SOURCE: Hooker, J. T. “The Idea of Sparta.” In The Ancient Spartans, pp. 230-40. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1980.

In the following essay, Hooker focuses on the contributions of such antique writers as Thucydides, Plato, and Plutarch to the legend of classical, Lycurgan Sparta.

… [The] idea or legend of ‘Lycurgan’ Sparta clearly emerged in Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans. In that work, Xenophon distinguished the Lycurgan ideal (which had no shortcoming whatever) from the contemporary reality, caused by the intrusion of wealth and the habits and morals of barbarians. The contrast between real and ideal runs like a continuous thread through many of the allusions to Sparta made by the ancient Greek authors. Although, no doubt, elements of the Spartan legend were in existence before the Persian Wars, we can trace its development only as far back as that epoch. And already we are confronted by the...