LYCURGUS

Those authors who are most worthy of credit deduce the genealogy of

Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, as follows:

Aristodemus.

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Patrocles.

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Sous.

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Eurypon.

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Eunomus.

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Polydectes by his first wife. Lycurgus by Dionassa his second.

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.