The swiftest way for a modern reader to grasp the contours of the Spartan myth as it circulated in antiquity, and informed the Renaissance, is to read Plutarch’s engaging Life of Lycurgus, the original Spartan lawgiver. But this exercise, alas, will not reveal how much of Plutarch’s colorful mirage is based on fact. Plutarch, who was not even from the Peloponnese, worked centuries after Sparta’s ascendancy, at a more peaceful time, when classical Sparta had become a nostalgic theme park for Roman tourists. Plutarch admits that nothing is actually known about Lycurgus. So how much did the
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