!

the town against depraved and corrupt manners, than against infectious distempers. Properly speaking, the very trade and business of the Lacedæmonians was war: everything with them tended that way: arms were their only exercise and employment: their life was much less hard and austere in the camp than in the city; and they were the only people in the world to whom the time of war was a time of ease and refreshment, because then the reins of that strict and severe discipline, which prevailed at Sparta, were somewhat relaxed, and the men were indulged in a little more liberty. With them the first and most inviolable law of war, as Demaratus told Xerxes, was never to fly, or turn their backs, whatever superiority of numbers the enemy's army might consist of; never to quit their post; never to deliver up their arms; in a word, either to conquer or to die on the spot. This maxim was so important and essential in their opinion, that when the poet Archilochus came to Sparta, they obliged him to leave their city immediately; because they understood that, in one of his poems, he had said, "It was better for a man to throw down his arms than to expose himself to be killed."

Hence it is, that a mother recommended to her son, who was going to make a campaign, that he should return either with or upon his shield; and that another, hearing that her son was killed in fighting for his country, answered very coldly, "I brought him into the world for no other end." This humor was general among the Lacedæmonians. After the famous

battle of Leuctra, which was so fatal to the Spartans, the parents of those that died in the action congratulated each other upon it, and went to the temples to thank the gods that their children had done their duty; whereas the relations of those who survived the defeat were inconsolable. If any of the Spartans fled in battle, they were dishonored and disgraced forever. They were not only excluded from all posts and employments in the state, from all assemblies and public diversions, but it was thought scandalous to make any alliances with them by marriage, and a thousand affronts and insults were publicly offered them with impunity.

GREEK MYTHS.1

BY JOHN RUSKIN.

(From “The Queen of the Air.”)

[JOHN RUSKIN: English critic and essayist; born at London, February 8, 1819. In 1839 he took the Newdigate prize for a poem. During his Oxford days he published many verses over the signature "J. R." In 1850 his poems were collected and privately printed. A reprint was made of them in New York in 1882. He studied art, but rather for the purposes of criticism. In 1843 appeared the first part of "Modern Painters," which was a vehement eulogy of J. M. W. Turner; the last volume in 1856. "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," 1849, and "The Stones of Venice," 1851-1853, are his best-known works. Among his popular lectures have been "Munera Pulveris," 1862-1863; "Sesame and Lilies," 1865; "Crown of Wild Olive," 1866; and "The Queen of the Air," 1869. His works include dozens of other titles on artistic, social, and economic subjects. His "Præterita," 1885, is autobiographical.]

1. I WILL not ask your pardon for endeavoring to interest you in the subject of Greek Mythology; but I must ask your permission to approach it in a temper differing from that in which it is frequently treated. We cannot justly interpret the religion of any people, unless we are prepared to admit that we ourselves, as well as they, are liable to error in matters of faith; and that the convictions of others, however singular, may in some points have been well founded; while our own, however reasonable, may in some particulars be mistaken. You must forgive me, therefore, for not always distinctively calling the creeds of the past "superstition," and the creeds of the present day "religion"; as well as for assuming that a faith now confessed may sometimes be superficial, and that a faith long forgotten may once have been sincere. It is the task of the Divine to condemn the errors of antiquity, and of the philologists to account for them; I will only pray you to read, with patience, and human sympathy, the thoughts of men who lived without blame in a darkness they could not dispel; and to remember that, whatever charge of folly may justly attach to the saying, "There is no God," the folly is prouder, deeper, and less pardonable, in saying, "There is no God but for me."

2. A myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning attached to it other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being extraordinary, or, in the common use of the word, unnatural. Thus if I tell you that Hercules killed By permission of Mr. Geo. Allen. (Crown 8vo., price 58.)

1

a water serpent in the lake of Lerna, and if I mean, and you understand, nothing more than that fact, the story, whether true or false, is not a myth. But if by telling you this, I mean that Hercules purified the stagnation of many streams from deadly miasmata, my story, however simple, is a true myth; only, as, if I left it in that simplicity, you would probably look for nothing beyond, it will be wise in me to surprise your attention by adding some singular circumstance; for instance, that the water snake had several heads, which revived as fast as they were killed, and which poisoned even the foot that trod upon them as they slept. And in proportion to the fullness of intended meaning I shall probably multiply and refine upon these improbabilities; as, suppose, if, instead of desiring only to tell you that Hercules purified a marsh, I wished you to understand that he contended with the venom and vapor of envy and evil ambition, whether in other men's souls or in his own, and choked that malaria only by supreme toil,- I might tell you that this serpent was formed by the goddess whose pride was in the trial of Hercules; and that its place of abode was by a palm tree; and that for every head of it that was cut off, two rose up with renewed life; and that the hero found at last he could not kill the creature at all by cutting its heads off or crushing them, but only by burning them down; and that the midmost of them could not be killed even that way, but had to be buried alive. Only in proportion as I mean more, I shall certainly appear more absurd in my statement; and at last when I get unendurably significant, all practical persons will agree that I was talking mere nonsense from the beginning, and never meant anything at all.

3. It is just possible, however, also, that the story-teller may all along have meant nothing but what he said; and that, incredible as the events may appear, he himself literally believed and expected you also to believe all this about Hercules, without any latent moral or history whatever. And it is very necessary, in reading traditions of this kind, to determine, first of all, whether you are listening to a simple person, who is relating what, at all events, he believes to be true (and may, therefore, possibly have been so to some extent), or to a reserved philosopher, who is veiling a theory of the universe under the grotesque of a fairy tale. It is, in general, more likely that the first supposition should be the right one: simple and credulous persons are, perhaps fortunately, more common