### id263995880 Spartan egalitarianism was a reaction to economic instability > The modern understanding of Lykourgos and his supposed reforms is far more complex. It is clear that there was no single grand introduction of Spartan laws and customs, but rather a system that changed over time to meet new circumstances, with each change being *attributed* to a mythical lawgiver. This involved a lot of deliberate doublethink, where things that had only recently been introduced were presented as the old way of the ancestors. Some of the elements you mention (common education and mess halls) cannot be identified in the sources before the late 6th century BC, and are now mostly explained as responses to growing economic inequality. They were attempts to create a superficially egalitarian society to prevent extreme competition for wealth leading down a path to civil war, as it did elsewhere in the Greek world. Other elements, such as land redistribution, have been shown to be post-Classical fictions. The idea that each Spartan held an equal lot (*kleros*) was created in the late third century BC to legitimise a last-ditch effort to reverse Sparta's fortunes by redistributing the land, which had fallen into the hands of just 100 families, to create a new army of 4500 landed citizens. - [View Highlight](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/q3bowq/sparta_wasnt_that_effective_in_war_were_there_any?__readwiseLocation=0%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F18%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A0%2C4%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F4%2F2%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F18%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F5%2F1%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F3%3A233#:~:text=The%20modern%20understanding%20of%20Lykourgos%2Carmy%20of%204500%20landed%20citizens.) - [[hypermilitarized groups in history#id263995880 Spartan egalitarianism was a reaction to economic instability|View in Vault]]