According to Greek history, Lycurgus traveled to Crete and became exposed to the Cretan culture, including the Agoge system (rigorous training) and the Mess. Plutarch says he brought the new system back to Sparta where much of it was adopted easily. Some aspects were resisted for a time before they became part of the new culture. It's impossible to know how long this took and how difficult it must have been. Obviously, in the beginning, Spartans of influence would have to accept the reforms or the Lycurgian system would have been stillborn. One imagines a next step where the leaders forced a new system on the people until it was completely accepted. Not that “forcing” would have been as difficult in this case as other times in history, because there were many elements that would have made the new system attractive to the Spartan people – equality, property, freedom from manual labor, and more, so perhaps the implementation took place rather quickly.
You are viewing a single comment's thread from: