Hence, when the progress of trade and commerce had occasioned the coining of the precious metals in Greece, no need of them was yet felt at Sparta for the common business of life; they were regarded as a dangerous novelty, and the possession of them was forbidden. Iron, the native produce of Laconia, prepared so as to be of no use for other purposes, at first in little bars, afterward in a more convenient form, continued to the latest times the only legal currency at Sparta, unless we may believe what some authors relate, that leather was applied to the same use. This restriction has been often ascribed to Lycurgus, but must have been introduced later, if, as seems most probable, the coinage of silver money was unknown to the Greeks for more than a century after him. With regard to gold, indeed, the prohibition would in his time have been superfluous, since it is certain, from two well-attested facts,* that, down to the Persian wars, this metal was so rare as to be quite out of the reach of a private Spartan. It seems, however, that the acquisition of gold or silver money was interdicted only to private Spartans; for the provincials, who were not debarred from commerce, it must have been indispensable; nor can it have been the design of the legislator to impose any such restriction on the state itself: whether the kings were originally exempt from it, or only owed the privilege, which they undoubtedly exercised, of amassing wealth, to subsequent changes in the commonwealth, is a more doubtful question. This prohibition must certainly have contributed to preserve the simplicity of the ancient manners; but it seems to have been attended with another consequence, which was often very injurious to the public interests. The tendency of human nature to hanker after all that is forbidden renders it probable that this was the secret spring of that venality, of which we find so many remarkable instances in Spartan history. Avarice appears to have been the vice to which the Spartan was most prone; money, for which he had scarcely any use, a bait, which even the purest patriotism could seldom resist. to the discharge of household duties as to the citizens which they were to give to the commonwealth. They were to be the mothers of a robust race, and hence were early subjected to the same athletic exercises as the harder sex; and it even seems to have been the legislator's intention that they should be looked upon only in this light, and should excite no affection directed to any other object. It was, perhaps, not without design, though probably with one very different from that which Plutarch supposes, that their persons were frequently exposed in public processions and dances in a manner which, to modern feelings, would betoken the last stage of public licentiousness.* Yet it is certain that, in this respect, the Spartan morals were at least as pure as those of any ancient, perhaps of any modern people. These spectacles, probably a relic of a primitive usage, and connected with the rites of religion, were far from lowering the Spartan virgin in the esteem of the other sex; and the praise or blame which, on such occasions, she was permitted to dispense to the by-standers, was found one of the most efficacious means of quickening the emulation of the youths. A Spartan marriage retained the form which had, no doubt, been given to the ceremony in the Dorian Highlands, and which to this day prevails among the Circassian tribes. The bride was considered as a prize of courage and address, and was always supposed to be carried off from the parental roof by force or stratagem. The Spartan matrons appeared in public much more rarely than before marriage; and, though the pleasures of domestic society were little valued at Sparta, where it was even disreputable for the young husband to be seen in company with his wife, they were treated with a respect, and exercised an influence which seemed to the other Greeks extravagant and pernicious; but it became such only, if at all, after the whole nation had degenerated. In the better times, they alone among the Greek women show a dignity of character which makes them worthy rivals of the Roman matrons. Adultery was long unknown at Sparta; yet so little sanctity was attached to the nup ple, and in a manner which shocks our notions of decency, to maxims of state policy or private expedience.† From his birth every Spartan belonged to the state, which decided, as we have seen, whether he was likely to prove a useful member of the community, and extinguished the life of the sickly or deformed infant.‡ To the age of seven, however, the care of the child was delegated to its natural guardians, yet not so as to be left wholly to their discretion, but subject to certain established rules of treatment, which guarded against every mischievous indulgence of parental tenderness. At the end of seven The same spirit which exercised this abso-tial compact, that it was sacrificed without scruJute control over private property appears in all the regulations by which the citizen was to be trained to the service of the state, and even in those which laid the foundation of the family itself. The character of the Spartan system is nowhere more conspicuous than in its mode of determining the relations of the sexes. The treatment of the women may serve to illustrate the manner in which old Hellenic usages were here modified by the peculiar design of the legislator. The freedom they enjoyed, and the deference paid to them, which were censured as excessive in later ages, when they formed a contrast to the custom then prevalent in Greece, were vestiges of remote antiquity, and conform-years began a long course of public discipline, able to the habits described in the Homeric poems. But it was more especially the liberty allowed to the young unmarried women that distinguished the Spartan institutions. Their education was conducted with a view not so much • The Spartans send to Lydia for a small quantity; HieTo to Architeles the Corinthian, the only man in Greece who had amassed a considerable stock. Theopompus in Athen., v., p. 232. which grew constantly more and more severe * Yet it seems necessary to distinguish between the private exercises, in which they laid aside all covering, and the public exhibitions, in which they wore the species of half-open tunic (the excords xerov), which procured for them the epithet of φαινομερίδες. + Plat, Lyc., 15. See also some remarks of Mr. Lewis in the Philological Museum, vol. ii., p. 70, note 43. It was exposed in a glen of Taygetus, hence called the 'ATоirat. The twelve tables contained a similar enactment. Cic., De Leg., iii., 8. ger, to forage in the fields or houses which they might contrive to enter by stealth. The ingenious and successful pilferer gained applause with his booty: one who was detected was made to smart, not for the attempt, but for the failure. It seems a gross, though not an uncommon mistake, to treat this practice as a violation of property and an encouragement to theft; it was a preparation, not more remarkable than many others, for the hardships and was apparently a similar institution, but made subservient to a political end. as the boy approached towards manhood. The education of the young was in some degree the business of all the elder citizens; for there was none who did not contribute to it, if not by his active interference, at least by his presence and inspection. But it was placed under the especial superintendence of an officer* selected from the men of most approved worth; and he, again, chose a number of youths, just past the age of twenty, and who most eminently united courage with discretion, to exercise a more imme-shifts of a military life. The hateful crypta diate command over the classes into which the boys were divided. The leader of each class directed the sports and tasks of his young troop, The Muses were appropriately honoured at and punished their offences with military rig- Sparta with a sacrifice on the eve of a batour, but was himself responsible to his elders tle, and the union of the spear and the lyre was for the mode in which he discharged his office. a favourite theme with the Laconian poets, and The Spartan education was simple in its ob- those who sang of Spartan customs. Though jects it was not the result of any general view bred in the discipline of the camp, the young of human nature, or of any attempt to unfold its Spartan, like the hero of the Iliad, was not a various capacities; it aimed at training men stranger to music and poetry. He was taught who were to live in the midst of difficulty and to sing, and to play on the flute and the lyre: danger, and who could only be safe themselves but the strains with which his memory was while they held rule over others. The citizen stored, and to which his voice was formed, was to be always ready for the defence of him- were either sacred hymns, or breathed a marself and his country, at home and abroad; and tial spirit; and it was because they cherished he was, therefore, to be equally fitted to com- such sentiments that the Homeric lays, if not mand and to obey. His body, his mind, and introduced by Lycurgus, were early welcomed his character were formed for this purpose, and at Sparta; for the same reason Tyrtæus was for no other; and hence the Spartan system, held in honour, while Archilochus, the delight making directly for its main end, and rejecting of Greece, was banished, because he had not all that was foreign to it, attained, within its been ashamed to record his own inglorious flight own sphere, to a perfection which it is impos- from a field of battle.* As these musical exersible not to admire. The young Spartan was cises were designed to cultivate, not so much perhaps unable either to read or write; he an intellectual as a moral taste, so it was probscarcely possessed the elements of any of the ably less for the sake of sharpening their ingearts or sciences by which society is enriched or nuity than of promoting presence of mind and adorned; but he could run, leap, wrestle, hurl promptness of decision, that the boys were the disc or the javelin, and wield every other led into the habit of answering all questions weapon, with a vigour, agility, and grace which proposed to them with a ready, pointed, sentenwere nowhere surpassed. These, however, tious brevity, which was a proverbial characterwere accomplishments to be learned in every istic of Spartan conversation. But the lessons Greek palæstra: he might find many rivals in which were most studiously inculcated-more, all that he could do; but few could approach indeed, by example than by precept-were those him in the firmness with which he was taught of modesty, obedience, and reverence for age to suffer. From the tender age at which he and rank; for these were the qualities on which, left his mother's lap for the public schools, his above all others, the stability of the commonlife was one continued trial of patience. Coarse wealth reposed. The gait and look of the Sparand scanty fare, and this occasionally withheld; tan youths, as they passed along the streets, a light dress, without any change in the depth observed Xenophon, breathed modesty and reof winter; a bed of reeds, which he himself serve. In the presence of their elders they gathered from the Eurotas; blows exchanged were bashful as virgins and silent as statues, with his comrades; stripes inflicted by his gov-save when a question was put to them. It ernors, more by way of exercise than of pun- was, as Plutarch supposes, to signify the imishment, inured him to every form of pain and portance of these virtues that the Temple of hardship. One test of this passive fortitude Fear was erected near the mansion-house of was very celebrated among the ancients. In the ephors. In truth, the respect for the laws, early times, probably before the Dorian con- which rendered the Spartan averse to innovaquest, human victims appear to have been of- tion at home, was little more than another form fered in Laconia to an image of Artemis, which of that awe with which his early habits inspired Orestes was believed to have brought with him him for the magistrates and the aged. With from Scythia. Lycurgus, it is said, abolished this feeling was intimately connected that quick this bloody rite, but substituted for it a contest and deep sense of shame, which shrank from little less ferocious, in which the most generous dishonour as the most dreadful of evils, and enyouths, standing on the altar, presented them-abled him to meet death so calmly, when he selves to the lash, and were sometimes seen to expire under it without a groan. Another usage, not less famous, served to train the Spartan boys at once to suffering and to action. They were at times compelled, either by the express com- *Plut., Inst. Lac, 33. Valerius Maximus (vi., 3, E. 1) mand of their leader or by the cravings of hun-assigns a different and much less probable motive, but refers the expulsion, which, according to Plutarch, befell thepoet himself, to his works. ↑ Cleum., 9. * The παιδονόμος. † ἀγέλκι, as in Crete. saw in it the will of his country. The interval between the age of twenty and thirty was looked upon as a stage of transition LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS. from boyhood to manhood. During this period | peditions against the same enemy: a precauthe young Spartan was released, indeed, from tion, it is supposed, against the danger of trainthe discipline of the classes, but he was not yet ing a weak adversary, by repeated attacks, into permitted to appear among the men in the as- a bold and skilful one. Plutarch thinks that sembly, and was, perhaps, chiefly employed in Sparta's first great reverse was owed to the vioall military service which might be required lation of this rule. But it is difficult to name any within the frontier. But his education could period of history during which it appears to scarcely be said to have ceased even after he have been observed. It must, however, be adhad reached his full maturity, and had entered mitted, that caution was a prominent quality in on the duties of a husband and a father. The the Spartan character, and, combined with the life of the Spartan, in time of peace, was one of consciousness of superiority, it may sometimes leisure, for this was essential to the dignity of have supplied the place of humanity in softena freeman; but it was not one of ease and in- ing the ferocity of warfare. A wholesome sudolence, for this would have unfitted him for perstition, which respected certain religious the duties of a citizen and a warrior. His time, festivals as sacred armistices, contributed to little occupied by domestic cares when not en- the same end. But the martial spirit of the gaged by any public service, was principally di- Spartan institutions is evinced, not only by the vided between the exercises of the palæstra whole system of education, but still more strongand the toils of the chase. From these he rest-ly by the care taken to render war as attractive ed at the public meals. Of this institution, as possible. As the city, in many respects, rewhich Sparta, in common with Crete, retained sembled a camp, so the life of the camp was to the latest times, we need here only speak to studiously freed from many of the hardships point out one or two features which were pe- and restraints imposed on that of the city. War culiar to the Spartan usage. At Sparta the en- was the element in which the Spartan seems to tertainment was provided at the expense, not have breathed most freely, and to have enjoyed of the state, but of those who shared it. The the fullest consciousness of his existence. He head of each family, as far as his means reach-dressed his hair and crowned himself for a bated, contributed for all its members; but the cit-tle as others for a feast; and the mood in which izen who was reduced to indigence lost his he advanced to the mortal struggle was no less place at the public board. The guests were di- calm and cheerful than that in which he entervided into companies, generally of fifteen per-ed the lists for a prize at the public games. sons, who filled up vacancies by ballot, in which unanimous consent was required for every election. No member, not even the kings, was permitted to stay away, except on some extraor dinary occasion, as of a sacrifice or a lengthened chase, when he was expected to send a pres-ture to imitate. Its principles were probably ent to the table: such contributions frequently derived from an antiquity even more remote varied the frugal repast, which was constantly than the conquest of Peloponnesus, and perhaps enlivened by sallies of tempered mirth and contributed mainly to that event; but it was friendly pleasantry. The sixtieth year closed undoubtedly perfected by the experience of sucthe military age. The period which ensued was ceeding generations. We subjoin some details one of peaceful repose, yet not of monotonous on the organization of the Spartan army in a inaction: it was cheered by the natural reward note, and shall here content ourselves with a of an honourable career, by respect, and prece- few general remarks. The strength of the dence, and authority: it found a regular and Spartan army lay in its heavy-armed infantry, gentle employment, if not in the affairs of the and no other kind of service was thought equalstate, in the superintendence and direction of ly worthy of the free warrior, because none callthe young. When disabled from more active ed forth courage and discipline in the same derecreations, the old man could still enjoy the gree. Hence little value was set on the cavalsociety of his equals in the lesche, a place ded-ry; and, though in the Peloponnesian war it icated at Sparta, as in most Greek cities, to was found necessary to pay greater attention meetings for public conversation, where he to it, it never acquired any great efficacy or repmight beguile the evening of his life with recol-utation. The name of horsemen was, indeed, lections of his well-spent youth. The ancient authors who most admired the Spartan institutions, condemned their exclusively warlike tendency; and it can scarcely be denied that the life of a Spartan was a continual preparation for war, though undoubtedly it was something more. It is, perhaps, only in this sense that the military system of Sparta can be properly ascribed to Lycurgus, though he is said to have introduced several technical improvements. It has been more generally believed that he was the author of a maxim of policy which is said to have been sanctioned by one of his oracular ordinances, and which tended to restrain the martial ardour of his countrymen within the bounds of prudent moderation. It forbade them to make frequent ex Hence the name pidiria, according to Plut., Lyc., 12. VOL. I.-S have been derived from the ages when the chiefs fought in to his age; and those who did not shun him might strike him with impunity. "I am not surprised," says Xenophon, "that men prefer death to such a life." Our ignorance as to the internal condition of the other Dorian states in the period to which the legislation of Lycurgus is referred, renders it impossible to ascertain how near their insti a woman or a child. Hence, too, the sea was an element never congenial to the spirit of Spartan warfare, and the Helots were mostly employed in the sea-service, as on land they served as light troops, or attended the camp in Lycurgus, it is said, committed none of his a menial capacity. The superiority of the Spar-laws to writing, and even enjoined, by one of tan infantry depended on a nicely graduated sys- his ordinances, that they should never be intem of subordination, by means of which the or- scribed in any other kind of tablet than the ders of the general were rapidly transmitted, hearts and minds of his countrymen. It is unand executed with ease and precision. The certain whether in his days letters were yet leader of the enomoty, the lowest subdivision, known or used at Sparta; afterward we find or first element of the whole body, was at once titles there which seem to imply written laws.* the organ which communicated the word of But, undoubtedly, it was early perceived that command to his company, and the pivot of the the security of the Spartan institutions dependvarious movements by which its position was ed, not on stones or parchments, but on the naadapted to the exigencies of the march or the tional feeling in which they lived; and it was, field. The promptness with which its evolutions perhaps, chiefly with the view of preserving this were performed, and the harmonious combina-in its full strength and purity, that citizens were tion of the movements of the several subdivis- forbidden to go abroad without leave of the maions, were greatly promoted by the choral dan-gistrates, and that the presence of foreigners ces, more especially the war dance, called the was discouraged. Whether they were excluPyrrhic, in which the Spartan youth were ha- ded by a standing ordinance, from which the bitually exercised. We have already remarked, magistrate alone could grant an exemption, or that the caution of the Spartan character may were only subject to be sent away at the mahave dictated the general maxim, which, how-gistrate's pleasure, is a point not quite clear, ever, was very far from being constantly ob- but of little practical moment. served, of avoiding repeated conflicts with the same enemy. The same prudence appears in the care taken to keep the force of every expedition secret, and in all the regulations of the camp. And to the like motive we may proba-tutions may once have approached to those of bly ascribe the rule, which we learn from Thu- Sparta. It has been inferred, from a hint casucydides was really enforced, of pursuing a flying ally preserved by an ancient writer, that the enemy no farther than was necessary for secu- usage of the syssitia continued to subsist in still ring the victory. We should be glad to believe later times at Corinth. This inference, which that humanity had any share in this practice; would lead to other conclusions affecting the but it seems no more to deserve this praise than personality of Lycurgus, is perhaps not suffianother injunction peculiar to Spartan warfare, ciently warranted; but it seems highly probawhich forbade the stripping of the slain before ble, that if we could distinguish all the parts of the end of the battle. If the Spartans abstain- the Spartan system which it had in common ed from suspending the spoils of the dead in with other ancient states, those which were their temples, this may have arisen from a reli- properly exclusively its own would be found gious scruple. The reason that the spoils of comparatively few. The character of the Docowards were not a fit offering for the gods, rian race, which was stamped on its arts, its was worthy of the frantic insolence of the first language, and its religion, was undoubtedly disCleomenes.* In the days of their glory, the tinguished, by many peculiar features, from that Spartans were too little used to defeat to be of the other Hellenic tribes; and much that is much elated with the success of their arms. most singular in their manners and institutions The tidings of an important victory were cele- must be ascribed to this, as the last inscrutable brated with the sacrifice of a cock, and procured cause which bounds all inquiry. But the groundno greater reward for the bearer than a dish of work of the Dorian commonwealth belongs to meat from the table of the ephors. During the old Hellenic frame of society; and the ruthis period, the watchword of the Spartan war-ling ideas and feelings by which the form of rior was "victory or death;" or, as the Spar-government and the habits of life were detertan matron is said to have expressed it, he was to bring his shield home, or to be borne upon it. To survive its loss was to incur disgrace such as no generous spirit could endure. The recreant who had separated his lot from that of his fellow-combatants was degraded from all the privileges of society, and became a butt for public scorn and insult. He was excluded from every honourable place and company, and was compelled to appear with his beard half shaved, in a dress of shreds and patches. His daughters, if he had any, found no husbands; if unmarried, he could not hope for a wife, and yet was condemned to the legal penalties of voluntary celibacy. The young owed no respectiv., c. 63), who, in the voyage to Sicily with Archias, the + Mueller collects this from the story of Ethiops (Athen., mined, were transmitted from the heroic ages. The conquerors of Peloponnesus, with the martial spirit, retained the political maxims of their ancestors, which were those of the whole Hellenic nation. They considered the possession of arms as the highest privilege of a freeman, the exercise of them as the only employment that became him. According to the rules of the heroic equity, he who excelled in this noblest of arts was born to command; the race that showed itself inferior in warlike virtues was destined to obey and to serve; the most * Νομοφύλακες. founder of Syracuse, sold his portion of land for a honey. cake to his messmate (riavrov ovooir). But the custom at Corinth cannot be proved by the fact that two persons messed together during the voyage. THE MESSENIAN WARS. perfect order of things was that in which the higher class was occupied by no care or labour that did not contribute to the species of excellence which was the supreme end of its being, and where the subject ranks were mere instruments, only needed to relieve the higher from necessary but degrading toil: a view of society not peculiar to any race of mankind, though among the nations in which the same maxims have not been hallowed by superstition, none appears to have been governed by them more uniformly than the ancient Hellenes, and no Hellenic tribe applied them so steadily and consistently as the Dorians. The predominance of this military spirit in the early period of a nation's history, though accompanied by an aversion and contempt for the arts of peace, ought not certainly to lower any race in our esteem. It has appeared most signally in the noblest portions of our species; and is in itself no more inauspicious sign for the future growth of intelligence and humanity, than the overflow of animal spirits, the impatience of mental application, and the petulance of superior strength and activity in a vigorous boy. But a neglected or vicious education, or untoward circumstances, may disappoint the intention of nature, check the growth of the higher faculties, or confine them to a single direction and a narrow compass; and may thus detain nations and individuals in a state of intellectual infancy, ripe and robust only in its passions and physical powers. Such a misfortune, which has sometimes been celebrated as a singular advantage, or as the noblest fruit of legislative wisdom, befell the Dorians in Crete and Sparta. tribes, and which was a conspicuous feature in Considered from this point of view, the com- DOWN TO THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. THE MESSENIAN WARS AND AFFAIRS OF SPARTA In the Dorian race, the primitive Hellenic character had been moulded, by the circumstances under which the people was formed and trained, into a peculiar form. Before the invasion of Peloponnesus, the conquerors had passed through a severe school. In the mountain tracts, where they had wandered and settled, they had maintained a long struggle with danger and hardship; and they undoubtedly brought the habits and feelings which grow out of such a discipline along with them into the happier TOWARDS the first Olympiad (B.C. 776), Laseats in which they finally established their dominion. Many of the Spartan virtues and vices seem to have flowed from this source. conia was subdued and tranquil; the Spartans A people inured to poverty and toil learns to were united by the institutions of Lycurgus, and pride itself in the fortitude with which it meets their warlike youth ready, and, perhaps, impaprivation and suffering; it places its point of tient for new enterprises. Until the fall of honour in disdaining all superfluous enjoyment, Amycle and the other conquests of Teleclus and shinks from whatever serves merely to had secured the submission of Laconia, they grace and refine life, as unmanly and pernicious were probably too much occupied at home to luxury. This austere simplicity, though not enter into any wars with their neighbours inconsistent with kindly affections, is almost in- which might require a long-continued exertion separable from a proportionate coarseness and of their strength. We find them, indeed, very harshness of sentiments, which is careless of early engaged in contests on the side of Arcadia all the more delicate observances of social in- and Argos; but these were not very vigorously tercourse, and is too apt to degenerate into fe- prosecuted, or attended with very important reTocity and cruelty. A strong tendency to super-sults. An expedition of Sous, son of Procles, stition, which several causes contribute to cher- against Cleitor, in Arcadia, in which he is said ish in the mountaineer, distinguished the Spar- to have delivered his army from jeopardy by a tans, even among the Greeks, down to a late stratagem, stands unexplained as an isolated period of their history: a habit of mind closely fact. Jealousy soon sprang up between Sparta allied, or, it may be said, substantially one with the attachment to ancient usages, the veneration for established rights, privileges, and authority, which generally prevails in mountain Herud., ii., 167. and Argos, and disturbed the harmony which the family compact should have secured. In † ἔμφρουρος. the reign of Echestratus, son of Agis, the Spartans had made themselves masters of Cynuria, |