temper, jealousy, and all sorts of desires, must be added; all of
which the sponger is beyond the reach of; he does not yield to
temper because on the one hand he has fortitude, and on the other
hand he has no one to irritate him. Or if he is by any chance moved
to wrath, there is nothing disagreeable or sullen about it; it
entertains and amuses merely. As to pain, he has less of that to
endure than anybody, one of his profession’s recommendations and
privileges being just that immunity. He has neither money, house,
slave, wife, nor children—those hostages to Fortune. He desires
neither fame, wealth, nor beauty.
_Tyc_. He will feel pain if the supplies run short, I presume.
_Si_. Ah, but you see, he is not a sponger if that happens. A
courageous man is not courageous if he has no courage, a sensible
one not sensible if he has no sense. He could not be a sponger
under those conditions. We are discussing the sponger, not the non-
sponger. If the courageous is so in virtue of his courage, the
sensible sensible in virtue of his sense, then the sponger is a
sponger in virtue of sponging. Take that away, and we shall be
dealing with something else, and not with a sponger at all.
_Tyc_. So his supplies will never run short?
_Si_. Manifestly. So he is as free from that sort of pain as
from others.
Then all philosophers and rhetoricians are timorous creatures
together. You may generally see them carrying sticks on their
walks; well, of course they would not go armed if they were not
afraid. And they bar their doors elaborately, for fear of night
attacks. Now our man just latches his room door, so that the wind
may not blow it open; if there is a noise in the night, it is all
the same to him as if there were none; he will travel a lonely road
and wear no sword; he does not know what fear is. But I am always
seeing philosophers, though there is nothing to be afraid of,
carrying bows and arrows; as for their sticks, they take them to
bath or breakfast with them.
Again, no one can accuse a sponger of adultery, violence, rape, or
in fact of any crime whatsoever. One guilty of such offences will
not be sponging, but ruining himself. If he is caught in adultery,
his style thenceforth is taken from his offence. Just as a piece of
cowardice brings a man not repute, but disrepute, so, I take it,
the sponger who commits an offence loses his previous title and
gets in exchange that proper to the offence. Of such offences on
the part of rhetoricians and philosophers, on the other hand, we
have not only abundant examples in our own time, but records
against the ancients in their own writings. There is an Apology of
Socrates, of Aeschines, of Hyperides, of Demosthenes, and indeed of
most of their kind. There is no sponger’s apology extant, and you
will never hear of anybody’s bringing a suit against one.
Now I suppose you will tell me that the sponger’s life may be
better than theirs, but his death is worse. Not a bit of it; it is
a far happier one. We know very well that all or most philosophers
have had the wretched fate they deserved, some by poison after
condemnation for heinous crimes, some by burning alive, some by
strangury, some in exile. No one can adduce a sponger’s death to
match these; he eats and drinks, and dies a blissful death. If you
are told that any died a violent one, be sure it was nothing worse
than indigestion.
_Tyc_. I must say, you have done well for your kind against
the philosophers. And now look at it from the patron’s point of
view; does he get his money’s worth? It strikes me the rich man
does the kindness, confers the favour, finds the food, and it is
all a little discreditable to the man who takes them.
_Si_. Now, really, Tychiades, that is rather silly of you. Can
you not see that a rich man, if he had the gold of Gyges, is yet
poor as long as he dines alone, and no better than a tramp if he
goes abroad unattended? A soldier without his arms, a dress without
its purple, a horse without its trappings, are poor things; and a
rich man without his sponger is a mean, cheap spectacle. The
sponger gives lustre to the patron, never the patron to the other.
Moreover, none of the reproach that you imagine attaches to
sponging; you refer, of course, to the difference in their degrees;
but then it is an advantage to the rich man to keep the other;
apart from his ornamental use, he is a most valuable bodyguard. In
battle no one will be over ready to undertake the rich man with
such a comrade at his side; and you can hardly, having him, die by
poison. Who would dare attempt such a thing, with him tasting your
food and drink? So he brings you not only credit, but insurance.
His affection is such that he will run all risks; he would never
leave his patron to face the dangers of the table alone; no, he
would rather eat and die with him.
_Tyc_. You have stated your case without missing a point,
Simon. Do not tell me you were unprepared again; you have been
trained in a good school, man. But one thing more I should like to
know. There is a nasty sound about the word sponger, don’t you
think?
_Si_. See whether I have a satisfactory answer to that. Oblige
me by giving what you consider the right answers to my questions.
Sponging is an old word; what does it really mean?
_Tyc_. Getting your dinner at some one else’s expense.
_Si_. Dining out, in fact?
_Tyc_. Yes.
_Si_. And we may call a sponger an out-diner?
_Tyc_. The gravamen’s in that; he should dine at home.
_Si_. A few more answers, please. Of these pairs, which do you
consider the best? Which would you take, if you had the choice?-To
sail, or to out-sail?
_Tyc_. The latter.
_Si_. To run or out-run?
_Tyc_. The latter.
_Si_. Ride or out-ride, shoot or out-shoot?
_Tyc_. Still the same.
_Si_. So I presume an out-diner is better than a diner?
_Tyc_. Indisputable. Henceforward I shall come to you morning
and afternoon like a schoolboy for lessons. And I am sure you ought
to do your very best for me, as your first pupil. The first child
is always the mother’s joy, you know. [Footnote: It has been
necessary, in Section 60, to tamper a little with the Greek in
order to get the point, such as it is; but it has not been
seriously misrepresented.]
ANACHARSIS, A DISCUSSION OF PHYSICAL TRAINING
_Anacharsis. Solon_
_An_. Why do your young men behave like this, Solon? Some of
them grappling and tripping each other, some throttling,
struggling, intertwining in the clay like so many pigs wallowing.
And yet their first proceeding after they have stripped—I noticed
that—is to oil and scrape each other quite amicably; but then I do
not know what comes over them—they put down their heads and begin
to push, and crash their foreheads together like a pair of rival
rams. There, look! that one has lifted the other right off his
legs, and dropped him on the ground; now he has fallen on top, and
will not let him get his head up, but presses it down into the
clay; and to finish him off he twines his legs tight round his
belly, thrusts his elbow hard against his throat, and throttles the
wretched victim, who meanwhile is patting his shoulder; that will
be a form of supplication; he is asking not to be quite choked to
death. Regardless of their fresh oil, they get all filthy, smother
themselves in mud and sweat till they might as well not have been
anointed, and present, to me at least, the most ludicrous
resemblance to eels slipping through a man’s hands.
Then here in the open court are others doing just the same, except
that, instead of the clay, they have for floor a depression filled
with deep sand, with which they sprinkle one another, scraping up
the dust on purpose, like fowls; I suppose they want their
interfacings to be tighter; the sand is to neutralize the
slipperiness of the oil, and by drying it up to give a firmer grip.
And here are others, sanded too, but on their legs, going at each
other with blows and kicks. We shall surely see this poor fellow
spit out his teeth in a minute; his mouth is all full of blood and
sand; he has had a blow on the jaw from the other’s fist, you see.
Why does not the official there separate them and put an end to it?
I guess that he is an official from his purple; but no, he
encourages them, and commends the one who gave that blow.
Wherever you look, every one busy-rising on his toes, jumping up
and kicking the air, or something.
Now I want to know what is the good of it all. To me it looks more
like madness than anything else. It will not be very easy to
convince me that people who behave like this are not wrong in their
heads.
_So_. It is quite natural it should strike you that way, being
so novel, and so utterly contrary to Scythian customs. Similarly
you have no doubt many methods and habits that would seem
extraordinary enough to us Greeks, v if we were spectators of them
as you now are of ours. But be reassured, my dear sir; these
proceedings are not madness; it is no spirit of violence that sets
them hitting each other, wallowing in clay, and sprinkling dust.
The thing has its use, and its delight too, resulting in admirable
physical condition. If you make some stay, as I imagine you will,
in Greece, you are bound to be either a clay-bob or a dust-bob
before long; you will be so taken with the pleasure and profit of
the pursuit.
_An_. Hands off, please. No, I wish you all joy of your
pleasures and your profits; but if any of you treats me like that,
he will find out that we do not wear scimetars for ornament.
But would you mind giving a name to all this? What are we to say
they are doing?
_So_. The place is called a gymnasium, and is dedicated to the
Lycean Apollo. You see his statue there; the one leaning on the
pillar, with a bow in the left hand. The right arm bent over the
head indicates that the God is resting after some great exertion.
Of the exercises here, that in the clay is called wrestling; the
youths in the dust are also called wrestlers, and those who strike
each other standing are engaged in what we call the pancratium. But
we have other gymnasiums for boxing, quoit-throwing, and high-
jumping; and in all these we hold contests, the winner in which is
honoured above all his contemporaries, and receives prizes.
_An_. Ah, and what are the prizes, now?
_So_. At Olympia a wreath of wild olive, at the Isthmus one of
pine, at Nemea of parsley, at Pytho some of the God’s sacred
apples, and at our Panathenaea oil pressed from the temple olives.
What are you laughing at, Anacharsis? Are the prizes too small?
_An_. Oh dear no; your prize-list is most imposing; the givers
may well plume themselves on their munificence, and the competitors
be monstrous keen on winning. Who would not go through this amount
of preparatory toil, and take his chance of a choking or a
dislocation, for apples or parsley? It is obviously impossible for
any one who has a fancy to a supply of apples, or a wreath of
parsley or pine, to get them without a mud plaster on his face, or
a kick in the stomach from his competitor.
_So_. My dear sir, it is not the things’ intrinsic value that we look
at. They are the symbols of victory, labels of the winners; it is the
fame attaching to them that is worth any price to their holders; that
is why the man whose quest of honour leads through toil is content to
take his kicks. No toil, no honour; he who covets that must start with
enduring hardship; when he has done that, he may begin to look for the
pleasure and profit his labours are to bring.
_An_. Which pleasure and profit consists in their being seen
in their wreaths by every one, and congratulated on their victory
by those who before commiserated their pain; their happiness lies
in their exchange of apples and parsley for toil.
_So_. Ah, you certainly do not understand our ways yet. You
will revise your opinions before long, when you go to the great
festivals and see the crowds gathering to look on, the stands
filling up, the competitors receiving their ovations, and the
victor being idolized.
_An_. Why, Solon, that is just where the humiliation comes in;
they are treated like this not in something like privacy, but with
all these spectators to watch the affronts they endure—who, I am
to believe, count them happy when they see them dripping with blood
or being throttled; for such are the happy concomitants of victory.
In my country, if a man strikes a citizen, knocks him down, or
tears his clothes, our elders punish him severely, even though
there were only one or two witnesses, not like your vast Olympic or
Isthmian gatherings. However, though I cannot help pitying the
competitors, I am still more astonished at the spectators; you tell
me the chief people from all over Greece attend; how can they leave
their serious concerns and waste time on such things? How they can
like it passes my comprehension—to look on at people being struck
and knocked about, dashed to the ground and pounded by one another.
_So_. If the Olympia, Isthmia, or Panathenaea were only on
now, those object-lessons might have been enough to convince you
that our keenness is not thrown away. I cannot make you apprehend
the delights of them by description; you should be there sitting in
the middle of the spectators, looking at the men’s courage and
physical beauty, their marvellous condition, effective skill and
invincible strength, their enterprise, their emulation, their
unconquerable spirit, and their unwearied pursuit of victory. Oh, I
know very well, you would never have been tired of talking about
your favourites, backing them with voice and hand.
_An_. I dare say, and with laugh and flout too. All the fine
things in your list, your courages and conditions, your beauties
and enterprises, I see you wasting in no high cause; your country
is not in danger, your land not being ravaged, your friends or
relations not being haled away. The more ridiculous that such
patterns of perfection as you make them out should endure the
misery all for nothing, and spoil their beauty and their fine
figures with sand and black eyes, just for the triumphant
possession of an apple or a sprig of wild olive. Oh, how I love to
think of those prizes! By the way, do all who enter get them?
_So_. No, indeed. There is only one winner.
_An_. And do you mean to say such a number can be found to
toil for a remote uncertainty of success, knowing that the winner
cannot be more than one, and the failures must be many, with their
bruises, or their wounds very likely, for sole reward?
_So_. Dear me; you have no idea yet of what is a good political
constitution, or you would never depreciate the best of our
customs. If you ever take the trouble to inquire how a State may
best be organized, and its citizens best developed, you will find
yourself commending these practices and the earnestness with which
we cultivate them; then you will realize what good effects are
inseparable from those toils which seem for the moment to tax our
energies to no purpose.
_An_. Well, Solon, why did I come all the way from Scythia,
why did I make the long stormy passage of the Euxine, but to learn
the laws of Greece, observe your customs, and work out the best
constitution? That was why I chose you of all Athenians for my
friend and host; I had heard of you; I had been told you were a
legislator, you had devised the most admirable customs, introduced
institutions of great excellence, and in fact built up what you
call a constitution. Before all things, then, teach me; make me
your pupil. Nothing would please me more than to sit by your side
without bit or sup for as long as you could hold out, and listen
open-mouthed to what you have to say of constitution and laws.
_So_. The whole thing can hardly be so shortly disposed of,
friend. You must take the different departments, one by one, and
find out our views upon the Gods, then upon parents, upon marriage,
and so for the rest. But I will let you know at once what we think
about the young, and how we treat them when higher things begin to
dawn upon their intelligence, when their frames begin to set and to
be capable of endurance. Then you will grasp our purpose in
imposing these exercises upon them and insisting on physical
effort; our view is not bounded by the contests, and directed to
their carrying off prizes there—of course only a small proportion
of them ever reach that point; no; the indirect benefit that we
secure for their city and themselves is of more importance. There
is another contest in which all good citizens get prizes, and its
wreaths are not of pine or wild olive or parsley, but of complete
human happiness, including individual freedom and political
independence, wealth and repute, enjoyment of our ancient ritual,
security of our dear ones, and all the choicest boons a man might
ask of Heaven. It is of these materials that the wreath I tell you
of is woven; and they are provided by that contest for which this
training and these toils are the preparation.
_An_. You strange man! you had all these grand prizes up your
sleeve, and you told me a tale of apples and parsley and tufts of
wild olive and pine.
_So_. Ah, you will not think those such trifles either, when
you take my meaning. They are manifestations of the same spirit,
all small parts of that greater contest, and of the wreath of
happiness I told you of. But it is true that instead of beginning
at the beginning I was carried away to the meetings at the Isthmus
and Olympia and Nemea. However, we have plenty of time, and you
profess curiosity; it is a simple matter to go back to the
beginning, to that many-prized contest which I tell you is the real
end of all.
_An_. That will be better; we are more likely to prosper on
the high road; perhaps I shall even be cured of my inclination to
laugh at any one I see priding himself on his olive or parsley
wreath. But I propose that we go into the shade over there and sit
down on the benches, not to be interrupted by these rounds of
cheering. And indeed I must confess I have had enough of this sun;
how it scorches one’s bare head! I did not want to look like a
foreigner, so I left my hat at home. But the year is at its
hottest; the dog-star, as you call it, is burning everything up,
and not leaving a drop of moisture in the air; and the noonday sun
right overhead gives an absolutely intolerable heat. I cannot make
out how you at your age, so far from dripping like me, never turn a
hair; instead of looking about for some hospitable shade, you take
your sunning quite kindly.
_So_. Ah, Anacharsis, these useless toils, these perpetual
clay-baths, these miseries in the sand and the open air, are
prophylactics against the sun’s rays; _we_ need no hats to
ward off his shafts. But come along.
And you are not to regard me as an authority whose statements are
to be accepted as matter of faith; wherever you think I have not
made out my case, you are to contradict me at once and get the
thing straight. So we shall stand to win; either you, after
relieving your mind of all objections that strike you, will reach a
firm conviction, or, failing that, I shall have found out my
mistake. And in the latter case, Athens will owe you a debt that
she cannot be too quick to acknowledge; for your instructions and
corrections of my ideas will redound to her advantage. I shall keep
nothing back; I shall produce it all in public, stand up in the
assembly and say: _Men of Athens, I drew up for you such laws as
I thought would most advantage you; but this stranger_—and at
that word I point to you, Anacharsis—_this stranger from Scythia
has been wise enough to show me my mistake and teach me better
ways. Let his name be inscribed as your benefactor’s; set him up in
bronze beside your name-Gods, or by Athene on the citadel_. And
be assured that Athens will not be ashamed to learn what is for her
good from a barbarian and an alien.
_An_. Ah, now I have a specimen of that Attic irony which I
have so often heard of. I am an unsettled wanderer who lives on his
cart and goes from land to land, who has never dwelt in a city, nor
even seen one till now; how should I lay down a constitution, or
give lessons to a people that is one with the soil it lives on
[Footnote: See _Athenians_ in Notes.], and for all these ages
has enjoyed the blessings of perfect order in this ancient city?
How, above all, instruct that Solon whose native gift all men say
it is to know how a state may best be governed, and what laws will
bring it happiness? Nevertheless, you shall be my legislator too; I
will contradict you, where I think you wrong, for my own better
instruction. And here we are, safely covered from the sun’s
pursuit, and this cool stone invites us to take our ease. Start now
and give me your reasons. Why seize upon the rising generation so
young, and subject them to such toils? How do you develop perfect
virtue out of clay and training? What is the exact contribution to
it of dust and summersaults? That and that only is my first
curiosity. All the rest you shall give me by degrees as occasion
rises later. But, Solon, one thing you must bear in mind: you are
talking to a barbarian. What I mean is, you must be simple, and
brief; I am afraid I shall forget the beginning, if a very abundant
flow follows.
_So_. Why, you had better work the sluice yourself, whenever
the word-stream is either turbid or diverging into a wrong
channel. As for mere continuance, you can cut that up by questions.
However, so long as what I have to say is not irrelevant, I do not
know that length matters. There is an ancient procedure in the
Areopagus, our murder court. When the members have ascended the
hill, and taken their seats to decide a case of murder or
deliberate maiming or arson, each side is allowed to address the
court in turn, prosecution and defence being conducted either by
the principals or by counsel. As long as they speak to the matter
in hand, the court listens silently and patiently. But if either
prefaces his speech with an appeal to its benevolence, or attempts
to stir its compassion or indignation by irrelevant considerations
—and the legal profession have numberless ways of playing upon
juries—, the usher at once comes up and silences him. The court is
not to be trifled with or have its food disguised with condiments,
but to be shown the bare facts. Now, Anacharsis, I hereby create
you a temporary Areopagite; you shall hear me according to that
court’s practice, and silence me if you find me cajoling you; but
as long as I keep to the point, I may speak at large. For there is
no sun here to make length a burden to you; we have plenty of shade
and plenty of time.
_An_. That sounds reasonable. And I take it very kindly that
you should have given me this incidental view of the proceedings on
the Areopagus; they are very remarkable, quite a pattern of the way
a judicial decision should be arrived at. Let your speech be
regulated accordingly, and the Areopagite of your appointment shall
listen as his office requires.
_So_. Well, I must start with a brief preliminary statement of
our views upon city and citizens. A city in our conception is not
the buildings—walls, temples, docks, and so forth; these are no
more than the local habitation that provides the members of the
community with shelter and safety; it is in the citizens that we
find the root of the matter; they it is that replenish and organize
and achieve and guard, corresponding in the city to the soul in
man. Holding this view, we are not indifferent, as you see, to our
city’s body; that we adorn with all the beauty we can impart to it;
it is provided with internal buildings, and fenced as securely as
may be with external walls. But our first, our engrossing
preoccupation is to make our citizens noble of spirit and strong of
body. So they will in peace time make the most of themselves and
their political unity, while in war they will bring their city
through safe with its freedom and well-being unimpaired. Their
early breeding we leave to their mothers, nurses, and tutors, who
are to rear them in the elements of a liberal education. But as
soon as they attain to a knowledge of good and evil, when reverence
and shame and fear and ambition spring up in them, when their
bodies begin to set and strengthen and be equal to toil, then we
take them over, and appoint them both a course of mental
instruction and discipline, and one of bodily endurance. We are not
satisfied with mere spontaneous development either for body or
soul; we think that the addition of systematic teaching will
improve the gifted and reform the inferior. We conform our practice
to that of the farmer, who shelters and fences his plants while
they are yet small and tender, to protect them from the winds, but,
as soon as the shoot has gathered substance, prunes it and lets the
winds beat upon it and knock it about, and makes it thereby the
more fruitful.