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rapine, and luxury, were banished from this simple state; and the people found in ignorance of riches a happy substitute for the want of those refinements they bestow.

23. But these institutions were not thought sufficient to prevent that tendency which mankind have to private excess. A third regulation was therefore made, commanding that all meals should be in public. He ordained that all the men should eat in one common hall without distinction; and lest strangers should attempt to corrupt his citizens by their example, a law was expressly made against their continuance in the city. By these means frugality was not only necessary, but the use of riches was at once abolished. Every man sent monthly his provision to the common stock, with a little money for other contingent expenses. These consisted of one bushel of flour, eight measures of wine, five pounds of cheese, and two pounds and a half of figs.

24. The tables consisted of fifteen persons each, where none could be admitted but by the consent of the whole company. Every one, without exception of persons, was obliged to be at the common meal; and a long time after, when Agis returned from a successful expedition, he was punished and reprimanded for having eaten with his queen in private. The very children eat of these reals, and were carried thither as to a school of temperance and wisdom.

25. At these homely repasts no rude or immoral conversation was permitted, no loquacious disputes or ostentatious talking. Each endeavoured to express his sentiments with the utmost perspicuity and conciseness; wit was admitted to season the banquet, and secrecy to give it security. As soon as a young man came into the room, the oldest man in company used to say to him, pointing to the door, "Nothing spoken here must go that way.”

26. Black broth was their favourite dish; of what ingredients it was made is not known, but they used no flesh in their entertainments. It probably resembled those lenten soups which are still in use on the continent. Dionysius, the tyrant, found their fare very unpalatable; but, as the cook asserted, the broth was nothing without the seasoning of fatigue and hunger.

27. An injunction so rigorous, which thus cut off all the delicacies and refinements of luxury, was by no means pleasing to the rich, who took every occasion to insult the lawgiver upon his new regulations. The tumults they excited were frequent; and in one of these, a young fellow, whose name was Alexander, struck out one of Lycurgus's eyes. But he had the majority of the people on his side, who, provoked at the outrage, delivered

the young man into his hands to treat him with all proper se. verity.

28. Lycurgus, instead of testifying any brutal resentment, won over his aggressor by all the arts of affability and tenderness, till at last, from being one of the proudest and most turbulent men of Sparta, he became an example of wisdom and moderation, and an useful assistant to Lycurgus in promoting his new institutions.

29. Thus, undaunted by opposition, and steady in his designs, he went on to make a thorough reformation in the manners of his countrymen. As the education of the youth was one of the most important objects of a legislator's care, he took care to instil such early principles, that children should in a manner be born with a sense of order and discipline. His grand principle was, that children were properly the possession of the state, and belonged to the community more than to their parents. To this end he began from the very time of their conception, making it the mother's duty to use such diet and exercise as might fit her to produce a vigorous and healthy offspring.

30. As during this period, all institutions were tinctured with the savageness of the times, it is not wonderful that Lycurgus ordained that all such children as, upon a public view, were deemed deformed or weakly, and unfitted for a future life of vigour and fatigue, should be exposed to perish in a cavern near mount Taygetus. This was considered as a public punishment upon the mother; and it was thought the readiest way to lighten the state of future incumbrance.

31. Those infants that were born without any capital defects, were adopted as children of the state, and delivered to their parents to be nursed with severity and hardship. From their tenderest age they were accustomed to make no choice in their eating, nor to be afraid in the dark, or when left alone, not to be peevish or fretful, to walk barefoot, to lie hard at nights, to wear the same clothes winter and summer, and to fear nothing from their equals.

32. At the age of seven years they were taken from their parents, and delivered over to the classes for a public education. Their discipline there was little else than an apprenticeship to hardship, self-denial, and obedience. In these classes, one of the boys, more advanced and experienced than the rest, presided as captain to govern and chastise the refractory. Their very sports and exercises were regulated according to the exactest discipline, and made up of labour and fatigue. They went barefoot, with their heads shaved, and fought with one another naked.

33. While they were at table it was usual for the masters to instruct the boys, by asking them questions concerning the nature of moral actions, or the different merits of the most noted men of the time. The boys were obliged to give a quick and ready answer, which was to be accompanied with their reasons in the concisest manner, for a Spartan's language was as sparing as his money was ponderous and bulky.

34. All ostentatious learning was banished from this simple commonwealth, their only study was to obey, their only pride was to suffer hardship. Every art was practised to harden them against adventitious danger. There was yearly a custom of whipping them at the altar of Diana, and. the boy that bore this punishment with the greatest fortitude, came off victorious.

35. This was inflicted publicly before the eyes of their parents, and in the presence of the whole city; and many were known to expire under the severity of the discipline, without uttering a single groan. Even their own fathers, when they saw them covered with blood and wounds, and ready to expire, exhorted them to persevere to the end with constancy and resolution. Plutarch, who says that he has seen several children expire under this cruel treatment, tells us of one who having stolen a fox, and hid it under his coat, chose rather to let it tear his very bowels than discover the theft.

36. Every institution seems tending to harden the body, and sharpen the mind for war. In order to prepare them for stratągems and sudden incursions, the boys were permitted to steal from each other; but if they were caught in the fact, they were punished for their want of dexterity. Such a permission, therefore, was little better than a prohibition of theft, since the punishment followed, as at present, in case of detection. In fact, by this institution, negligence in the possessor was made justly liable to the loss of the possessions, a consideration which has not been sufficiently attended to by subsequent legislators.

37. At twelve years old, the boys were removed into other classes, of a more advanced kind. There, in order to crush the seeds of vice, which at that time began to appear, their labour and discipline were increased with their age. There they had their instructer from among the men, called Pædonomus, and under him the Irens, young men selected from their own body, to exercise a more constant and immediate command over them.

38. They had now their skirmishes between parties, and their mock fights between larger bodies. In these they often fought with hands, feet, teeth, and nails, with such obstinacy,

that it was common to see them lose their eyes, and often their lives, before the fray determined. Such was the constant discipline of the minority, which lasted till the age of thirty, before which they were not permitted to marry, to go into the troops, or to bear any office in the state.

39. With regard to the virgins, their discipline was equally strict with the former. They were inured to a constant course of labour and industry until they were twenty years old, before which time they were not considered marriageable. They had also their peculiar exercises. They ran, wrestled, pitched the bar, and performed all these feats naked before the whole body of the citizens. Yet this was thought no way indecent, as it was supposed that the frequent view of the person would rather check than excite any looser appetite.

40. An education so manlike did not fail to produce in the Spartan women corresponding sentiments. They were bold, frugal, and patriotic, filled with a sense of honour, and a love of military glory. Some foreign women, in conversation with the wife of Leonidas, saying that the Spartan women alone knew how to govern the men, she boldly replied," the Spartan women alone bring forth men."

41. A mother was known to give her son, who was going to battle, his shield, with this remarkable advice: Return with it, or return upon it. Implying, that rather than throw it from him in flight, he should be ne upon it dead to his friends in Sparta.

42. Another hearing that her son was killed in fighting for his country, she answered without any emotion, "It is for that I brought him into the world." After the battle of Leuctra, the parents of those who died in the action, went to the temples to thank the gods, that their sons had done their duty, while those whose children survived that dreadful day, seemed inconsolable.

43. Yet it must not be concealed, that in a city where the women were inspired with such a passion for military glory, they were not equally remarkable for connubial fidelity. In fact, there was no law against adultery, and an exchange of husbands was often actually practised among them. This was always by the mutual consent of parties, which removed the tedious ceremonies of a divorce. One reason assigned for allowing this mutual liberty, was not so much to gratify licentious desire, as to improve the breed of citizens, by matching such as were possessed of mutual inclination. In fact, in many of the laws of Lycurgus he seems to admit that private vices may become public benefits, and this among the number.

44. Besides these constitutional regulations, there were many other general maxims laid down, that obtained the force of laws among them. They were forbid to exercise any mechanic art. The chief occupations of the Spartans were bodily exercises or hunting. The Helotes, who had lost their liberty some centuries before, and who had been condemned to perpetual slavery, tilled their lands for them, receiving for their labour a bare subsistence.

45. The citizens, thus possessed of competence and leisure, were mostly in company in large common halls, where they met and conversed together. They passed little of their time alone, being accustomed to live like bees, always together, always attentive to their chiefs and leaders. The love of their country and the public good was their predominant passion : and all self-interest was lost in the general wish for the welfare of the community. Pedaratus having missed the honour of being chosen of the three hundred who had a certain rank in the city, converted his disappointment into joy, that there were three hundred better men in Sparta than he.

46. Among the maxims of their legislator, it was forbidden them to make frequent war upon the same enemies. By this inhibition they were restrained from lasting and immoderate resentment, they were in no danger of teaching their discipline to those they made war upon, and all their alliances were thus more frequently renewed.

47. Whenever they had broken and routed the enemies, they never pursued them farther than was necessary to make themselves sure of victory. They thought it sufficiently glorious to overcome, and were ashamed of destroying an enemy that yielded or fled. Nor was this without answering some good purposes for an enemy, conscious that all who resisted were put to the sword, often fled, as they were convinced that such a conduct was the surest means of obtaining safety. Thus valour and generosity seemed the ruling motives of this new institution. Arms were their only exercise, and their life was much less austere in the camp than in the city.

48. The Spartans were the only people in the world to whom the time of war was a time of ease and refreshment: because then the severity of their manners was relaxed, and the men were indulged in greater liberties. With them the first and most inviolable law of war was never to turn their backs on the enemy, however disproportioned in force, nor to deliver up their arms until they resigned them with life.

49. When the poet Archilochus came to Sparta he was obliged to quit the city for having asserted in one of his poems,

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