Spartan

“ XV. Such are the general outlines of the state and constitution of Sparta—the firmest aristocracy that perhaps ever existed, for it was an aristocracy on the widest base. If some Spartans were noble, every Spartan boasted himself gentle. His birth forbade him to work, and his only profession was the sword. The difference between the meanest Spartan and his king was not so great as that between a Spartan and a Perioecus. Not only the servitude of the Helots, but the subjection of the Perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race ”

“ Come back and be Spartan, as thine ancestors were before thee, and Alithea will rejoice and think the Gods have heard her. But if thou seest within thyself one cause why thy mother should sacrifice to Fear, lest her son should break the laws of Sparta, or sully his Spartan name, humble thyself, and mourn that thou didst not perish at Plataea. ”

“ WHEN as of old the Spartan mother sent
Her best beloved to the perilous field,
One charge she laid upon him ere he went:
"Return, my son, or with or on thy shield."
Even so we, with anguish unrevealed
By eyes o'er-bright and lips to laughter lent,
Sent forth our men to battle, nor would yield
To tears by pride's fierce barriers hardly pent. ”

“ And pitch your lances in the yielding plain.
Here in the midst, in either army’s sight,
He dares the Spartan king to single fight;
And wills that Helen and the ravish’d spoil,
That caused the contest, shall reward the toil.
Let these the brave triumphant victor grace,
And different nations part in leagues of peace.”
He spoke: in still suspense on either side
Each army stood: the Spartan chief replied:
“Me too, ye warriors, hear, whose fatal right
A world engages in the toils of fight.
To me the labour of the field resign;
Me Paris injured; all the war be mine. ”

“ Even in earliest youth, while yet all other lands and customs were unknown, when it was duly poured into my ears that to be born a Spartan constituted the glory and the bliss of earth, my soul sickened at the lesson, and my reason revolted against the lie. ”

“ And the deep voice of the Spartan warrior had a slight tremor in its tone as it uttered its respectful salutation.
"Draw near, Lysander. What sayest thou of my son?"
"I left him well, and—"
"Does a Spartan mother first ask of the bodily health of an absent man-child? By the tomb of Orestes and near the Temple of Fear, a king's widow asks a Spartan soldier what he says of a Spartan chief."
"All Hellas," replied Lysander, recovering his spirit, "might answer thee best, Alithea. For all Hellas proclaimed that the bravest man at Plataea was thy son, my chief." ”

“ His expectations were not ill-founded—the customs of Sparta allowed no slight to a Spartan, and they adjudged therefore the prize of valour to their own Eurybiades, while they awarded that of wisdom or science to Themistocles. Each was equally honoured with a crown of olive. Forgetful of all their prejudices, their envy, and their inhospitable treatment of strangers, that nation of warriors were dazzled by the hero whose courage assimilated to their own. ”

“ As a Spartan never drew back, he made up his mind to die on the field of battle, and bade his warriors comb their hair, don their choicest armor, and dress themselves in their richest attire, as was the custom when some great danger threatened them and they expected to die. ”

“ And be the Spartan's epitaph on me— 'Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.' Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; ”

“ The most vaunted Spartan vigor has not left the least sign of a monument, chiseled, written, carved, or stained, to record Sparta’s very existence. Sparta’s vigor was the vigor of the bull or the elephant. ”

“ And who has not learned, in a later school, the wisdom of the Spartan commissioners? Do not their utterances sound familiar to us? "Increase of dominion is waste of life and treasure. Sparta is content to hold her own. What care we, who leads the Greeks into blows? The fewer blows the better. Brave men fight if they must: wise men never fight if they can help it." ”

“ To those tall ships, remotest of the fleet,
Where lie great Ajax and the king of Crete. [216]
To rouse the Spartan I myself decree;
Dear as he is to us, and dear to thee,
Yet must I tax his sloth, that claims no share
With his great brother in his martial care:
Him it behoved to every chief to sue,
Preventing every part perform’d by you;
For strong necessity our toils demands,
Claims all our hearts, and urges all our hands. ”

“ Inspired by this your act, henceforth five hundred Spartan men shall count a thousand. Our countrymen with envy shall view the gaping wounds through which the hero’s soul flees to the silent shades, and mourn they were not privileged with us to die. ”

“ Remember that thou insist on the disgrace to me—the Heracleid, and through me to Sparta, that my recall would occasion; remember that thou prove that my alleged harshness is but necessary to the discipline that preserves armies, and to the ascendancy of Spartan rule. And as to the idle tale of Persian prisoners escaped, why thou knowest how even the Ionians could make nothing of that charge. Crowd all sail, strain every oar, no ship in the fleet so swift as that which bears thee. I care not for the few hours' start the talebearers have. Our Spartan forms are slow ”

“ As the Spartan boys were trained to become good soldiers, ready to die for Sparta, so were the girls trained to become good wives and mothers of Spartan men, and if they could not themselves die for their country, to be willing to sacrifice those whom they loved the best. Every Spartan when he went to war, carried a shield that was so heavy that if he fled from the enemy, he would have to throw it away, so it was considered a great disgrace to return home without one's shield; if he died in battle the Spartan was carried home upon it. ”

“ The Spartan woman, distinguished for her sternness of character and warlike disposition, looked with shame upon a son who could return from battle unless victorious, ever teaching him, from his earliest infancy, "to conquer, or to die on the battle-field." All the gentle and amiable qualities of the heart were repressed in their growth; and, while Sparta offered to her sons the rich boon of intellectual culture, her daughters were thought unworthy of the gift. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Spartan troops were mostly indigent young men, who elate with their freedom from the bonds of usury, and big with the hopes of a share in the lands at their return, followed Agis with the greatest vigour and alacrity, and behaved so well in their march, that they reminded the admiring Greeks of the excellent discipline and decorum for which the Spartans were formerly so famous under the most renowned of their ancient leaders. ”

“ Sparta lies hard by the mountain Taÿgetos, and to this day they show you a ravine on the mountain-side where it is claimed the deformed and weakly Spartan children were cast, to remove them from among a race which prized bodily vigor above every other consideration. It is a pity that Sparta, which played so vast a part in early history, should have left so little to recall her material existence. ”

“ From infancy to old age he was ever learning the skill and daring which belong to the battle field. His every mental development was martial in its tendency. He saw in every feature of his country's institutions an appeal to his warrior spirit. Imagine a band of young ambitious minds circled around some aged patriot, who, in the all-glowing language of arms, is describing the daring, the glorious achievement which had immortalized the Spartan character. ”

“ Its progress was mainly due, however, to that part of the legislation of Lycurgus which related to the military discipline and education of its citizens. The position of Sparta, an unfortified city surrounded by numerous enemies, compelled the Spartans to be a nation of soldiers. From his birth every Spartan belonged to the state; sickly and deformed children were destroyed, those only being thought worthy to live who promised to become useful members of society. ”

“ To him we may attribute the unification of the several component parts of the state, the strict military organization and training which soon made the Spartan hoplite the best soldier in Greece, and above all the elaborate and rigid system of education which rested upon, and in turn proved the strongest support of, that subordination of the individual to the state which perhaps has had no parallel in the history of the world. ”

“ And so, perverse one, thou canst not love this great hero, a proper person truly, and a mighty warrior, who will eat you an army of Persians at a meal. These Spartan fighting-cocks want no garlic, I warrant you. ”

“ In truth, the whole Spartan system was hard and unfeeling, and much fitter to make fighting machines than men.
p. 115The first great Spartan war that we know of was with their neighbours of Messenia, who stood out bravely, but were beaten, and brought down to the state of Helots in the year 723 b.c., all but a small band, who fled into other states. Among them was born a brave youth named Aristomenes, who collected all the boldest of his fellow-Messenians to try to save their country, and Argos, Arcadia, and Elis joined with them. Several battles were fought. ”

“ Profuse expenditure on its maintenance; the 'continued practice' of which Pericles boasted, the peace manoeuvres of a remote past; skilfully designed equipment; and the memory of past glories;—all these did not avail to save it from defeat at the hands of an enemy who only began to organise a fleet when the Athenians had invaded his coast waters.
Ideal perfection as a regular army has never been so nearly reached as by that of Sparta. The Spartan spent his life in the barrack and the mess-room; his amusements were the exercises of the parade ground. ”

“ First of all, the Spartan was a warrior, but not a worker, and although hardened, was an aristocrat. He left all labor to his slaves, and in this way strengthened his slaves and enfeebled himself in many respects. The value of work in strengthening and developing the brain and the whole body was not then understood. ”

“ Hence thy State was a camp, its citizens sentinels; its children were brought up from the cradle to support the stern life to which necessity devoted the men. Hardship and privation were second nature. Not enough to be brave; vigilance was equally essential. Every Spartan life was precious; therefore came the cunning which characterises the Spartan; therefore the boy is permitted to steal, but punished if detected; therefore the whole Commonwealth strives to keep aloof from the wars of Greece unless itself be threatened. ”

“ The Spartans, in order to guard their children against drunkenness, exposed to them slaves whom they had previously deprived of reason by intoxication, we may derive a Spartan lesson from Archæological explorations. ”

“ At Sparta youths fight with their fists, feet, nails, even with their teeth, and prefer being killed to being conquered. A Spartan boy is even said to have hidden a fox in the bosom of his garment, and to have been killed by the teeth of the beast, without uttering (lit. neither to have uttered) a murmur: for to steal anything without being caught (lit secretly) was held to be glorious among the Spartans ”

“ But in truth the good and the evil, which at first sight appear almost incompatible, are closely connected, and have a common origin. It was because the Spartan had been taught to revere himself as one of a race of sovereigns, and to look down on all that was not Spartan as of an inferior species, that he had no fellow feeling for the miserable serfs who crouched before him, and that the thought of submitting to a foreign master, or of turning his back before an enemy, never, even in the last extremity, crossed his mind. ”

“ Another Spartan, when told that the enemy's archers were so numerous that their arrows darkened the sun, replied: "So much the better; we shall fight in the shade."
A Spartan soldier
17. Some of the Greeks retired, but a few resolved to stay with the brave Spartans. And now the Greeks under Leonidas did not wait to be attacked in front and rear, but marched out into the wide part of the pass and assailed the Persians. The Persian officers drove their soldiers forward with whips. The poor wretches were pierced with the Greek spears, hurled into the sea, or trampled under foot. ”

“ Comic writers might show up the boorishness of the unlearned Spartans, and irritable tragic poets might vent their spleen on their country’s enemy, but in the end Spartan institutions had to be respected and admired. ”

“ Indeed, the Thessalians and Boeotians were the only Greek people who distinguished themselves much for their cavalry; scarcely any other states had territories adapted for the evolutions of cavalry. The whole life of a Spartan was little else than either the preparation for or the practice of war. The result was, that in the strictness of their discipline, the precision and facility with which they performed their military evolutions, and the skill and power with which they used their weapons, the Spartans were unrivalled among the Greeks. ”