Part 12 (1/2)
The Spartans were forbidden to engage in trade; all their time must be pa.s.sed in the chase, or in gymnastic and martial exercise. Iron was made the sole money of the state. This, according to Plutarch, ”was of great size and weight, and of small value, so that the equivalent for ten minae (about $140) required a great room for its stowage, and a yoke of oxen to draw it.” The object of this, he tell us, was to prevent its being used for the purchase of ”foreign trumpery.”
THE PUBLIC TABLES.--The most peculiar, perhaps, of the Lycurgean inst.i.tutions were the public meals. In order to correct the extravagance with which the tables of the rich were often spread, Lycurgus ordered that all the Spartan citizens should eat at public and common tables. Excepting the ephors, none, not even the kings, were excused from sitting at the common mess. One of the kings, returning from a long expedition, presumed to dine privately with his wife, but received therefor a severe reproof.
A luxury-loving Athenian, once visiting Sparta and seeing the coa.r.s.e fare of the citizens, is reported to have declared that now he understood the Spartan disregard of life in battle. ”Any one,” said he, ”must naturally prefer death to life on such fare as this.”
EDUCATION OF THE YOUTH.--Children were considered as belonging to the state. Every infant was brought before the Council of Elders; and if it did not seem likely to become a robust and useful citizen, it was exposed in a mountain glen. At seven the education and training of the youth were committed to the charge of public officers, called boy-trainers. The aim of the entire course, as to the boys, was to make a nation of soldiers who should despise toil and danger and prefer death to military dishonor.
Reading and writing were untaught, and the art of rhetoric was despised.
Spartan brevity was a proverb, whence our word _laconic_ (from Laconia), implying a concise and pithy mode of expression. Boys were taught to respond in the fewest words possible. At the public tables they were not permitted to speak until questioned: they sat ”silent as statues.” As Plutarch puts it, ”Lycurgus was for having the money bulky, heavy, and of little value; and the language, on the contrary, very pithy and short, and a great deal of sense compressed in a few words.”
But before all things else the Spartan youth was taught to bear pain unflinchingly. Often he was scourged just for the purpose of accustoming his body to pain. Frequently, it is said, boys died under the lash, without betraying their suffering by look or moan.
Another custom tended to the same end as the foregoing usage. The boys were at times compelled to forage for their food. If detected, they were severely punished for having been so unskilful as not to get safely away with their booty. This custom, as well as the fort.i.tude of the Spartan youth, is familiar to all through the story of the boy who, having stolen a young fox and concealed it beneath his tunic, allowed the animal to tear out his vitals, without betraying himself by the movement of a muscle.
The Cryptia, which has been represented as an organization of young Spartans who were allowed, as a means of rendering themselves ready and expert in war, to hunt and kill the Helots, seems in reality to have been a sort of police inst.i.tution, designed to guard against uprisings of the serfs.
ESTIMATE OF THE SPARTAN INSt.i.tUTIONS.--That the laws and regulations of the Spartan const.i.tution were admirably adapted to the end in view,--the rearing of a nation of skilful and resolute warriors,--the long military supremacy of Sparta among the states of Greece abundantly attests. But when we consider the aim and object of the Spartan inst.i.tutions, we must p.r.o.nounce them low and unworthy. The true order of things was just reversed among the Lacedaemonians. Government exists for the individual: at Sparta the individual lived for the state. The body is intended to be the instrument of the mind: the Spartans reversed this, and attended to the education of the mind only so far as its development enhanced the effectiveness of the body as a weapon in warfare.
Spartan history teaches how easy it is for a nation, like an individual, to misdirect its energies--to subordinate the higher to the lower. It ill.u.s.trates, too, the fact that only those nations that labor to develop that which is best and highest in man make helpful contributions to the progress of the world. Sparta, in significant contrast to Athens, bequeathed nothing to posterity.
THE MESSENIAN WARS.--The most important event in Spartan history between the age of Lycurgus and the commencement of the Persian War was the long contest with Messenia, known as the First and Second Messenian Wars (about 750-650 B.C.). Messenia was one of the districts of the Peloponnesus which, like Laconia, had been taken possession of by the Dorians at the time of the great invasion.
It is told that the Spartans, in the second war, falling into despair, sent to Delphi for advice. The oracle directed them to ask Athens for a commander. The Athenians did not wish to aid the Lacedaemonians, yet dared not oppose the oracle. So they sent Tyrtaeus, a poet-schoolmaster, who they hoped and thought would prove of but little service to Sparta. Whatever truth there may be in this part of the story, it seems indisputable that during the Second Messenian War, Tyrtaeus, an Attic poet, reanimated the drooping spirits of the Spartans by the energy of his martial strains.
Perhaps it would not be too much to say that Sparta owed her final victory to the inspiring songs of this martial poet.
The conquered Messenians were reduced to serfdom, and their condition made as degrading and bitter as that of the Helots of Laconia. Many, choosing exile, pushed out into the western seas in search of new homes. Some of the fugitives founded Rhegium, in Italy; others, settling in Sicily, gave name and importance to the still existing city of Messina.
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF SPARTA.--After having secured possession of Messenia, Sparta conquered the southern part of Argolis. All the southern portion of the Peloponnesus was now subject to her commands.
On the north, Sparta extended her power over many of the villages, or towns.h.i.+ps, of Arcadia; but her advance in this direction having been checked by Tegea, one of the few important Arcadian cities, Sparta entered into an alliance with that city, which ever after remained her faithful friend and helper. This alliance was one of the main sources of Spartan preponderance in Greece during the next hundred years and more.
Sparta was now the most powerful state in the Peloponnesus. Her fame was spread even beyond the limits of h.e.l.las. Croesus, king of Lydia, sought an alliance with her in his unfortunate war with Persia, which just now was the rising power in Asia.
3. THE GROWTH OF ATHENS.
THE ATTIC PEOPLE.--The population of Attica in historic times was essentially Ionian in race, but there were in it strains of other h.e.l.lenic stocks, besides some non-h.e.l.lenic elements as well. This mixed origin of the population is believed to be one secret of the versatile yet well- balanced character which distinguished the Attic people above all other branches of the h.e.l.lenic family. It is not the absolutely pure, but the mixed races, like the English people, that have made the largest contributions to civilization.
THE SITE OF ATHENS.--Four or five miles from the sea, a flat-topped rock, about one thousand feet in length and half as many in width, rises with abrupt cliffs, one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the plains of Attica. The security afforded by this eminence doubtless led to its selection as a stronghold by the early Attic settlers. Here a few buildings, perched upon the summit of the rock and surrounded by a palisade, const.i.tuted the beginning of the capital whose fame has spread over all the world.
THE KINGS OF ATHENS.--During the Heroic Age Athens was ruled by kings, like all the other Grecian cities. The names of Theseus and Codrus are the most noted of the regal line.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS. (From a Photograph.)]
To Theseus tradition ascribed the work of uniting the different Attic villages, or cantons, twelve in number, into a single city, on the seat of the ancient Cecropia (see p. 92). This prehistoric union, however or by whomsoever effected, laid the basis of the greatness of Athens.
Respecting Codrus, the following legend is told: At one time the Dorians from the Peloponnesus invaded Attica. Codrus having learned that an oracle had a.s.sured them of success if they spared the life of the Athenian king, disguised himself, and, with a single companion, made an attack upon some Spartan soldiers, who instantly slew him. Discovering that the king of Athens had fallen by a Lacedaemonian sword, the Spartans despaired of taking the city, and withdrew from the country.
THE ARCHONS (1050?-612 B.C.).--Codrus was the last king of Athens. His successor, elected by the n.o.bles, was given simply the name of Archon, or Ruler, for the reason, it is said, that no one was thought worthy to bear the t.i.tle of the divine Codrus. The real truth is, that the n.o.bles were transforming the Homeric monarchy into an oligarchy, and to effect the change were taking away from the king his royal powers. At the outset there was but one Archon, elected for life; later, there were nine, chosen annually.
Throughout these early times the government was in the hands of the n.o.bles; the people, that is, the free farmers and artisans, having no part in the management of public affairs. The people at length demanded a voice in the government, or at least legal protection from the exactions and cruelties of the wealthy.
THE LAWS OF DRACO (about 620 B.C.).--To meet these demands, the n.o.bles appointed one of their own number, Draco, to prepare a code of laws. He reduced existing customs and regulations to a definite and written const.i.tution, a.s.signing to the smallest offence the penalty of death. This cruel severity of the Draconian laws caused an Athenian orator to say of them that ”they were written, not in ink, but in blood.” But for their harshness Draco was not responsible: he did not make them; their severity was simply a reflection of the harshness of those early times.