Chapter 11

From the central mass of the mountain system of the Peloponnesus in Arcadia, two chains, Taygetus and Parnon, detach themselves and extend southward, terminating in the two dangerous promontories of Taenarum and Malea. Between the two ridges the river Eurotas winds its way in a southeasterly course. In the undulating valley formed by the bed of the stream, and shut in by the mountain ranges, lay ancient Sparta. The country, by nature and climate, was such as to make men hardy and determined. Euripides styles it "a country rich in productions, but difficult to cultivate; shut in on all sides by a barrier of stern mountains; almost inaccessible to the foe." Its hidden situation in the Eurotas valley made it a well-guarded camp, and the Dorian conquerors of the Peloponnesus, surrounded by enemies and threatened by warlike neighbors, soon saw that the only hope of holding their conquests and extending their power lay in the maintenance of a warlike race.

Lycurgus, usually reputed to have lived in the ninth century before Christ, was the founder of the legislation which constituted the greatness of Sparta. He was one of the originators of the principle, so characteristic of antiquity and in such contrast to the spirit of modern times: "The citizen is born and lives for the State; to it his time, his strength, and all his powers belong." Nowhere was this maxim so rigidly enforced as at Sparta. Lycurgus established institutions of a public nature which gave a centralized administration of the most rigid sort, and regulations relating to private life which would develop a warlike type of citizen, the whole system tending to make Sparta supreme in the Peloponnesus, and her soldiers invincible in war. To accomplish this end, the daily life of every individual, both male and female, was under the control of the State. The effect of such a system on the character has been happily expressed by Rousseau: "He strengthened the citizen by taking away the human traits from the man."

Lycurgus saw that the salvation of Sparta depended on its citizens being a nation of warriors. Only by being always ready for war and by possessing an invincible body of soldiery could the State fulfil its destiny in the work of the world. He realized further that the natural antecedent of a nation of men strong physically and intellectually is a race of healthy, sturdy, able-bodied women. Hence his training of the daughters of Sparta was the corner-stone of his system. Valuing woman only for her fruitfulness, his legislation in regard to her had but one object in view--fitting her to be the mother of a powerful race of men. Maidens, therefore, as well as youths, were subjected to the most rigid physical training.

From the moment of birth, the Spartan boy or girl was in the hands of the State. The infant was exposed in the place of public assembly, and if the elders considered it frail and unpromising, or for any reason regarded its existence of no value to the State, the child was thrown off a cliff of Mount Taygetus,--a usage shocking to modern sensibilities, but accepted as a necessity by Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers. The able-bodied child was restored to its mother, and she directed the early training of her charge under the eye of the magistrates. Though the Spartan girl was not, as the youth, removed altogether from the mother at the age of seven and brought up in the barracks, yet her training was scarcely less severe than that of the boys. The feminine tasks of spinning and weaving, customary for free women of other peoples, were by the Spartans committed to female slaves, and the State so ordered the lives of the free maidens that they might become in the future the mothers of robust children. "He [Lycurgus] directed the maidens," says Plutarch, "to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they conceived might in strong and healthy bodies take firmer root and find better growth." These gymnastic exercises they practised in public, clad in little else save their own modesty, thus overcoming fear of exposure to the air, as well as overgreat tenderness and shyness. Similarly clad, they took part in processions along with the young men, and were trained in singing and dancing in the public choruses. This carefully regulated comradeship between youths and maidens was encouraged with a view to stimulating the young men to deeds of valor. The maidens on these occasions would make, by means of jests, befitting reflections on the young men who had misbehaved themselves in the wars, and would sing encomiums upon those who had done gallant actions. Thus the young men were spurred on to greater endeavor by the dread of feminine ridicule, and were inspired by feminine praise to the performance of great deeds. It was always the part of the Spartan maiden, then, to keep bright the fires of patriotism and heroic endeavor. The mother, by precept and example, taught the daughter to repress every emotion of womanly tenderness, to elevate the State to the first place in her heart and life, and to find her destiny in bearing brave sons to defend her country. Thus admitted to the freedom of companionship with their brothers in the games and processions, and stimulated by the instructions of their mothers, they early caught the spirit and purpose which animated one and all--the spirit of unselfish patriotism. It was natural, therefore, that they accepted without a murmur the tyranny of a single idea and found in it their glory and pride. Many stories are told of their remarkable devotion to the State. A Spartan mother who has lost her boy in battle exclaims: "Did I not bear him that he might die for Sparta?" To another, waiting for tidings of the battle, comes a messenger announcing that her five sons have perished. "You contemptible slave," she replies, "that is not what I wish to hear. How fares my country?" On hearing that Sparta is victorious, she adds, without a tremor: "Willingly, then, do I hear of the death of my sons."

Marriage is the determining factor in the economic conditions of society, and the regulations prescribed concerning it are an excellent index to the character of any people. Under the Lycurgan system, marriage was strictly under the control of the State. The goddess of love was practically banished from Sparta. Only one temple to Aphrodite stood in Lacedaemon; and in this the goddess was represented armed, not with her magic girdle, but with a sword, and seated with a veil over her head and fetters upon her feet, symbolizing that she was under restraint. History records many instances of affection between husband and wife, but considerations of love did not enter into the marriage contract. No frail woman was allowed to marry. The age of marriage was fixed at the period which was considered best for the perfection of the offspring, usually about thirty years in the case of the men, and about twenty for the maidens. Plutarch describes in uncolored language the chief features of the marriage relations of the Spartans:

"In their marriages, the husband carried off his bride by a sort of force; nor were brides ever small and of tender years, but in their full bloom and ripeness. After this, she who superintended the wedding comes and clips the hair of the bride close round her head, dresses her up in man's clothes, and leaves her upon a mattress in the dark; afterward comes the bridegroom, in his everyday clothes, sober and composed, as having supped at the common table; and entering privately into the room where the bride lies, unties her virgin zone, and takes her to himself; and after staying some time together, he returns composedly to his own apartment, to sleep as usual with the other young men. And so he continues to do, spending his days and indeed his nights with them, visiting his bride in fear and shame and with circumspection, when he thought he should not be observed; she also, on her part, using her wit to help to find favorable opportunities for their meeting, when company was out of the way. 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. Their interviews being thus difficult and rare, served not only for continual exercise of their self-control, but brought them together with their bodies healthy and vigorous, and their affections fresh and lively, unsated and undulled by easy access and long continuance with each other, while their partings were always early enough to leave behind unextinguished in each of them some remaining fire of longing and mutual delight.

"After guarding marriage with this modesty and reserve, Lycurgus was equally careful to banish empty and womanish jealousy. For this object, excluding all licentious disorders, he made it nevertheless honorable for men to give the use of their wives to those whom they should think fit, that so they might have children by them; ridiculing those in whose opinion such favors are so unfit for participation as to fight and shed blood and go to war therefor. Lycurgus allowed a man, who was advanced in years and had a young wife, to recommend some virtuous and approved young man, that she might have a child by him, who might inherit the good qualities of the father, and be a son to himself. On the other side, an honest man who had love for a married woman upon account of her modesty and the well-favoredness of her children 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."

Regulations such as these, though shocking to modern sensibilities, seem not to have been detrimental to public morals while Sparta submitted to the severe austerity of the laws. It seems surprising that, while a woman might lawfully be the recognized wife of two husbands, no such duplication of spouses was allowed to a man. This rule is illustrated by its one historical exception In the case of King Anaxandrides, who, says Herodotus, when the royal Heraclidaean line of Eurystheus was in danger of becoming extinct, married his niece, who bore him no children. The people besought him to divorce her, and to contract another marriage; but, owing to his love for his wife, he positively refused. Upon this, they made a suggestion to him as follows: "Since then we perceive thou art firmly attached to the wife whom thou now hast, consent to do this, and set not thyself against it, lest the Spartans take some counsel against thee other than might be wished. We do not ask of thee the putting away of the wife thou now hast; but do thou give to her all that thou givest now, and at the same time take to thy house another wife in addition to this one, to bear thee children." When they spoke to him after this manner, Anaxandrides consented, and from this time forth he kept two separate households, having two wives, a thing which, we are told, was not by any means after the Spartan fashion.

Every inducement was offered to encourage matrimony, and bachelors were the objects of general scorn and derision. "Those who continued bachelors," says Plutarch, "were in a degree disfranchised by law; for they were excluded from the sight of the public processions in which the young men and maidens danced naked, and in the winter-time the officers compelled them to walk naked round the market place, singing, as they went, a certain song to their own disgrace, that they justly suffered this punishment for disobeying the laws." Furthermore, at a certain festival the women themselves sought to bring these misguided individuals to a proper sense of their duty by dragging them round an altar and continually inflicting blows upon them. Without doubt, the maidens were all inclined to matrimony, as it enhanced their influence and enabled them to fulfil their mission; and the rulers were ever ready to provide husbands for them.

A kind of disgrace attached to childlessness. Men who were not fathers were denied the respect and observance which the young men of Sparta regularly paid their elders. On one occasion, Dercyllidas, a commander of great renown, entered an assembly. A young Spartan, contrary to custom, failed to rise at his approach. The veteran soldier was surprised. "You have no sons," said the youth, "who will one day pay the same honor to me." And public opinion justified the excuse.

The effects of the athletic training upon the physical nature of woman were most commendable. The Spartan maiden was renowned throughout Greece for preeminence in vigor of body and beauty of form. Even the Athenian was impressed by this. Lysistrata, in the play of Aristophanes, in greeting Lampito, the delegate from Sparta, who has come to a women's conference, speaks thus:

"O dearest Laconian, O Lampito, welcome! How beautiful you look, sweetest one! What a fresh color! How vigorous your body is! What beautiful breasts you have! Why, you could throttle an ox!" To this greeting comes the reply:

"Yes, I think I could, by Castor and Pollux! for I practise gymnastics and leap high."

Ideals of beauty differ in different ages and countries, and there is no doubt that Lampito was a magnificent specimen of woman; yet it may be doubted whether such masculine vigor is consonant with the highest moral and spiritual development, which, after all, is the chief factor in womanly charm. Spartan women were in demand everywhere as nurses, and were universally respected for their vigor and prowess; yet it was the equally healthy, but more graceful, Ionian woman who was chosen as the model of the statues of the goddess of love and beauty.

Spartan discipline produced beautiful animals, but any system which dulled the sensibilities could hardly inculcate that grace and sweetness and warmth of temperament which are essential to beauty.

As to the moral nature of the Spartan woman, there is no doubt that the unselfish devotion to the State, and the subordination of individual inclination to the good of the whole, would tend to promote a rigid morality. Yet the free intercourse between the sexes shocked the Athenians; and Euripides, in the _Andromache_, has put into the mouth of Peleus a severe indictment of the Spartan woman:

"Though one should essay, Virtuous could daughter of Sparta never be. They gad abroad with young men from their homes, And--with bare thighs and loose, disgirdled vesture-Race, wrestle with them--things intolerable To me! And is it wonder-worthy then That ye train not your women to be chaste?"

The Spartan laws, it is true, permitted and encouraged certain practices regarded as morally wrong in this day, yet that which was lawful could not well be considered immoral. Xenophon and Plutarch were ardent admirers of the Spartan system, and strongly affirm the uprightness and nobility of the Spartans. Plutarch tells an incident to illustrate Spartan virtue in the old days. Geradas, a very ancient Spartan, being asked by a stranger what punishment their law had appointed for adulterers, answered: "There are no adulterers in our country." "But," replied the stranger, "suppose there were." "Then," answered he, "the offender would have to give the plaintiff a bull with a neck so long that he might drink from the top of Taygetus of the Eurotas River below it." The man, surprised at this, said: "Why, 'tis impossible to find such a bull." Geradas smilingly replied: "It is as impossible to find an adulterer in Sparta."

Though we have to recognize much in the Spartan polity which is repugnant to our ideas of the sacredness of family ties, yet we must feel the utmost respect for the Spartan matron in the best days of Lacedaemon. This rigid system provided for four or five centuries "a succession of the strongest men that possibly ever existed on the face of the earth," and the strength of character of the mothers made the sons what they were. Only the Roman matron can be fitly compared to the Spartan mother.

It is not surprising that such mothers possessed an influence envied throughout Greece. "You Spartan women are the only ones who rule over men," said a stranger to Gorgo, wife of Leonidas. "True," she rejoined; "for we are the only ones who are the mothers of men."

For several centuries, owing to her peculiar discipline, Sparta was, excepting Athens, the foremost State of Greece. But time is an enemy often not taken sufficiently into consideration by men who establish peculiar systems. And Lycurgus, who wished to make his system perpetual, did not fully consider the disintegrating effects which time exerts on all things temporal. "_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_ [You may repress natural propensities by force, but they will be certain to reappear]," says Horace, the wisest of Roman satirists; and the Spartan polity had attempted to repress nature in men and women and to control it by law. The great fault in the Lacedaemonian constitution was in effect the violation of the eternal laws which assign to each creature his role in the harmony of the world. Men are made for war, but they are made for peace as well. Therefore, as Lycurgus made the city an armed camp, in periods of peace the Spartan man "rusted like an unused sword in its scabbard," and in idleness at home or in garrison duty abroad fell an easy victim to avarice and lust.

In his legislation concerning women, Lycurgus violated natural propensities to an even greater extent than he had in his laws governing the conduct of men. Woman was destined primarily for domestic life. She was created to bear children; but her kingdom is the home, with its manifold duties, and rearing children is as much her function as bearing them. Yet the Spartan lad was taken forcibly from his mother at the tender age of seven, and the Spartan maiden, while living at home, was subject to stringent regulations formulated and enforced by the State.

Woman is intuitively interested in domestic duties, in housekeeping and clothes mending, and in caring for the innumerable wants of husband and children. Yet the _Syssitia_, or public meals, deprived her of the society of husband and sons, and took from her domestic cares because they were deemed too menial for a free Spartan. "Female slaves," averred Lycurgus, "are good enough to sit at home spinning and weaving; but who can expect a splendid offspring--the appropriate mission and duty of a free Spartan woman toward her country--from mothers brought up in such occupations?"

Although the Spartan system prescribed rigid discipline for the Spartan woman up to the time of motherhood, after that time it left her life altogether unregulated by law. Plato, who was in many respects a great admirer of the Spartans, criticises this singular defect. He found fault with a system which regarded woman only as a mother, and consequently, when children had been born and turned over to the State, did not by law provide occupation for the mothers or in any way regulate their conduct. There was nothing to restrain their luxury or keep them loyal to duty and probity. Higher culture was discouraged, intercourse with strangers was forbidden, and woman was left largely to her own devices for employment and recreation; but she was deprived in large measure of the usual feminine occupations. During the old days, when the State was the all in all of the citizens, and the mothers were urging on husbands and sons to valiant deeds, the evils of the Lycurgan system did not show themselves; but when the crisis came, and Sparta lost her supremacy in Greek affairs, then old manners gave way, vice and weakness rushed in, and men and women alike were debauched and evil.

Aristotle, who was at his zenith during the latter part of the fourth century before Christ, is severe in his denunciations of the license of the Spartan women. This he regards as defeating the intention of the Spartan constitution and subversive of the good order of the State. He argues that, while Lycurgus sought to make the whole State hardy and temperate, and succeeded in the case of the men, he had not done so with the women, who lived in every sort of intemperance and luxury. He charges that the Spartan men are under the domination of their wives--Ares being ever susceptible to the wishes and inclinations of Aphrodite. And the result is the same, he adds, "whether women rule or the rulers are ruled by women." He also attacks the courage of the women, stating that in a Theban invasion they had been utterly useless and caused more confusion than the enemy. He finds them prone to avarice, and regrets that, owing to the inequality of the laws governing property, more than two-fifths of the whole country was already in the hands of women.

Nature in the end asserted herself, and the evils inherent in the Lycurgan system brought about the fall of the State. Sparta had sacrificed the liberties of her citizens, she had despised the laws of nature in the destiny and education of women, she had banished the arts, and had sought to keep out every humanizing influence. Consequently, when that constitution, inflexible and in certain respects immoral and unnatural, was impaired, her decline was rapid. Sad it is that Aristotle should have perceived in the immorality, the greed, the misconduct, of the women, one of the causes of the fall of Sparta!

Sparta had become degenerate, but she was not to die without a final struggle. In the middle of the third century before Christ, two kings of Sparta, inspired by the stories of her early days, endeavored to overcome the luxury and vice that were rampant and to restore the State to its primitive simplicity and greatness. In their meritorious efforts to accomplish the impossible, they enlisted the efforts of noble women, who by their self-sacrificing devotion cast a momentary radiance over the dying State.

The earliest of these two kings was the young and gentle Agis. In the corrupt state of society he saw need of reforms, and wished to begin at the root of the evil by annulling debts and redistributing the land. One of the first counsellors whom he consulted in his projected reforms was his mother, Agesistrata, a woman of great wealth and power, who had many of the Spartans in her debt and would be seriously affected by the change. Yet, becoming conscious of the need of reforms, she, with the grandmother of the young king, entered heartily into his plans to restore the greatness of Sparta. Agesistrata urged other aristocratic women to join in the movement, "knowing well that the Lacedaemonian wives always had great power with their husbands." These, however, violently opposed the scheme, because at this time most of the money of Sparta was in the women's hands and was the main support of their credit and power. Leonidas, the other king, was the head of the opposition, and a deadly struggle followed between Agis and Leonidas--the one standing for the people, the other for the aristocrats. Agis was at first successful, and Leonidas was deposed, Cleombrotus, his son-in-law, being elevated to the kingship in his stead. Another woman now comes to the front. Chilonis, Cleombrotus's wife and Leonidas's daughter, seeing her aged father in exile and distress, leaves her husband in the height of his power and devotes herself to her aged father.