not to have been detrimental to public morals while Sparta submitted to
the severe austerity of the laws. It seems surprising that, while a
woman might lawfully be the recognized wife of two husbands, no such
duplication of spouses was allowed to a man. This rule is illustrated by
its one historical exception In the case of King Anaxandrides, who, says
Herodotus, when the royal Heraclidaean line of Eurystheus was in danger
of becoming extinct, married his niece, who bore him no children. The
people besought him to divorce her, and to contract another marriage;
but, owing to his love for his wife, he positively refused. Upon this,
they made a suggestion to him as follows: "Since then we perceive thou
art firmly attached to the wife whom thou now hast, consent to do this,
and set not thyself against it, lest the Spartans take some counsel
against thee other than might be wished. We do not ask of thee the
putting away of the wife thou now hast; but do thou give to her all that
thou givest now, and at the same time take to thy house another wife in
addition to this one, to bear thee children." When they spoke to him
after this manner, Anaxandrides consented, and from this time forth he
kept two separate households, having two wives, a thing which, we are
told, was not by any means after the Spartan fashion.
Every inducement was offered to encourage matrimony, and bachelors were
the objects of general scorn and derision. "Those who continued
bachelors," says Plutarch, "were in a degree disfranchised by law; for
they were excluded from the sight of the public processions in which the
young men and maidens danced naked, and in the winter-time the officers
compelled them to walk naked round the market place, singing, as they
went, a certain song to their own disgrace, that they justly suffered
this punishment for disobeying the laws." Furthermore, at a certain
festival the women themselves sought to bring these misguided
individuals to a proper sense of their duty by dragging them round an
altar and continually inflicting blows upon them. Without doubt, the
maidens were all inclined to matrimony, as it enhanced their influence
and enabled them to fulfil their mission; and the rulers were ever ready
to provide husbands for them.
A kind of disgrace attached to childlessness. Men who were not fathers
were denied the respect and observance which the young men of Sparta
regularly paid their elders. On one occasion, Dercyllidas, a commander
of great renown, entered an assembly. A young Spartan, contrary to
custom, failed to rise at his approach. The veteran soldier was
surprised. "You have no sons," said the youth, "who will one day pay the
same honor to me." And public opinion justified the excuse.
The effects of the athletic training upon the physical nature of woman
were most commendable. The Spartan maiden was renowned throughout Greece
for preeminence in vigor of body and beauty of form. Even the Athenian
was impressed by this. Lysistrata, in the play of Aristophanes, in
greeting Lampito, the delegate from Sparta, who has come to a women's
conference, speaks thus:
"O dearest Laconian, O Lampito, welcome! How beautiful you look,
sweetest one! What a fresh color! How vigorous your body is! What
beautiful breasts you have! Why, you could throttle an ox!" To this
greeting comes the reply:
"Yes, I think I could, by Castor and Pollux! for I practise gymnastics
and leap high."
Ideals of beauty differ in different ages and countries, and there is no
doubt that Lampito was a magnificent specimen of woman; yet it may be
doubted whether such masculine vigor is consonant with the highest moral
and spiritual development, which, after all, is the chief factor in
womanly charm. Spartan women were in demand everywhere as nurses, and
were universally respected for their vigor and prowess; yet it was the
equally healthy, but more graceful, Ionian woman who was chosen as the
model of the statues of the goddess of love and beauty.
Spartan discipline produced beautiful animals, but any system which
dulled the sensibilities could hardly inculcate that grace and sweetness
and warmth of temperament which are essential to beauty.
As to the moral nature of the Spartan woman, there is no doubt that the
unselfish devotion to the State, and the subordination of individual
inclination to the good of the whole, would tend to promote a rigid
morality. Yet the free intercourse between the sexes shocked the
Athenians; and Euripides, in the _Andromache_, has put into the mouth of
Peleus a severe indictment of the Spartan woman:
"Though one should essay,
Virtuous could daughter of Sparta never be.
They gad abroad with young men from their homes,
And--with bare thighs and loose, disgirdled vesture-Race,
wrestle with them--things intolerable
To me! And is it wonder-worthy then
That ye train not your women to be chaste?"
The Spartan laws, it is true, permitted and encouraged certain practices
regarded as morally wrong in this day, yet that which was lawful could
not well be considered immoral. Xenophon and Plutarch were ardent
admirers of the Spartan system, and strongly affirm the uprightness and
nobility of the Spartans. Plutarch tells an incident to illustrate
Spartan virtue in the old days. Geradas, a very ancient Spartan, being
asked by a stranger what punishment their law had appointed for
adulterers, answered: "There are no adulterers in our country." "But,"
replied the stranger, "suppose there were." "Then," answered he, "the
offender would have to give the plaintiff a bull with a neck so long
that he might drink from the top of Taygetus of the Eurotas River below
it." The man, surprised at this, said: "Why, 'tis impossible to find
such a bull." Geradas smilingly replied: "It is as impossible to find an
adulterer in Sparta."
Though we have to recognize much in the Spartan polity which is
repugnant to our ideas of the sacredness of family ties, yet we must
feel the utmost respect for the Spartan matron in the best days of
Lacedaemon. This rigid system provided for four or five centuries "a
succession of the strongest men that possibly ever existed on the face
of the earth," and the strength of character of the mothers made the
sons what they were. Only the Roman matron can be fitly compared to the
Spartan mother.
It is not surprising that such mothers possessed an influence envied
throughout Greece. "You Spartan women are the only ones who rule over
men," said a stranger to Gorgo, wife of Leonidas. "True," she rejoined;
"for we are the only ones who are the mothers of men."
For several centuries, owing to her peculiar discipline, Sparta was,
excepting Athens, the foremost State of Greece. But time is an enemy
often not taken sufficiently into consideration by men who establish
peculiar systems. And Lycurgus, who wished to make his system perpetual,
did not fully consider the disintegrating effects which time exerts on
all things temporal. "_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_
[You may repress natural propensities by force, but they will be
certain to reappear]," says Horace, the wisest of Roman satirists; and
the Spartan polity had attempted to repress nature in men and women and
to control it by law. The great fault in the Lacedaemonian constitution
was in effect the violation of the eternal laws which assign to each
creature his role in the harmony of the world. Men are made for war, but
they are made for peace as well. Therefore, as Lycurgus made the city an
armed camp, in periods of peace the Spartan man "rusted like an unused
sword in its scabbard," and in idleness at home or in garrison duty
abroad fell an easy victim to avarice and lust.
In his legislation concerning women, Lycurgus violated natural
propensities to an even greater extent than he had in his laws governing
the conduct of men. Woman was destined primarily for domestic life. She
was created to bear children; but her kingdom is the home, with its
manifold duties, and rearing children is as much her function as bearing
them. Yet the Spartan lad was taken forcibly from his mother at the
tender age of seven, and the Spartan maiden, while living at home, was
subject to stringent regulations formulated and enforced by the State.
Woman is intuitively interested in domestic duties, in housekeeping and
clothes mending, and in caring for the innumerable wants of husband and
children. Yet the _Syssitia_, or public meals, deprived her of the
society of husband and sons, and took from her domestic cares because
they were deemed too menial for a free Spartan. "Female slaves," averred
Lycurgus, "are good enough to sit at home spinning and weaving; but who
can expect a splendid offspring--the appropriate mission and duty of a
free Spartan woman toward her country--from mothers brought up in such
occupations?"
Although the Spartan system prescribed rigid discipline for the Spartan
woman up to the time of motherhood, after that time it left her life
altogether unregulated by law. Plato, who was in many respects a great
admirer of the Spartans, criticises this singular defect. He found fault
with a system which regarded woman only as a mother, and consequently,
when children had been born and turned over to the State, did not by law
provide occupation for the mothers or in any way regulate their conduct.
There was nothing to restrain their luxury or keep them loyal to duty
and probity. Higher culture was discouraged, intercourse with strangers
was forbidden, and woman was left largely to her own devices for
employment and recreation; but she was deprived in large measure of the
usual feminine occupations. During the old days, when the State was the
all in all of the citizens, and the mothers were urging on husbands and
sons to valiant deeds, the evils of the Lycurgan system did not show
themselves; but when the crisis came, and Sparta lost her supremacy in
Greek affairs, then old manners gave way, vice and weakness rushed in,
and men and women alike were debauched and evil.
Aristotle, who was at his zenith during the latter part of the fourth
century before Christ, is severe in his denunciations of the license of
the Spartan women. This he regards as defeating the intention of the
Spartan constitution and subversive of the good order of the State. He
argues that, while Lycurgus sought to make the whole State hardy and
temperate, and succeeded in the case of the men, he had not done so with
the women, who lived in every sort of intemperance and luxury. He
charges that the Spartan men are under the domination of their
wives--Ares being ever susceptible to the wishes and inclinations of
Aphrodite. And the result is the same, he adds, "whether women rule or
the rulers are ruled by women." He also attacks the courage of the
women, stating that in a Theban invasion they had been utterly useless
and caused more confusion than the enemy. He finds them prone to
avarice, and regrets that, owing to the inequality of the laws governing
property, more than two-fifths of the whole country was already in the
hands of women.
Nature in the end asserted herself, and the evils inherent in the
Lycurgan system brought about the fall of the State. Sparta had
sacrificed the liberties of her citizens, she had despised the laws of
nature in the destiny and education of women, she had banished the arts,
and had sought to keep out every humanizing influence. Consequently,
when that constitution, inflexible and in certain respects immoral and
unnatural, was impaired, her decline was rapid. Sad it is that Aristotle
should have perceived in the immorality, the greed, the misconduct, of
the women, one of the causes of the fall of Sparta!
Sparta had become degenerate, but she was not to die without a final
struggle. In the middle of the third century before Christ, two kings of
Sparta, inspired by the stories of her early days, endeavored to
overcome the luxury and vice that were rampant and to restore the State
to its primitive simplicity and greatness. In their meritorious efforts
to accomplish the impossible, they enlisted the efforts of noble women,
who by their self-sacrificing devotion cast a momentary radiance over
the dying State.
The earliest of these two kings was the young and gentle Agis. In the
corrupt state of society he saw need of reforms, and wished to begin at
the root of the evil by annulling debts and redistributing the land. One
of the first counsellors whom he consulted in his projected reforms was
his mother, Agesistrata, a woman of great wealth and power, who had
many of the Spartans in her debt and would be seriously affected by the
change. Yet, becoming conscious of the need of reforms, she, with the
grandmother of the young king, entered heartily into his plans to
restore the greatness of Sparta. Agesistrata urged other aristocratic
women to join in the movement, "knowing well that the Lacedaemonian wives
always had great power with their husbands." These, however, violently
opposed the scheme, because at this time most of the money of Sparta was
in the women's hands and was the main support of their credit and power.
Leonidas, the other king, was the head of the opposition, and a deadly
struggle followed between Agis and Leonidas--the one standing for the
people, the other for the aristocrats. Agis was at first successful, and
Leonidas was deposed, Cleombrotus, his son-in-law, being elevated to the
kingship in his stead. Another woman now comes to the front. Chilonis,
Cleombrotus's wife and Leonidas's daughter, seeing her aged father in
exile and distress, leaves her husband in the height of his power and
devotes herself to her aged father.
However, the wheel of fortune again turns, and Leonidas is restored to
power. Agis and Cleombrotus flee for their lives, and become
suppliants--the one at the temple of the Brazen House, the other at the
temple of Poseidon. Leonidas, being more incensed against his
son-in-law, leaves Agis for the time and goes with his soldiers to
Cleombrotus's sanctuary to reproach him for having conspired with his
enemies, usurped his throne, and driven him from his country. Chilonis,
perceiving the great danger threatening her husband, leaves her father
and seeks to aid and comfort the fugitive. Plutarch thus tells her
story:
"Cleombrotus, having little to say for himself, sat silent. His wife,
Chilonis, the daughter of Leonidas, had chosen to follow her father in
his sufferings; for when Cleombrotus usurped the kingdom, she forsook
him and wholly devoted herself to comforting her father in his
affliction; whilst he still remained in Sparta, she remained also, as a
suppliant, with him; and when he fled, she fled with him, bewailing his
misfortune, and extremely displeased with Cleombrotus. But now, upon
this turn of fortune, she changed in like manner, and was seen sitting
now, as a suppliant, with her husband, embracing him with her arms, and
having her two little children beside her. All men were full of wonder
at the piety and tender affection of the young woman, who, pointing to
her robes and her hair, both alike neglected and unattended to, said to
Leonidas: 'I am not brought, my father, to this condition you see me in,
on account of the present misfortune of Cleombrotus; my mourning habit
is long since familiar to me; it was put on to condole with you in your
banishment; and now you are restored to your country, and to your
kingdom, must I still remain in grief and misery? Or would you have me
attired in my royal ornaments, that I may rejoice with you when you have
killed, within my arms, the man to whom you gave me for a wife? Either
Cleombrotus must appease you by mine and my children's tears, or he must
suffer a punishment greater than you propose for his faults, and shall
see me, whom he loves so well, die before him. To what end should I
live, or how shall I appear among the Spartan women, when it shall so
manifestly be seen that I have not been able to move to compassion
either a husband or a father? I was born, it seems, to participate in
the ill fortune and in the disgrace, both as a wife and a daughter, of
those nearest and dearest to me. As for Cleombrotus, I sufficiently
surrendered any honorable plea on his behalf when I forsook him to
follow you; but you yourself offer the fairest excuse for his
proceedings, by showing to the world that for the sake of a kingdom it
is just to kill a son-in-law and be regardless of a daughter.' Chilonis,
having ended this lamentation, rested her face on her husband's head,
and looked round with her weeping and woe-begone eyes upon those who
stood before her.
"Leonidas, touched with compassion, withdrew a while to advise with his
friends; then, returning, bade Cleombrotus leave the sanctuary and go
into banishment; 'Chilonis,' he said, 'ought to stay with him, it not
being just that she should forsake a father whose affection had granted
to her the life of a husband.' But all he could say would not prevail.
She rose up immediately, and taking one of her children in her arms,
gave the other to her husband, and making her reverence to the altar of
the deity, went out and followed him. So that, in a word, if Cleombrotus
were not utterly blinded by ambition, he would surely choose to be
banished with so excellent a woman rather than without her to possess a
kingdom."
Having disposed of Cleombrotus, Leonidas next proceeded to consider how
he might entrap Agis. Agis, however, held his sanctuary until he was
finally betrayed by the treachery of three pretended friends, Amphares,
Damochares, and Arcesilaus. He was led off to prison and executed.
Plutarch says: "Immediately after he was dead, Amphares went out of the
prison gate, where he found Agesistrata, who, believing him still the
same friend as before, threw herself at his feet. He gently raised her
up, and assured her she need not fear any further violence or danger of
death for her son, and that, if she pleased, she might go in and see
him. She begged her mother might also have the favor to be admitted, and
he replied that nobody should hinder it. When they were entered, he
commanded the gate should again be locked, and Archidamia, the
grandmother, to be first introduced; she was now grown to be very old,
and had lived all her days in the highest repute among her fellows. As
soon as Amphares thought she was despatched, he told Agesistrata she
might now go in if she pleased. She entered; and beholding her son's
body stretched on the ground, and her mother's hanging by the neck, the
first thing she did was, with her own hand, to assist the officers in
taking down the body; then, covering it decently, she laid it out by her
son's, whom then embracing, and kissing his cheeks, 'O my son,' said
she, 'it was thy too great mercy and goodness which brought thee and us
to ruin.' Amphares, who stood watching behind the door, on hearing this,
broke in, and said angrily to her, 'Since you approve so well of your
son's actions, it is fit you should partake in his reward.' She, rising
up to offer herself to the noose, said only, 'I pray that it may redound
to the good of Sparta.'"
Thus was defeated the first effort for the reformation of Sparta. In the
city's long history, Agis was the first king who had been put to death
by the order of the ephors. When the bodies of the gentle king and his
noble mother and grandmother were exposed, the horror of the people knew
no bounds, and the aged Leonidas and Amphares became the objects of
public detestation.
The second attempt at the reformation of Sparta is also remarkable for
the unselfishness and nobility of the women who took part.
After the execution of King Agis, his wife, Agiatis, was compelled by
Leonidas to become the wife of his son Cleomenes, though the latter was
as yet too young to marry. As Agiatis was the heiress of the great
estate of her father, Gylippus, the old king was unwilling that she
should be the wife of anyone but his son. Agiatis was, says Plutarch,
"in person the most youthful and beautiful woman in all Greece, and
well-conducted in her habits of life." She resisted the union as long as
she could; but when forced to marry, she became to the youth a kind and
obliging wife. Cleomenes loved her very dearly, and often asked her
about the reforms of Agis; and she did not fail to inspire him with the
lofty ideals of her former gentle and high-minded husband. Cleomenes
himself, in consequence, fell in love with the old ways, and, after
Leonidas's death, attempted to carry out the reforms in which Agis had
failed. His mother, Cratesiclea, was also very zealous to promote his
ambitions; and in order that she might effectually assist him in his
plans, she accepted as her husband one of the foremost in wealth and
power among the citizens. With her help, the king succeeded in breaking
the power of the ephors, and a return to the system of Lycurgus was
partially accomplished. But Cleomenes had aroused a formidable enemy in
the person of Aratus, head of the Achaean League. He carried into Achaea
the war against Aratus, and made himself master of almost all
Peloponnesus, but, through the persistence of his enemies, almost as
quickly lost that territory. In the midst of his misfortunes, he
received news of the death of his wife, to whom he was devotedly
attached. "This news afflicted him extremely," says Plutarch, "and he
grieved as a young man would do, for the loss of a very beautiful and
excellent wife." When all seemed lost, he received promise of assistance
from King Ptolemy of Egypt, but only on condition that he send the
latter his mother and children as hostages. Plutarch thus continues the
story:
"Now Ptolemy, the King of Egypt, promised him assistance, but demanded
his mother and children for hostages. This, for a considerable time, he
was ashamed to discover to his mother; and though he often went to her
on purpose, and was just upon the discourse, yet he still refrained, and
kept it to himself; so that she began to suspect, and asked his friend
whether Cleomenes had something to say to her which he was afraid to
speak. At last, Cleomenes venturing to tell her, she laughed aloud, and
said: 'Was this the thing that you had so often a mind to tell me, but
were afraid? Make haste and put me on shipboard, and send this carcass
where it may be most serviceable to Sparta, before age destroys it
unprofitably here,' Therefore, all things being provided for the voyage,
they went by land to Taenarum, and the army waited on them. Cratesiclea,
when she was ready to go on board, took Cleomenes aside into Poseidon's
temple, and, embracing him, who was much dejected and extremely
discomposed, she said: 'Go to, King of Sparta; when we come forth at the
door, let none see us weep or show any passion that is unworthy of
Sparta, for that alone is in our power; as for success or
disappointment, those wait on us as the deity decrees,' Having this
said, and composed her countenance, she went to the ship with her little
grandson, and bade the pilot put out at once to sea. When she came to
Egypt, and understood that Ptolemy entertained proposals and overtures
of peace from Antigonus, and that Cleomenes, though the Achaeans invited
and urged him to an agreement, was afraid for her sake to come to any
without Ptolemy's consent, she wrote to him, advising him to do that
which was most becoming and most profitable for Sparta, and not, for the
sake of an old woman and a little child, stand always in fear of
Ptolemy. This character she maintained in her misfortunes."
Cleomenes, however, soon realized how little reliance is to be put in
the favors of princes. Antigonus of Syria took the part of Aratus
against him, and Ptolemy, who had been ever ready to help the valiant
Spartan, did not care to invite the hostility of a greater foe.
Cleomenes was defeated by Antigonus, and became an exile at the court of
Ptolemy, but it proved to be a prison instead of a home. Upon the death
of the elder Ptolemy, his son kept Cleomenes and his friends under
restraint, and, to please Antigonus, purposed putting them to death.
Cleomenes and his companions, knowing that a tragic end awaited them,
determined to break through their prison bars and to rouse the populace
to a revolt against Ptolemy. They easily made their escape, but the
people could not be persuaded to undertake any struggle for liberty; and
so the devoted band resolved to die. Then each one killed himself,
except Panteus, the youngest and handsomest of them all, who was
selected by Cleomenes to wait till the rest were dead, so that he might
perform for them the last offices. He carefully arranged all the bodies
of his comrades, and then, kissing his beloved king and throwing his
arms about him, slew himself. The news of this sad event, having spread
through the city, finally reached the aged mother, Cratesiclea, who,
though a woman of great spirit, could hardly bear up against the weight
of this affliction, especially as she knew that an equally tragic fate
awaited her grandchildren.