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VII.

which prevailed, at least in early times, among the Dorian cities of the island. In every town were two public buildings, destined, the one for the lodging of B. C. 1104. strangers, the other for the meals of the citizens; and in the banqueting-room two tables were set apart for the foreign guests. The temperate repast was followed by conversation, which was first made to turn on the affairs of the state: and it cannot be doubted that the freedom of discussion allowed at the festive board, made no slight amends for the restrictions imposed on the deliberations of the public assembly. After this, the discourse fell on valiant deeds, and illustrious men, whose praises might rouse the younger hearers to generous emulation.

Whatever may have been the origin of this institution, it manifestly answered several important ends, beside that for which it was immediately designed. On the one hand, it maintained a stricter separation between the ruling and the subject classes; it kept alive in the former the full consciousness of their superior station, and their national character: on the other hand, it bound the citizens together by ties of the most endearing intimacy; taught them to look on each other as members of one family; and gave an efficacy to the power of public opinion, which must have nearly superseded the necessity of any penal laws. To this we may add, that it provided a main Education. part of the education of the young. Till they had reached their eighteenth year, the sons accompanied their fathers to the public hall, with the orphans of the deceased. The younger waited at the table; the rest, seated beside the men on a lower bench, received a portion suited to their age, of plainer fare, and listened to the conversation of their elders. They were here under the eye of an officer publicly ap pointed to superintend them.1 How far, in other

1 Пadovóμos. Ephorus in Strabo, x. p. 483.

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respects, the state assumed a direct control over their education, does not appear; but it seems highly proB. C. 1104. bable, that the same officer who watched over their behaviour in public, also enforced the other branches of discipline to which they were subject. They were early inured to hardship and laborious exercises: the same coarse garment served them for summer and winter; and their strength and spirit were proved by frequent combats between rival companies. The intervals of leisure left by this species of training were filled up by some simple lessons in poetry and music, and, in later times at least, in the rudiments of letters. The songs which they learnt, contained the precepts and maxims enforced by the laws, hymns to the gods, and the praises of the illustrious dead. From the beginning of their eighteenth year they were subjected to a stricter rule. They were now divided into troops 1, each headed by a youth of some noble family, whose pride it was to collect the greatest number he could under his command. He was himself placed under the control of some elder person, generally his father, who directed the exercises of the troop in the chase, the course, and the wrestlingschool. On stated days, the rival troops engaged in a mimic fight, with movements measured by the flute and the lyre; and the blows they exchanged on these occasions, were dealt not merely with the hand and with clubs, but with iron weapons, probably with a view of putting their skill, patience, and self-command, as well as their strength, to trial, by the necessity of defending themselves without inflicting a dangerous wound. - How long the youths remained in these troops we are not informed. As soon as they quitted them to enter into the society of the men, the law compelled each to choose a bride; who however was not permitted, it is said, to undertake

1 ἀγέλαι.

VII.

the duties of a matron, until she was found capable CHAP. of discharging them; that is, probably, she continued for some time to live under the roof of her parents. B. c. 1104. The Cretan institutions sanctioned, and even enforced, a close intimacy between the men and the youths, which was undoubtedly designed to revive that generous friendship of the heroic ages, which was so celebrated in song, and to add a new motive to the love of glory in the noblest spirits. But the usage, which was singularly regulated by the law1, degenerated in later times into a frightful licence, which was often mistaken for its primitive form, and consequently attributed to political views, which, if they had ever existed, would have been equally odious and absurd.2

1 Ephorus in Strabo, x. 483.

Aristotle, Pol. ii. 10.

CHAP.
VIII.

B. C. 884.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS.

stitutions.

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Opposite views of the subject.—Time and lineage of Lycurgus.
-Birth of Charilaus.-Travels of Lycurgus, his Return to
Sparta, Actions, and Death. - Antiquity of the Spartan In-
Lycurgus a real person. Nature of the revo-
lution effected by him. - Difficulty of reconciling the different
accounts of it. State of things which called for his interpo-
sition. Objects which he had in view. Outline of his
measures. Distribution of Property. Erroneous views of
the subject.Nature of the partition made by Lycurgus.
Condition of the Laconian Subjects. The Helots. Their
treatment. The Cryptia.- The Spartans. - Spartan
Tribes. Spartan Nobles. Assemblies of the People. -
The Gerusia. The Kings.- Royal Prerogatives.
nours of the Kings. The Ephors. A general principle
of the Spartan Institutions. Provisions for preserving the
number of the Spartan families unchanged. Restrictions
on the use of the precious metals at Sparta. Condition
and Education of the Spartan Women. - Education of the
Spartan Youths. - Exercises of patience. Cultivation of
intellectual faculties, and of moral habits. - Spartan Syssitia.
-Military Institutions. System of Tactics.- Maxims of
Spartan Warfare.-Spartan Laws unwritten. -- Connection
between the Dorian and the old Hellenic institutions. — Pe-
culiar circumstances which formed the Dorian character.
-Peculiar position of the Spartans.

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We now return to the Dorians of Peloponnesus, whose history, scanty as is the information transmitted to us concerning its earlier ages, is still somewhat less obscure, and much more interesting, than that of the other Greek tribes during the same period. Our attention will for some time be fixed on the steps

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by which Sparta rose to a supremacy above the rest of the Dorian states, which was finally extended over the whole of Greece. This is the most momentous B. C. 884. event of the period intervening between the Return of the Heracleids and the Persian wars. It was in part an effect of the great addition which Sparta made to her territory, by swallowing up that of her western neighbour. But this conquest may itself be regarded as a result of those peculiar institutions, which, once firmly established, decided her character and destiny to the end of her political existence, and which are in themselves one of the most interesting subjects that engage the attention of the statesman and the philosopher in the history of Greece.

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Before we attempt to describe the Spartan consti- Opposite tution, it will be necessary to notice the different views of opinions that have been entertained as to its origin ject. and its author. It has been usual, both with ancient and modern writers, to consider it as the work of a single man as the fruit of the happy genius, or of the commanding character, of Lycurgus, who has generally been supposed to have had the merit, if not of inventing it, yet of introducing and establishing it among his countrymen. Viewed in this light, it has justly excited not only admiration, but astonishment: it appears a prodigy of art, on which we gaze as on an Egyptian pyramid — a structure wonderful in its execution, but mysterious in its design. We admire the power which the legislator has exerted over his fellow-men: but while we are amazed at his boldness and success, we can scarcely refrain from suspecting that he must have been partly swayed by the desire of raising an extraordinary monument to his own. fame. According to the opposite view of the subject, it was not an artificial fabric, but the spontaneous growth of a peculiar nature, which at the utmost required only a few slight touches from the hand of

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