… economic inequality among the spartiates was not new at any point we can see. But the nature of all of our sources – Plutarch, Xenophon, etc – is that they are almost always more interested in describing the ideal Spartan polity than the one that actually existed. And I want to emphasize […] that this ideal policy does not seem to ever have existed, with one author after another placing that ideal Sparta in the time period of the next author, who in turn informs us that, no, the ideal was even further back.
It is important to begin by noting that the sheer quantity of food the spartiates were to receive from their kleros would make almost any spartiate wealthy by the standards of most Greek poleis – spartiates, after all, lived a live of leisure (Plut. Lyc. 24.2) supported by the labor of slaves (Plut. Lyc. 24.3), where the closest they got to actual productive work was essentially sport hunting (Xen. Lac. 4.7). If the diet of the syssition was not necessarily extravagant, it was also hardly … well, Spartan – every meal seems to have included meat or at least meat-broth (Plut. Lyc. 12.2; Xen. Lac. 5.3), which would have been a fine luxury for most poorer Greeks. So when we are talking about disparities among the spartiates, we really mean disparities between the super-rich and the merely affluent. As we’ll see, even among the spartiates, these distinctions were made to matter sharply and with systematic callousness.
Now, our sources do insist that the Spartan system offered the Spartiates little opportunity for the accumulation or spending of wealth, except […] they also say this about a system they admit no longer functions … and then subsequently describe the behavior of wealthy Spartans in their own day. We’ve already noted Herodotus reporting long-standing wealthy elite spartiates as early as 480 (Hdt. 7.134), so it’s no use arguing they didn’t exist. Which raises the question: what does a rich Spartiate spend their wealth on?
In some ways, much the same as other Greek aristocrats. They might spend it on food: Xenophon notes that rich spartiates in his own day embellished the meals of their syssitia by substituting nice wheat bread in place of the more common (and less tasty) barley bread, as well as contributing more meat and such from hunting (Xen. Lac. 5.3). While the syssitia ought to even this effect out, in practice it seems like rich spartiates sought out the company of other rich spartiates (that certainly seems to be the marriage pattern, note Plut. Lys. 30.5, Agis. 5.1-4). Some spartiates, Xenophon notes, hoarded gold and silver (Xen Lac. 14.3; cf. Plut. Lyc. 30.1 where this is supposedly illegal – perhaps only for the insufficiently politically connected?). Rich spartiates might also travel and even live abroad in luxury (Xen. Lac. 14.4; Cf. Plut. Lyc. 27.3).
Wealthy spartiates also seemed to love their horses (Xen. Ages. 9.6). They competed frequently in the Olympic games, especially in chariot-racing. I should note just how expensive such an effort was. Competing in the Olympics at all was the preserve of the wealthy in Greece, because building up physical fitness required a lot of calories and a lot of protein in a society where meat was quite expensive. But to then add raising horses to the list – that is very expensive indeed (note also spartiate cavalry, Plut. Lyc. 23.1-2). Sparta’s most distinguished Olympic sport was also by far the most expensive one: the four-horse chariot race.
In other ways, however, the spartiates were quite unlike other Greek aristocrats. They do not seem to have patronized artists and craftsmen. The various craft-arts – decorative metalworking, sculpture, etc – largely fade away in Sparta starting around 550 B.C. – it may be that this transition is the correct date for the true beginning of not only “Spartan austerity” but also the Spartan system as we know it. There are a few exceptions – Cartledge (1979) notes black-painted Laconian finewares persist into the fifth century. Nevertheless, the late date for the archaeological indicators of Spartan austerity is striking, as it suggests that the society the spartiates of the early 300s believed to have dated back to Lycurgus in the 820s may well only have dated back to the 550s.
The other thing we see far less of in Sparta is euergitism – the patronage of the polis itself by wealthy families as a way of burnishing their standing in society. While there are notable exceptions (note Pritchard, Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens (2015) on the interaction and scale of tribute, taxes and euergitism at Athens), most of the grand buildings and public artwork in Greek cities was either built or maintained by private citizens, either as voluntary acts of public beneficence (euergitism – literally “doing good”) or as obligations set on the wealthy (called liturgies). Sparta had almost none of this public building in the Classical period – Thucydides’ observation that an observer looking only at the foundation of Sparta’s temples and public buildings would be hard-pressed to say the place was anything special is quite accurate (Thuc. 1.10.2). There are a handful of exceptions – the Persian stoa, a few statue groups, some hero reliefs, but far, far less than other Greek cities. In short, while other Greek elites felt the need – or were compelled – to contribute some of their wealth back to the community, the spartiates did not.
Passing judgment on those priorities, to a degree, comes down to taste. It is easy to cast the public building and patronage of the arts that most Greek elites engaged in as crass self-aggrandizement, wasting their money on burnishing their own image, rather than actually helping anyone except by accident. And there is truth to that idea – the Greek imagination has little space for what we today would call a philanthropist. On the other hand – as we’ll see – a handful of spartiates will come to possess a far greater proportion of the wealth and productive capacity of their society. Those wealthy spartiates will do even less to improve the lives of anyone – even their fellow spartiates. Moreover, following the beginning of Spartan austerity in the 550s, Sparta will produce no great artwork, no advances in architecture, no great works of literature – nothing to push the bounds of human achievement, to raise the human spirit.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part IV: Spartan Wealth”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-08-29.
