own
purposes. How far back the sayings go varies from saying to saying. Some go
back to the classical period and seem to be authentic sayings by historical
characters. However, many appear to be later inventions created in the
Hellenistic period.
Leonidas’ saying has a somewhat
odd context. Unlike most sayings in Plutarch’s compilation, it is not a verbal
saying, but a written response by letter to a letter from the Persian king Xerxes.
In fact, it is Leonidas’ second response in a mini-exchange of letters
initiated by Xerxes. The initial exchange between the two men is given in the
previous Saying, no. 10. Leonidas’ “molon labe” in Saying no. 11 has the
appropriate Spartan brevity in response to a brief three-word demand from
Xerxes. In contrast, in no. 10 Xerxes’ letter and Leonidas’ response are both
somewhat longer: Xerxes’ letter is 10 words long and Leonidas’ response is an
incongruously verbose 24 words in ancient Greek. The exchange of letters is in
itself peculiar, though not because Spartiates couldn’t read or write (they
could). Oral communication via herald was a more normal mode of exchange and
would have given greater public resonance to a dramatic assertion like “molon labe”.
In sum, the historical
authenticity of the phrase “molon labe” is uncertain. One cannot prove that it
is a later embroidering of the Leonidas legend; but its sole appearance in a
late work which is known to contain many other inventions and its somewhat odd
context in that work do not inspire confidence that it is genuinely historical.
ADDENDUM (8/10/13) (Added by Baldr Odinson): For a related article on how ancient Greeks did not carry their weapons in everyday life, "How the Ancient Greeks Viewed Weapons," see an article in the New Yorker,
HERE. Selected quotes from that article:
The pioneers of citizen armies were also pioneers of withdrawing weapons from the places of civilized life. ...
But, even in these cities, it was believed that carrying weapons at home would be tantamount to letting weapons, not laws, rule. ...
This is the opposite of the view attributed to the Founding Fathers by the N.R.A.’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, in 2009, when he said that “our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.” On the contrary, letting the guys with weapons make the rules of ordinary life was the opposite of the classical practices that inspired the American founders.
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