ABSTRACT
The early history of Sparta, like that of most Greek states, is hidden by the clouds of legend. In the case of Sparta, however, it is not simply the story of a mythical founder or some other mythical story. With Sparta, history and legend are more closely interwoven than anywhere else because the fame of her institutions and the outstanding qualities of her citizens gave later writers the chance of idealizing the picture and creating an artificial historical phenomenon, ‘the Spartan Mirage’.1 Of Lycurgus, the lawgiver, if not the founder, of that ideal Sparta, Plutarch states that ‘nothing can be said that is undisputed’. In spite of this statement, he then continues to write the life story of the man whom the Greeks themselves did not know whether to call a man or a god. Plutarch’s illogical attitude only confirms that his account of the Life of Lycurgus is legend rather than history, and so is most of the postHerodotean evidence. The conservatism of later Sparta, on the other hand, retained a good many early elements, and that is another reason why a chapter on early Sparta is needed if we want to understand her later character.
