From his birth every Spartan belonged to the state, which decided whether he was likely to prove a useful member of the community, and extinguished the life of the sickly or deformed infant, which was exposed in a glen of mount Taygetus. Up to the age of seven, a boy was left to the care of his natural guardians, though not without some control to prevent mischievous parental indulgence. At the end of his seventh year, he began a long course of public discipline, which grew more and more severe as the boy approached manhood. Though the elders exercised a more or less direct influence over him, his training was under the special superintendence of an officer (Taidovóμoç) selected from the men of most approved worth. He divided the boys into classes, which were commanded by the most distinguished among them. All offences were rigorously punished. The whole system of education aimed at nothing beyond training men who were to live in the midst of difficulty and danger, and who could be safe themselves only while they held rule over others. The citizen was to be equally ready to command and to obey; and this system, narrow as it was, was carried to such perfection, that it is impossible not to admire it. A young Spartan might not be able to read or write, nor be possessed of any of those qualifications which we deem essential to the character of a man; yet he could run, leap, wrestle, hurl the disc or the javelin, and wield every other weapon with vigour, agility, and grace. But above all things, he was distinguished for the firmness and perseverance with which he endured hardships and sufferings; for from his infancy his life was one continued trial of patience. One test of this passive fortitude, the diapaoriywog, was particularly celebrated among the ancients. The origin of this is explained as follows: from the earliest times human sacrifices had been offered in Laconia to Artemis, whose image Orestes was believed to have brought from Scythia. These bloody rites, it is said, were abolished by Lycurgus, who substituted for them a contest little less ferocious, in which the most generous youths, standing on the altar, presented themselves to the lash, and were sometimes seen to expire under it without a groan. This and similar usages, such as the cryptia, prepared the Spartan youths for all the hardships of a military life.

But, although bred in this manner, the Spartan warrior was not a stranger to music and poetry. He was taught to sing and to play on the flute or lyre; but the strains to which his voice was formed, were either sacred hymns or breathed a martial spirit; and it was because they cherished such sentiments that the Homeric poems, if not introduced by Lycurgus, became popular among the Spartans at an early period. For the same reason Tyrtaeus was

held in high honour, while Archilochus was banished because he had not been ashamed to record his own flight from the field of battle. The mental training of bovs consisted chiefly in cultivating a moral taste and imparting to them presence of mind and promptness of decision; and hence the Spartans became proverbial for ready, pointed, and sententious brevity in their ordinary conversation. Modesty, obedience, and reverence for age and rank were inculcated more by example than by precept, and upon these qualities above all others the stability of the commonwealth reposed; since that respect for the laws of his country, which rendered the Spartan averse to innovation, was little more than another form of the reverence and awe with which in earlier years he had regarded the magistrates and the aged. During the interval between the age of twenty and thirty, the Spartan was not yet permitted to appear in the public assembly, and seems to have been chiefly employed in military service in the camp or on the frontier. When he had attained the age of full maturity, he was a soldier in time of war, and in time of peace enjoyed the leisure which was believed to be essential to the dignity of a freeman; but, in order that he might not become unfitted for war, his amusements were the palaestra and the chase, from which he rested only at the public meals. These public meals (ovooíria), like many other institutions, Sparta had in common with Crete*, though they were not entirely the same in the two countries. The sixtieth year closed the military age, and the period which followed was one of peaceful repose, though not of wearisome inaction it was cheered by respect and authority, and was employed either in the direction of public affairs, or in the superintendence of the young.

The institutions of Sparta had all more or less a warlike tendency, and this one-sidedness is justly censured even by their admirers. A prominent feature of the Spartan character was caution; and this, together with their observance of the maxim not to pursue a routed enemy farther than was necessary for securing the victory, may sometimes have supplied the place of humanity and softened the ferocity of warfare. The same end was gained by the regulation that, during certain religious festivals, there should be a cessation from all hostilities. War seems to have been the element in which a Spartan breathed most freely and enjoyed the fullest consciousness of his existence; he dressed his hair and crowned himself for a battle as others did for a feast; and advanced to the mortal struggle with a mind as calm and

* Comp. p. 72.

cheerful as that with which he commenced a contest for a prize at

the public games.

The warlike spirit of the Spartans was maintained by their ancient system of tactics. The main strength of the army consisted in its heavy-armed infantry, the only mode of service which was thought worthy of a free Spartan. Hence little value was set upon the cavalry, which in fact never acquired any great efficacy. Three hundred picked young men indeed, who served as the king's body-guard, bore the name of horsemen as a title of honour; but in battle they fought on foot, using their horses only on the march and in executing the king's commands. The Spartans, moreover, always shrank from besieging a fortified town, and the sea was never a congenial element to the spirit of their warfare. At sea the Helots were mostly employed, as on land they formed the light-armed infantry or followed their masters in the capacity of menial servants. Promptness and punctuality in the execution of the various evolutions and movements and in their harmonious combinations, distinguished the Spartan armies at all times; and these movements were greatly facilitated by the warlike dance, called the Pyrrhic, in which the Spartan youths were habitually exercised. The tidings of an important victory were celebrated with the sacrifice of a cock, and their bearer was rewarded with a dish of meat from the table of the ephors. During the most brilliant period of Spartan history, the warrior's watchword was “victory or death;" and the coward who saved his life by flight, was degraded from all the privileges of society, and became a butt for public scorn and insult.

It was no doubt felt from an early period, that the security of the Spartan constitution depended, not on its being written on stone or parchment, but on the national feeling in which it lived; and hence Lycurgus is said to have forbidden the use of written laws. It was, perhaps, chiefly with the view of preserving this feeling in its full strength and purity, that citizens were not allowed to go abroad without leave of the magistrates, and that the presence of foreigners at Sparta was discouraged; but, previously to the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, this latter regulation appears to have been rarely enforced, and distinguished foreigners were not only permitted, but even invited, to sojourn at Sparta.

From all that has been said about the Spartan institutions, it is clear that the greater part of them were only a continuation of the Hellenic, and especially the Doric, institutions, such as they existed in the heroic ages. Among the Dorians this Hellenic character maintained itself in comparative purity, in consequence

of the circumstances by which they were surrounded in Peloponnesus after the conquest; nay, in many points it may even have become more marked and developed, and all that a legislator like Lycurgus had to do, was to arrange and regulate that which previously had been only customary.

Greek helmets.

A.

Coin of Argos.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MESSENIAN WARS AND AFFAIRS OF SPARTA DOWN TO THE SIXTH CENTURY BEFORE CHRIST,

ABOUT the first Olympiad, B. c. 776, all Laconia was subdued and tranquil. The Spartans, united and made strong by the institutions of Lycurgus, and long accustomed to war, were perhaps impatient for fresh enterprises. Their first undertaking seems to have been directed against Arcadia; but the account of the expedition of king Sous against the Arcadian town of Cleitor* is not supported by sufficient authority. Jealousy appears to have soon sprung up between Sparta and Argos. Originally, the whole of the eastern coast of Laconia, as far as Cape Malea, belonged to Argos, and bore the name of Cynuria. Of this district the Spartans had made themselves masters in the reign of Echestratus, the son of Agis, and this led to a series of hostilities between the two states. Charilaus and Nicander, joined by the Dryopes of Asine, made inroads into the Argive territory; and Charilaus, deceived by an oracle which seemed to promise the conquest of the important town of Tegea, marched into Arcadia aiso; but he was defeated, and the captured Spartans were obliged to serve as slaves in the chains which they had brought with them for the Tegeatans. The struggle with them was often renewed, but always with ill success.

An easier and more inviting conquest, however, offered itself to them in the west. It was probably not without jealousy and envy that the Dorians of Laconia observed that Messenia, which had fallen to the lot of Cresphontes and his followers, was a much fairer country than their own, and under the influence of such feelings a pretext for war is easily found. The Dorians in Mes

Plut. Lycurg. 2.

Herod. 1. 65. &c.; Paus. III. 3. § 5.