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| The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch | |
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Lycurgus
Those authors who are most worthy of credit deduce the genealogy
of Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, as follows:
Aristodemus. Sous certainly was the most renowned of all his ancestors, under
whose conduct the Spartans made slaves of the Helots, and added to
their dominions, by conquest, a good part of Arcadia. There goes a
story of this king Sous, that, being besieged by the Clitorians in
a dry and stony place so that he could come at no water, he was at
last constrained to agree with them upon these terms, that he
would restore to them all his conquests, provided that himself and
all his men should drink of the nearest spring. After the usual
oaths and ratifications, he called his soldiers together, and
offered to him that would forbear drinking, his kingdom for a
reward; and when not a man of them was able to forbear, in short,
when they had all drunk their fill, at last comes king Sous
himself to the spring, and, having sprinkled his face only,
without swallowing one drop, marches off in the face of his
enemies, refusing to yield up his conquests, because himself and
all his men had not, according to the articles, drunk of their
water.
Although he was justly had in admiration on this account, yet his
family was not surnamed from him, but from his son Eurypon (of
whom they were called Eurypontids); the reason of which was that
Eurypon relaxed the rigor of the monarchy, seeking favor and
popularity with the many. They, after this first step, grew
bolder; and the succeeding kings partly incurred hatred with their
people by trying to use force, or, for popularity's sake and
through weakness, gave way; and anarchy and confusion long
prevailed in Sparta, causing, moreover, the death of the father of
Lycurgus. For as he was endeavoring to quell a riot, he was
stabbed with a butcher's knife, and left the title of king to his
eldest son Polydectes.
He, too, dying soon after, the right of succession (as every one
thought) rested in Lycurgus; and reign he did for a time, but
declared that the kingdom belonged to the child of his sister-in-
law the queen, and that he himself should exercise the regal
jurisdiction only as his guardian; the Spartan name for which
office is prodicus. Soon after, an overture was made to him by the
queen, that she would herself in some way destroy the infant, upon
condition that he would marry her when he came to the crown.
Abhorring the woman's wickedness, he nevertheless did not reject
her proposal, but, making show of closing with her, despatched the
messenger with thanks and expressions of joy, with orders that
they should bring the boy baby to him, wheresoever he were, and
whatsoever doing. It so fell out that when he was at supper with
the principal magistrates, the queen's child was presented to him,
and he, taking him into his arms, said to those about him, "Men of
Sparta, here is a king born unto us;" this said, he laid him down
in the king's place, and named him Charilaus, that is, the joy of
the people; because that all were transported with joy and with
wonder at his noble and just spirit. His reign had lasted only
eight months, but he was honored on other accounts by the
citizens, and there were more who obeyed him because of his
eminent virtues, than because he was regent to the king and had
the royal power in his hands. Some, however, envied and sought to
impede his growing influence while he was still young; chiefly the
kindred and friends of the queen-mother, who pretended to have
been dealt with injuriously. Her brother Leonidas, in a warm
debate which fell out betwixt him and Lycurgus, went so far as to
tell him to his face that he was well assured that ere long he
should see him king; suggesting suspicions and preparing the way
for an accusation of him, as though he had made away with his
nephew, if the child should chance to fail, though by a natural
death. Words of the like import were designedly cast abroad by the
queen-mother and her adherents.
Troubled at this, and not knowing what it might come to, he
thought it his wisest course to avoid their envy by a voluntary
exile, and to travel from place to place until his nephew came to
marriageable years, and, by having a son, had secured the
succession. Setting sail, therefore, with this resolution, he
first arrived at Crete, where, having considered their several
forms of government, and got an acquaintance with the principal
men amongst them, some of their laws he very much approved of, and
resolved to make use of them in his own country; a good part he
rejected as useless. Amongst the persons there the most renowned
for their learning and their wisdom in state matters was one
Thales, whom Lycurgus, by importunities and assurances of
friendship, persuaded to go over to Lacedaemon; where, though by
his outward appearance and his own profession he seemed to be no
other than a lyric poet, in reality he performed the part of one
of the ablest lawgivers in the world. The very songs which he
composed were exhortations to obedience and concord, and the very
measure and cadence of the verse, conveying impressions of order
and tranquillity, had so great an influence on the minds of the
listeners that they were insensibly softened and civilized,
insomuch that they renounced their private feuds and animosities,
and were reunited in a common admiration of virtue. So that it may
truly be said that Thales prepared the way for the discipline
introduced by Lycurgus.
From Crete he sailed to Asia, with design, as is said, to examine
the difference betwixt the manners and rules of life of the
Cretans, which were very sober and temperate, and those of the
Ionians, a people of sumptuous and delicate habits, and so to form
a judgment; just as physicians do by comparing healthy and
diseased bodies. Here he had the first sight of Homer's works, in
the hands, we may suppose, of the posterity of Creophylus; and,
having observed that the few loose expressions and actions of ill
example which are to be found in his poems were much outweighed by
serious lessons of state and rules of morality, he set himself
eagerly to transcribe and digest them into order, as thinking they
would be of good use in his own country. They had, indeed, already
obtained some slight repute amongst the Greeks, and scattered
portions, as chance conveyed them, were in the hands of
individuals; but Lycurgus first made them really known.
The Egyptians say that he took a voyage into Egypt, and that,
being much taken with their way of separating the soldiery from
the rest of the nation, he transferred it from them to Sparta; a
removal from contact with those employed in low and mechanical
occupations giving high refinement and beauty to the state. Some
Greek writers also record this. But as for his voyages into Spain,
Africa, and the Indies, and his conferences there with the
Gymnosophists, the whole relation, as far as I can find, rests on
the single credit of the Spartan Aristocrates, the son of
Hipparchus.
Lycurgus was much missed at Sparta, and often sent for, "For kings
indeed we have," they said, "who wear the marks and assume the
titles of royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they
have nothing by which they are to be distinguished from their
subjects;" adding that in him alone was the true foundation of
sovereignty to be seen, a nature made to rule, and a genius to
gain obedience. Nor were the kings themselves averse to see him
back, for they looked upon his presence as a bulwark against the
insolencies of the people.
Things being in this posture at his return, he applied himself,
without loss of time, to a thorough reformation, and resolved to
change the whole face of the commonwealth; for what could a few
particular laws and a partial alteration avail? He must act as
wise physicians do, in the case of one who labors under a
complication of diseases,--by force of medicines reduce and
exhaust him, change his whole temperament, and then set him upon a
totally new regimen of diet. Having thus projected things, away he
goes to Delphi to consult Apollo there; which having done, and
offered his sacrifice, he returned with that renowned oracle, in
which he is called beloved of God, and rather God than man: that
his prayers were heard, that his laws should be the best, and the
commonwealth which observed them the most famous in the world.
Encouraged by these things, he set himself to bring over to his
side the leading men of Sparta, exhorting them to give him a
helping hand in his great undertaking: he broke it first to his
particular friends, and then by degrees gained others, and
animated them all to put his design in execution. When things were
ripe for action, he gave order to thirty of the principal men of
Sparta to be ready armed at the market-place at break of day, to
the end that he might strike a terror into the opposite party.
Hermippus hath set down the names of twenty of the most eminent of
them: but the name of him whom Lycurgus most confided in, and who
was of most use to him both in making his laws and putting them in
execution, was Arthmiadas. Things growing to a tumult, king
Charilaus, apprehending that it was a conspiracy against his
person, took sanctuary in the temple of Athena of the Brazen
House; but, being soon after undeceived, and having taken an oath
of them that they had no designs against him, he quitted his
refuge, and himself also entered into the confederacy with them;
of so gentle and flexible a disposition he was, to which
Archelaus, his brother-king, alluded, when, hearing him extolled
for his goodness, he said: "Who can say he is anything but good?
he is so even to the bad."
Amongst the many changes and alterations which Lycurgus made, the
first and of greatest importance was the establishment of the
senate, which, having a power equal to the kings' in matters of
great consequence, and, as Plato expresses it, allaying and
qualifying the fiery genius of the royal office, gave steadiness
and safety to the commonwealth. For the state, which before had no
firm basis to stand upon, but leaned one while towards an absolute
monarchy, when the kings had the upper hand, and another while
towards a pure democracy, when the people had the better, found in
this establishment of the senate a central weight, like ballast in
a ship, which always kept things in a just equilibrium; the
twenty-eight always adhering to the kings so far as to resist
democracy, and, on the other hand, supporting the people against
the establishment of absolute monarchy. As for the determinate
number of twenty-eight, Aristotle states that it so fell out
because two of the original associates, for want of courage, fell
off from the enterprise; but Sphaerus assures us that there were
but twenty-eight of the confederates at first; perhaps there is
some mystery in the number, which consists of seven multiplied by
four, and is the first of perfect numbers after six, being, as
that is, equal to all its parts. For my part, I believe Lycurgus
fixed upon the number of twenty-eight, that, the two kings being
reckoned amongst them, they might be thirty in all. So eagerly set
was he upon this establishment, that he took the trouble to obtain
an oracle about it from Delphi; and the Rhetra (or sacred
ordinance) runs thus: "After that you have built a temple to
Jupiter Hellanius, and to Minerva Hellania, and after that you
have phyle'd the people into phyles, and obe'd them into obes, you
shall establish a council of thirty elders, the leaders included,
and shall, from time to time, assemble the people betwixt Babyca
and Cnacion, there propound and put to the vote. The commons have
the final voice and decision." By phyles and obes are meant the
divisions of the people; by the leaders, the two kings; Aristotle
says Cnacion is a river, and Babyca a bridge. Betwixt this Babyca
and Cnacion, their assemblies were held, for they had no council-
house or building to meet in. Lycurgus was of opinion that
ornaments were so far from advantaging them in their councils,
that they were rather an hindrance, by diverting their attention
from the business before them to statues and pictures, and roofs
curiously fretted, the usual embellishments of such places amongst
the other Greeks. The people then being thus assembled in the open
air, it was not allowed to any one of their order to give his
advice, but only either to ratify or reject what should be
propounded to them by the king or senate.
After the creation of the thirty senators, his next task, and,
indeed, the most hazardous he ever undertook, was the making of a
new division of their lands. For there was an extreme inequality
amongst them, and their state was overloaded with a multitude of
indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had
centred upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might
expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and
those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he
obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a
new division of the land, and that they should live all together
on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and
the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure
of difference between man and man.
Upon their consent to these proposals, proceeding at once to put
them into execution, he divided the country of Laconia in general
into thirty thousand equal shares, and the part attached to the
city of Sparta into nine thousand; these he distributed among the
Spartans, as he did the others to the country citizens. A lot was
so much as to yield, one year with another, about seventy bushels
of grain for the master of the family, and twelve for his wife,
with a suitable proportion of oil and wine. And this he thought
sufficient to keep their bodies in good health and strength;
superfluities they were better without. It is reported, that, as
he returned from a journey shortly after the division of the
lands, in harvest time, the ground being newly reaped, seeing the
stacks all standing equal and alike, he smiled, and said to those
about him, "Methinks all Laconia looks like one family estate just
divided among a number of brothers."
Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of their
movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or
inequality left amongst them; but finding that it would be very
dangerous to go about it openly, he took another course, and
defeated their avarice by the following stratagem: he commanded
that all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only a
sort of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and
quantity of which was worth but very little; so that to lay up a
hundred or two dollars there was required a pretty large closet,
and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen. With the
diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished
from Lacedaemon; for who would rob another of such a coin? Who
would unjustly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a
thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor
indeed of any use to cut in pieces? For when it was just red-hot,
they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means spoilt it, and made
it almost incapable of being worked.
In the next place, he declared an outlawry of all needless and
superfluous arts; but here he might almost have spared his
proclamation; for they of themselves would have gone with the gold
and silver, the money which remained being not so proper payment
for curious work; for, being of iron, it was scarcely portable,
neither, if they should take the pains to export it, would it pass
amongst the other Greeks, who ridiculed it. so there was now no
more means of purchasing foreign goods and small wares; merchants
sent no shiploads into Laconian ports; no rhetoric-master, no
itinerant fortune-teller, or gold or silversmith, engraver, or
jeweler, set foot in a country which had no money; so that luxury,
deprived little by little of that which fed and fomented it,
wasted to nothing, and died away of itself. For the rich had no
advantage here over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had no
road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing nothing.
And in this way they became excellent artists in common necessary
things; bedsteads, chairs, and tables, and such like staple
utensils in a family, were admirably well made there; their cup,
particularly, was very much in fashion, and eagerly sought for by
soldiers, as Critias reports; for its color was such as to prevent
water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look at, from
being noticed; and the shape of it was such that the mud stuck to
the sides, so that only the purer part came to the drinker's
mouth. For this, also, they had to thank their lawgiver, who, by
relieving the artisans of the trouble of making useless things,
set them to show their skill in giving beauty to those of daily
and indispensable use.
The third and most masterly stroke of this great lawgiver, by
which he struck a yet more effectual blow against luxury and the
desire of riches, was the ordinance he made that they should all
eat in common, of the same bread and same meat, and of kinds that
were specified, and should not spend their lives at home, laid on
costly couches at splendid tables, delivering themselves up into
the hands of their tradesmen and cooks, to fatten them in corners,
like greedy brutes, and to ruin not their minds only but their
very bodies, which, enfeebled by indulgence and excess, would
stand in need of long sleep, warm bathing, freedom from work, and,
in a word, of as much care and attendance as if they were
continually sick. It was certainly an extraordinary thing to have
brought about such a result as this, but a greater yet to have
taken away from wealth, as Theophrastus observes, not merely the
property of being coveted, but its very nature of being wealth.
For the rich, being obliged to go to the same table with the poor,
could not make use of or enjoy their abundance, nor so much as
please their vanity by looking at or displaying it. So that the
common proverb, that Plutus, the god of riches, is blind, was
nowhere in all the world literally verified but in Sparta. There,
indeed, he was not only blind, but, like a picture, without either
life or motion. Nor were they allowed to take food at home first,
and then attend the public tables, for everyone had an eye upon
those who did not eat and drink like the rest, and reproached them
with being dainty and effeminate.
This last ordinance in particular exasperated the wealthier men.
They collected in a body against Lycurgus, and from ill words came
to throwing stones, so that at length he was forced to run out of
the market-place, and make to sanctuary to save his life; by good-
hap he outran all excepting one Alcander, a young man otherwise
not ill accomplished, but hasty and violent, who came up so close
to him, that, when he turned to see who was near him, he struck
him upon the face with his stick, and put out one of his eyes.
Lycurgus, so far from being daunted and discouraged by this
accident, stopped short and showed his disfigured face and eye
beat out to his countrymen; they, dismayed and ashamed at the
sight, delivered Alcander into his hands to be punished, and
escorted him home, with expressions of great concern for his ill
usage. Lycurgus, having thanked them for their care of his person,
dismissed them all, excepting only Alcander; and, taking him with
him into his house, neither did nor said anything severe to him,
but dismissing those whose place it was, bade Alcander to wait
upon him at table. The young man, who was of an ingenuous temper,
did without murmuring as he was commanded; and, being thus
admitted to live with Lycurgus, he had an opportunity to observe
in him, beside his gentleness and calmness of temper, an
extraordinary sobriety and an indefatigable industry, and so, from
an enemy, became one of his most zealous admirers, and told his
friends and relations that Lycurgus was not that morose and ill-
natured man they had formerly taken him for, but the one mild and
gentle character of the world. And thus did Lycurgus, for
chastisement of his fault, make of a wild and passionate young man
one of the discreetest citizens of Sparta.
In memory of this accident, Lycurgus built a temple to Minerva.
Some authors, however, say that he was wounded, indeed, but did
not lose his eye from the blow; and that he built the temple in
gratitude for the cure. Be this as it will, certain it is, that,
after this misadventure, the Lacedaemonians made it a rule never
to carry so much as a staff into their public assemblies.
But to return to their public repasts. They met by companies of
fifteen, more or less, and each of them stood bound to bring in
monthly a bushel of meal, eight gallons of wine, five pounds of
cheese, two pounds and a half of figs, and some very small sum of
money to buy flesh or fish with. Besides this, when any of them
made sacrifice to the gods, they always sent a dole to the common
hall; and, likewise, when any of them had been a-hunting, he sent
thither a part of the venison he had killed; for these two
occasions were the only excuses allowed for supping at home. The
custom of eating together was observed strictly for a great while
afterwards; insomuch that king Agis himself, after having
vanquished the Athenians, sending for his commons at his return
home, because he desired to eat privately with his queen, was
refused them by the polemarchs; and when he resented this refusal
so much as to omit next day the sacrifice due for a war happily
ended, they made him pay a fine.
They used to send their children to these tables as to schools of
temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by
listening to experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse
with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and take them
without ill humor. In this point of good breeding, the
Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy
under it, upon the least hint given there was no more to be said
to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in the company to
say to each of them, as they came in, "Through this" (pointing to
the door), "no words go out." When any one had a desire to be
admitted into any of these little societies, he was to go through
the following probation: each man in the company took a little
ball of soft bread, which they were to throw into a deep basin,
that a waiter carried round upon his head; those that liked the
person to be chosen dropped their ball into the basin without
altering its figure, and those who disliked him pressed it betwixt
their fingers, and made it flat; and this signified as much as a
negative voice. And if there were but one of these flattened
pieces in the basin, the suitor was rejected, so desirous were
they that all the members of the company should be agreeable to
each other. The basin was called caddichus, and the rejected
candidate had a name thence derived. Their most famous dish was
the black broth, which was so much valued that the elderly men fed
only upon that, leaving what flesh there was to the younger.
They say that a certain king of Pontus, having heard much of this
black broth of theirs, sent for a Lacedaemonian cook on purpose to
make him some, but had no sooner tasted it than he found it
extremely bad, which the cook observing, told him, "Sir, to make
this broth relish, you should have bathed yourself first in the
river Eurotas."
After drinking moderately, every man went to his home without
lights, for the use of them was, on all occasions, forbid, to the
end that they might accustom themselves to march boldly in the
dark. Such was the common fashion of their meals.
Lycurgus would never reduce his laws into writing; nay, there is a
Rhetra expressly to forbid it. For he thought that the most
material points, and such as most directly tended to the public
welfare, being imprinted on the hearts of their youth by a good
discipline, would be sure to remain, and would find a stronger
security, than any compulsion would be, in the principles of
action formed in them by their best lawgiver, education.
One, then, of the Rhetras was, that their laws should not be
written; another is particularly leveled against luxury and
expensiveness, for by it it was ordained that the ceilings of
their houses should only be wrought by the axe, and their gates
and doors smoothed only the saw. Epaminondas's famous dictum about
his own table, that "Treason and a dinner like this do not keep
company together," may be said to have been anticipated by
Lycurgus. Luxury and a house of this kind could not well be
companions. For a man must have a less than ordinary share of
sense that would furnish such plain and common rooms with silver-
footed couches and purple coverlets and gold and silver plate.
Doubtless he had good reason to think that they would proportion
their beds to their houses, and their coverlets to their beds, and
the rest of their goods and furniture to these. It is reported
that King Leotychides, the first of that name, was so little used
to the sight of any other kind of work, that, being entertained at
Corinth in a stately room, he was much surprised to see the timber
and ceilings so finely carved and paneled, and asked his host
whether the trees grew so in his country.
A third ordinance or Rhetra was that they should not make war
often, or long, with the same enemy, lest they should train and
instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves.
And this is what Agesilaus was much blamed for a long time after;
it being thought that, by his continual incursions into Boeotia,
he made the Thebans a match for the Lacedaemonians; and therefore
Antalcidas, seeing him wounded one day, said to him that he was
very well paid for taking such pains to make the Thebans good
soldiers, whether they would or no. These laws were called the
Rhetras, to intimate that they were divine sanctions and
revelations.
In order to the good education of their youth (which, as I said
before, he thought the most important and noblest work of a
lawgiver), he took in their case all the care that was possible;
he ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling,
running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that
they might have strong and healthy bodies.
It was not in the power of the father to dispose of his child as
he thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain "triers"
at a place called Lesche; these were some of the elders of the
tribe to which the child belonged; their business it was carefully
to view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made,
they gave order for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the
nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance;
but if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken
to what was called the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus;
as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for
the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not,
from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous. Upon
the same account, the women did not bathe the new-born children
with water, as is the custom in all other countries, but with
wine, to prove the temper and complexion of their bodies; from a
notion they had that epileptic and weakly children faint and waste
away upon their being thus bathed, while, on the contrary, those
of a strong and vigorous habit acquire firmness and get a temper
by it like steel. There was much care and art, too, used by the
nurses; they had no swaddling bands; the children grew up free and
unconstrained in limb and form, and not dainty and fanciful about
their food; nor afraid in the dark, or of being left alone;
without any peevishness or ill humor or crying. Upon this account,
Spartan nurses were often bought up, or hired by people of other
countries.
Lycurgus was of another mind; he would not have masters bought out
of the market for his young Spartans, nor such as should sell
their pains; nor was it lawful, indeed, for the father himself to
raise his children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were
seven years old they were to be enrolled in certain companies and
classes, where they all lived under the same order and discipline,
doing their exercises and taking their play together. Of these he
who showed the most conduct and courage was made captain; they had
their eyes always upon him, obeyed his orders, and underwent
patiently whatsoever punishment he inflicted; so that the whole
course of their education was one continued exercise of a ready
and perfect obedience. The old men, too, were spectators of their
performances, and often raised quarrels and disputes among them,
to have a good opportunity of finding out their different
characters, and of seeing which would be valiant, which a coward,
when they should come to more dangerous encounters. Reading and
writing they gave them, just enough to serve their turn; their
chief care was to make them good subjects, and to teach them to
endure pain and conquer in battle. To this end, as they grew in
years, their discipline was proportionally increased; their heads
were close-clipped; they were accustomed to go barefoot, and for
the most part to play naked.
After they were twelve years old they were no longer allowed to
wear any under-garment; they had one coat to serve them a year;
their bodies were hard and dry, with but little acquaintance of
baths and unguents; these human indulgences they were allowed only
on some few particular days in the year. They lodged together in
little bands upon beds made of the rushes which grew by the banks
of the river Eurotas, which they were to break off with their
hands without a knife; if it were winter, they mingled some
thistledown with their rushes, which it was thought had the
property of giving warmth.
Besides all this, there was always one of the best and most honest
men in the city appointed to undertake the charge and governance
of them; he again arranged them into their several bands, and set
over each of them for their captain the most temperate and bold of
those they called Irens, who were usually twenty years old, two
years out of boyhood; and the eldest of the boys, again, were
Mell-Irens, as much as to say, "who would shortly be men." This
young man, therefore, was their captain when they fought, and
their master at home, using them for the offices of his house;
sending the oldest of them to fetch wood, and the weaker and less
able, to gather salads and herbs, and these they must either go
without or steal; which they did by creeping into the gardens, or
conveying themselves cunningly and closely into the eating-houses;
if they were taken in the act, they were whipped without mercy,
for thieving so ill and awkwardly. They stole, too, all other meat
they could lay their hands on, looking out and watching all
opportunities, when people were asleep or more careless than
usual. If they were caught, they were not only punished with
whipping, but hunger, too, being reduced to their ordinary
allowance, which was but very slender, and so contrived on
purpose, that they might set about to help themselves, and be
forced to exercise their energy and address.
So seriously did the Lacedaemonian children go about their
stealing, that a youth, having stolen a young fox and hid it under
his coat, suffered it to tear out his very bowels with its teeth
and claws, and died upon the place, rather than let it be seen.
What is practised to this very day in Lacedaemon is enough to gain
credit to this story, for I myself have seen several of the youths
endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana
surnamed Orthia.
The Iren, or under-master, used to stay a little with them after
supper, and one of them he bade to sing a song, to another he put
a question which required an advised and deliberate answer; for
example, Who was the best man in the city? What he thought of such
an action of such a man? They accustomed them thus early to pass a
right judgment upon persons and things, and to inform themselves
of the abilities or defects of their countrymen. If they had not
an answer ready to the question, Who was a good or who an ill-
reputed citizen? they were looked upon as of a dull and careless
disposition, and to have little or no sense of virtue and honor;
besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they said,
and in as few words and as comprehensive as might be; he that
failed of this, or answered not to the purpose, had his thumb bit
by his master.
They taught them, also, to speak with a natural and graceful
raillery, and to comprehend much matter of thought in few words.
For Lycurgus, who ordered, as we saw, that a great piece of money
should be but of an inconsiderable value, on the contrary would
allow no discourse to be current which did not contain in few
words a great deal of useful and curious sense; children in
Sparta, by a habit of long silence, came to give just and
sententious answers; for, indeed, loose talkers seldom originate
many sensible words. King Agis, when some Athenian laughed at
their short swords, and said that the jugglers on the stage
swallowed them with ease, answered him, "We find them long enough
to reach our enemies with;" and as their swords were short and
sharp, so, it seems to me, were their sayings. They reach the
point and arrest the attention of the hearers better than any
others. Lycurgus himself seems to have been short and sententious.
if we may trust the anecdotes of him; as appears by his answer to
one who by all means would set up democracy in Lacedaemon. "Begin,
friend," said he, "and set it up in your family." Another asked
him why he allowed of such mean and trivial sacrifices to the
gods. He replied, "That we may always have something to offer to
them." Being asked what sort of martial exercises or combats he
approved of, he answered, "All sorts, except that in which you
stretch out your hands."
Of their dislike to talkativeness, the following apophthegms are
evidence. King Leonidas said to one who held him in discourse upon
some useful matter, but not in due time and place, "Much to the
purpose, sir, elsewhere." King Charilaus, the nephew of Lycurgus,
being asked why his uncle had made so few laws, answered, "Men of
few words require but few laws." When one blamed Hecataeus the
sophist because that, being invited to the public table, he had
not spoken one word all supper-time, Archidamidas answered in his
vindication, "He who knows how to speak, knows also when."
The sharp, and yet not ungraceful, retorts which I mentioned may
be instanced as follows. Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome
manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in
Lacedaemon? answered at last," He, sir, that is the least like
you." Some, in company where Agis was, much extolled the Eleans
for their just and honorable management of the Olympic games;
"Indeed," said Agis, "they are highly to be commended if they can
do justice one day in five years."
We may see their character, too, in their very jests. For they did
not throw them out at random, but the very wit of them was
grounded upon something or other worth thinking about. For
instance, one, being asked to go hear a man who exactly
counterfeited the voice of a nightingale, answered, "Sir, I have
heard the nightingale itself." Another, having read the following
inscription upon a tomb,----
Seeking to quench a cruel tyranny,
They, at Selinus, did in battle die,
said, it served them right; for instead of trying to quench the
tyranny they should have let it burn out. A lad, being offered
some game-cocks that would die upon the spot, said he cared not
for cocks that would die, but for such as would live and kill
others. In short, their answers were so sententious and pertinent,
that one said well that intellectual, much more truly than
athletic, exercise was the Spartan characteristic.
Nor was their instruction in music and verse less carefully
attended to than their habits of grace and good breeding in
conversation. And their very songs had a life and spirit in them
that inflamed and possessed men's minds with an enthusiasm and
ardor for action; the style of them was plain and without
affectation; the subject always serious and moral; most usually it
was in praise of such men as had died in defence of their country,
or in derision of those that had been cowards; the former they
declared happy and glorified; the life of the latter they
described as most miserable and abject. There were also vaunts of
what they would do, and boasts of what they had done, varying with
the various ages, as, for example, they had three choirs in their
solemn festivals, the first of the old men, the second of the
young men, and the last of the children; the old men began thus:
We once were young, and brave and strong;
the young men answered them, singing,
And we're so now, come on and try;
the children came last and said,
But we'll be strongest by and by.
Before they engaged in battle, the Lacedaemonians abated a little
the severity of their manners in favor of their young men,
suffering them to curl and adorn their hair, and to have costly
arms, and fine clothes; and were well pleased to see them, like
proud horses, neighing and pressing to the course. And therefore,
as soon as they came to be well grown, they took a great deal of
care of their hair, to have it parted and trimmed, especially
against a day of battle, pursuant to a saying recorded of their
lawgiver, that a large head of hair added beauty to a good face,
and terror to an ugly one.
The senate, as I said before, consisted of those who were
Lycurgus's chief aiders and assistants in his plan. The vacancies
he ordered to be supplied out of the best and most deserving men
past sixty years old. The manner of their election was as follows:
the people being called together, some selected persons were
locked up in a room near the place of election, so contrived that
they could neither see nor be seen, but could only hear the noise
of the assembly without; for they decided this, as most other
affairs of moment, by the shouts of the people. This done, the
competitors were not brought in and presented all together, but
one after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly
without speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing-
tables with them, in which they recorded and marked each shout by
its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candidate each of
them was made, but merely that they came first, second, third, and
so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest
acclamations was declared senator duly elected.
When he perceived that his more important institutions had taken
root in the minds of his countrymen, that custom had rendered them
familiar and easy, that his commonwealth was now grown up and able
to go alone, then, as Plato somewhere tells us the Maker of the
world, when first he saw it existing and beginning its motion,
felt joy, even so Lycurgus, viewing with joy and satisfaction the
greatness and beauty of his political structure, now fairly at
work and in motion, conceived the thought to make it immortal too,
and as far as human forecast could reach, to deliver it down
unchangeable to posterity. He called an extraordinary assembly of
all the people, and told them that he now thought everything
reasonably well established, both for the happiness and the virtue
of the state; but that there was one thing still behind, of the
greatest importance, which he thought not fit to impart until he
had consulted the oracle; in the meantime, his desire was that
they would observe the laws without even the least alteration
until his return, and then he would do as the god should direct
him. They all consented readily, and bade him hasten his journey;
but, before he departed, he administered an oath to the two kings,
the senate, and the whole commons, to abide by and maintain the
established form of polity until Lycurgus should come back. This
done, he set out for Delphi, and, having sacrificed to Apollo,
asked him whether the laws he had established were good and
sufficient for a people's happiness and virtue. The oracle
answered that the laws were excellent, and that the people, while
it observed them, should live in the height of renown. Lycurgus
took the oracle in writing, and sent it over to Sparta, and,
having sacrificed a second time to Apollo, and taken leave of his
friends and his son, he resolved that the Spartans should not be
released from the oath they had taken, and that he would, of his
own act, close his life where he was. He was now about that age in
which life was still tolerable, and yet might be quitted without
regret. Everything, moreover, about him was in a sufficiently
prosperous condition. He, therefore, made an end of himself by a
total abstinence from food; thinking it a statesman's duty to make
his very death, if possible, an act of service to the state, and
even in the end of his life to give some example of virtue and
effect some useful purpose. Nor was he deceived in his
expectations, for the city of Lacedaemon continued the chief city
of all Greece for the space of five hundred years, in strict
observance of Lycurgus's laws; in all which time there was no
manner of alteration made, during the reign of fourteen kings,
down to the time of Agis, the son of Archidamus.
King Theopompus, when one said that Sparta held up so long because
their kings could command so well, replied, "Nay, rather because
the people know so well how to obey." For people do not obey,
unless rulers know how to command; obedience is a lesson taught by
commanders. A true leader himself creates the obedience of his own
followers; as it is the greatest attainment in the art of riding
to make a horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of
government to inspire men with a willingness to obey.
It is reported that when the bones were brought home to Sparta his
tomb was struck with lightning, an accident which befell no
eminent person but himself and Euripides. But Aristocrates, the
son of Hipparchus, says that he died in Crete, and that his Cretan
friends, in accordance with his own request, when they had burned
his body, scattered the ashes into the sea, for fear lest, if his
relics should be transported to Lacedaemon, the people might
pretend to be released from their oaths, and make innovations in
the government.
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