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The ancient Greeks attributed the arrangement of the Spartan regime, which had been based on Cretan institutions, to Lycurgus. There are many doubts and disagreements about the life of Lycurgus. Some consider him a descendant of Eurysthenes and others a descendant of Procles.

Eurysthenes was the son of Aristodemus (of the Heraclidean family) and the Argive daughter of Autesion, who, with his younger brother Procles, after the death of Aristodemus, seized power in Lacedaemon. Both were the progenitors of the two Spartan royal houses, although they are not usually called Eurysthenes and Procleides, but Agiades and Eurypontides.
Sparta does not occupy an independent position either in the History of Philosophy or in the History of Art. However, in the History of Education, Sparta certainly has a certain place. The most characteristic thing that Sparta produced is its political system, which for the first time appears as a power that exercises education in the full sense of the word.
The sources from which we derive our knowledge of this peculiar organization are unfortunately unclear. However, it is fortunate that the central idea that permeates Spartan education down to the last detail is revealed in a clear and unambiguous manner in the poems of Tyrtaeus. Thanks to these poems, Spartan education was able to detach itself from its historical context and exert a lasting influence. In contrast to what happens with Homer and Hesiod, we are informed from Tyrtaeus' elegies only about the ideal of this education. It is useful to note here that elegiac poetry constitutes a transition from epic to lyric poetry and is distinguished into four genres: a) polemical, b) erotic, c) ethical and political, d) gnomic. That is, Tyrtaeus' poetry does not provide us with elements from which we could synthesize the historical background from which this ideal emerged. To achieve this, we must resort to later sources. The most important of these sources, Xenophon's "Lacedaemonian Republic" is a product of the partly philosophical, partly political "romanticism" of the 4th century BC, which saw in the Spartan state a kind of virgin revelation. We can reconstruct Aristotle's lost "Lacedaemonian Republic" only in terms of certain details, which were preserved in dictionary entries of later antiquity. There is no doubt that the general direction of the work would be similar to that which is reflected in the second book of Aristotle's "Politics", where an attempt is made to evaluate the Spartan state. This evaluation is distinguished by the sobriety with which the judgment is made, in contrast to the usual apotheosis of Sparta by other philosophers. Xenophon (430-352 BC), who is friendly to Sparta, has personal experience of things, while Plutarch (46-120 AD) mixes in the biography of Lycurgus, older literary sources, each of which has a different value. When evaluating these testimonies, we must not forget that they came from the conscious or unconscious reaction against the new education of the 4th BC century. In the archaic conditions of Sparta they often see the overcoming of difficulties, which they themselves faced, and the solution of problems, which in reality had not concerned the wise Lycurgus at all. It is impossible to determine the exact age of the Spartan institutions in the time of Xenophon. The only sure guarantee of their archaic origin is found in the notorious conservatism, which made the Spartans the ideal of all aristocrats and to which the democrats abhorred them. However, as is natural, Sparta also underwent some development.
From Aristotle's "Politics" comes the judgment that Spartan education was a one-sided and arduous military exercise. This type of form is already known to Plato, who also has it constantly in mind when he outlines the spiritual image of the state of Lycurgus in the "Laws". The undisputed hegemony of Sparta in the Greek area, which was founded with the victorious outcome of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC-404 BC), was annihilated after three and a half decades with the disaster at Leuctra (371 BC in the war between Sparta and Thebes under Cleombrotus and Epaminondas respectively). The admiration for Spartan eunuchism had received a strong blow. The aversion of the Greeks to their oppressors had become general, especially since Sparta's insatiable desire for power had taken hold and abolished the old honored upbringing. Money, once almost unknown in Sparta, had now entered it, and thus the greed of money ruined Sparta.
Certain historians, inspired by the moral greatness of the Dorians, which they wanted to emphasize and project in contrast to the "cult" of Athens, had perceived the old Spartan martial world as anything but a continuation of an ancient state of the Dorian race, which was preserved in Laconia, due to the particular conditions there, from the days of the movements of the Greek races and the settlement of the Dorians in Laconia until later times.
However, we should emphasize the fact that the Spartans constitute a small part of the Laconian population that holds a leading position. Under their command are the perioioi, a free agricultural class, and the helots who were in a state of slavery and who were not recognized as having any rights. Ancient sources describe Sparta as a kind of "active" war camp. This character is determined more by the internal state of the community than by a disposition for external conquests. The institution of the dual kingship of the Heraclides, which in historical times had lost its political power, and which regained its original importance only on the battlefield, is a remnant of the old institution of the warrior king from the times of the Dorian migration, and probably originates from two different tribes, whose leaders maintained their power at the same time. The Spartan popular assembly continues to be the community of warriors. (The word "army", a derivative of the verb stronymi or stronyo and storennymi or stornymi = to spread, has in archaic times the meaning "people", thus it retains a significant trace of the origin of those, which we call free institutions). The political rights of the citizen of the ancient city originally come from the sector that was responsible for the defense of the country. During the Spartan popular assembly, no debate is held, it simply decides with a yes or a no on the proposals introduced by the council of elders. This council has the right to dissolve the national assembly or to withdraw its original proposals in the event that the decision of the popular assembly was not the desired one. The ephors constituted the politically strongest authority of the state, which limited the powers of the kings to a minimum. The establishment of the institution of the ephors has the meaning of a compromise way out of the dilemma of the dynamic tension between the rulers and the people. In this way, the people are granted a minimum measure of rights, but on the other hand, the character of authenticity of public life is preserved. It is characteristic that the ephors are the only institution that was not based on the legislation of Lycurgus. It is also characteristic that the institution of the ephors is attributed by Plutarch to King Theopompus (and his co-regent Polydorus), but Tyrtaeus, who describes the various elements of the Spartan State in his poem "Eunomy", writing two generations after the time of Theopompus, does not mention the ephors.
This so-called legislation is the exact opposite of what the ancient Greeks meant by this word. It is not a kind of codification of individual provisions of Public, Civil and Criminal Law but the Law itself in its primary sense, the oral tradition that is in force and from which only a few basic laws that were solemnly established had received written formulation. That is, such written formulation had been received by the so-called clauses (clause, a word synonymous with the word χρέσμός), such as e.g. those referring to the powers of the popular assembly, about which Plutarch writes. The ancient sources do not consider this characteristic as a remnant of primitive situations. On the contrary, they see in it, in contrast to the endless paraphrasing of the 4th century Republic, the wisdom of Lycurgus, who considered the power of EDUCATION and the formation of a sound political mind to be more important than dry written provisions, having the same opinion on this point as Socrates and Plato. It is true, of course, that the mission that education and the general oral tradition (custom) are called upon to perform takes on all the greater importance, the less the law regulates the details of life in an external way. Nevertheless, the image of the "great Pedagogue" Lycurgus is based on the later idealized interpretation of the Spartan data. The absence of written laws is interpreted by Plutarch by the fact that education in Sparta was omnipotent. The function of legislation had been completely replaced by PAEDIA.
Such was the regime of Sparta. Nothing else, that is, than an aristocracy very limited in persons, which preserved all the types of the Homeric regime, kingship, council of elders, market of the deme and which managed to remove from them all real power and to rule directly with five of its commissioners, the ephors. Arisicracies, however, prevailed in many parts of Greece in these early historical years. These aristocracies never had the power that the aristocracy of Sparta acquired, and many times in fact, when the people became rich, they completely abolished their old office, while the aristocracy of Sparta not only strengthened its power, but for many years maintained its prestige unchanged.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. History of the Greek Nation, K. Paparrigopoulos
2. EDUCATION The education of the Greek man, WERNER JAIGER
3. Great Greek Encyclopedia of PYRSOS
4. Large Dictionary of Verbs of the Ancient Greek Language KONTEOU
5. Great Dictionary of the Greek Language LIDDEL-SCOTT
6. All Ancient Greek Authors PAPYRUS
7. History of the Greek Nation Athens Publishing House