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abstract: Eugenic ideology has received insufficient attention in scholarly treatments of the reforms of the third-century Hellenistic Spartan kings Agis IV (r. 244-241 BC) and Kleomenes III (r. 235-222 BC), who attempted to replenish the Spartiate population through enfranchisement. However, close analysis of the language in our surviving source material suggests that eugenic fixations underlay both the enfranchisements proposed by these reformers as well as some of the debates over their reforms. Adherence to Spartan tradition compelled these reformers to present their reforms as compliant with previous native Spartan eugenic ideology, and shaped and restricted what they were able to accomplish.
Keywords: Sparta - Agis IV - Kleomenes III - Eugenic Ideology - Hellenistic World - Spartan Tradition
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1.Introduction
In the Hellenistic period (323-30 BC), two reformers attempted to increase Sparta's population and hence its state power by replenishing the citizen body and reorganizing important aspects of its economy. These were the kings Agis IV (244-241) and Kleomenes III (235-222). They were responding to a long-lasting problem in Sparta. For in the Classical period (478-323 BC), a numerical decline had beset the Spartiates, Sparta's privileged citizen warrior caste. Their numbers had declined from some 8,000 adult males around 480 BC to some 1,000 in the mid-fourth century. This numeric fall was caused by deaths never replenished due to problems economic, demographic, and politico-cultural.2 Spartiate cultural, eugenic, and racial exclusivity had prevented Sparta's marginal groups from being allowed to join, and thus to replenish, the dwindling Spartiate caste. A full share in Spartiate rights and privileges would have included years of military training and cultural education in the high-status educational and socialization system known to Xenophon as the Spartan paideia and to Hellenistic Spartiates as the agoge, and probably grants of land allotments known as kleroi worked by dependent labor.3 Primarily due to this shortage of citizen soldiers, after 371 BC Sparta's power lessened considerably, and Sparta did little to challenge the rise of Macedonian power. It is to this complex set of difficulties that the Hellenistic reformers responded. However, their responses were hampered by the tenacity and path dependency of Spartiate cultural forms, which included a strong eugenic ideology.4 Other modern ideological analyses of Sparta's Hellenistic reformers have...