Xenophon, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
I will give you the reason I gave when I began the book. I wondered how a city with so few men had become the most powerful and famous in Hellas, and I could not account for it until I looked at the Spartans' institutions. Then my wonder passed to the lawgiver, Lycurgus, whom I count among the wisest of men.1 He did not copy other cities. He devised laws on a pattern opposed to the common one, and obedience to them was the secret of Sparta's prosperity.
Begin at the beginning, with the rearing of children. Elsewhere the girl who will be a mother is fed the plainest food and kept sitting at her wool, and I ask how women raised so can bear a splendid offspring. Lycurgus held that the highest work of a free woman is bearing children, so he required bodily training of women as of men and set up contests in running and strength for both, believing that strong parents would have vigorous children.2
What I admired most is the obedience, and the manner of it. In other cities the leading men do not wish to be thought to fear the magistrates; they take it for servility. In Sparta the stronger a man is, the more readily he bows to constituted authority, and the great men pride themselves on running at the word of command, since their example draws the rest after them.3
Obedience is the greatest blessing a state, an army or a household can enjoy, and the Spartans understood it. Socrates taught the same thing to a young man who despised the laws. Lycurgus gave Sparta her distinction above other states chiefly by instilling in her a spirit of obedience to the laws, and a city whose citizens hold to this flourishes in peace and is irresistible in war.4
Agesilaus, whom I knew and served, was the proof of it in a living man. Being the most powerful man in the state, he made no secret of his absolute submission to the laws. What lesser man, seeing the king obey, would take it on himself to disobey?5 The same man grieved at a victory over fellow-Hellenes and refused to sack a Greek city, saying that such cities ought to be brought back to a better mind and not enslaved.
I wrote also, and you should not forget it, that the Spartans of my own day no longer obey Lycurgus as they did. I praise what the laws made, and I say plainly that it is slipping away.
I recall the astonishment with which I first noted the unique position of Sparta amongst the states of Hellas... This legislator, Lycurgus, I must needs admire, and hold him to have been one of the wisest of mankind.The Polity of the Lacedaemonians
believing that the highest function of a free woman was the bearing of children, in the first place he insisted on the training of the body as incumbent no less on the female than the male... His belief was that where both parents were strong their progeny would be found to be more vigorous.The Polity of the Lacedaemonians
In Sparta, on the contrary, the stronger a man is the more readily does he bow before constituted authority. And indeed, they magnify themselves on their humility, and on a prompt obedience, running, or at any rate not crawling with laggard step, at the word of command.The Polity of the Lacedaemonians
if he succeeded in giving Sparta a distinction above other states, it was only by instilling into her, beyond all else, a spirit of obedience to the laws?The Memorabilia
he made no secret of his absolute submission to the laws, since what lesser man, seeing the king's obedience, would take on himself to disobey?Agesilaus