The Good Book (90 page)

19. Aristotle is wrong in saying that, after Lycurgus had tried all ways to reduce the women to more modesty and sobriety, he was at last forced to leave them as they were,

20. Because in the absence of their husbands, who spent the best part of their lives away at war, their wives, whom they had to leave absolute mistresses at home,

21. Took great liberties and assumed the superiority; and were treated with overmuch respect and called by the title of lady or queen.

22. The truth is, Lycurgus took in their case, also, all the care that was possible;

23. He ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the discus and casting the dart,

24. To the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth,

25. And that with this greater vigour, might better undergo the pains of childbearing.

26. And to take away their excessive tenderness and all acquired womanishness, he ordered that the girls should go naked in the processions, as well as the young men,

27. And dance, too, in that condition, at feasts, singing certain songs, while the young men stood around, seeing and hearing them.

28. On these occasions the maidens now and then made, by jests, a reflection on those youths who had misbehaved themselves in the wars;

29. And again sang encomiums upon those who had acted gallantly, and by these means inspired the younger men with an emulation of their glory.

30. Those that were thus commended went away proud, elated and gratified with their honour among the maidens;

31. And those who were rallied were as sensibly touched as if they had been formally reprimanded;

32. So much the more, because the kings and the elders, as well as the rest of the city, saw and heard all that passed.

33. Nor was there anything shameful in this nakedness of the girls; modesty attended them, and all wantonness was excluded.

34. It taught them simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of higher feelings, admitted as they thus were to the field of noble action and glory.

35. Hence it was natural for them to think and speak as Gorgo, for example, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have done,

36. When some foreign lady told her that the women of Lacedaemon were the only women in the world who could rule men;

37. ‘With good reason,’ Gorgo replied, ‘for we are the only women who bring forth men.’

38. These public processions of the maidens, and their appearing naked in their exercises and dancings, were incitements to marriage,

39. Operating upon the young with the rigour and certainty, as Plato says, of love, if not of mathematics.

40. But besides all this, to promote it yet more effectually, those who continued bachelors were partly disfranchised by law;

41. For they were excluded from the public processions in which the young men and maidens danced naked,

42. And, in wintertime, the officers compelled them to march naked themselves round the marketplace,

43. Singing a song to their own disgrace, that they justly suffered this punishment for disobeying the law to marry and have children.

44. Moreover, they were denied the respect paid by younger men to their elders;

45. No man, for example, found fault with what was said to Dercyllidas, though so eminent a commander;

46. Upon whose approach one day a young man, instead of rising, retained his seat, remarking, ‘No child of yours will make room for me.’

Chapter 8

  1. In their marriages, the brides were never of tender years, but in their full bloom and ripeness.

  2. After being carried off by her man, the bride had her hair clipped close, dressed in man’s clothes, and lay on a mattress in the dark;

  3. Afterwards came the bridegroom, in his everyday clothes, sober and composed, as having supped at the common table,

  4. And, entering privately into the room where the bride lies, untied her virgin girdle, and took her to himself;

  5. And, after staying some time together, he returned composedly to his own apartment, to sleep as usual with the other young men.

  6. And so he continued to do, spending his days and nights with the young men, visiting his bride in secret, and with circumspection;

  7. She, for her part, using her wit to find favourable opportunities for their meeting, when company was out of the way.

  8. In this manner they lived a long time, insomuch that they sometimes had children by their wives before ever they saw their faces by daylight.

  9. Their interviews, being thus difficult and rare, served not only for continual exercise of self-control,

10. But brought them together with their bodies healthy and vigorous, and their affections unsated and undulled by easy access and long continuance with each other;

11. While their partings were always early enough to leave unextinguished in each of them some remaining fire of longing and mutual delight.

12. After guarding marriage with this modesty and reserve, Lycurgus was equally careful to banish jealousy.

13. For this object, excluding all licentious disorders, he made it honourable for men to agree to their wives consorting with those they thought fit, that so they might have children by them;

14. Ridiculing those in whose opinion such favours are so wrong as to shed blood and go to war about it.

15. Lycurgus allowed a man who was advanced in years and had a young wife to recommend some virtuous and approved young man,

16. That she might have a child by him, who might inherit the good qualities of the father, and be a son to himself.

17. On the other side, an honest man who had love for a married woman upon account of her modesty and the well-favouredness of her children,

18. Might, without formality, beg her company of her husband, that he might raise, as it were, from this plot of good ground, worthy and well-allied children for himself.

19. And indeed, Lycurgus was of the view that children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth,

20. And therefore would not have his citizens begot by the first-comers, but by the best men that could be found;

21. The laws of other nations seemed to him absurd and inconsistent, where people would be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and pay money to procure fine breeding,

22. And yet kept their wives shut up, to be made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm or diseased;

23. As if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would prove their bad qualities first upon those who were rearing them,

24. And well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities.

25. These regulations, founded on natural and social grounds, were certainly so far from that scandalous liberty which was afterwards charged upon Spartan women,

26. That they knew not what was meant by the word adultery.

Chapter 9

  1. Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of a newborn if he thought it unfit;

  2. He had to carry it before assessors, whose business it was carefully to examine the infant;

  3. If they found it healthy and vigorous, they gave order for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land for its maintenance,  

  4. But, if they found it misbegotten, they ordered it to be taken to the chasm called Apothetae,

  5. Thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor in the public interest, that it should be brought up.

  6. The women did not bathe the newborn children in water, as in other countries, but in wine, to prove the temper of their bodies,

  7. From a notion that weakly children faint away upon their being thus bathed, while those who are strong acquire firmness by it.

  8. Much care and art was used by the nurses; they had no swaddling bands;

  9. The children grew up free and unconstrained in limb, not dainty about their food,

10. Not afraid in the dark, or of being left alone, and without peevishness or crying.

11. On this account Spartan nurses were valued in other countries.

12. Lycurgus would not have teachers bought out of the slave market, nor those who charged fees;

13. Nor could fathers themselves educate their children after their own fancy;

14. But when seven years old they were enrolled in companies where they lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and playing together.

15. Of these, the one who made the best showing was made captain; they kept their eyes upon him, obeyed him and patiently accepted his discipline,

16. So that their whole education was one continued exercise of ready and perfect obedience.

17. The older men were spectators of their performances, and often stirred disputes among them,

18. To find out their different characters, and see which would be valiant, which a coward, in real conflicts.

19. They taught them just enough reading and writing to serve;

20. The chief care was to make them good subjects and soldiers, and to teach them to endure pain and conquer in battle.

21. As they grew older their discipline was proportionately increased; their heads were close-clipped, they went barefoot and played naked.

22. After they were twelve years old, they were forbidden to wear undergarments, and made one coat last a year.

23. Their bodies were hard and dry, with little acquaintance of baths and unguents; these indulgences were allowed only on particular days in the year.

24. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made of the rushes from the River Eurotas.

25. If it were winter, they mingled some thistledown with the rushes for warmth.

26. By the time they reached this age none of the more hopeful boys lacked a lover to bear him company.

27. The old men, too, had an eye upon them, coming often to the grounds to observe them contend in wit and strength,

28. And this with as much interest as if they were their fathers, tutors or magistrates;

29. So they were never without someone present to remind them of their duty, and punish neglect of it.

30. One of the best men in the city was appointed to take charge of them;

31. He arranged them into their bands, and chose their captains from among the most temperate and boldest of the Irens,

32. Who were usually twenty years old, two years out of the boys’ group.

Chapter 10

  1. A young man chosen as Iren was the boys’ captain when they fought and their master at home,

  2. Using them for the offices of his house; sending the eldest of them to fetch wood, and the less able to gather salads;

  3. And these they must either go without or steal; which they did by getting cunningly into gardens or the eating-houses.

  4. If they were caught they were whipped, not for stealing but for being found out.

  5. They stole all the other food they could, watching all opportunities when people were asleep or careless.

  6. If they were caught, they were punished not only by whipping but by hunger also,

  7. Being reduced to their ordinary allowance, which was very slender,

  8. This to induce them to help themselves and exercise their energy and cunning.

  9. This hard and spare fare, and the work of getting it, had another purpose:

10. It conduced to beauty of shape; for a dry and lean habit is a better subject for nature’s configuration, which the gross and overfed are too heavy to submit to properly.

11. Just as we find that women who take physic whilst they are with child bear leaner and smaller but better-shaped and prettier children.

12. So seriously did the Spartan children go about their stealing,

13. That it is reputed that a youth, having stolen a young fox and hid it under his coat,

14. Suffered it to tear out his very bowels with its teeth and claws, and died rather than let it be discovered.

15. The Iren used to stay with the boys after supper, and bade one of them to sing; to another he put a question requiring a thoughtful answer,

16. For example, who was the best man in the city? What he thought of such an action of such a man?

17. Thus the boys were taught early to pass careful judgement on persons and things, and to keep themselves informed.

18. If they had not an answer ready they were looked upon as dull and careless, with little sense of honour;

19. Besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they said, and in as few and comprehensive words as possible.

20. He that failed of this, or answered not to the purpose, had his thumb bitten by the master.