CHAPTER I
EDUCATION AT SPARTA AND IN CRETE
According to a current legend, which Herodotos, owing to his Ionian patriotism, is eager to contradict, Anacharsis the Scythian, on his return from his travels, declared that the Spartans seemed to him to be the only Hellenic people with whom it was possible to converse sensibly, for they alone had time to be wise.[1] The full Spartan citizen certainly had abundant leisure. He was absolutely free from the cares of money-making, for he was supported by an hereditary allotment which was cultivated for him by State-serfs. He had no profession or trade to occupy him. His whole time was spent in educating himself and his younger countrymen in accordance with Spartan ideas, and in practising the Spartan mode of life. The Spartans divided their day between various gymnastic and military exercises, hunting, public affairs, and “leschai” or conversation-clubs, at which no talk of business was permitted; the members discussed only what was honourable and noble, or blamed what was cowardly and base.[2] They were on the whole a grave and silent people, but they had a terse wit of their own, and there was a statue of Laughter in their city. They were always in a state of perfect training, like the “wiry dogs” of Plato’s Republic. They were strong conservatives; innovation was strictly forbidden. The unfortunate who made a change in the rules of the Ball-game was scourged. In the Skias or Council-chamber still hung in Pausanias’ time the eleven-stringed lyre which Timotheos had brought to Sparta, only to have it broken;[3] and the nine-stringed lyre of Phrunis met the same fate. Having once accepted the seven-stringed lyre from Terpander, the Spartans never permitted it to be changed. They had also a talent for minute organisation; both their army and their children were greatly subdivided. Every one at Sparta was a part of a beautifully organised machine, designed almost exclusively for military purposes.
In this strangely artificial State, it was essential that the future citizens should be saturated with the spirit of the place at an early age. There were practically no written laws. Judges and rulers acted on their own discretion.[4] This was only possible if a particular stamp of character, a particular outlook and attitude, were impressed upon every citizen. Consequently, education was the most important thing at Sparta. It was both regulated and enforced by the State. It was exactly the same for all. The boys were taken away from home and brought up in great boarding-schools, so that the individualising tendencies of family life and hereditary instincts might be stamped out, and a general type of character, the Spartan type, alone be left in all the boys. For boarding-schools have admittedly this result, that they impose a recognisable stamp, a certain similarity of manner and attitude, upon all the boys who pass through them.
Therefore, as soon as a child was born at Sparta, it was taken before the elders of the tribe to which its parents belonged.[5] If they decided that it was likely to prove sickly, it was exposed on Mount Taügetos, there to die or be brought up by Helots or Perioikoi. Sparta was no place for invalids. If the infant was approved, it was taken back to its home, to be brought up by its mother. Spartan women were famous for their skill in bringing up children. Spartan nurses were in great demand in Hellas. They were eagerly sought after for boys of rank and wealth like Alkibiades. The songs which they sang to their charges and the rules which they enforced made the children “not afraid of the dark” or terrified if they were left alone; not addicted “to daintiness or naughty tempers or screaming”; in fact, “little gentlemen” in every way.
No doubt the discipline of the children was strict, but then the parents lived just as strictly themselves. There were no luxuries for any one at Sparta: the houses and furniture were as plain as the food. But there is a charming picture of Agesilaos riding on a stick to amuse his children; and the Spartan mothers, if stern towards cowardice, seem to have been keenly interested in their children’s development; they were by no means nonentities like Athenian ladies.
The children slept at home till they were seven; but at an early age were taken by their fathers to the “Pheiditia” or clubs where the grown men spent those hours during which they stayed indoors and took their meals. About fifty men attended each of these clubs. The children sat on the floor near their fathers. Each member contributed monthly a “medimnos” of barley-meal, eight “choes” of wine, five “mnai” of cheese, two and a half “mnai” of figs,[6] and some very cheap relish; if he sacrificed to a god, he gave part of the victim to his “mess,” and if he was successful in hunting (which was a frequent occupation), he brought his spoils to the common table. There was also the famous black broth, made by the hereditary guild of State cooks, which only a life of Spartan training and cold baths in the Eurotas could make appetising; yet elderly Spartans preferred it to meat. Perhaps a fragment of Alkman represents a high-day at one of these clubs: “Seven couches and as many tables, brimming full of poppy-flavoured loaves, and linseed and sesamum, and in bowls honey and linseed for the children.”[7]
A Spartan who became too poor to pay his contribution to his club lost his rights as a citizen, and so could not have his children educated in the State-system. But as long as the allotments were not alienated, such cases were not common. The contribution was κατὰ κεφαλήν,[8] that is, the fixed quantity of provisions had to be supplied for every member of the family who attended a club, i.e. for every male, since the women took their meals at home. There is no reason whatever for supposing that the boys, either before or after they went to the boarding-schools, were fed at the expense of the State. It is expressly stated that the number of foster-children, who accompanied their benefactors’ sons to school, varied according to the extent of their patron’s means.[9] Parents must therefore have paid something for their boys while they were at school. The teaching involved no expenses; hence it must have been the food for which they paid. Thus, only those boys could attend the Spartan schools whose parents could afford to pay the customary subscription in kind for their own and their children’s food at the common meals. Xenophon, the admirer of all things Spartan, adopts the same system in his State, since he makes the children of the poor drop out automatically from the public schools. It must be remembered that at Sparta families were always small, and the population tended to decrease steadily; the number of males for whom subscriptions had to be paid by the head of the family can rarely have been large.
Generally speaking, therefore, the Spartan schools were only for the sons of “Peers” (ὅμοιοι),[10] that is, those who paid the subscriptions. But a certain number of other boys were admitted, provided that their food was paid for. A rich Spartan might, if he chose, select certain other boys to be educated with his own son or sons, and pay their expenses meanwhile.[11] The number of these school-companions depended on the number of contributions in kind which he was capable of supplying. The school-companions could thus attend the Spartan schools; but they did not become citizens when they grew up, unless they revealed so much merit that the Spartan State gave them the franchise.
From what classes were these school-companions drawn? Sometimes they were foreigners, sons either of distinguished guest-friends of leading Spartans, or of refugee-settlers in Laconia. Thus Xenophon’s two sons were educated at Sparta. These foreign boys were called τρόφιμοι or Foster-children. Xenophon mentions “foreigners from among the τρόφιμοι.”[12] If these Foster-children, when grown up, remained in Sparta they possessed no civic rights. A passage in Plato refers to the difficulty which was experienced in getting these Foster-children to accept this humble position.[13] It is interesting to note that Sparta thus precedes Athens as an educational centre to which boys from foreign cities came to receive their schooling.
More often Spartan parents chose Helots to be school-companions of their sons. Thus Plutarch speaks of “two of the foster-brothers of Kleomenes, whom they call Mothakes.”[14] The name Mothax was applied to these educated Helots. They seem to have been notorious for the way in which they presumed upon their position, if we may assume a connection between Mothax and Mothon, a term which is used for the patron deity of impudence in Aristophanes, and elsewhere is the name of a vulgar dance.[15] They were not enfranchised when their school-days were over, and had to settle down to slavish duties, unless they showed peculiar merit. But several of the most distinguished Spartans, including Lusandros, were enfranchised Mothakes.
Xenophon, in a passage which has already been quoted, mentions “gentlemen-volunteers of the Perioikoi and certain foreigners of the so-called Foster-children and bastards of the Spartiatai, very goodly men and not without share in the honourable things in the State.”[16] If most of the authorities are right in regarding “the honourable things”[17] as a Spartan phrase for their educational system—and there is good ground for this view—then this passage shows that illegitimate sons, and perhaps eminent Perioikoi, passed through the public schools at Sparta although, however, neither were called Foster-children, a name reserved for distinguished foreigners. The Helots who shared the education were known as Mothakes, and sometimes as σύντροφοι, school-companions; but they do not seem to have been called τρόφιμοι, “Foster-children.”
During the best period of Spartan history, none of these extra pupils, τρόφιμοι, Mothakes, illegitimate children, and eminent Perioikoi, were enfranchised unless they showed peculiar merit. At a later date, perhaps, any one who passed through the schools became a Spartan citizen. Plutarch makes this a part of Lukourgos’ system; but that is improbable. Such a custom would only arise in the days of Spartan decay and depopulation. On the other hand, any Spartan boys who flinched before the hardships of their national education, lost their status, and were disfranchised, if they did not persevere.[18]
Till they were seven, the boys were taken to their fathers’ clubs: the girls had all their meals with their mothers at home, for the women did not have dining-clubs. By seeing the hardships which their fathers endured, and hearing their discussions on political subjects and their terse humour, the boys were already being trained in the Spartan mode of life; for the clubs served as an elementary school. There, too, they learnt to play with their contemporaries, and to exchange rough jests without flinching. To take a jest without annoyance was part of the Spartan character; but if the jester went too far for endurance, he might be asked to stop.
At seven the boys were taken away from home, and organised in a most systematic way into “packs” and “divisions.” These were the “ilai,” which probably contained sixty-four boys, and the “agelai,” whose numbers are unknown.[19] These packs fed together, slept together on bundles of reeds for bedding, and played together. The boys had to go barefoot always, and wore only a single garment summer and winter alike. They were all under the control of a “Paidonomos” or “Superintendent of the boys,” a citizen of rank, repute, and position, who might at any moment call them together, and punish them severely if they had been idle: he had attendants who bore the ominous name of Floggers.[20] So, as Xenophon grimly remarks, a spirit of discipline and obedience prevailed at Sparta. In order that the boys might not be left without control, even when the Paidonomos was absent, any citizen who might be passing might order them to do anything which he liked, and punish them for any faults which they committed. The most sensible and plucky boy in each pack was made a Prefect over it, and called the Bouâgor, or “Herd-leader”; the rest obeyed his orders and endured his punishments.[21]
The elder men stirred up quarrels among the boys in order to see who was plucky. Over every school was set one of the young men over twenty who had a good reputation both for courage and for morality.[22] He was called the Eiren. He kept an eye on their battles, and used them as servants at home for his supper; he ordered the bigger boys to bring him firewood, and the smaller to collect vegetables. The only way by which such supplies could be obtained was by stealing them from the gardens and the men’s dining-clubs. Apparently, then, the boys dined with him in his house;[23] they were supplied with a scanty meal by their parents to eat there, and were encouraged to make up the deficiency by stealing. “When the Eiren had finished supper, he ordered one of the boys to sing, and to another he propounded some question which needed a thoughtful answer, such as, ‘Who is the best of the grown-ups?’ For such particular questions are more stimulating than generalities like ‘What is virtue?’ or ‘What is a good citizen?’ The answer had to be accompanied by a concise reason; failure was punished by a bite on the hand. Elder men watched, saying nothing at the time, but rebuking the Eiren severely afterwards if he was too strict or too lenient.”
Thus we find at Sparta a prefect-system and fagging. But the sense of responsibility produced in the elder boys at English public schools and the practice which they acquire in exercising authority were prevented at Sparta by the perpetual presence of grown men, which made Laconian schools more like French Lycées. There is no class of professional schoolmasters; the Eiren, the Paidonomos, and any elder who chooses, give the instruction freely and gratuitously. Education, being so simple, cost nothing at Sparta.
From Plutarch’s mention of stealing from the men’s dining-clubs it may safely be inferred that boys of this age dined apart. Whether it was always in the Eiren’s house cannot be ascertained. After the age of sixteen they must have come into the men’s syssitia; for Xenophon implies that the visitor to Sparta could see lads of that age at dinner and ask them questions: and a visitor would certainly not have dined in a dining-room meant only for boys. Whether the election of members took place at that age, or whether they still went to their fathers’ clubs, is unknown.
The education was almost entirely physical. Plutarch, it is true, says that they learnt “letters, because they were useful.”[24] This may have been a later introduction, or perhaps the amount learnt was so little as to justify Isokrates in saying that the Spartans “do not even learn their letters, which are the means to a knowledge of the past, as well as of contemporary events”;[25] he also thought it highly improbable that even “the most intelligent of them would hear of his speeches, unless they found some one to read them aloud.”[26] They had, indeed, little reason to learn to read. Their written laws were very few, and these they learnt by heart, set to a tune. They had nothing to do with commerce or even with accounts; very few of them knew how to count.[27] Hippias, the Sophist, found that all they cared to listen to, were “genealogies of men and heroes, foundations of cities, and archæology generally.” Probably, like the Dorian philosopher Pythagoras, and like Plato, the admirer of all things Dorian, they held that memory was all-important, and that the use of writing weakened it.[28] Besides the State-laws set to music there were songs which praised dead heroes and derided cowards: the diction was plain and simple, the subjects grave and moral; many of them were war-marches; all were incentive to pluck and energy.
Rhetoric was, of course, utterly forbidden: a young man who learnt it abroad and brought it home was punished by the Ephors.[28] Spartans learned to be silent as a rule; when they spoke, their remarks were short and much to the point, for they thought it wrong to waste a word.[29] This was definitely taught to the boys, as has been shown above. “If you converse with quite an ordinary Laconian,” says Plato,[30] “at first he seems a mere fool; then suddenly, at the critical point, he flings forth a pithy saying, and his companions seem no better than children compared with him.” This epigrammatic wisdom Plato ironically ascribes to the fact that Laconians really attend Sophists on the sly, and are greater philosophers than any one knows. Many echoes of their terse and grim humour have come down to modern times: such as Leonidas’ remark to his troops at Thermopylae, “Breakfast here: supper in Hades”; and the Spartan’s description of Athens, “All things noble there,” by which he meant that nothing, however base, was counted ignoble.
The Spartans must not be regarded as wholly averse to literature. They knew Homer, and thought him the best poet of his class, although the manner of life he inculcated was Ionic, not Doric.[31] Alkman spent his life at Sparta, and has left one splendid song for a chorus of Laconian girls. Aristophanes could put a fine chorus into the mouths of Laconians, though its subject is noticeably warlike. For it was war-poems that the Spartans liked. “They care naught for the other poets,” says the Athenian orator, Lukourgos, “but for Turtaios they care so exceedingly that they made a law to summon every one to the king’s tent, when they are on a campaign, to hear the poems of Turtaios, considering that this would make them most ready to die for their country.”[32]
After all, the objects of the Spartan education were not intellectual acuteness and the accumulation of knowledge, but discipline, endurance, and victory in war. Discipline was taught by the perpetual presence of authority, and by very severe punishments. Spartan boys were practically never left to their own devices: perhaps that is the secret of the moral failure of nearly every Spartan who was given a position of authority outside Lakedaimon; for responsibility requires practice. Endurance was taught by their whole mode of life. They went barefooted, with a single garment, played and danced naked under the hot Laconian sun;[33] there were no ointments or luxurious baths for their bodies, only the Eurotas for a swim, and a bundle of reeds for a bed. The food which the boys received was very scanty: often they were turned out into the country in the early morning to provide food for themselves for the whole day by stealing.
This organised stealing was a feature of Spartan education. At an early age, as we have seen, the small boys were sent out to steal firewood and vegetables for the Eiren who had charge of them. Later they were driven out into the country, to forage for themselves at the expense of the farms. There was a definite age at which it was customary to begin stealing.[34] The articles which might be stolen were fixed by law, and the legal limits might not be transgressed.[35] It must be remembered that much property in Laconia was held in common. Any one, for instance, who was belated while hunting might take what food he pleased from a country house, and even break open seals to get at provisions. The Spartans also used one another’s dogs and horses freely, without permission. It is therefore absurd to say that the system taught the boys to be dishonest. If the State agrees to declare certain articles to be common property, it is no longer stealing if one citizen removes them from the house of another: he is no more dishonest than a man who picks blackberries or buttercups in England. At one of the English public schools, tooth-mugs used to be a recognised article of plunder. The small fags were expected to keep their particular dormitory supplied with them, at the expense of others. They were punished by the wronged dormitory if caught in the act of removing them: but ingenuity in such thefts was regarded as praiseworthy. There was a certain number of these mugs belonging to the whole house; they were common property, and could therefore be purloined without dishonesty.
Moreover, this system of legalised robbery had a valuable educational object at Sparta. It was excellent training in scouting, laying ambushes, and foraging, all of which it is very important that a future soldier should learn. Xenophon, a soldier himself, notices this, and in the Anabasis, when he needs a clever strategist, he selects a Spartan because he has been educated in this way. Since this was the object of the system, the boys, if caught, were flogged, not for stealing, but for stealing clumsily. Isokrates declares that skill in robbery was the road to the highest offices at Sparta. “If any one can show that this is not the branch of education which the Lacedaemonians regard as the most important,” he adds, “I admit that I have not spoken a word of truth in my life.”[36]
These foraging expeditions of the boys prepared them for the similar, if more arduous, duties of “Secret Service”[37] which awaited them between eighteen and twenty. Young men of this age were sent in bands to the different districts of Laconia for long periods, during which they hid in the woods, slept on the ground, attended to their own wants without a servant, and wandered about the country by day and night.[38] When it appeared good to them or their chiefs they made sudden attacks on the Helots, and slaughtered those who seemed ambitious enough to be dangerous, the Ephors declaring war on their serfs yearly in order that there might be no blood-guiltiness attached to these assassinations.[39] There was a regular officer set over this secret police, who no doubt directed where the particular youths should go.[40] At a critical moment of the Peloponnesian War, 2000 of the bravest and most ambitious Helots suddenly “disappeared,” probably by this means.[41] But Plato recognised the educational value of such a system, if the murders were omitted. In his Laws[42] he institutes a force of κρυπτοί, 720 in number, who patrol the whole country, taking the twelve districts in turn, so as to gain a complete acquaintance with it. They have all the farm-servants and beasts at their disposal, for digging trenches, making fortifications, roads, embankments, and reservoirs, for irrigation works and the like. The similarity of name suggests similarity of functions, but how much of this the κρυπτοί at Sparta did cannot be fixed. Probably their chief work was to keep watch over the subject populations, Perioikoi and Helots, who were otherwise left almost entirely to their own devices.
In their institutions of the foraging parties and Secret Service, the Spartans show a clear appreciation of boy-nature, as well as a keen eye for methods of military training. Moderns are beginning to realise that the average boy has so much of the primitive and natural man in him that, unless he is permitted to “go wild” and live the savage life at intervals, he is apt to become riotous and lawless. Hence in recent days the institution of camps for boys in England and “Seton Indians” in America. The Spartans, alone of Hellenes, fully recognised this peculiarity of boys, and met it with the foraging expeditions and secret service. The Athenian boy was not thus provided for until he became an ephebos; hence the Athenian streets were full of young Hooligans, while the aristocratic lads developed more refined, if more vicious, methods of giving vent to their instincts. In these country-expeditions alone the Spartan boys had an opportunity of escaping from the presence of their elders and developing habits of self-reliance and responsibility. Had Sparta made better use of these opportunities, the fate of her Empire after Aigospotamoi might have been different.
A frequent occupation of all ages at Sparta was hunting. This, too, they recognised to be an excellent training for soldiers, since it involved courage in meeting wild beasts, skill and ingenuity in tracking them, and hardships of all sorts in the forests and on the mountains. Laconia was full of game, and Laconian hounds were famous. The successful huntsman gave what he had killed to enrich the meals of his dining-club, and so won much popularity.
Spartan boys must also have learnt to ride, for they had to go in procession on horseback at the festival of Huakinthos.[43] They were taught to swim, too, by their daily plunge in the Eurotas. A great part of their time was spent in gymnastics, under the close inspection of their elders. Boxing and the pankration were forbidden to the young Spartan, probably because they developed a few particular muscles at the expense of the others.[44] For wrestling no scientific trainers were allowed; the Spartan type depended solely on strength and activity, not on technical skill; so a Spartan, when beaten by a wrestler from another country, said his opponent was not a better man, but only a cleverer wrestler.[45] Gladiators, such as those mentioned in Plato’s Laches as teaching the use of arms, were not permitted at Sparta; these, however, seem to have been unpractical theorists, quite useless in battle, as General Laches shows by a funny anecdote about one of them.[46] No lounging spectators were permitted in Spartan gymnasia; the rule was “strip or withdraw.”[47] The eldest man in each gymnasium had to see that every one took sufficient exercise to work off his food and prevent him from becoming puffy.[48] The physical condition of the boys was inspected every ten days by the Ephors,[49] while the competitions of the epheboi seem to have been controlled by a special board, the Bidiaioi, who figure in inscriptions.[50] Aristotle says of the whole Spartan discipline that it made the boys “beast-like,”[51] but admits that it did not produce the one-sided athlete, so common in Hellas, who looked solely to athletics, and was too much specialised to be good for anything else. Xenophon[52] says that it would be hard to find anywhere men with more healthy or more serviceable bodies than the Spartiatai. The most beautiful man in the Hellenic army at Plataea was a Spartan.[53] The Spartan boys’ manners were in some ways surprisingly maidenlike. When they went along the highway, they kept their hands under their coat, and walked in silence, keeping their eyes fixed on the ground before their feet. They spoke as rarely as a statue and looked about them less than a bronze figure: they were as modest as a girl. When they came into the mess-room, you could rarely hear them even answer a question.[54]
Fighting was encouraged at all ages; there were organised battles, somewhat resembling football matches, for the epheboi, in a shady playing-field surrounded by rows of plane trees and encircled by streams, access to it being given by two bridges. After a night spent in sacrifice, two teams of epheboi proceeded to this field. When they came near it, they drew lots, and the winners had the choice of bridges by which to enter the ground, selecting no doubt in accordance with the direction of sun and wind, as a modern football captain, who has won the toss, selects the end of the ground from which he will start playing. The epheboi fought with their hands, kicked, bit, and even tore out one another’s eyes, in the endeavour to drive the opposing team back into the water.[55]
The grown men were also encouraged to fight by the following device. The Ephors selected three of them, who were called Hippagretai. Each of these three selected one hundred companions, giving a public explanation in each case why he chose one man and rejected the others. So those who had been rejected became foes to those who were selected, and kept a close watch over them for the slightest breach of the accepted code of honour. Each party was always trying to increase its strength or perform some signal service to the State, in order to strengthen its own claims. The rivals also fought with their fists whenever they met.[56]
This systematised pugnaciousness at Sparta presents an interesting parallel to the German University duels and to the fights which used to be almost daily occurrences in the life of an English schoolboy. Most of the older English public schools can still show the special ground which was the recognised scene of these battles.
Floggings were exceedingly common at Sparta. Any elder man might flog any boy. It was not etiquette for boys to complain to their parents in these cases; if they did so, they received a second thrashing. But the triumph of this system was the flogging of the “epheboi” yearly at the altar of Artemis Orthia, in substitute for human sacrifice. Entrance for the competition was quite voluntary, but competitors seem always to have been forthcoming even down to Plutarch’s days. They began by practice of some sort in the country.[57] The altar was covered with blood; if the floggers were too lenient to some “ephebos” owing to his beauty or reputation, the statue, according to the legend, performed a miracle in order to show its displeasure.[58] The competitors were often killed on the spot; but they never uttered a groan.[59] The winner was called the “altar-victor” (βωμονίκης) and an inscription still records such a victory.[60]
The girls at Sparta were also organised into agelai or “packs.”[61] They took their meals at home, but otherwise lived a thoroughly outdoor life. They had to train their bodies no less than the boys, in order that they might bear strong children, so they took part in contests of strength as well as of speed.[62] They shared in the gymnasia and in the musical training. Among their sports were wrestling, running, and swimming; they were exposed to sun and dust and toil.[63] They learned to throw the diskos and the javelin;[64] they wore only the short Doric “chiton” with split sides.[65] They went in procession at festivals like the boys; at certain festivals they danced and sang in the presence of the young men, praising the brave among them and jeering at the cowards. At the Huakinthia the maidens raced on horseback. Theokritos makes a band of 240 maidens, “all playmates together, anoint themselves like men and race beside the Eurotas.”[66] That passage also gives wool-work to Laconian maidens (which is probably untrue, being contradicted by Plato),[67] and lyre-playing, which is contradicted by a Laconian in Plutarch, who says that “such rubbish is not Laconian.” The result of all this outdoor training was great physical perfection: Lampito, the Spartan woman in Aristophanes’ Lusistrata, is greatly admired by the women from other cities for her beauty, her complexion, and her bodily condition: “she looks as though she could throttle a bull.” She ascribes it to her gymnastics and vigorous dancing.[68] The girls till they married wore no veil, and mixed freely with the young men; in fact, there was one dance where they met in modern fashion; first the youth danced some military steps, and then the maiden danced some of a suitable sort.[69] Consequently love-matches were far more possible at Sparta than elsewhere in Hellas. After marriage the women had to wear veils, and remained at home; gymnastics, dances, and races ceased.
The Spartans were intensely fond of dancing, but it must be remembered that they often called dancing what moderns would call drill. For war was almost a form of dance; they marched or charged into battle to the notes of the flute, crowned and wearing red cloaks. The march tunes were in frequent use in Sparta, no doubt at military exercises. Every day the epheboi were drawn up in ranks, one behind the other, and went through military evolutions and dancing figures alternately, while a flutist played to them and beat time with his foot.[70] This is simply musical drill. The great national festival of the Gumnopaidia was very similar. Three great battalions, consisting respectively of old men, young men, and boys, drawn up in rank and file, exhibited various movements, chiefly of a gymnastic sort, singing the songs of Thaletas and Alkman and Dionusodotos the while and indulging in impromptu jesting at one another’s expense, after the fashion of a rustic revel-chorus in Attica. Sometimes the battalions appeared one by one, and were “led out” like an army, by the Ephors.[71] On other occasions all three were drawn up in crescent formation side by side, with the boys in the middle. The festival must have closely resembled the public parades of the gymnastic clubs in Switzerland. There were posts of honour and dishonour, as in battle, cowards usually receiving the latter. But Agesilaos, the king, once received an inferior station after his victory at Corinth, and turned the insult by a jest, “Well thought of, chorus-leader: that’s the way to give honour to the post.”[72] Then there was the war-dance, imitating all the actions of battle, a sort of manual and bayonet exercise, but accompanied by much acting and by music. Every Spartan boy began to learn this as soon as he was five.[73] It was done in quick time, if we may judge by the “Pyrrhic” or war-dance foot ( ˘ ˘ ). There was also a wrestling-dance,[74] and most gymnastics were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In fact, chorus-dancing was a regular part of the education of Spartans and Cretans: the only experience of singing which most of them possessed was acquired in this way.[75] It is true that elegiacs were sung as solos before the king’s tent on campaigns, and at meals, when the victor got a particularly good slice of meat; but probably this accomplishment was confined to a few. Aristotle asserts that the Laconians did not learn songs, but claimed nevertheless to be able to distinguish good from bad.
* * * * *
Such was the Spartan system of education. To an Englishman their schools have a greater interest than those of any other ancient State. Sparta produced the only true boarding-schools of antiquity. The “packs” of the Spartan boys, like the English public schools, formed miniature States, to whose corporate interests and honour each boy learned to make his own wishes subservient. Spartan boys, too, like our own, had the smaller traits of individuality rubbed off them by the publicity and perpetual intercourse with others involved in the boarding-school system, in order that the racial characteristics might the more emerge in them. They, too, learnt endurance by hardship, and were early trained both to rule and to obey by means of the institution of prefects and fagging. But here the resemblance stops short. The Spartans, like most other nations, were not prepared to pay the price at which alone an education in responsibility can be obtained, the price which lies in the possible ruin of all the boys who are not strong enough to be a law to themselves. They very rarely left the boys to themselves without grown men to look after them. They were always interfering and supervising, instead of leaving the prefects to exercise their authority. And so, when Spartans were sent abroad to govern cities or command armies, having had no practice in responsibility, they failed shamefully and ignominiously. But this is equally true of the Athenians and of other Hellenes. The Spartans deserve all credit for their experiments with the boarding-school system.
But the system which they adopted had many faults, besides that which has already been noticed. There was no individual attention for the boys. The hardships were excessive and brutalising. While the boys’ bodies were developed and trained almost to perfection, their minds were almost entirely neglected: hence the stupidities of Spartan policy and the lack of imagination which their statesmen showed. It was impossible to over-eat or over-drink under the Spartan system, so the young Spartan had no experience in self-restraint.[76] The gymnasia and dining-clubs caused a great deal of quarrelling (which the Spartan authorities welcomed), and of immorality (which was very strictly forbidden); the Spartan gymnasia erred less, however, in this latter respect than the Athenian. In war the Spartans were only invincible so long as they were the only trained troops in Hellas; the rise of professional armies ruined them, for they could not adapt themselves to new circumstances. They produced no art and very little literature, if any. But their whole State was as much a work of art as a Doric temple, and of very much the same order, with its symmetry and regularity, its sacrifice of detail to the whole, its strength and restraint. It was also the inspiration of at least one great piece of literature, Plato’s Republic.
If courage was their sole object, as perhaps it was, they succeeded in obtaining it. The coward was a rare, and a most unhappy bird at Sparta. Mothers on several occasions killed sons who returned home from a campaign disgraced. “No one would mess with a coward, or consort with him. When rival teams were chosen for the game of ball, he was omitted. In dances he received the post of dishonour. He was avoided in the streets. No one would sit next to him. He could not find a husband for his daughters or a wife for himself,” and was punished for these offences. “He was beaten if he imitated his betters in any way.”[77] If the Hellenes were a nation of children, as the old Egyptian called them, the Spartans were at least a manly sort of schoolboy. They deified the schoolboy virtues, pluck and endurance. If we wish to see how far their education, in its best days, enabled them to prove true to their ideals, let us consider those 300 at Thermopylae waiting, with jests on their lips, for the onset of Oriental myriads, and remember that finest of all epitaphs, of which English can give no rendering, written upon their memorial in the pass in honour of their obedience unto death—
Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
* * * * *
The Cretan system of education was very similar in many ways to the Spartan. In both localities the teaching was given by any elder member of the community who chose, not by a professional and paid class of masters. But in Crete education cost the parent even less than at Sparta; for the boys were fed largely at public cost.[78] But so was every other Cretan, male and female alike. Each community possessed large public estates, cultivated by public serfs.[79] The revenues thus accruing to the State were applied to the expenses of government, which were small, and to the food-supply of all citizens. Thus men, women, and children were all fed mainly at public cost. It may be noted, however, that there is no question of providing the children of improvident parents with meals at the expense of more provident citizens. Moreover, the heads of families, who each possessed an allotment, as at Sparta, had to contribute a tenth of the produce of their estates.
The women-folk took their meals at home,[80] although the cost of their food was mainly defrayed by the public revenues. The men took their meals in dining-clubs (ἀνδρεῖα). The whole population of each community was divided into clubs of this sort, apparently on the family basis, so that two or three families made up a club between them, to which their children and descendants would in turn belong. All the males of the family attended these meals; small children, boys, and young men as well as elders are all mentioned as being present at the same dinners.[81] The club is only an enlarged family party. The small children sat on the ground behind their fathers; they waited on themselves and on their elders, but the general superintendence of cooking and attendance was in the hands of a woman with three or four public slaves and some underlings in her control.[82] As they grew older, the sons sat beside their fathers. Boys ordinarily received half what their parents had; but orphans were allowed the full quantity at their dead father’s club.
Thus the Cretan club was an amalgamation of several families into a sort of clan, whose male members all dined together. All the boys of the clan formed one boarding-school. They all slept in one room, perhaps attached to the dining-hall; there was always a dormitory attached to each of these buildings for visitors from other cities, so it would be natural to expect a dormitory for the children also. The boys took their meals in the club dining-hall, in the presence of their elders, by whose improving conversations upon politics and morals they were supposed to be educated. These elder members elected one of their number to serve as παιδονόμος or “Superintendent of the boys” of their club.[83] Under his directions the boys learned letters “in moderation”: they were constantly practised in gymnastics, in the use of arms, especially the bow, which was a great Cretan weapon, and in the war-dances, the Kuretic and Pyrrhic, both indigenous in Crete. They learned the laws of their country set to a sort of tune, in order that their souls might be drawn by the music, and also, that they might more easily remember them. In this way, if they did anything which was forbidden, they had not the excuse of ignorance.[84] Besides this, they were taught hymns to the gods, and praises of good men. The favourite metre for these purposes was the Cretic (– ˘ –), which was regarded as “severe” and so suitable for teaching courage and restraint.[85] The Pæan was their chief national form of song. Cretan boys were also practised in that terse and somewhat humorous style of speaking which we have already seen at Sparta.[86]
Cretan boys were always fighting either single combats or combined battles against the boys of another club-school. They were taught endurance by many hardships. They wore only a short coat in summer and winter alike. They learnt to despise heat and cold and mountain paths and the blows which they received in gymnasia and in fighting.
They remained in the club-schools till their seventeenth year,[87] when they became epheboi and celebrated their escape from the garb of childhood by a special festival.[88] Like their contemporaries at Athens, the epheboi took a special oath of allegiance to the State and hatred towards its enemies. A fragment still survives of the oath taken by the epheboi of Dreros, near Knossos.[89] At seventeen the epheboi were collected into “packs” (ἀγέλαι) by private enterprise. A rich and distinguished young ephebos would gather round him as large a pack of his contemporaries as he could; their numbers no doubt depended partly on his wealth, and still more on his personal popularity. The aristocratic element in this arrangement is very noticeable, as in all the institutions of Crete as contrasted with Sparta. The father of this young chief usually acted as leader of the pack (ἀγελάτης); he possessed full authority over them and could punish them as he pleased. He led them out on hunting expeditions and to the “Runs” (δρόμοι), that is, the gymnasia of the epheboi. Cretans who had not yet entered a pack of epheboi were excluded from these runs (ἀπόδρομοι); when they entered, they were called “members of packs” (ἀγέλαστοι).[90] The pack-leader could collect his followers where he pleased;[91] very possibly the epheboi did not attend the club dinners ordinarily, but fed or slept either at their patron’s house (whence the need of a rich pack-leader) or in some special room. They thus corresponded closely to the Spartan boys of a younger age under their Eiren. Their food was supplied, like that of all Cretans, largely out of the public revenues. On certain fixed days “pack” joined battle with “pack” to the sound of the lyre and flutes and in regular time, as was the custom in war; fists, clubs, and even weapons of iron might be used. It was a regular institution, half dance, half field-day, with fixed rules and imposed by law. These battles must have closely resembled the contests of the Spartan epheboi in the shady playing-fields. The life of the boys was surrounded with a military atmosphere throughout. They wore military dress and counted their weapons their most valuable possessions. Young Cretans remained in the packs till after marriage. Then they returned to their homes and the clubs.
Of the practical results of Cretan education nothing can be said. From the day when Idomeneus sets sail from Troy, Crete almost disappears from Hellenic history. Too strong to be attacked by their neighbours, too much weakened by intestine feuds to assume the aggressive, the Cretans remained aloof from their compatriots on the mainland and in the archipelago till the close of the period of Hellenic independence.
APPENDIX A
SPARTAN SYSSITIA
These dining-clubs were organised like “diminutive states.”[92] It was enacted who was to recline in the most important place, who in the second, and so on, and who was to sit on the footstool, which was the place of dishonour, usually assigned only to children. “Each man is given a portion to himself, which he does not share with any one. They have as much barley bread as they like, and there is an earthenware cup of wine standing by each man, for him to put his lips to when he feels disposed. The chief dish is always the same for all, boiled pork. There is plenty of Spartan broth, and some olives, cheese, and figs.[93]
“Each contributes to his mess about 18 gallons of barley meal, 60 or 70 pints of wine, and a small quantity of figs and cheese, and 10 Aeginetan obols for extras.” This contribution no doubt covered expenses, for the quantity sent by an absentee king, probably representing the average consumption of an individual, falls well within this estimate (cf. Herod. vi. 57). After the regular meal[94] an ἔπαικλον or extra meal might be served. It would be provided by a member of the mess, consisting either of the results of hunting or the produce of his farm, for nothing might be bought. The ordinary components of such a meal were pigeons, geese, fieldfares, blackbirds, hares, lambs, and kids, and wheaten bread, a welcome change from the usual barley loaves. The cooks proclaimed the name of the giver, so that he might get the credit. ἔπαικλα were often exacted as fines for offences from rich members; the poor had to pay laurel leaves or reeds. There was also a special sort of ἔπαικλον designed for the children, barley meal soaked in olive oil—a sort of porridge, in fact. According to Nicocles the Laconian, this was swallowed in laurel leaves—which does not sound very inviting.
There were also banquets independent of the messes. These were called κοπίδες.[95] Tents were set up in the sacred enclosure round the temple of the deity in whose honour the feast was given. Heaps of brushwood covered with carpets served for couches. The food consisted of slices of meat, round buns, cheese, slices of sausage, and for dessert dried figs and various beans.
At the Tithenidia, or Nurses’ Feast, a κοπίς was given at the temple of Artemis Koruthalia by the stream Tiassos.[96] The nurses brought the boy-babies to it. The sacrifice was a sucking pig, and baked loaves were served. The κοπίδες were evidently a feature of Spartan life: Epilukos makes his “laddie” (κωράλισκος) remark, “I will go to the κοπίς in Amuklai at Appellas’ house, where will be buns and loaves and jolly good broth”: which shows that the children’s parties at Sparta were regarded as attractive.
The Karneia, the great Spartan festival, was an imitation of camp-life.[97] The sacrificial meal was served in tents, each containing nine men, and everything was done to the word of command.
APPENDIX B
CRETAN SYSSITIA
The chief authorities for the attendance at these meals are the two historians, Dosiades and Purgion, quoted in Athenaeus (143). Dosiades states that an equal portion is set before each man present, but to the younger members is given a half portion of meat, and they do not touch any of the other things. Purgion says: “To the sons, who sit on lower seats by their fathers’ chairs, they give a half portion of what is supplied to the men; orphans receive a full share.” The comparison of the two passages shows that the “younger members” mentioned by Dosiades are what Purgion calls the orphans, and that they are not yet full-grown men. Thus they must be either the boys or the epheboi. It is not, however, at all likely that the epheboi, who were of military age and engaged in violent exercises, would be given only half rations, so these younger members are the boys not yet included in the ἀγέλαι. Dosiades continues: “On each table is set a drinking vessel, of weak wine. This all who sit at the common table share equally. The children have a bowl to themselves,” that is, the boys who sat beside their fathers but not at the table. “After supper first they discuss the political situation, and then recall feats in battle, and praise those who have distinguished themselves, encouraging the youngers to heroism.” The quotation shows that not merely the small children are in question, but boys of an age to understand politics and war.
[1] Herodotos, 4. 77.
[2] Plutarch, Lukourgos, 25. Kratinos (Athen. 138) ridicules these clubs and says that the attraction of them was that sausages hung there on pegs to be nibbled.
[3] Pausanias, 3. 12. A similar event happened at Argos. Plutarch, On Music, 37.
[4] Aristot. Pol. ii. 9, 10.
[5] Plutarch, Luk. 16.
[6] Say, 1½ bushels of meal, 5 gallons of wine, 5 lbs. of cheese, and 2½ lbs. of figs.
[7] Smyth, Melic Poets, “Alkman,” 26, if the emendation παίδεσσι be correct.
[8] Aristot. Pol. ii. 9.
[9] Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271).
[10] Xen. Anab. iv. 6. 14; Aristot. Pol. ii. 9. 31.
[11] Phularchos (Athen. vi. 271 e).
[12] Xen. Hellen. v. 3. 9.
[13] Plato, Rep. 520 D.
[14] Plut. Kleom. 8.
[15] Aristoph. Knights, 635, 695 (with Schol. on 697, φορτικὸν ὀρχήσεως εῖδος); Eurip. Bacch. 1060.
[16] Xen. Hellen. v. 3. 9.
[17] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii. 3; Hellen. v. 4. 32.
[18] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iii. 3.
[19] “Agelai” of young men are mentioned by inscriptions at Miletos and Smurna [Böckh, 2892, 3326]; there may have been boarding-schools somewhat resembling those of Sparta at these towns for young men.
[20] μαστιγόφοροι. Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 2. Aristotle calls Paidonomoi an aristocratic institution. They existed in Crete, and inscriptions mention them in Karia, Teos, and many other places.
[21] Plut. Lukourgos, 16. Hesychius declares that the Bouâgor was a boy, so the word cannot mean the Eiren, who was over twenty.
[22] Plut. Lukourgos, 17; Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 11.
[23] In which case the Eiren corresponds closely to the Cretan Agelates.
[24] Lukourgos, 16; Lac. Institutions, 247.
[25] Isok. Panath. 276 D.
[26] Panath. 285 C.
[27] Plato, Hippias Maj. 285 C.
[28] Sext. Empir. Mathem. 2, § 21.
[29] Plut. Lukourgos, 19-20.
[30] Plato, Protag. 342 E.
[31] Plato, Laws, 680 D. Crete repudiated Homer altogether.
[32] Luk. against Leokrates, 107. The Polemarchos was judge in these singing competitions, and the winner received a bit of meat (Philochoros in Athen. 630 f.).
[33] Plato, Laws, 633 E.
[34] Plut. Apoph.
[35] Xen. Anab. iv. 6. 14.
[36] Isok. Panath. 277.
[37] κρυπτεία, κρυπτή.
[38] Plato, Laws, 633 C.
[39] Plut. Lukourgos, 28. Isokrates merely mentions that the Ephors could kill as many Helots as they liked (Panath. 271 B).
[40] Plut. Kleom. 28.
[41] Thuc. iv. 80.
[42] Plato, Laws, 763 B. Some have supposed that κρυπτοί is an interpolation. If so, the resemblance must have been close enough to strike a commentator who knew Lakedaimon, in spite of the fact that the ages in the two systems are different.
[43] Polukrates (in Athen. 139 e).
[44] Aristot. Pol. viii. 4; Plut. Luk. 19.
[45] Plut. Apoph. 233 E. Plato adopts the Spartan views about wrestling in the Laws.
[46] Plato, Laches, 183 D, E.
[47] Plato, Theait. 162 B and 169 B.
[48] Xen. Constit. of Lak. v. 8.
[49] Athen. xii. 550 d. Their dress and bedding was inspected at the same time.
[50] Pausan. 11 2. βίδεος, Böckh, 1241, 1242; βίδυος, 1254.
[51] Aristot. Pol. viii. 4. 1.
[52] Xen. Constit. of Lak. v. 9.
[53] Herod. ix. 72.
[54] Xen. Constit. of Lak. ii. 4.
[55] Paus.iii. 14. 2.
[56] Xen. Constit. of Lak. iv.
[57] Hesychius, Φούαξιρ.
[58] Paus. iii. 16. 11.
[59] Plut. Lukourgos, 18; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 27.
[60] Böckh, 1364.
[61] Pindar, Frag. Hyporch. 8 Λάκαινα παρθένων ἀγέλα.
[62] Xen. Constit. of Lak. i. 4.
[63] Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. 15.
[64] Plut. Lukourgos, 14.
[65] Whence they were called φαινομήριδες. This chiton may be seen in the conventional statues of Artemis.
[66] Theok. Idyll 18. 23.
[67] Laws, 806 A.
[68] Lusistrata, l. 80 onwards. In the play Lampito is married. Aristophanes has either made a mistake or the gymnastics are meant to be in the past only.
[69] The ὄρμος dance. Compare the dance at the end of the Lusistrata, where “man stands by woman, and woman by man.”
[70] Lucian, Dancing, 274.
[71] Xen. Hellen. vi. 4. 16.
[72] Xen. Ag. ii. 17.
[73] Athen. 630 a.
[74] Athen. 678 b.
[75] Plato, Laws, 666 D.
[76] Laws, 634-635.
[77] Xen. Constit. of Lak. ix. 5.
[78] Aristot. Pol. ii. 10. 8.
[79] Additional revenues for the same objects were derived from the taxes paid by Perioikoi and serfs (Athen. 143 a, b).
[80] Plato, Laws, 781 A.
[81] Historians quoted by Athen. 143 e.
[82] Ibid.
[83] Strabo, x. 4. 483 (on authority of Ephoros), and Herakleides Pont. iii. (who provide most of the details about Crete).
[84] Aelian, True History, ii. 39.
[85] Strabo, x. 4. 480.
[86] Sosikrates (in Athen. 261 e), speaking of Phaistos.
[87] Hesychius, ἀπάγελος.
[88] ἐκδύσια, Antoninus Liberalis, 18.
[89] Mahaffy, p. 81; Grasberger, iii. 61.
[90] Eustathius on Il. ix. 518.
[91] Herakl. Pont. iii. 3.
[92] Persaeus ap. Athen. 140 f.
[93] Dicaearchus ap. Athen. 141 a.
[94] Sphaerus ap. Athen. 141 c, d.; and Molpis, ibid.
[95] Polemon ap. Athen. 56 a, and 138-139.
[96] Cp. the crèche temples in Plato’s Laws, 794 A.
[97] Demetrius of Scepsis (ap. Athen. 141 e).