Lycurgus , Legendary Law - giver of 800 B . C . Sparta : Cultural

The historian E.H. Carr (1961) argues that "the function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present" (p. 35). How well we understand the present will of course determine how effective we can be in planning our future. Presumably, then, behaviorists concerned with progressive social change may benefit from the study of history . Yet historical facts belong to the past, irretrievably; time machines exist only in fiction . Consequently, the selection, interpretation, and synthesis of such facts (or assumed facts) are unavoidably, in part, a function of the historian's reinforcement history and current circumstances, both personal and cultural. Hence, behaviorists concerned with understanding the past face a challenging task: to render interpretations of historical writings consistent with our best guess as to the controlling variables operating at the levels of behavior and culture at the time. As a case in point, we offer the following exercise in interpretation drawn from the the extraordinarily remote culture of ancient Sparta specifically, the accomplishments attributed to Lycurgus, one of the most controversial and interesting figures of the ancient world. We must first qualify our title. Not only is Lycurgus considered the legendary law-giver of Sparta; as often, he is viewed as a semimythical historical figure. Even the ancients were in doubt about what he actually did or even when he lived, with estimates ranging from the 10th to the 8th century B.C. Moreover, while Lycurgus is credited with the establishment of the Spartan constitution, contemporary scholars argue that the institutions and reforms attributed to him probably developed over centuries. However, there is general agreement among modem scholars that there was a Spartan constitution and that it has been preserved in the works ascribed to the Greek historian Xenophon (B.C. 434?355?). As Moore (1975) notes, this document isn't so much a constitution as it is a discussion of the way of life of the Spartans . In short, "although Lycurgus may have been a wholly mythical personage, the [Spartan] constitution reflects the realities of Sparta's history and social system" (Brinton, Christopher, & Wolff, 1960, p . 60). In accordance with most students of ancient Greek history, we will accept that Lycurgus lived around 800 B.C., long before the Greek alphabet was fully developed. Our purpose, however, is not to argue aboutthe accuracy of his biography but to examine 800 B.C. Sparta as a remarkable feat of cultural engineering in B.F. Skinner's (1971) sense of the term (i.e., the establishment of practices which induce members to work for the survival of their culture) . Spartan society was rigidl y divided into three classes : a ruling class of citizens hoplites or Spartans proper constituting 5 to 10 percent of the population; an oppressed and exploited class of helots, outnumbering the citizen by about 10 to 1; and a small peripheral group call perioikoi, mostly farmers, miners, and small merchants. Neither the perioikoi nor the helots had any political rights . They were denied admission to the ranks of the Spartans and prohibited from intermarrying with them . These social class divisions were the result of Sparta's history. Spartans were descendants of the Dorian conquerors who had invaded southern Peloponnesus and occupied one of the most fertile valleys in Greece, the plain of Laconia. The conquered population was promptly reduced to the status of helots . During the subsequent period of colonization the problem of overpopulation arose in Laconia. The Spartans met this problem, not by encouraging emigration abroad as did other Greek city-states, but mostl y by annexing adjacent territories, thus initially making it an expansionistic culture until it's population became stabilized and Sparta became a unified state . "The luckier descendants of Spartas' s once independent neighbors became perioikoi; the rest became helots" (Brinton, et al., 1960, p. 60). By the time of Lycurgus the class system was firmly entrenched . The Spartan citizens numbering about 8,0009 ,000 (Anderson, 1974, p. 35) had reduced the great masses of helots to a cond ition of serfdom and treated them harshly, occasionally executing a few to discourage recalcitrance . The helots revolted unsuccessfully a number of times . Sparta was also threatened by the danger of foreign invasion. Under these precarious circumstances, as legend has it, Lycurgus began the task of designing a culture that would change the Spartan people and turn them into an in-