Plutarch
46-119 A.C.E - Wrote in Greek
The Comparison of
Numa with Lycurgus
Written 75 A.C.E.
Translated by Dryden
The Comparison of
Numa with Lycurgus
By Plutarch
Having thus finished the lives of Lycurgus and Numa, we shall now, though
the work be difficult, put together their points of difference as they
lie here before our view. Their points of likeness are obvious; their moderation,
their religion, their capacity of government and discipline, their both
deriving their laws and constitutions from the gods. Yet in their common
glories there are circumstances of diversity; for first Numa accepted and
Lycurgus resigned a kingdom; Numa received without desiring it, Lycurgus
had it and gave it up; the one from a private person and a stranger was
raised by others to be their king; the other from the condition of a prince
voluntarily descended to the state of privacy. It was glorious to acquire
a throne by justice, yet more glorious to prefer justice before a throne;
the same virtue which made the one appear worthy of regal power exalted
the other to the disregard of it. Lastly, as the musicians tune their harps,
so the one let down the high-flown spirits of the people at Rome to a lower
key, as the other screwed them up at Sparta to a higher note, when they
were sunken low by dissoluteness and riot. The harder task was that of
Lycurgus; for it was not so much his business to persuade his citizens
to put off their armour or ungird their swords, as to cast away their gold
or silver, and abandon costly furniture and rich tables; nor was it necessary
to preach to them, that, laying aside their arms, they should observe the
festivals, and sacrifice to the gods, but rather, that, giving up feasting
and drinking, they should employ their time in laborious and martial exercises;
so that while the one effected all by persuasions and his people's love
for him, the other, with danger and hazard of his person, scarcely in the
end succeeded. Numa's muse was a gentle and loving inspiration, fitting
him well to turn and soothe his people into peace and justice out of their
violent and fiery tempers; whereas, if we must admit the treatment of the
Helots to be a part of Lycurgus's legislation, a most cruel and iniquitous
proceeding, we must own that Numa was by a great deal the more humane and
Greek-like legislator, granting even to actual slaves a licence to sit
at meat with their masters at the feast of Saturn, that they also might
have some taste and relish of the sweets of liberty. For this custom, too,
is ascribed to Numa, whose wish was, they conceive, to give a place in
the enjoyment of the yearly fruits of the soil to those who had helped
to produce them. Others will have it to be in remembrance of the age of
Saturn, when there was no distinction between master and slave, but all
lived as brothers and as equals in a condition of equality.
In general, it seems that both aimed at the same design and intent,
which was to bring their people to moderation and frugality; but of other
virtues, the one set his affection most on fortitude, and the other on
justice; unless we will attribute their different ways to the different
habits and temperaments which they had to work upon by their enactments;
for Numa did not out of cowardice or fear affect peace, but because he
would not be guilty of injustice; nor did Lycurgus promote a spirit of
war in his people that they might do injustice to others, but that they
might protect themselves by it.
In bringing the habits they formed in their people to a just and
happy mean, mitigating them where they exceeded, and strengthening them
where they were deficient, both were compelled to make great innovations.
The frame of government which Numa formed was democratic and popular to
the last extreme, goldsmiths and flute-players and shoemakers constituting
his promiscuous, many-coloured commonalty. Lycurgus was rigid and aristocratical,
banishing all the base and mechanic arts to the company of servants and
strangers, and allowing the true citizens no implements but the spear and
shield, the trade of war only, and the service of Mars, and no other knowledge
or study, but that of obedience to their commanding officers, and victory
over their enemies. Every sort of money-making was forbid them as freemen;
and to make them thoroughly so and keep them so through their whole lives,
every conceivable concern with money was handed over, with the cooking
and the waiting at table, to slaves and helots. But Numa made none of these
distinctions; he only suppressed military rapacity, allowing free scope
to every other means of obtaining wealth; nor did he endeavour to do away
with inequality in this respect, but permitted riches to be amassed to
any extent, and paid no attention to the gradual and continual augmentation
and influx of poverty; which it was his business at the outset, whilst
there was no great disparity in the estates of men, and whilst people still
lived much in one manner, to obviate, as Lycurgus did, and take measures
of precaution against the mischiefs of avarice, mischiefs not of small
importance, but the real seed and first beginning of all the great and
extensive evils of after-times. The re-division of estates, Lycurgus is
not, it seems to me, to be blamed for making, nor Numa for omitting; this
equality was the basis and foundation of the one commonwealth; but at Rome,
where the lands had been lately divided, there was nothing to urge any
re-division or any disturbance of the first arrangement, which was probably
still in existence.
With respect to wives and children, and that community which both,
with a sound policy, appointed, to prevent all jealousy, their methods,
however were different. For when a Roman thought himself to have a sufficient
number of children, in case his neighbour who had none should come and
request his wife of him, he had a lawful power to give her up to him who
desired her, either for a certain time, or for good. The Lacedaemonian
husband, on the other hand, might allow the use of his wife to any other
that desired to have children by her, and yet still keep her in his house,
the original marriage obligation still subsisting as at first. Nay, many
husbands, as we have said, would invite men whom they thought likely to
procure them fine and good-looking children into their houses. What is
the difference, then, between the two customs? Shall we say that the Lacedaemonian
system is one of an extreme and entire unconcern about their wives, and
would cause most people endless disquiet and annoyance with pangs and jealousies?
the Roman course wears an air of a more delicate acquiescence, draws the
veil of a new contract over the change, and concedes the general insupportableness
of mere community? Numa's directions, too, for the care of young women,
are better adapted to the female sex and to propriety; Lycurgus's are altogether
unreserved and unfeminine, and have given a great handle to the poets,
who call them (Ibycus, for example) Phoenomerides, bare-thighed; and give
them the character (as does Euripides) of being wild after
husbands-
"These with the young men from the house go
out,
With thighs that show, and robes that fly about." For in fact the skirts
of the frock worn by unmarried girls were not sewn together at the lower
part, but used to fly back and show the whole thigh bare as they walked.
The thing is most distinctly given by Sophocles-
"-She, also, the young maid,
Whose frock, no robe yet o'er it laid,
Folding back, leaves her bare thigh free,
Hermione." And so their women, it is said, were bold and masculine,
overbearing to their husbands in the first place, absolute mistresses in
their houses, giving their opinions about public matters freely, and speaking
openly even on the most important subjects. But the matrons, under the
government of Numa, still indeed received from their husbands all that
high respect and honour which had been paid them under Romulus as a sort
of atonement for the violence done to them; nevertheless, great modesty
was enjoined upon them; all busy intermeddling forbidden, sobriety insisted
on, and silence made habitual. Wine they were not to touch at all, nor
to speak, except in their husband's company, even on the most ordinary
subjects. So that once when a woman had the confidence to plead her own
cause in a court of judicature, the senate, it is said, sent to inquire
of the oracle what the prodigy did portend; and, indeed, their general
good behaviour and submissiveness is justly proved by the record of those
that were otherwise; for as the Greek historians record in their annals
the names of those who first unsheathed the sword of civil war, or murdered
their brothers, or were parricides, or killed their mothers, so the Roman
writers report it as the first example, that Spurius Carvilius divorced
his wife, being a case that never before happened, in the space of two
hundred and thirty years from the foundation of the city; and that one
Thalaea, the wife of Pinarius, had a quarrel (the first instance of the
kind) with her mother-in-law, Gegania, in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus;
so successful was the legislator in securing order and good conduct in
the marriage relation. Their respective regulations for marrying the young
women are in accordance with those for their education. Lycurgus made them
brides when they were of full age and inclination for it. Intercourse,
where nature was thus consulted, would produce, he thought, love and tenderness,
instead of the dislike and fear attending an unnatural compulsion; and
their bodies, also, would be better able to bear the trials of breeding
and of bearing children, in his judgment the one end of
marriage.
The Romans, on the other hand, gave their daughters in marriage
as early as twelve years old, or even under; thus the thought their bodies
alike and minds would be delivered to the future husband pure and undefiled.
The way of Lycurgus seems the more natural with a view to the birth of
children; the other, looking to a life to be spent together, is more moral.
However, the rules which Lycurgus drew up for superintendence of children,
their collection into companies, their discipline and association, as also
his exact regulations for their meals, exercises, and sports, argue Numa
no more than an ordinary lawgiver. Numa left the whole matter simply to
be decided by the parent's wishes or necessities; he might, if he pleased,
make his son a husbandman or carpenter, coppersmith or musician; as if
it were of no importance for them to be directed and trained up from the
beginning to one and the same common end, or as though it would do for
them to be like passengers on shipboard, brought thither each for his own
ends and by his own choice, uniting to act for the common good only in
time of danger upon occasion of their private fears, in general looking
simply to their own interest.
We may forbear, indeed, to blame common legislators, who may be
deficient in power or knowledge. But when a wise man like Numa had received
the sovereignty over a new and docile people, was there anything that would
better deserve his attention than the education of children, and the training
up of the young, not to contrariety and discordance of character, but to
the unity of the common model of virtue, to which from their cradle they
should have been formed and moulded? One benefit among many that Lycurgus
obtained by his course was the permanence which it secured to his laws.
The obligation of oaths to preserve them would have availed but little,
if he had not, by discipline and education, infused them into the children's
characters, and imbued their whole early life with a love of his government.
The result was that the main points and fundamentals of his legislation
continued for above five hundred years, like some deep and thoroughly ingrained
tincture, retaining their hold upon the nation. But Numa's whole design
and aim, the continuance of peace and goodwill, on his death vanished with
him; no sooner did he expire his last breath than the gates of Janus's
temple flew wide open, and, as if war had, indeed, been kept and caged
up within those walls, it rushed forth to fill all Italy with blood and
slaughter; and thus that best and justest fabric of things was of no long
continuance, because it wanted that cement which should have kept all together,
education. What, then, some may say, has not Rome been advanced and bettered
by her wars? A question that will need a long answer, if it is to be one
to satisfy men who take the better to consist in riches, luxury, and dominion,
rather than in security, gentleness, and that independence which is accompanied
by justice. However, it makes much for Lycurgus, that, after the Romans
had deserted the doctrine and discipline of Numa, their empire grew and
their power increased so much; whereas so soon as the Lacedaemonians fell
from the institutions of Lycurgus, they sank from the highest to the lowest
state, and, after forfeiting their supremacy over the rest of Greece, were
themselves in danger of absolute extirpation. Thus much, meantime, was
peculiarly signal and almost divine in the circumstances of Numa, that
he was an alien, and yet courted to come and accept a kingdom, the frame
of which though he entirely altered, yet he performed it by mere persuasion,
and ruled a city that as yet had scarce become one city, without recurring
to arms or any violence (such as Lycurgus used, supporting himself by the
aid of the nobler citizens against the commonalty), but, by mere force
of wisdom and justice, established union and harmony amongst
all.
THE END
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