Bret Devereaux

And to say that Sparta lacked the class distinctions of Rome's patrician/plebian divide is a severe error. Both because it overstates the importance of those divisions (which by the Middle Republic had ceased to matter very much - there were rich, powerful plebians)...

But also because it somehow credits Sparta for an 'equality' Rome could have achieved simply by enslaving all of the plebians. The difference between Rome and Sparta is that in Sparta the patricians managed to completely wall everyone else out from politics.

Spartan mores considered by whom? Athenian aristocrats who wish they too could ignore their political underclass, or Plutarch writing with rose-tinted glasses 300 years thick? It's important to remember that the supposedly equal, ideal, Lycurgean society probably never existed.