Spartan institutions were pictured as a model of political stability from the Classical period onwards. The so-called Spartan ‘mirage’ did not involve only its constitutional order but also social and economic institutions. Xenophon begins hisConstitution of the Lacedaemoniansby associating Spartan fame with thepoliteiaset up by Lycurgus, which made the Laconian city the most powerful (δυνατωτάτη) and famous (ὀνομαστοτάτη)polisin Greece (Xen.Lac.1.1). In Aristotle'sPolitics, in which the assessment of Sparta is more complex and nuanced, one finds a critique of contemporary Spartan institutions as well as praise for Lycurgus as a great lawgiver who established the laws of Sparta (Arist.Pol.2.1269a69, 2.1273b20). Most other ancient sources often remark upon the unchangeable features of some Spartan institutions as a key aspect of Spartan εὐνομία. Thucydides maintains that, after a long period of war andstasis, the Dorians established excellent laws and Sparta employed the same constitution for more than four hundred years (Thuc. 1.18.1: τετρακόσια καὶ ὀλίγῳ πλείω ἐς τὴν τελευτὴν τοῦδε τοῦ πολέμου ἀφ᾽ οὗ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῇ αὐτῇ πολιτείᾳ χρῶνται).
The Greek term adeia means literally “absence of fear” and in Athenian Law indicates a special authorization or immunity from prosecution. The Athenian Assembly granted adeia to authorize deliberation on an entrenched piece of legislation, and about atimoi and public debtors or to confer immunity from legal prosecution in criminal investigation.
The term diagramma can refer to a decree of a polis and of a federal state or most commonly to an ordinance or law in the form of a letter issued “in the name of the kings” by the royal chancery of the Macedonian and Hellenistic kingdoms. The latter dealt with several subjects such as establishing a new constitution, the recall of exiles, the creation of a new law code, court procedures, solving border disputes, and prescribing a tax law.
The Greek word kalokagathia defined the moral excellence of the kaloi kagathoi (“honorable and good” men, καλοὶ κἀgamma;αθοί).
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