Talk:Sparta

Unsourced[edit]

Polybius credited the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus with the invention of mixed government. Naturally, mixed governments themselves would eventually succumb to degeneration. But this process would take centuries rather than decades. This was shown by the examples of Sparta, the Republic of Carthage, and Rome.”
- J.R.Nyquist
  - cf. also: https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/polybius-origins-separation-powers

Feel no fear before the multitude of men, do not run in panic, but let each man bear his shield straight toward the fore-fighters, regarding his own life as hateful and holding the dark spirits of death as dear as the radiance of the sun.
- Tyrtaeus, Spartan Lessons; Or, the Praise of Valour (!?)

Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble?
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Stranger, go back to Sparta and tell our people that we who were slain obeyed the code.
- Simonides

[B]etter not bring up a lion inside your city, But if you must, then humour all his moods.
- Aristophanes, The Frogs