Xenelasia , [1] generally speaking, refers to citizens' rights, or the status of a citizen when granted to a foreign subject.

The laws of Sparta [2] were so remarkably unique in this respect that one never tires of talking about them. Lycurgus, who devised these laws, drew them from his own great genius. In the very heart of Greece he fashioned a new people, who had nothing in common with the rest of the Greeks except their language. Through his action the Spartans became an exceptional community, different from all others by their customs as by their sensibility, and even by their food and dress as by the nature of their thinking and feeling. But nothing contributed more to making Sparta an isolated nation than Lycurgus’ fine law, which did not grant xenelasia to any foreigner without compelling reasons, and even prevented any foreigner from having at his discretion the right to free entry into Sparta.

This arrangement offered the greatest advantages. It was a matter of creating a form of government and extraordinary rules of conduct, a simple religion free of that extraneous pomp which elsewhere was its main object, a form of worship free of most superstitions that held sway amongst other nations, festivals and games where the youth of both sexes appeared naked, an equal share of land among individuals, with exactly what was essential for each person’s subsistence; the requirement to eat together with extreme frugality, the veto on gold and silver, in short the custom of neither buying nor selling, of neither giving nor receiving, of not practising either luxury art or trade, nor a navy, nor travelling abroad without permission from the State, and not conducting one’s life according to foreign principles. These various laws could not be respected if foreigners were allowed free access; some laws would have been overwhelmingly unsuitable, while others would have been inherently impossible. One might judge, therefore, whether xenelasia was not an essential basis of support for the application of these laws.

Xenelasia was a suitable way of avoiding all the violent and treacherous actions of which jealous foreigners might be guilty. Sparta need no longer fear, neither a Hercules who, as an invited guest within its walls, might massacre its leaders, nor a Paris who might carry off the wife of the man who offered him too easy access, nor latter-day Minyans [3] who, out of the most heinous ingratitude, might plot the ruin of those who had granted them hospitality. The Spartan people were protected from spies and every ill-disposed individual who might have entered the country or remained there intending to do harm. The State’s forces, unknown to their neighbours, consequently made them more formidable. Vulnerable places that they might have been able to exploit were hidden from their sight. Everything was concealed from them; not only the republic’s domestic affairs, its plans, its hidden strategies, but also its moral conduct and its maintenance of law and order. Nothing was more likely to retain their respect, which meant that we never needed a foreign general.

There were other foreigners whom Sparta was happy to welcome without fear of violating the intentions of its lawmaker. I refer to allies who came to its aid with armed forces. Thus, at the birth of the republic in the reign of Telecus [4], the Egides, who were a Theban family, came from Boeotia [5] to Sparta in order to help in the capture of two or three neighbouring towns which the Dorians [6] had left to the former inhabitants. The auxiliary force was led by Timomachus, who was the first to make the Spartans obey the laws of war laid down by Lycurgus. In this way it was possible to link Timomachus and his family with Tyrtaeus, [7] Pherecydes, Terpander and Thales [8].

Xenelasia did not prevent the Spartans from calling upon doctors and other skilled persons as and when they needed them. Abaris, a Scythian, found that Sparta was exposed to frequent fatalities caused, it was said, by the vapours and the heat coming from Mount Taygetus nearby. He performed sacrifices and lustrations, [9] probably alongside more effective remedies, and these illnesses no longer recurred . Bacis, a citizen of Boeotia, famous for several marvellous operations, cured through purification the Spartan women who had been gripped by a kind of mania. Anaximander, a physician from Miletus, warned the Spartans one day to leave the city because there was going to be an earthquake. They did so, withdrawing into the countryside with their movable chattels, namely, their weapons. The violent shock ripped off the summit of Mount Taygetus and demolished the town, in which a few young people who had remained in the middle of the portico perished beneath the ruins. This was the same Anaximander, according to Diogenes Laertes, or his disciple Anaximenes [10] of Miletus, according to Pliny, who invented the first sundial.

Xenelasia was not contravened when Sparta welcomed foreign ministers for reasons of State [11]; the Spartans were inevitably caught up in the course of public affairs: negotiations, confederations, war plans and peace treaties, which required involvement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So they were received by Sparta with every kind of respect and politeness, particularly after the assassination of the Persian ambassadors, who had been thrown into a well. The Spartans, at first offended after several painful incidents, blamed them on their own cruelty. Convinced that Heaven was pursuing revenge, they proposed at a large public meeting to atone for their crime by the voluntary suicide of a citizen. Sperthiès and Bulis, two of the most illustrious Spartans, immediately offered themselves up as victims and presented themselves to the King of Persia . On their way they were magnificently treated by the satraps. [12] When they reached Suze, Xerxes told them that if they had violated international rights by the murder of his ambassadors, he was not disposed to commit an act like the one for which he was obliged to reproach them, nor would he give them the opportunity to stop feeling guilty by accepting their act of reparation, and he dismissed them with this magnanimous response.. The Spartans turned this to good account and thereafter received delegates from far and wide with as much dignity as the Athenians. Such instances occur frequently in history, so it would be tedious to give an account of them.

We have already observed that xenelasia did not relate to foreign armies coming to Sparta’s aid. Political life expects greater respect for allies than for a country’s natives, and it is in the interests of a warrior people to act accordingly. This nation, however, thought it prudent to maintain a certain reserve with its allies. The foreigners with whom they did marches and camping did not know even the number of Spartans who made up the confederate army. In vain did they ask questions or make complaints on this score; these were met with a sort of pride, as appears from some replies by Agesilaus [13], Ariston and Agis [14].

But during the time of solemn and festive occasions that were celebrated on certain days of the year, strangers were allowed to come to Sparta and to act as witnesses. The way the youth of both sexes was displayed could not fail to arouse unbridled curiosity. Hence this cynical proposition reported in the Atheneum : ‘We have nothing but praise for the Spartan custom of showing off its naked girls to strangers’. Crowds of people flocked to these spectacles. They were placed in the shade, whilst the Spartans remained exposed to the blazing sun. Xenophon refers to Lichas [15], who stood out by his concern to entertain lavishly the strangers who came at those times to Sparta; and one should perhaps note on these occasions the Copis feast, described at great length by the Atheneum, where foreigners ate indiscrimately with the Spartan inhabitants.

Spartan xenelasia still thought it necessary to relax in circumstances favouring some individuals, or even some entire peoples, where exceptional reasons rendered them welcome to the nation. Arion, a famous musician in Lesbos, was shipwrecked near the Laconian coastline and escaped onto Cape Taenarum. He was granted asylum, and in the Temple of Apollo, on the same promontory, he dedicated a bronze statue as a memorial of his adventure. After the Battle of Salamis, [16] Themistocles made his way to Sparta, having failed to receive from Athens his homeland and from the rest of the Greeks the honours that he deserved. In Sparta he was awarded the crown of olives, together with the finest chariot in the city, and thirty leading citizens escorted him to the frontier on his return; extraordinary honours, which the Spartans never conferred on any foreigner.

Alcibiades and others who were forced to leave their own country for ‘reasons of state’ [17], also found a refuge in Sparta. A special kind of hospitality existed between this Athenian general and a Spartan citizen, from which Endeas, the Spartan’s son, later derived great advantages.

Pericles of Athens was linked to Archidamos, King of Sparta, through the same connections with this personal hospitality, whose rights were so sacred that Archidamos [18] did not dare touch Pericles’s lands when he was destroying those of the Athenians. Agesilaus, another Spartan king [19] who was on friendly terms with Xenophon of Athens, urged him to send his children to Sparta so as to be brought up in the Spartan manner. Whenever the Delians [20] visited Sparta, they were received with great esteem; they were given top priority, because their ancestors helped the Dioscures in freeing Helen. The Philasians, who had remained faithful to their alliance with the republic during its times of misfortune as in its finest days, had received every kind of honour when they had been to Sparta.

If others had no cause to boast about the welcome they were given in Sparta, they had only themselves to blame . No sooner had Archilochus [21] of Paros entered the city than he was forced out because he had in the past declared in his poetry that it was better to take flight than to die while in combat. The Spartans also drove out Meandrius, the tyrant of Samos [22], for having handed out vases of gold and silver.

The great benefit of xenelasia was, moreover, to counter the innovations that trading with foreigners inevitably brings about in one’s language and customs. Once the basic principles had been set up amongst the Spartans, they were certain to be maintained as more secure, with no compromise to degrade their purity; they were destined to survive longer unchanged, and no other life-style would incite the taste for novelty; and if the fickle or mischievous ways of private persons were to lead them to introduce innovations, at least they had no foreign models to arouse their envy. Consequently, it was both less common to see disorder there and easier to correct it.

Foreigners often have little inclination for the country in which they travel. Those with the best intentions inevitably carry with them ways of thinking and acting that may upset the harmony of a small country, where perfect order must hold sway. Lycurgus wanted his State to be of that kind. He had set up within the country a way of life that was reliable and unwavering, which only the incursions from abroad could upset. This attitude led him to find foreigners suspect, so he believed he must keep them at arm’s length in order to prevent morals from being corrupted in his own country.

Rome gradually corrupted the dignity of citizenship by making it too easily available. Sparta, by its extreme disinclination to grant this status, made it worthy of esteem and precious. The title of citizen, which had become very rare, gained a new value in foreigners’ minds. We have a fine example in Herodotus. The Spartans wanted to attract into their society Tisamen, who was of Aelian nationality and a famous soothsayer, so as to put him along with their kings at the head of their forces against Persia. The oracle had commanded it, for it required reasons above ordinary politics to oblige them to take a foreign general. So they made him the most favourable offers; Tisamen rejected them, requesting solely the privileges and honour of citizenship of Sparta. At first they refused him; but, as the enemy drew closer, they had to accept it. Then Tisamen demanded that the same favour be also granted to his brother Hegias; and it became necessary to assent to this request. These are, says Herodotus, the only two persons to whom Sparta accorded the right of xenelasia The historian is mistaken, but what he says demonstrates at least the favourable view that was taken in his time of the citizenship of Sparta. The Athenians clearly showed the high opinion that they held of it when they openly complained that the Spartans did not extend their privileges to any foreigner.

However, it is not true that entry into Sparta was closed to all foreigners. Lycurgus himself welcomed Thales, of the island of Crete, to Sparta so that this foreigner, who added to poetic talent all the qualities of a lawmaker, might confer the charms of poetry upon harsh and dispiriting laws. The Spartans welcomed him, following an explicit command from the oracle, and considered that his arrival had put paid to a plague which was causing their ruination. Some time later, the magistrates also brought from Lesbos the poet Terpander, who calmed the mutinous nation. In addition Pherecydes, who was, I believe, Athenian, also came to Sparta as a citizen; and these three foreigners, who never gave up singing the praises of the republic’s new customs, were showered with honours. True, Pherecydes later died an unhappy death, but that was in the public interest.

It was also an oracle that brought Tyrtaeus, an Athenian poet, to Sparta; his own country sent him derisively to the Spartans, to act as their leader in the battle of Messina, but they derived real advantages from it. The soldiers, invigorated by his poetic songs, won a total victory. Furthermore the Spartans, who were generally no friends of poets, set much store by this one, to the point of forbidding any move against the enemy until they had heard Tyrtaeus’ poetry beforehand in the King’s tent, so that they might be the more ready to fight and die for their homeland. This was the origin of their battle songs that were so well known in ancient times. Moreover, Tyrtaeus wrote on behalf of the Spartans a treatise about their republic, which has not come down to us. Remarkably, they accepted this foreigner into their country only by naturalising him and making him a citizen of Sparta; in order, said one Spartan, that he should not be made of gold and silver; whereas Mythecus, an excessively skilled cook, was not suited to Spartan frugality because he had composed dishes that flattered the taste buds. This extreme attentiveness to repressing foreign luxury in their land was all the more essential because these foreigners sometimes took it into their heads to abuse the gifts with which they had been honoured after receiving them, to the point of committing vulgar acts of insolence in the very heart of Sparta: as witness those bold men of Clazomene, who filled with muck and filth the chairs of the ephors who were to render justice and to govern State business. These magistrates pretended not to seem offended; they simply announced publicly this laconic ruling:’Let it be known that the Clazomenians are allowed to do stupid things’.

Sparta had special magistrates for keeping an eye on foreigners. They were called proxenetes , from the name of their work. They were responsible for welcoming foreigners, finding them lodgings, catering for their needs and comforts, bringing them out in public, procuring them seats at plays and games, and probably watching over their activities. The use of proxenetes must have been common practice amongst the various peoples of Greece, who would constantly send each other deputies to deal with civic affairs; for example, Alcibiades native of Athens and Polydamas native of Thessaly were proxenetes for the Spartans, the one in Athens and the other in Thessaly; by the same token, the Athenians and the Thessalonians had their proxenetes in the city of Sparta.

Foreigners never had more freedom to come to the Spartans than when they made themselves masters of Athens. The relaxed way of life that then became general gradually brought about a collapse in their xenelasia and in their main rules of governance. They began the pursuit of worldly pleasures, and foreigners were obliged to provide them with the means of doing so, since Sparta had no commercial trading or any understanding of the frivolous arts. This led in the fullness of time to opening up for foreigners in the town of Las a general warehouse for maritime trade. In the end xenelasia came to be forgotten, and the Spartans lost their moral virtues. This article may seem long, but it is about Lycurgus and Sparta.

Notes

1. 'It means 'body of citizens', according to the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, (1799).

2. The original French text uses the terms 'Lacédémone'/'Lacédémonien' and 'Sparte'/'Sparte' more or less indeterminately . This translation will refer to 'Sparte,/'Sparte' throughout./

3. A prehistoric people living in parts of Boeotia and Thessaly: ancestors of Mycenean and later Greeks.

4. King of Sparta, mid-18 ^th century BCE.

5. A country in ancient Greece, with Thebes as its capital

6. A race which invaded Greece in the 12 ^th -11 ^th centuries BCE.

7. Spartan poet, 6 ^th cent. BCE; his works figure among the earliest surviving documentation concerning Spartan history. .

8. Thales of Miletus (in Asia Minor): c.624-c.546, is generally considered to be the first philosopher in the Western tradition.

9. Purifications.

10. An Archaic Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, 585-528 BCE.

11. 'a purely political ground of action on the part of a ruler or government, especially as involving some departure from strict justice' (Oxford English Dictionary)

12. Provincial governors.

13. Agesilaus succeeded his half-brother Agis II as King of Sparta and ruled c.400-c.360 BCE.

14. Agis II, King of Sparta, who commanded military operations during most of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE).

15. He organised and financed festivities, thus becoming a popular figure.

16. Salamis: 480 BCE, where the Athenian general Themistocles achieved a decisive victory over the Persian forces.

17. See n.10. Alcibiades (c.450-404 BC ): an Athenian politician and general who aroused suspicions of wishing to extend the imperialism of Athenian government. He escaped to Sparta, but later lost Spartan confidence and left Sparta for Asia Minor and ultimately Athens.

18. King of Sparta, c.478-427 BCE.

19. Agesilaus II, King of Sparta, c.400-c.360 BCE

20. Citizens of the island of Delos.

21. Early Greek lyric poet (c.680-640 BCE).

22. Aegean island off Asia Minor.