Sparta

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 15.9 §1 I would not have Lacedaemon

  Lacedaemon is another name for Sparta. The clause is textually corrupt (daggered in the Latin); the joke seems to be that Cicero will not treat far-off Sparta as if it were as handy as nearby Lanuvium.

• Tusculan Disputations §1.100 a certain Spartan — whose name has not even been handed down

  An anonymous Spartan, condemned by the ephors (Sparta's chief magistrates), who joked that he was glad to pay a penalty he could discharge 'without a loan.' One of several Spartan exempla of contempt for death.

• Tusculan Disputations §2.34 At Sparta, indeed, boys are received at the altar with such a scourging

  The diamastigosis, a Spartan ritual flogging of boys at the altar of Artemis Orthia, endured in silence as a test of fortitude; in later periods it could be fatal. Cicero says he witnessed it during his own visit to Sparta.

• Tusculan Disputations §2.36 the daughters of Laconia

  Laconia is the region of which Sparta is the chief city; its girls, unusually for Greece, were trained in athletics (wrestling, running). The verse quoted contrasts their hardy regimen with the secluded, 'barbarously fertile' life of women elsewhere.