Had Plato lived a few centuries earlier he might have visited at least
one Greek state where his barbarous ideal of the sexual relations was
to a considerable extent realized. The Spartan law-maker Lycurgus
shared his views regarding marriage, and had the advantage of being
able to enforce them. He, too, believed that human beings should be
bred like cattle. He laughed, so Plutarch tells us in his biographic
sketch, at those who, while exercising care in raising dogs and
horses, allowed unworthy husbands to have offspring. This, in itself,
was a praiseworthy thought; but the method adopted by Lycurgus to
overcome that objection was subversive of all morality and affection.
He considered it advisable that among worthy men there should be a
community of wives and children, for which purpose he tried to
suppress jealousy, ridiculing those who insisted on a conjugal
monopoly and who even engaged in fights on account of it. Elderly men
were urged to share their wives with younger men and adopt the
children as their own; and if a man considered another's wife
particularly prolific or virtuous he was not to hesitate to ask for
her. Bridegrooms followed the custom of capturing their brides. An
attendant, after cutting off the bride's hair and putting a man's
garment on her, left her alone in the dark, whereupon her bridegroom
visited her, returning soon, however, to his comrades. For
months--sometimes until after children had been born--the husband
would thus be unable to see his wife.
Reading Greek literature in the light of modern science, it is
interesting to note that we have in the foregoing account unmistakable
allusions to several primitive customs which have prevailed among
savages and barbarians in all parts of the world.[308] The Greek
writers, ignorant of the revelations of anthropology regarding the
evolution of human habits, assumed such customs to have been
originated by particular lawgivers. This was natural enough and
pardonable under the circumstances; but how any modern writer can
consider such customs (whether aboriginal or instituted by lawgivers)
especially favorable to love, passes my comprehension. Yet one of the
best informed of my critics assured me that "in Sparta love was made a
part of state policy, and opportunities were contrived for the young
men and women to see each other at public games and become enamored."
As usual in such cases, the writer ignores the details regarding these
Spartan opportunities for seeing one another and falling in love,
which would have spoiled his argument by indicating what kind of
"love" was in question here.
Plutarch relates that Lycurgus made the girls strip naked and attend
certain festivals and dance in that state before the youths, who were
also naked. Bachelors who refused to marry were not allowed to attend
these dances, which, as Plutarch adds with characteristic Greek
naïveté, were "a strong incentive to marriage." The erudite C.O.
Müller, in his history of the Doric race (II., 298), while confessing
that in all his reading of Greek books he had not come across a single
instance of an Athenian in love with a free-born woman and marrying
her because of a strong attachment, declares that Sparta was somewhat
different, personal attachments having been possible there because the
young men and women were brought together at festivals and dances; but
he has the acumen to see that this love was "not of a romantic
nature."[309]