1. It was a singular instance of the wisdom of this nation, in that
they took the greatest care they could, by an early sober education,
to instil into their youth the principles of virtue and good manners,
that so, by a constant succession of prudent and valiant men, they
might the better provide for the honor and security of their state, and
lay in the minds of every one a solid and good foundation of love and
friendship, of prudence and knowledge, of temperance and frugality,
of courage and resolution. And therefore their great lawgiver thought
it necessary for the ends of government to institute several distinct
societies and conventions of the people; amongst which was that of
their solemn and public living together at one table, where their
custom was to admit their youth into the conversation of their wise
and elderly men, that so by daily eating and drinking with them they
might insensibly, as it were, be trained up to a right knowledge
of themselves, to a just submission to their superiors, and to the
learning of whatever might conduce to the reputation of their laws
and the interest of their country. For here they were taught all the
wholesome rules of discipline, and daily instructed how to demean
themselves from the example and practice of their great ones; and
though they did not at this public meeting confine themselves to set
and grave discourses concerning the civil government, but allowed
themselves a larger freedom, by mingling sometimes with their politics
the easy and familiar entertainments of mirth and satire, yet this was
ever done with the greatest modesty and discretion, not so much to
expose the person of any one, as to reprove the fault he had committed.
Whatever was transacted at these stated and common feasts was to be
locked up in every one’s breast with the greatest silence and secrecy,
insomuch as the eldest among them at these assemblies, pointing to the
door, acquainted him who entered the room that nothing of what was done
or spoken there was to be talked of afterwards.
2. At all these public meetings they used a great deal of moderation,
they being designed only for schools of temperance and modesty, not
for luxury and indecency; their chief dish and only delicacy being a
sort of pottage (called by them their black broth, and made of some
little pieces of flesh, with a small quantity of blood, salt, and
vinegar), and this the more ancient among them generally preferred
to any sort of meat whatsoever, as the more pleasing entertainment
and of a more substantial nourishment. The younger sort contented
themselves with flesh and other ordinary provisions, without tasting of
this dish, which was reserved only for the old men. It is reported of
Dionysius, the Sicilian tyrant, that having heard of the great fame and
commendation of this broth, he hired a certain cook of Lacedaemon, who
was thoroughly skilled in the make and composition of it, to furnish
his table every day with so great and curious a dainty; and that he
might have it in the greatest perfection, enjoined him to spare no cost
in the making it agreeable and pleasant to his palate. But it seems
the end answered not the pains he took in it; for after all his care
and niceness, the king, as soon as he had tasted of it, found it both
fulsome and nauseous to his stomach, and spitting it out with great
distaste, as if he had taken down a vomit, sufficiently expressed his
disapprobation of it. But the cook, not discouraged at this dislike of
his master, told the tyrant that he humbly conceived the reason of this
disagreeableness to him was not in the pottage, but rather in himself,
who had not prepared his body for such food according to the Laconic
mode and custom. For hard labors and long exercises and moderate
abstinence (the best preparatives to a good and healthy appetite) and
frequent bathings in the river Eurotas were the only necessaries for a
right relish and understanding of the excellency of this entertainment.
3. ’Tis true, their constant diet was very mean and sparing; not what
might pamper their bodies or make their minds soft and delicate, but
such only as would barely serve to supply the common necessities of
nature. This they accustomed themselves to, that so they might become
sober and governable, active and bold in the defence of their country;
they accounting only such men serviceable to the state, who could best
endure the extremes of hunger and cold, and with cheerfulness and vigor
run through the fatigues of labor and the difficulties of hardship.
Those who could fast longest after a slender meal, and with the least
provision satisfy their appetites, were esteemed the most frugal and
temperate, and most sprightly and healthful, the most comely and well
proportioned; nature, through such a temperance and moderation of
diet, not suffering the constitution to run out into an unwieldy bulk
or greatness of body (the usual consequence of full tables and too
much ease), but rather rendering it thereby nervous and sinewy, of a
just and equal growth, and consolidating and knitting together all the
several parts and members of it. A very little drink did serve their
turn, who never drank but when an extreme thirst provoked them to
it; for at all their common entertainments they studied the greatest
measures of sobriety, and took care they should be deprived of all
kinds of compotations whatsoever. And at night when they returned home,
they went cheerfully to their sleep, without the assistance of any
light to direct them to their lodging; that being prohibited them as
an indecent thing, the better to accustom them to travel in the dark,
without any sense of fear or apprehensions of danger.
4. They never applied their minds to any kind of learning, further
than what was necessary for use and service; nature indeed having
made them more fit for the purposes of war than for the improvements
of knowledge. And therefore for speculative sciences and philosophic
studies, they looked upon them as foreign to their business and
unserviceable to their ends of living, and for this reason they would
not tolerate them amongst them, nor suffer the professors of them to
live within their government. They banished them their cities, as
they did all sorts of strangers, esteeming them as things that did
debase the true worth and excellency of virtue, which they made to
consist only in manly actions and generous exercises, and not in vain
disputations and empty notions. So that the whole of what their youth
was instructed in was to learn obedience to the laws and injunctions
of their governors, to endure with patience the greatest labors, and
where they could not conquer, to die valiantly in the field. For this
reason likewise it was, that all mechanic arts and trades, all vain
and insignificant employments, such as regarded only curiosity or
pleasure, were strictly prohibited them, as things that would make
them degenerate into idleness and covetousness, would render them vain
and effeminate, useless to themselves, and unserviceable to the state;
and on this account it was that they would never suffer any scenes or
interludes, whether of comedy or tragedy, to be set up among them, lest
there should be any encouragement given to speak or act any thing that
might savor of contempt or contumely against their laws and government,
it being customary for the stage to assume an indecent liberty of
taxing the one with faults and the other with imperfections.
5. As to their apparel, they were as thinly clad as they were dieted,
never exceeding one garment, which they wore for the space of a
whole year. And this they did, the better to inure them to hardship
and to bear up against all the injuries of the weather, that so the
extremities of heat and cold should have no influence at all upon their
constitution. They were as regardless of their selves as they were
negligent of their clothes, denying themselves (unless it were at some
stated time of the year) the use of ointments and bathings to keep them
clean and sweet, as too expensive and signs of a too soft and delicate
temper of body.
6. Their youth, as they were instructed and ate in public together, so
at night slept in distinct companies in one common chamber, and on no
other beds than what were made of reeds, which they had gathered out of
the river Eurotas, near the banks of which they grew. This was the only
accommodation they had in the summer, but in winter they mingled with
the reeds a certain soft and downy thistle, having much more of heat
and warmth in it than the other.
7. It was freely allowed them to place an ardent affection upon
those whose excellent endowments recommended them to the love
and consideration of any one; but then this was always done with
the greatest innocency and modesty, and every way becoming the
strictest rules and measures of virtue, it being accounted a base and
dishonorable passion in any one to love the body and not the mind, as
those did who in their young men preferred the beauty of the one before
the excellency of the other. Chaste thoughts and modest discourses were
the usual entertainments of their loves; and if any one was accused at
any time either of wanton actions or impure discourse, it was esteemed
by all so infamous a thing, that the stains it left upon his reputation
could never be wiped out during his whole life.
8. So strict and severe was the education of their youth, that whenever
they were met with in the streets by your grave and elderly persons,
they underwent a close examination; it being their custom to enquire
of them upon what business and whither they were going, and if they
did not give them a direct and true answer to the question demanded
of them, but shamed them with some idle story or false pretence,
they never escaped without a rigorous censure and sharp correction.
And this they did to prevent their youth from stealing abroad upon
any idle or bad design, that so, through the uneasy fears of meeting
these grave examiners, and the impossibility of escaping punishment
upon their false account and representations of things, they might
be kept within due compass, and do nothing that might entrench upon
truth or offend against the rules of virtue. Nor was it expected
only from their superiors to censure and admonish them upon any
miscarriage or indecency whatsoever, but it was strictly required of
them under a severe penalty; for he who did not reprove a fault that
was committed in his presence, and showed not his just resentments
of it by a verbal correction, was adjudged equally culpable with the
guilty, and obnoxious to the same punishment. For they could not
imagine that person had a serious regard for the honor of their laws
and the reputation of their government, who could carelessly pass by
any immorality and patiently see the least corruption of good manners
in their youth; by which means they took away all occasions of
fondness, partiality, and indulgence in the aged, and all presumption,
irreverence, and disobedience, and especially all impatiency of
reproof, in the younger sort. For not to endure the reprehension of
their superiors in such cases was highly disgraceful to them, and ever
interpreted as an open renunciation of their authority, and a downright
opposing of the justice of their proceedings.
9. Besides, when any was surprised in the commission of some notorious
offence, he was presently sentenced to walk round a certain altar in
the city, and publicly to shame himself by singing an ingenious satire,
composed by himself, upon the crime and folly he had been guilty of,
that so the punishment might be inflicted by the same hand which had
contracted the guilt.
10. Their children were brought up in a strict obedience to their
parents, and taught from their infancy to pay a profound reverence
to all their dictates and commands. And no less were they enjoined
to show an awful regard and observance to all their superiors in age
and authority, so as to rise up before the hoary head, and to honor
the face of the old man, to give him the way when they met him in the
streets, and to stand still and remain silent till he was passed by;
insomuch as it was indulged them, as a peculiar privilege due to their
age and wisdom, not only to have a paternal authority over their own
children, servants, and estates, but over their neighbors too, as if
they were a part of their own family and propriety; that so in general
there might be a mutual care, and an united interest, zealously carried
on betwixt them for the private good of every one in particular, as
well as for the public good of the communities they lived in. By this
means they never wanted faithful counsellors to assist with good advice
in all their concerns, nor hearty friends to prosecute each other’s
interest as it were their own; by this means they never wanted careful
tutors and guardians for their youth, who were always at hand to
admonish and instruct them in the solid principles of virtue.
11. No one durst show himself refractory to their instructions, nor at
the least murmur at their reprehensions; insomuch that, whenever any of
their youth had been punished by them for some ill that had been done,
and a complaint thereupon made by them to their parents of the severity
they had suffered, hoping for some little relief from their indulgence
and affection, it was accounted highly dishonorable in them not to add
to their punishment by a fresh correction for the folly and injustice
of their complaint. For by the common interest of discipline, and that
great care that every one was obliged to take in the education of their
youth, they had a firm trust and assurance in one another, that they
never would enjoin their children the performance of any thing that was
in the least unnecessary or unbecoming them.
12. Though it might seem very strange and unaccountable in this wise
nation, that any thing which had the least semblance of baseness or
dishonesty should be universally approved, commended, and encouraged
by their laws, yet so it was in the case of theft, whereby their young
children were allowed to steal certain things, as particularly the
fruit of their orchards or their messes at their feasts. But then this
was not done to encourage them to the desires of avarice and injustice,
but to sharpen their wits, and to make them crafty and subtle, and
to train them up in all sorts of wiles and cunning, watchfulness and
circumspection, whereby they were rendered more apt to serve them
in their wars, which was upon the matter the whole profession of
this commonwealth. And if at any time they were taken in the act of
stealing, they were most certainly punished with rods and the penance
of fasting; not because they esteemed the stealth criminal, but because
they wanted skill and cunning in the management and concealing of
it.[47]
14. They spent a great part of their studies in poetry and music,
which raised their minds above the ordinary level, and by a kind of
artificial enthusiasm inspired them with generous heats and resolutions
for action. Their compositions, consisting only of very grave and moral
subjects, were easy and natural, in a plain dress, and without any
paint or ornament, containing nothing else but the just commendations
of those great personages whose singular wisdom and virtue had made
their lives famous and exemplary, and whose courage in defence of their
country had made their deaths honorable and happy. Nor were the valiant
and virtuous only the subject of these songs; but the better to make
men sensible of what rewards and honors are due to the memory of such,
they made invectives in them upon those who were signally vicious and
cowards, as men who died with as much contempt as they had lived with
infamy. They generally concluded their poem with a solemn profession of
what they would be, boasting of their progress in virtue, agreeable to
the abilities of their nature and the expectations of their age.
15. At all their public festivals these songs were a great part of
their entertainment, where there were three companies of singers,
representing the three several ages of nature. The old men made up the
first chorus, whose business was to present what they had been after
this manner:—
That active courage youthful blood contains
Did once with equal vigor warm our veins.