This article considers the cultic background of Sparta's historical tradition, more precisely the connection between the regulative work of the legendary lawmaker Lykurgus concerning narrative tradition and the cult practice of Artemis Orthia central to Sparta's initiation rituals. It is a well-known fact that oral tradition, which includes the stories considered in this article, does not reliably impart the events of the past like they actually happened but rather adapts stories from the past into customary cliches in a given culture and preserves in the memory only what is important from the point of view of a given group. It is also clear that stories telling about the past are associated with specific places and often also with regularly performed rites. According to the unshakable conviction of the Spartans, their lawmaker Lykurgus imposed the perfect system of government (eunomy well-ordered government), overcoming the foregoing total chaos (kakonomy - bad government). Lykurgus is said to have laid the foundation for the harsh rearing of Spartan boys as the guarantee of the imposed order, thus generating diligent and disciplined citizens. In addition to establishing the order of government, Lykurgus is also said to have established a ritual in the Sanctuary of Orthia, which played an important role in the system of rearing young Spartans. The writer Pausanias, who lived during the time of the Roman Empire, tells us a corresponding story. According to the story, two Greek brothers, Alopekos and Astrabakos, found a statue of a goddess bound in willow shoots, which drove them mad and caused a subsequent struggle and killing at the altar of the goddess when the Spartans set about offering her a sacrifice. The Spartans started sacrificing people from among themselves according to instructions from the oracle in order to compensate for the desecration until one generation later, when Lykurgus replaced it by the whipping of young men so that the blood falling onto the altar would appease the goddess. Thus Lykurgus had allegedly overcome the initial chaos and established order both in the Spartan state as a whole as well as in the Orthia place of worship. Whipping occupied a central place in establishing order at the level of the state overall as well as in the Orthia rite, which in turn was organically connected with stealing (or robbery) both in the rearing of Spartans as well as in the rituals of the classical period. Although Pausanias, through whom the story of the establishment of the cult of Orthia has been passed down to us, is a rather late author, the connection of the story with ritual demonstrates that the story he has imparted at least partially reflects early tradition. The rite was thought to be established by Lykurgus in the classical period already and the frenzied fight around the altar that is central to Pausanias's story fits in well with the classical period but not with the later ritual. Alopekos and Astrabakos, who allegedly found the statue, were characters who were definitely associated with the cult from the early period. The fox-man Alopekos (alopex means fox) fits in well with the thievery and combat ritual of the classical period that require speed and cleverness, as well as with the fact that boys had to go through a so called fox period of initiation outside of the city before the whipping. The mule saddle man Astrabakos (astrobe - mule saddle) fits in superbly with the cult context of the even earlier archaic period (7th-6th century BC). The mule was a lecherous beast in the opinion of the Greeks, and Astrabakos himself was a sexually active trickster according to story told about him. As this type of phallusian character, Astrabakos fits in with the numerous finds of an erotic nature at the Orthia sanctuary from the archaic period, which refer to the sexual aspect in the cult beliefs of that period. Finds with erotic undertones as well as other finds also refer at the same time to a certain phase of ritual chaos in the cult beliefs of that time. This kind of ritual inversion interwoven with sexuality, from which order was regenerated in the final phase of the rite, is known from many initiation and fertility cults in Greece as well as elsewhere. In this case, however, this demonstrates that the initial lunacy accentuated in the story told by Pausanias together with the characters Alopekos and Astrabakos that personify that lunacy corresponds superbly with the cult practice of the early, archaic period in particular. In later times, those traits were either in the background in the cult of Orthia or had disappeared altogether. Thus we see that in the archaic period already, Spartans probably told the story of how Lykurgus had brought into being a befitting thievery and whipping ritual out of lunacy and murderous chaos at the Orthia sanctuary. The tradition of Lykurgus as the man who put an end to chaos and established order throughout the Spartan state was also well known by the 5th century BC at the latest and thus can probably be traced back to the foregoing archaic period. These two aspects the establishment of order out of chaos through whipping both in the Spartan state as a whole and specifically in the Orthia sanctuary were probably connected to each other in the eyes of Spartans since the early period. The Orthia ritual seemingly sanctioned the legislation of Lykurgus in terms of the tradition associated with those laws. At the same time, archaeology indicates that the emergence of the Orthia sanctuary in the 9th-8th centuries BC probably really did coincide with the formation of the Spartan state. The connection between the tradition describing the beginning of Spartan statehood and the beginning of the Orthia cult may thus have developed in the very early phase of Spartan history. As the actual historical connection between the origin of the Spartan state and the Orthia cult indicates, this complex of tradition can reflect the actual sanctioning role of the Orthia cult in the formation of the Spartan state, regardless of all the modifications in that tradition.
