conservation of the State apparatus by abolishing military and monetary movement.3
Aristotle wrote the epitaph to Lycurgus' system: "The essential object of any social system must be to organize the military institution like al the others. "
In Sparta the opposite happened. In the first Hellenic democracy we already find most of the great Western themes, except for the main one: mobility. Whereas everything was sacrificed to make the State a single war machine, the eventuality of its being mobilized in a real conflict seemed fearsome to the Lacedaemonians, as if the hazards and uncertainties of battle would destroy their overly precise military mechanism.4
The Spartans have been called a people without history. In reality, by their hostility to every form of constitutional metamorphosis, they refused History as the kinetic reference of their existence. First, by not turning toward the sea and its vehicular empires-thus separating themselves from the totality of Hellenic cities-to go settle in the very heart of Greece and colonize the Messenians, Greeks like themselves. Then, by eluding for almost two centuries after the Lycurgean experiment the consequences of their military might, by fleeing those of their victories. And it will be precisely the Spartan military State's victory over Athens that will subvert its perfection: "The Lacedaemonians might date the beginning of their corruption from their conquest of Athens, and the influx of gold and silver among them that thence ensued" (Plutarch, "Life of Agis") .
What the armies couldn't do was accomplished by economic warfare. The dilemma of the status quo, of military non-intervention, was resolved once and for all, not only for the Mediterraneans, but for the Western world to come.
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I Speed and Politics