Ideal Commonwealths | Page 8

at home,
upon expensive couches and tables, to call in the assistance of butchers
and cooks, or to fatten like voracious animals in private. For so not
only their manners would be corrupted, but their bodies disordered;
abandoned to all manner of sensuality and dissoluteness, they would
require long sleep, warm baths, and the same indulgence as in perpetual
sickness. To effect this was certainly very great; but it was greater still,
to secure riches from rapine and from envy, as Theophrastus expresses
it, or rather by their eating in common, and by the frugality of their
table, to take from riches their very being. For what use or enjoyment
of them, what peculiar display of magnificence could there be, where
the poor man went to the same refreshment with the rich? Hence the

observation, that it was only at Sparta where Plutus (according to the
proverb) was kept blind, and like an image, destitute of life or motion.
It must further be observed, that they had not the privilege to eat at
home, and so to come without appetite to the public repast: they made a
point of it to observe any one that did not eat and drink with them, and
to reproach him as an intemperate and effeminate person that was sick
of the common diet.
The rich, therefore (we are told), were more offended with this
regulation than with any other, and, rising in a body, they loudly
expressed their indignation: nay, they proceeded so far as to assault
Lycurgus with stones, so that he was forced to fly from the assembly
and take refuge in a temple. Unhappily, however, before he reached it,
a young man named Alcander, hasty in his resentments, though not
otherwise ill-tempered, came up with him, and, upon his turning round,
struck out one of his eyes with a stick. Lycurgus then stopped short,
and, without giving way to passion, showed the people his eye beat out,
and his face streaming with blood. They were so struck with shame and
sorrow at the sight, that they surrendered Alcander to him, and
conducted him home with the utmost expressions of regret. Lycurgus
thanked them for their care of his person, and dismissed them all except
Alcander. He took him into his house, but showed no ill treatment
either by word or action; only ordering him to wait upon him, instead
of his usual servants and attendants. The youth, who was of an
ingenuous disposition, without murmuring, did as he was commanded.
Living in this manner with Lycurgus, and having an opportunity to
observe the mildness and goodness of his heart, his strict temperance
and indefatigable industry, he told his friends that Lycurgus was not
that proud and severe man he might have been taken for, but, above all
others, gentle and engaging in his behaviour. This, then, was the
chastisement, and this punishment he suffered, of a wild and
headstrong young man to become a very modest and prudent citizen. In
memory of his misfortune, Lycurgus built a temple to Minerva
Optiletis, so called by him from a term which the Dorians use for the
eye. Yet Dioscorides, who wrote a treatise concerning the
Lacedæmonian government, and others, relate that his eye was hurt, but
not put out, and that he built the temple in gratitude to the goddess for

his cure. However, the Spartans never carried staves to their assemblies
afterwards.
The public repasts were called by the Cretans Andria; but the
Lacedæmonians styled them Phiditia, either from their tendency to
friendship and mutual benevolence, phiditia being used instead of
philitia; or else from their teaching frugality and parsimony, which the
word pheido signifies. But it is not all impossible that the first letter
might by some means or other be added, and so phiditia take place of
editia, which barely signifies eating. There were fifteen persons to a
table, or a few more or less. Each of them was obliged to bring in
monthly a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of cheese,
two pounds and a half of figs, and a little money to buy flesh and fish.
If any of them happened to offer a sacrifice of first fruits, or to kill
venison, he sent a part of it to the public table: for after a sacrifice or
hunting, he was at liberty to sup at home: but the rest were to appear at
the usual place. For a long time this eating in common was observed
with great exactness: so that when king Agis returned from a successful
expedition against the Athenians, and from a desire to sup with his wife,
requested to have his portion at home, the Polemarchs refused to send it:
nay, when, through resentment, he neglected, the day following, to
offer the