Creating Legitimacy: The Dyarchy in Spartan Social Memory
Abstract
Scholars of the constitutional development of Archaic Sparta and its dyarchy (or dual kingship) have long considered Tyrtaios’ Eunomia contemporary evidence for the mysterious lawgiver Lykourgos, whose alleged reforms have largely been reconstructed from late-Classical and Roman sources. According to orthodox narratives of Lykourgos, seventh-century Sparta enjoyed internal stability and good governance, but Tyrtaios’ seventh-century poem strongly suggests the continued existence of civil strife. Drawing on social memory studies and archaeological survey data, this dissertation questions the Lykourgan grand narrative and explores the capacity of Tyrtaios’ Eunomia to help us recontextualize Sparta’s socio-political development in the seventh century BCE.
I argue that Tyrtaios fr.2 West2 offers insights into how the seventh-century poet encouraged Spartans to preserve their basileia by using local social memory in the form of the myths of the return of the Herakleidai and the Dorian migration. Building on the work of Hans van Wees and Jessica Romney, I make the case that Tyrtaios’ Eunomia did not respond to an external challenge to Sparta’s rule over Messenia but was composed in response to ongoing political instability within Sparta. Using the concept of social memory as an analytical tool, I explore the transmission and varied functionality of these two foundational myths in relation to a broader collective memory concerning Herakles and his offspring in the Peloponnese. I also demonstrate that the poem highlights the divine heritage of the two basileis as descendants of Herakles and Zeus and links their origin to the origin of the Spartan community itself, thus legitimizing the Spartan dyarchy as an essential element of the established divine order. Tyrtaios’ Eunomia represents a moment in the institutionalization process of the Spartan basileia in the middle of the seventh century. Alkman’s Partheneion, a choral song composed c.600 BCE, presented to its audience a prescribed social order that implicitly called upon the Spartans to consider their basileis as embodiments of proper behaviour with respect to marriage. It thus shows that the Spartan basileia was, by then, successfully integrated into the socio-cultural and religious fabric of the Spartan community.