EDUCATION OF THE SPARTANS, CRETANS,
ARCADIANS, ETC.
A different picture is presented to us by the education of the
Spartans,[852] which, almost perfect in its kind, aimed chiefly at
unfolding the powers of the body. Mental acquirements in the states of
Doric origin were few, and the object even of these seems to have been
rather connected with the developement of the animal than the
spiritual nature of man, though they were not utterly destitute of all
those arts and accomplishments which embellish a life of peace. Little
stress, however, can be laid on the elaborate divisions of youth into
numerous classes, the intention of which is not stated. There can,
nevertheless, be no doubt that much art, reflection and wisdom was
exhibited in the forming of the system whose object was the creation
of a military character, and through this the enjoyment of the
hegemonia or lead in the public affairs of Greece, an honour which
Sparta attained to and held during many years.[853]
Footnote 852:
See Müll. Dor. ii. 313, sqq. Cf. Pfeiff. Ant. ii. 57. p. 370.
Footnote 853:
To destroy the power of Sparta the Achæans could imagine no better
means than to change their system of education.—Plut. Vit. Philop. §
16. Paus. vii. 8. 5. The Mityleneans, too, desirous of breaking the
military spirit of certain of their allies, forbade them to give the
least instruction to their children.—Ælian, V. H. vii. 15. With the
same view the Emperor Julian closed the public schools against the
Christians.—Gibbon, iv. 111. Among our ancestors, too, when a blow
was meditated against Dissenters, no measure more severe could be
devised than to deprive them of education.—Lord John Russell, Hist.
of Eur. i. 273.
A modern writer has correctly remarked that by permitting the state to
decide on the lives of infants, the institutions of Lycurgus
recognised the authority of the community to regulate, how it pleased,
the education they were to receive. The authority of parents over
their children was thus all but annihilated, for, although the
recognition and feeling of relationship continued after the state had
undertaken the training of youth, their influence was exceedingly
weakened, a circumstance to which may be attributed the seeming
heroism of the Spartan women, who could stoically bear the death of
their sons because they had been in a great measure estranged from
them.
As, however, the institutions of Lycurgus differed in all things else
from those of other Grecian legislators, it is not surprising they
should also differ on the subject of education. But it may greatly be
doubted whether we altogether comprehend his system. The accounts
transmitted to us are in many points contradictory, and it may in
general be remarked that on no subject whatever do modern ideas differ
so much from those prevalent in antiquity, as on the subject of
education. Plutarch and Xenophon, or rather the sophist who assumed
his name, two of the authors on whom in this discussion most reliance
is usually placed, were prejudiced and credulous, and often, to speak
frankly, extremely ignorant. Both were unwilling, even if they
possessed the power, to criticise the system, and yet by modern
writers their opinions have generally without scruple been adopted.
Xenophon himself, as well as the sophist who here apes him, was in
predilections a Spartan, and as strongly disposed to satirise and
underrate the institutions of his own country as to exaggerate the
merits of the Laconian. Even were the trifling essay on the
Lacedæmonian republic proved to be his, we should yet lay little
stress upon its testimony, unless when corroborated by the evidence of
other and better writers.
Elsewhere in Greece,—observes the author of this tract,[854] whoever
he was,—persons, the most solicitous respecting the education of their
children, placed over them at the first dawn of intellectual
developement, pædagogues, who at the outset undertook their
instruction, and afterwards conducted them to the schools where
letters, music, and gymnastics were taught. In this respect, however,
as a modern writer has shown, the institutions of Sparta were in no
degree superior, since Helots were there the instructors of young
children; and, on this account, he rejects the story of Plutarch,[855]
that they were compelled to intoxicate themselves, to exhibit to the
youths a practical proof of the deformity of drunkenness.[856] It was
contrary, he says, to common sense. But as common sense had very
little to do with any part of the system, this is a poor argument, and
will not weigh against positive testimony.
Footnote 854:
Rep. Lac. ii. 1. Cf. Pfeiff. Ant. p. 370.
Footnote 855:
Lycurg. 28. Müll. Dor. ii. 39. Commonly, also, the nurses of the
kings were Helots.—Plut. Ages. § 3.
Footnote 856:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 29.
Another evil which the Pseudo-Xenophon discovers in the common
Hellenic plan of training,[857] was that lads were indulged with the
use of shoes, and rendered effeminate by frequent changes of clean
linen, while their appetite, generally keen in boyhood,[858] was
suffered to be the measure of what they ate. Lycurgus, he remarks,
managed all these things differently. Instead of remaining under the
superintendence of their parents, and frequenting what schools and
masters they might judge proper, boys at Sparta passed under a sort of
camp discipline regulated by the laws and intrusted to the
guardianship of a particular magistrate, whom they denominated a
Pædonomos. This part of the system Xenophon[859] prefers to the
Athenian practice of intrusting youth to the care of servile
pædagogues. The Pædonomos, however, resembled in many respects the
Athenian Gymnasiarch, and, so far as I can perceive, possessed no
superiority over him, except that his authority extended beyond school
hours. He was, indeed, a kind of despot, vested with the power to call
the boys together when he pleased, and inflict chastisement, at his
own discretion, on any whom he detected exhibiting the least symptom
of effeminacy. To enable him to carry his resolutions instantly into
effect he marched about the town like an executioner, attended by men
having whips, who at his nod seized the boy delinquent and subjected
him at once to the torture. Thus possessing the power of enforcing
obedience, a great show at least of reverence attended him.
Footnote 857:
De Rep. Laced. ii. 5. Cf. Plut. Lycurg. § 17.
Footnote 858:
And keen it must needs have been before they could have relished
their black broth, with a dose of which Dionysios once made an
experiment upon his stomach. Having put a spoonful of the compound
into his mouth, he instantly spat it out again, declaring that he
could not swallow it, for it was the filthiest stuff he had ever
tasted; upon which his Spartan cook remarked, “You should have first
bathed in the Eurotas.”—Plut. Inst. Lac. § 2.
Footnote 859:
De Rep. Lac. ii. 2. Lycurg. § 17. Cf. Hesych. v. Παιδονόμος.
The privilege of sharing the paternal cares of the Pædonomos was not
rigidly confined to the sons of Spartans (πολιτικοὶ παῖδες);[860] the
Mothaces also, Spartans of half blood, and even strangers might share
it. Who the Mothaces were it is extremely difficult to determine. Some
contend that they were slaves brought up in the family.[861] But
Athenæus, and Phylarchos whom he quotes, state most distinctly that
they were free, ἐλεύθεροι μέν εἰσί. In order to remove the
unfavourable impression made on mankind by the accounts transmitted to
us of Spartan slavery, it has been pretended that they, as well as the
Neodamodes, were Helots. Of the Neodamodes, however, the very author
on whom reliance is placed asserts the contrary. They were originally
slaves indeed, he says, but different from the Helots, ἑτέρους ὄντας
τῶν εἱλώτων. With respect to the Mothaces,[862] notwithstanding the
testimony of Hesychius and other grammarians, it seems clear that they
were the sons of free though poor Laconians, who, desirous of
obtaining for them the rights of Spartans, sent them to be the
companions of such youthful citizens as would consent to receive them.
It is moreover added that the youth, according to their means, chose
one, two, or more of these companions; which shows that although the
right of controlling the studies of its children was vested in the
state, the expenses, in whole or in part, devolved upon the parents.
Footnote 860:
Athen. vi. 102.
Footnote 861:
Müll. ii. 314.
Footnote 862:
Harpocrat. v. Μόθωνες.
The Mothaces, or Mothones as they are sometimes called, were identical
with the σύντροφοι:[863] but the τρόφιμοι were such youthful
strangers—for example, the sons of Xenophon[864] and Phocion—as, by
submitting to the severities of Spartan discipline, acquired the
freedom of the city, the privilege of aspiring to political
distinction, and, according to some writers, even a share of the land.
This, if true, would render credible the statement of the philosopher
Teles,[865] who affirms that even Helots, by the means above
described, could rise to the rank of Spartans; while they who in this
point disobeyed the laws, were they even the children of kings, sank
to the condition of Helots, and of course forfeited their estates,
otherwise there would have been no land to bestow on the military
neophytes. Three of the most remarkable men in Spartan story,
Lysander, Gylippos, and Callicratidas were Mothaces, whose fathers
were obscure.[866] It will be seen that we have here the original of
that system of education sketched by Xenophon in his Persian Utopia,
and designed to recommend monarchy to his countrymen, as that of Sir
Thomas More was framed for the contrary purpose.
Footnote 863:
De Rep. Lac. iii. 3. 3. Schneid.
Footnote 864:
Diog. Laert. ii. c. vi. § 10. Xen. Hellen. v. 3. 9. Plut. Ages. § 6.
Footnote 865:
Ap. Stob. Florileg. 40. 8. Gaisf. Cf. Plut. Inst. Lac. § 21, 22.
Athen. vi. 103. Müll. Dor. ii. 315. note p.—In Xenophon’s Persian
Utopia such citizens as were too poor to maintain their children at
school lost the benefits of public training; but, according to law,
the advantages of the Spartan system were open to all.—Arist. Polit.
iv. 9.
Footnote 866:
Ælian, Var. Hist. xii. 43.
According to the laws of Lycurgus the heir-apparent to the throne was
exempted from the necessity of mixing with his fellow-citizens in the
public schools, though the younger members of the royal family
occupied the same level with other boys.[867] That this was an unwise
regulation, however, will be at once evident, since no man stands so
much in need of severe discipline as a prince, who in spite of
correction is too apt to be guided by his unbridled passions. Fact,
too, bears out this view, for two of the noblest sovereigns of Sparta,
Leonidas and Agesilaos, had been subjected, while boys,[868] to the
correction of their teachers.
It has been already remarked that the spirit of Spartan education was
severe. It was, in fact, precisely the same as that which, in the last
generation, pervaded the discipline of the Seneka and Mohawk Indians,
and produced those numerous examples of patience, fortitude, and
magnanimity, together with that force, agility and suppleness of body
so greatly admired and, perhaps, envied by civilised nations. It was
this stern and martial system that constituted the secret model,
according to which Locke fashioned his plan of youthful training,
designed rather to produce a sound mind in a sound body than to
shatter and enervate the latter by the piling up in the brain of
miscellaneous and often useless knowledge. But in his attempts at
hardening the frame and rendering it invulnerable to the stings of
suffering, our countryman did not dare to go the lengths of the
Spartan legislator, who in this, at least, exhibited superior wisdom,
that he did not consider the chastisement of stripes to have any
tendency towards creating a base and servile habit of mind.[869]
Footnote 867:
Plut. Ages. § i.
Footnote 868:
Müll. Dor. ii. 315.
Footnote 869:
On the democratic tendency of Spartan discipline see Bœckh. in Plat.
Min. 181. sqq. Isocrat. Areop. § 14–16.
Consistently with the general aim of his institutions, Lycurgus,
instead of ordaining, like Locke, that his alumni should wear leaky
shoes, dispensed with the incumbrance altogether. And, certainly, in a
soldier, the habit of trampling with the naked foot on ice and snow
and the sharpest rocks, is worthy of acquisition.
Institutions are generally based on the actual circumstances of
society. Lycurgus legislated for a people to whom it was important to
be able easily to climb steeps, or descend them with a sure foot, to
spring forward also, to run, to bend, and perform innumerable acts of
personal dexterity. He, therefore, commenced with boyhood the
inculcating of those habits and exercises which their manhood would
imperatively require of them.
It has been seen that for change of linen an especial aversion was
entertained at Sparta. Children were, therefore, taught to be content
with one clean shirt per annum, at the termination of which period it
was probably as well peopled as the Emperor Julian’s beard,
particularly as, during all that time, it was considered low and
unfashionable to bathe or make use of the ordinary ointments, an
indulgence permitted to them but for a few days in the course of the
year. All this time, however, they might more properly, perhaps, be
said to be shirtless, since the himation only was left them, the
chiton being taken away.[870] They were compelled also, as incipient
soldiers, to lie hard on pallet beds, made with the tops of reeds
collected, perfunctorily, without the help of the knife or dagger,
from the banks of the Eurotas. To this, as an especial indulgence,
they were in winter permitted to add a quantity of thistle-down, which
material was supposed to contain much warmth.[871]
Footnote 870:
Plut. Lycurg. § 17. Inst. Lac. § 5. Xen. de Rep. Lac. ii. 4.
Footnote 871:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 10.
The initiation into these accomplishments commenced at the age of
twelve. At the same time, acting upon the Galenian maxim, that “a fat
stomach makes a lean wit,” the boys were reduced to short commons, the
Bouagor, or leader of the juvenile troop, being instructed to pinch
them as closely as possible on that score, in order that when the
chances of war should reduce them to the necessity of subsisting on
famine rations, they might be prepared without murmuring to submit to
it. Persons so educated, moreover, would be little delicate in the
choice of provisions. Anything, from a sea hedgehog to a snail, would
suit their stomachs; and it would be hard indeed if war could ever
place them in circumstances where such food as they were accustomed to
might not be found. Health, too, and light spirits, as Lycurgus well
understood, are the offspring of an abstemious diet. The spare
warrior, clean-limbed and agile, would leap round the man puffed out
and bloated with overfeeding, and, therefore, to be fat was at Sparta
an offence punishable at law.[872] However, not to be too hard on the
young gentlemen, it was always permitted, when hunger grew
troublesome, to have recourse to what, for want of a fitter name, we
must call stealing.[873]
Footnote 872:
Ælian. V. H. xiv. 7. Plut. Inst. Lac. § 13. Athen. xii. 74.—Apropos
of this subject, the ancients have left us a very curious anecdote.
Dionysios, son of Clearchos, the first tyrant of Heraclea, having
succeeded to the government of his country, became insensibly so
corpulent by his daily excess and extreme niceness in the choice of
his viands, that he was nearly suffocated by the enormous mass of
his fat. Every time he fell into a deep slumber it was feared he
would never wake again; and, to rouse him from his lethargy, the
physicians were often compelled to thrust long, sharp needles into
his body until they reached the quick, upon which he would again
exhibit signs of animation. Of this prodigious obesity his majesty
was so much ashamed, however, that, when transacting business or
giving audience to strangers, he would ensconce himself behind a
large trunk, so that no part of him was visible but his face. Yet,
in spite of this infirmity, he lived fifty-five years and reigned
thirty-three; and, to the honour of corpulence be it remarked, that
no tyrant ever before exhibited so much mildness and moderation.—Id.
xii. 72.
Footnote 873:
Xen. Rep. Lac. ii. 6.—This writer observes, that what might be
filched was determined by law.—Anab. iv. 6. 14. And Plutarch
explains, that they might take as much food as they could.—Inst.
Lac. § 12.
In modern times it would be thought a poor compliment to any system of
education to represent it as an admirable method for rendering a man
an accomplished thief. But the Spartan sophists, whose wisdom Plato,
in a jocular mood, so greatly extols, held a different theory. They
did not undertake the teaching of morals, but such habits as became a
soldier, among which thieving always maintains a distinguished place.
Xenophon, however, is careful to guard us against the supposition that
this habit of appropriation arose from want. The object of the
legislator was, without the incurring of moral guilt, to nourish all
the useful habits commonly found in a thief,—as, the power to watch by
night, to wear the mask of honesty by day, craftily to lay snares, and
even to set spies upon the individual to be plundered. To men designed
to spend their lives in war such qualities are, doubtless, of the
highest importance, since they enable them to procure provisions and
overreach the enemy.[874] To this practice Xenophon alludes in the
Anabasis, where the army is placed in circumstances of much
difficulty. “I understand,” he says to Cheirisophos, “that among you
Lacedæmonians the habit of stealing is carefully cultivated from
childhood; and that, so far from being disgraceful, it is considered a
necessary accomplishment, so long as you keep within the bounds
prescribed by law. When detected, however, it is equally lawful to be
scourged.”[875]
Footnote 874:
Xen. de Rep. Lac. ii. 7.
Footnote 875:
Anab. iv. vi. 14.
Were they scourged, then, for stealing? Not at all, but simply for
being caught; and Xenophon is right in remarking, that, in all human
arts, they who unskilfully perform what they undertake are punished,
and so should a bungling thief.[876] The passage immediately following
is mutilated or inextricably corrupt,[877] but, from an attentive
examination, it would appear that the boys detected on these occasions
were selected to be flogged[878] during the festival of Artemis
Orthia, or Orthosia, whose altar was thus annually smeared with human
blood. This impartial superstition extended its empire over all ranks
and conditions of men, servile or free, from the beggar to the prince;
for here, we are told, Helots had sometimes the honour to be scourged
in company perhaps with a scion of the Eurypontid or Agid kings. At
Alea, in Arcadia, women, by the command of an oracle, were subjected
to the same discipline. “Here,” says Pausanias,[879] “during the
festival of Dionysos women, by command of an oracle, were flogged like
the youth of Sparta at the altar of Artemis Orthia.”
Footnote 876:
De Rep. Lac. ii. 8.
Footnote 877:
Schneid. in Xen. de Rep. Lac. ii. 9.
Footnote 878:
Sometimes to death.—Plut. Inst. Lac. § 39. Vit. Aristid. § 17.
Pausan. iii. 16. 6. Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. iii. 24. p. 153. c.
Spanheim ad Callim. in Dian. 174. The Scholiast on Pindar derives
this name of Artemis from Mount Orthion or Orthosion in
Arcadia.—Olymp. iii. 54. Cf. Lycoph. 1330. with the Schol. of
Tzetzes. Schol. Plat. de Legg. p. 224. Ruhnk.
Footnote 879:
Arcad. viii. 23. 1. Meurs. (Græc. Fer. p. 256,) understands _sese
flagellabant_.
The above ordinance of Lycurgus led in the next instance to the
hybernation of the youth upon the mountains:[880] to inure them still
further to hardships, and, practically to teach them the art of
providing for themselves, they were sent forth with a roving
commission to prowl about the highlands and less frequented parts of
Laconia, armed for self-protection, and that they might be able to
bring down their game. At first, perhaps, they confined themselves
within the limits prescribed by law. But almost of necessity they
would become involved in quarrels with the Helots, by plundering whose
farms and villages they chiefly subsisted. The Helots would sometimes
resist and sometimes resent their incursions. Ill blood would be
engendered. Hot and fiery youths, abandoned to their own guidance,
would easily discover excuses for cruelty and revenge. From quarrels
they would proceed to blows—from blows to assassination; and beaten,
perhaps, by day, they would fall suddenly on the defenceless peasants
in the dead of night, and butcher whole hamlets to avenge an affront
offered to them perhaps by an individual. Thus, out of a custom
blameless enough in its origin, grew the terrible institution of the
Crypteia,[881] or annual massacre of the Helots, denied by some modern
writers, but too well authenticated, and too much in keeping with the
Spartan character and general policy, to allow of our indulging in any
scepticism on the point.
Footnote 880:
The Platonic Scholiast confounds this practice with the Crypteia, so
called, he says, because the youth were compelled to conceal
themselves while they subsisted on plunder. Ἀπολύοντες γὰρ ἕκαστον
γυμνὸν, προσέταττον ἐνιαυτὸν ὅλον ἔξω ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσι πλανᾶσθαι, καὶ
τρέφειν ἑαυτὸν διὰ κλοπῆς, καὶ τῶν τοιούτων, οὕτω δὲ ὥστε μηδενὶ
κατάδηλον γενέσθαι· διὸ καὶ κρύπτεια ὠνόμασται· ἐκολάζοντο γὰρ οἱ
ὅπου δήποτε ὀφθέντες.—Ad Legg. p. 225. Ruhnk.
Footnote 881:
For a fuller account of this institution see Book V. Chapter VIII.
But, in addition to the above, there were other branches of education
taught at Sparta,—that is gymnastics and music. Writers, desirous of
enhancing the mental acquisitions of the Dorians, adhere somewhat too
strictly to the meaning often affixed by the Greeks to the word
_music_, which they employed to signify literature. But Xenophon, in
his treatise on the Lacedæmonian Commonwealth, appears invariably to
use it in its limited and modern signification.
To gymnastics the Dorians, upon the whole an unintellectual people,
were naturally much addicted,—far too much according to ancient
writers; but here again their modern historian steps in to their
defence. He will have it, that it was in later times that they became
philogymnasts, and quotes Dion Chrysostom as if he was the principal
witness. Plato, to be sure, is referred to as a parasitical authority,
and so is Aristotle;[882] but then the latter only says, that their
constant violent exercises rendered them brutal, in which the
historian appears to discover no harm. “This want of moderation,
however, though it occurred in later times, is never perceivable in
the maxims and ideas of the Dorians, who in this, as in several other
cases, know how to set bounds to youthful ardour, and check its
pernicious effects.”[883] This, it appears to me, is the language of
an apologist. If they had such knowledge, how culpable must they have
been not to check it in the matter of the Crypteia?
Footnote 882:
Polit. viii. 3. 3.—To this may be added the testimony of Plato, who
evidently, without naming them, means to describe the Spartans,
where he speaks of a people wholly given up to the study of bodily
exercises, and by that means becoming brutal and ferocious.—De Rep.
t. vi. p. 154.
Footnote 883:
Dorians, ii. 319. seq.
It may be observed, however, that though they devoted to gymnastics
too much of their leisure, the fault lay in them, not in the system of
exercises, which was in itself one of extreme beauty and simplicity.
Its object,—which it was excellently calculated to attain,—was not to
create athletæ but soldiers, not gigantic strength, but an elastic,
agile, beautiful frame, adapted for all the movements of war. Boxing,
accordingly, and the pancration[884] were banished from their
gymnasia, a regulation evincing at the same time their wisdom and
their taste; the former being the most barbarous and useless, the
latter the most unseemly portion of gymnastics, often exhibiting the
antagonists rolling and struggling, like savages or animals devoid of
reason, on the ground.
Footnote 884:
Ταῦτα μόνα μὴ κωλύσαντος ἀγωνίζεσθαι τοὺς πολίτας, ἐν οἷς χεὶρ οὺκ
ἀνατείνεται.—Plut. Lycurg. § 19. The exercises, in which the
admission of being vanquished was made by holding up the hand, are
elsewhere named:—Πυγμὴν δὲ καὶ παγκράτιον ἀγωνίζεσθαι ἐκώλυσεν, ἵνα
μηδὲ παίζοντες ἀπαυδᾷν ἐθίζωνται.—Reg. Apophtheg. Lycurg. 4.
Apophtheg. Lacon. Lycurg. 23.
As the ancient idea of education included every thing employed to
develope the powers of body or mind, we must regard in this light the
military games peculiar to the Spartans and Cretans.[885] Among the
former the youth, having sacrificed to Ares in a temple at Therapne,
passed over into an island dyked round and called Platanistas, where,
dividing off into separate parties, they engaged in a contest which
wanted nothing but arms to render it a genuine battle. A learned
historian, seldom sparing of words, avoids describing this interesting
scene; and wherefore?—Because a faithful description of it must convey
a striking idea of Spartan ferocity. “They exerted” says he, “every
means in their power to obtain the victory.”—Exactly; but what were
those means? “Adolescentium greges Lacedæmone vidimus ipsi indibili
contentione certantes, pugnis, calcibus, unguibus, morsu denique; quum
exanimarentur priusquam se victos faterentur.[886]” Yet were these
battles carried on under the eyes of magistrates, the five Bidiæi[887]
appointed to superintend these exercises as well as those performed
elsewhere. The little island where they fought was a spot of great
natural beauty, encircled by a sheet of clear water, and approached on
all sides through thick and lofty groves of platane trees. A bridge
thrown over the canal led to the island on both sides, and on the one
stood a statue of Heracles, on the other of Lycurgus. This battle was
reckoned among the institutions of the latter, and under the
protection probably of the former. The preliminaries to the fight were
as follow. They first sacrificed in the Phœbaion which stands without
the city, not far from Therapne. Here each of the two divisions of the
youth offered up a dog’s whelp to Ares, the bravest of domestic
animals, sacred in their opinion to the bravest of the Gods. No other
Grecian people sacrificed the dog excepting the Colophonians, who
offered up a black bitch to Hecate. In both cities the sacrifice was
performed by night. After the ceremony two tame boars were brought
forward, one by each party, which they compelled to fight; and they
whose brute champion proved superior, thence augured that victory
awaited them in the Platanistas. On the following day, a little before
noon, they entered by the bridges into the island, one party by one
bridge, the other by the other. But the choice was not left to them,
having been determined on the preceding night by lot. Being arrived,
they faced each other, and commenced the battle, striking with the
fist, kicking, leaping on each other, tearing one another with their
teeth, and gouging after the most approved Kentucky fashion. Thus they
struggled, man to man, urging forward together and thrusting each
other into the water.[888] From these words, as well as from the
testimony of Cicero cited above, it is clear the combat was conducted
with no other arms than those furnished by nature, though Lucian,
misemploying the verb ὁπλομάχειν,[889] would lead us to a different
conclusion. But this kind of battle is always enumerated among the
gymnastic exercises or contests; and what necessity would there have
been to have recourse to fists, feet, teeth, and nails, had they been
permitted the use of arms? Fatigued with this violent exertion they
betook themselves for a short time to repose, refreshed by which they
resumed their exercises, dancing in most intricate measures to the
sound of the pipe.[890] Akin in spirit to the contests in the
Platanistas were the ever-recurring battles fought by the young men
with the three hundred followers of the Hippagretæ; three inferior
magistrates appointed by the Ephori, who selected each one hundred
followers from among the healthiest and bravest of the youthful
population. Against this chosen band all the other young men of the
city were bound by custom to make war; and, but that they could be
parted by any citizen who might happen to be passing by, it is
probable that these fierce boxing matches would often have terminated
fatally.
Footnote 885:
Müll. ii. 26.
Footnote 886:
Cic. Tusc. Disput. v. 27.
Footnote 887:
Paus. iii. 11. 2.
Footnote 888:
Paus. iii. 14. 8. sqq.
Footnote 889:
Anachars. § 38.
Footnote 890:
Cf. Ubb. Emm. Antiq. Græc. iii. 89. sqq.
Similar customs prevailed in Crete, where, as in most other parts of
Greece, the business of education appears to have commenced at the age
of seven years, when the cake called Promachos was given to the boys,
because, as it has been conjectured, they were thenceforward to be
trained for fighting. Up to the age of seventeen they were denominated
Apageli, since they were not until then admitted into those Agelæ[891]
or bands, in which they thenceforward performed their exercises. Here,
as in Sparta, the greatest possible care was taken to extirpate from
the character every germ of effeminacy. They ate whatever food was
given them squatting on the ground, not being permitted to join their
elders at the board, and went abroad in all weathers clad in a single
garment, like the boys of Sparta during their hibernation. However,
the youth of the several Agelæ, armed with stones, and iron weapons,
marching to the sound of flutes, and assailing each other, converted
their exercises into something very like real warfare. Our
cudgel-playing, single-stick, &c. are pastimes of the same
description; and boxing now nearly exploded, can plead classical
precedent. They were habituated, says Ephoros, to labours and arms,
and taught to despise both heat and cold, rough roads and cliffs, and
the blows they received in the gymnasium and their mock battles. The
use of the bow formed part of their education, as well as the armed
dance, at first taught by the Curetes, and afterwards named the
Pyrrhic; so that a warlike spirit breathed through the whole system of
their education.[892]
Footnote 891:
Ἀγέλη for the boys, συσσίτιον for the men.—Strab. x. 4. p. 379.
Müll. (Dor. ii. 326.) uses both indiscriminately.
Footnote 892:
Strab. x. 4. p. 380. seq.—This agrees with what Plato relates of the
Cretan polity.—De Legg. t. vii. p. 260. t. viii. p. 86.
With all these facts before him, though many of them he has
suppressed, the historian of the Doric race, in direct contradiction
to Plato and Aristotle, contends naïvely that it would be erroneous to
conclude that the aim of bodily exercise among the Dorians was war, or
that in their result they rendered the youth either brutal or
ferocious. Their object, in his opinion, was to obtain something like
ideal beauty of form, strength, and health, which, he says, they
accordingly attained, being, about B. C. 540, the healthiest of the
Greeks and most renowned for beautiful men and women. But Xenophon
whom, on the subject of health he quotes, does not authorise his
superlative:—"It would not be easy," are his words, “to find healthier
or more active men.”[893] Again, the language of Herodotus by no means
bears him out. He, indeed, affirms that Callicrates, a Spartan, was
the handsomest man in the army at Platæa, but says nothing of the
Spartans being handsomer than the other Greeks; but rather the
contrary. He was not merely the handsomest man among his countrymen,
but, which he evidently considered more remarkable, among all the
other Greeks.[894]
Footnote 893:
De Rep. Lac. v. 9.—At a later period the reputation of being the
handsomest men in Greece was enjoyed by certain young men of
Athens.—Æschin. cont. Tim. § 31.
Footnote 894:
Herod. ix. 72.
Not, however, to insist on such points as these, let us proceed to
examine the intellectual cultivation of the Dorians.[895] That the art
of writing never flourished very generally at Sparta appears to be on
all hands admitted, though we can by no means doubt that among them
numerous individuals possessing this accomplishment might always be
found. Thus, in the old story of the combat of the three hundred
Spartans and Argives, it is related that Othryades, the sole survivor
of the Laconian band, having remained last on the field of battle,
erected a trophy and wrote upon it with his blood Λακεδαιμόνιοι κατ᾽
Ἀργείων, immediately after which he died of his wounds.[896]
Generally, however, no great stress was laid on a knowledge of the art
of writing, which, in the opinion of some authors, was of
comparatively little value where the people were taught to chant their
laws as well as their songs. Similar customs and regulations prevailed
on this head in Crete, where, nevertheless, letters appear to have
been viewed with a more favourable eye.[897] In addition to their body
of legal poetry, which was probably less voluminous than a metrical
version of the statutes at large, the youth were taught to sing hymns
in honour of the gods and the praises of illustrious men.[898] In
music, too, they were permitted to make some proficiency, though
generally, we are told, it was their ambition to excel rather in the
regularity of their manners than in the extent of their acquirements.
Footnote 895:
Cf. Ælian. Var. Hist. xii. 50.
Footnote 896:
Stob. Florileg. vii. 67.
Footnote 897:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 14. seq.—The Spartans sacrificed to the muses
before going to battle in order that they might perform something
worthy of notice by them.—Id. § 16. It is remarked of king Cleomenes
that he studied philosophy under Sphæros the Borysthenite who was
likewise permitted to impart his system to the other youth.—Id.
Cleom. § 2.—Cf. Diog. Laert. vii. 6.
Footnote 898:
In later times learning grew to be more highly valued. Thus it was
ordained by law that the youth should assemble annually in the Hall
of the Ephori to hear the work of Dicæarchos on the constitution of
their country read to them.—Suid. v. Δικαίαρχ. t. i. p. 730. d.
With respect to the Spartans it is probable, though the testimony of
ancient writers be sufficiently contradictory, that no great stress
was laid even on the ability to read; for, while Plutarch[899]
conceives this art to have been among their ordinary acquirements,
Isocrates, a grave and more competent authority, is decidedly of the
opposite opinion.[900]
Footnote 899:
Inst. Lac. § 4. Lycurg. § 16.
Footnote 900:
Panathen. § 83. Τοσοῦτον ἀπολελειμμένοι τῆς κοινῆς παιδείας καὶ
φιλοσοφίας εἰσιν ὥστ᾽ οὐδὲ γράμματα μανθάνουσιν.
Ælian,[901] too, coming in the rear of Plutarch, observes that the
Lacedæmonians were ignorant of mental culture (μουσικῆς) meaning
evidently as Perizonius has already observed, not “music” as Kühn
would translate it, (for in this they were learned,) but a knowledge
of poetry and eloquence.[902]
Footnote 901:
Var. Hist. xii. 50.
Footnote 902:
So again in Ælian. Var. Hist. iv. 15. Gelo, king of Syracuse, an
illiterate person is termed ἄμουσος.
That the Spartans were noted for their indifference to literature, is
well known. Even Xenophon, their apologist, instituting a comparison
between their system of education and that prevailing among the other
Greeks, observes that the latter sent their boys to school that they
might learn their letters, music, and the exercises of the palæstra,
while the former placed them under the care of a grave man who might
punish them if slothful and inactive, and inculcate great modesty and
obedience in lieu of the usual accomplishments. Plato also, in the
Greater Hippias,[903] having observed that their laws were averse from
the reception of foreign learning, adds immediately after that the
majority of them were even ignorant of arithmetic. In another
place,[904] indeed, the philosopher appears to hold a different
language, and is literally understood by Perizonius. But the reader
who examines the passage attentively, will probably agree with me in
considering it nothing more than one of those profoundly ironical
strokes in which, above all writers, he abounds. He in fact remarks,
what in another sense may have been very true, that no countries were
more fertile in sophists than Crete and Lacedæmon, but that they
dissembled their wisdom and feigned ignorance, lest they should appear
to excel all their countrymen in sapience, of which in reality there
was very little danger. He observes, however, no less ironically, that
those rude and unrhetorical nations were of all men most philosophical
and eloquent, and that it had long been understood by a great many
that to _laconise_, or act the Spartan, was rather to be a philosopher
than a diligent student of gymnastics. Perizonius,[905] indeed,
conceives that all this is to be understood of natural sound sense,
applied to morals and those brief and pithy sayings or λογοὶ, which
constituted the science of laconics.
Footnote 903:
T. v. p. 418.
Footnote 904:
Protag. t. i. p. 209.
Footnote 905:
Not. ad Ælian. xii. 50.—From an ironical passage of Plato we
may likewise infer that they were able genealogists and
story-tellers.—Hipp. Maj. t. v. p. 419.
But, after all, there never was, as Cicero observes, a single orator
among the Spartans; nor could it be otherwise, since all the arts
which beget and foster eloquence, and, more important still, every
political institution which favours it, were unknown in their state.
Nay, so far did they push their aversion for the oratorical art, that
if any citizen of Sparta acquired, in his experience abroad, the skill
artificially to wield a syllogism or a trope, he was subjected to
punishment,[906] while rhetoricians were expelled the city.[907]
Ignorance, therefore, of whatever learned nations prize, was their
chief boast. To them the sublime speculations of the Academy, and the
logic, sharp and irresistible, of the Lyceum, were equally strangers;
yet their discipline, and the habits of youth, imparted to them what
in modern jargon is termed a kind of practical “philosophy.” They
understood the great art, at least among them, how to command their
passions; as Maximus Tyrius[908] relates of Agesilaos who, though
educated in no school of philosophy, was nevertheless not a slave to
love, which therefore the sophist infers could not be a matter of
great difficulty. However there were limitations to their aversions
for learning. They opened in their state an asylum for those antique
teachers of mankind, the poets,[909] proscribed by Plato, and were in
this respect so superior in good taste to that philosopher, that they
at length, in imitation of the Great Preceptors of Greece, instituted
public recitations of Homer. And this, Maximus Tyrius adduces as a
proof that many well-constituted states had existed in which Homer was
not publicly studied, for he could not mean that he was once entirely
unknown at Sparta.[910]
Footnote 906:
The laws of Sparta were in this respect, as in many others, merely
imitations of those of Crete.—Sext. Empir. adv. Mathemat. l. ii. p.
68. Plutarch having remarked that they did learn to read, adds—τῶν
δὲ ἄλλων παιδευμάτων ξενηλασίαν ἐποιοῦτο, οὐ μᾶλλον ἀνθρώπων ἢ
λόγων.—Instit. Lac. § 4.
Footnote 907:
Cressol. Theat. Rhet. i. 12. p. 88.
Footnote 908:
Dissert. ix. p. 118.
Footnote 909:
Cf. Athen. xiv. 33.
Footnote 910:
Dissert. vii. p. 91.
Into the character of the Greeks, generally, there entered an element
but faintly discernible in the moral composition of modern nations, I
mean a most exquisite and exalted sensibility, which rendered them to
the last degree susceptible, and liable to be swayed irresistibly for
good or for evil by poetry and music. And this characteristic
distinguished in some degree the Doric as well as the Ionic race. They
could be excited, past belief, by the agency of sound. Music,
therefore, with us at least a mere source of enjoyment, among them was
invested with a moral character, and employed in education as a
powerful means of harmonising, purifying, ennobling the principles and
the affections of the heart. For this reason the government, which in
Greece was in reality a Committee of Public Safety,[911] watched over
the music no less sedulously than over the morals of the people, which
it powerfully influenced. It must, nevertheless, be confessed that
many ancient authors are little philosophical in relating or reasoning
upon the effects of music. They often confound consequences with
causes. Thus, in the example which certain authors undoubtingly adduce
of the Sicilian Dorians,[912] whose morals we are told were corrupted
by their fiddlesticks, they omit to inquire whether it was not rather
the natural and necessary degeneracy of a wealthy people, which
corrupted the music. This is my interpretation. For, in the history of
the ancient Sicilians, I can discover causes enough of lax and
imperfect morals, without calling in the aid of lyre or cithara. But
some writers on this point have an easy faith. They suppose that the
strict domestic discipline of Sparta “would hardly have been
preserved”[913] without the old-fashioned music.
Footnote 911:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 17.
Footnote 912:
Max. Tyr. iv. p. 54. Cic. de Legg. ii. 15.—Cicero, though apt in
most cases to defer to the opinion of Plato, hangs back here. He
does not, indeed, consider it a matter of indifference what songs
are sung, or what airs prevail in a state; but neither does he
credit the inferences drawn too subtilely by the great philosopher
from his musical theory.
Footnote 913:
Dorians. ii. 340.
In whatever way we decide on the metaphysics of the matter, certain it
is that in old times music was an universal accomplishment in most
parts of Greece; but this was when it was little more than the
chanting of savages, in which, however ignorant, any one may join.
Exactly in proportion as it rose into an art its cultivators
diminished in number, until, when a high degree of perfection had been
attained, it was abandoned almost wholly to professional musicians.
The Athenians had been commanded by the Pythian oracle to chant
chorically in the streets, a divine service in honour of Bacchos.[914]
At Sparta similar performances took place during the gymnopædia, when
choruses of naked men and boys, with crowns of palm leaves on their
heads, proceeded through the streets singing the songs of Thaletas and
Alcman and the pæans of Dionysidotos.[915] Mr. Müller, who loves to
complete or round off the accounts he finds in ancient authors, says
that, _doubtless_, a large portion of the inhabitants of the city took
part in these exhibitions. Perhaps they did, but we have no authority
for such a supposition. The place in the agora which contained statues
of Apollo, Artemis and Leto, was called _Choros_,[916] because there
the Ephebi danced in choruses in honour of Apollo. On these occasions
unwarlike persons were sometimes thrust into the least honourable
places,[917] while bachelors were excluded; so that, as Schneider has
well remarked, cowardice was less dishonourable than celibacy. But it
does not at all appear that the Spartans themselves were ever good
musicians, though they were not incapable of relishing good
music;[918] and hence the foreign musicians who flocked thither found
a welcome reception. The developement of the warlike constitution of
the state threw the favourable side of their discipline into the
shade.[919]
Footnote 914:
Demosth. in Mid. § 15.
Footnote 915:
Athen. xv. 22.
Footnote 916:
Paus. iii. 11. 9.—Müller, ii. 341., supposes the whole agora may
have been thus denominated.
Footnote 917:
Xen. de Rep. Lac. ix. 5. Plut. Lycurg. § 15.
Footnote 918:
Aristot. Pol. viii. 5.
Footnote 919:
Cf. Müll. Dor. ii. 342.
The Arcadians, likewise, made great use of music in their system of
education, and, though otherwise a rude race, continued to practise it
up to the age of thirty. Among them alone, in fact, were children
accustomed from infancy to sing, in certain measures, hymns and poems,
in which they celebrated the praises of the gods and heroes of their
country. After this, observes Polybius,[920] they learned the _nomoi_
of Timotheus and Philoxenos, and every year during the Dionysia formed
choruses in the theatre, where they danced to the sound of the flute.
Here boys contended with antagonists of their own age, and the young
men with those more advanced towards their prime. During the whole of
their lives they frequented these public assemblies, where they
instructed each other by their songs, and not by means of foreign
actors. With respect to other branches of education they considered it
no disgrace to profess themselves ignorant; but not to know how to
sing would, in Arcadia, have been a mark of extreme vulgarity. They
habituated themselves to walk with gravity to the sound of the flute,
and, having been thus instructed at the expense of the state,
proceeded once a year in public procession to the theatre. Their
ancestors introduced these customs, not with any view to pleasure, or
that they might grow rich by the exercise of their talents, but in
order to soften the austerity of character which their cold and murky
atmosphere would otherwise have engendered. For the character of
nations is invariably analogous to the air they breathe, and it is the
geographical position of races which determines alone their temper of
mind and the colour and configuration of their bodies.
Footnote 920:
iv. 20. 7. Athen. xiv. 21. seq.
Besides what has already been said of the Arcadians, it may be added,
that it was customary among them for the men and women to unite in
chanting certain odes, and to offer up sacrifices in common. There
were also dances in which the youth of both sexes joined, and their
object was to create and diffuse humane and gentle manners.
But the same habits were not prevalent throughout the whole country.
The Kynæthes made no progress in these humanising arts, and as they
dwelt in the rudest districts of Arcadia, and breathed the crudest
air, their ferocity became proverbial; they addicted themselves to
strife and contention, and degenerated into the fiercest and most
untameable savages in Greece. In fact, obtaining possession of several
cities, they shed so much blood that the whole nation was roused, and
at length united in expelling them the land. Even after their
departure the Mantinæans thought it necessary to purify the soil by
sacrifices, expiations, and the leading of victims round the whole
boundary line.
Dancing very naturally constituted a separate branch of education at
Sparta as in Crete. In both places the execution of the Pyrrhic
appears to have been regarded as a necessary accomplishment, the
youths, from the age of fifteen or earlier, having been taught to
perform it in arms.[921] It was or is—for the Pyrrhic still lingers in
Greece,
“Ye have the Pyrrhic dance as yet—”
an exhibition purely military. The dancers, accoutred with spear and
shield, went gracefully and vigorously through a number of movements,
wheeling, advancing, giving blows or shunning them, as in real
action.[922] In other parts of Greece, however, the Pyrrhic quickly
degenerated in character, becoming little better than a wild dance of
Bacchanals.[923] It has been rightly observed that at Sparta “the
chief object of the Gymnopædia was to represent gymnastic exercises
and dancing in intimate union, and, indeed, the latter only as the
accomplishment and end of the former.”[924] One of the dances,
resembling the Anapale, partook of a Bacchanalian character.”[925] The
youth, also, when skilled in these exercises, danced in rows behind
each other to the music of flutes, both military and choral dances, at
the same time, repeating an invitation in verse to Aphrodite and Eros
to join them, and an exhortation to each other.[926]
Footnote 921:
Athen. xiv. 29.—The armed dance was in particular favour with
Plato.—De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 17. Boys danced in armour during
the Panathenaia at Athens.—Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 935.
Footnote 922:
Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 54.
Footnote 923:
Athen. xiv. 29.
Footnote 924:
Müll. Dor. ii. 351.
Footnote 925:
Creuz. Com. Herod. i. 230.
Footnote 926:
Lucian de Saltat. § 10. seq.
It will be seen from the above details that the object of education at
Sparta was rather the formation of habits and the disciplining of the
mind to act in exact conformity with the laws, than to develope to
their fullest extent the intellectual powers of individuals. They
desired to amalgamate the whole energies of the people into one mass,
upon the supposition that being thus impelled in any particular
direction they would prove irresistible. No account was made of
private happiness. Everything seems to have been devised for the
effecting of national purposes, though from the known laws of the
human mind even the restraint and tyrannical interference of such a
system would with time be reconciled to the feelings and contribute to
individual content. But very much of what renders life sweet, was
sacrificed. Letters and arts, that subordinate creation, that world
within a world which the beneficence of Providence has permitted man
to call into existence, were at Sparta unknown. They enjoyed little or
nothing of that refined delight which arises from multiplying the
almost conscious fruits of the soul, from sending winged thoughts
abroad to move, enchant, electrify millions, from deifying truth and
confounding error, from ascending to the greatest heights of
mortality, and diffusing from thence a light and a glory to warm and
illuminate and gladden the human race for ever. This greater felicity
was reserved for the education of Athens, which must, therefore, in
all enlightened times, bear away the palm of excellence and utility.