Spartan Hereditary Care

by Hans F. K. Günther

Hans F. K. Günther highlights the rigorous hereditary practices and laws aimed at preserving the physical and moral superiority of the Spartans.

This is an excerpt from Hans F. K. Günther’s Lebensgeschichte des hellenischen Volkes (History of the Hellenic People), 1965.

The Spartans paid close attention to the inheritance of human traits and the preservation of their ruling class. From Plutarch’s writings about Lycurgus, it is evident that Sparta had actual hereditary health legislation. ... In fact, the constitution attributed to Lycurgus preserves Indo-European traditions in its laws on hereditary care, which had been developed under Spartan conditions and gained the force of law over the centuries.

The Lycurgan constitution aims to instil in the Spartans what Leonidas, when he marched towards certain death in the Battle of Thermopylae, declared as his legacy to Spartan women according to Plutarch (On the Malice of Herodotus, 32): ‘Marry the capable and give birth to the capable!’ Such an attitude of hereditary strengthening of their tribe was inherent in both Spartan men and women. According to Pollux (III, 48; VII, 40), all free men of sound constitution were obliged to marry. Plutarch (Lysander 30) reports that in Sparta, those who did not marry, married too late, or married someone incapable of producing strong offspring were punished. According to Athenaeus (XIII, 555 c/d), there was also a penalty for remaining unmarried; bachelors were despised. They were not allowed to watch games, and young men did not stand up when they passed by, as they did for married men.

The strength of the Spartan state was attributed by Hellenic historians to the selection, refinement, and culling of the tribe and its families. Xenophon, in his work on the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians (1,10; V, 9), first stated that the Lycurgan laws had provided Sparta with men distinguished by their height and strength, and then concluded, ‘It is easy to see that these [selective, refining, and eliminating] measures would produce a tribe superior in stature and strength; one would hardly find a healthier and more capable people than the Spartans.’

Herodotus (IX, 72) called the Spartans the most handsome men among the Hellenes. The racial characteristics of Spartan women are described by the poet Alcman, who was active in Sparta around 650 BCE (Fragments 54). He praised his cousin Hagesichora, saying her hair bloomed like unalloyed gold over a silver-bright face. The comparison of fair skin to silver is also found in Homer. In the 5th century BCE, the poet Bacchylides (XIX, 2) praised the ‘blonde girls from Laconia’. Even the Archbishop of Thessalonica, Eustathius, who lived in the 12th century and wrote commentaries on Homer, noted when referring to a passage from the Iliad (IV, 141) that among the Spartans, fair skin and blond hair were considered signs of masculinity.

Insightful men from other Hellenic tribes have always recognised the noble nature of Spartanism, even when their home state was at war with Sparta. The far-sighted Thucydides (III, 83) lamented the decline of nobility and honesty among the Dorians during the Peloponnesian War, which his home city of Athens fought against Sparta. Throughout Hellas, those of noble disposition saw in Sparta an ideal image of the best Hellenism. This was also the view of Plato, whose proposals for state hereditary care followed the Dorian model. The masculinity and civic spirit of Dorian culture in Sparta, its maintenance of moderation and dignity, these Apollonian qualities of a self-disciplined nobility born to lead: all these traits were admired by the best in Hellas. The consistent unity of Spartan nature through the centuries is certainly a result of the directed selection within the Spartan tribe, a conscious adherence to the Lycurgan direction of selection.

(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)