3. The following are two examples of Spartan laconisms: “Either this, or on this.” [Either bring this, or be brought on this. Attributed to Gorgo on presenting a shield to her son.] “Let Xerxes come and take them.” The reply of Leonidas when summoned by Xerxes to surrender his arms.
4. Among the literary tidings from modern Greece that seem to foretoken close at hand a signal renaissance of Greek literature, are the following: With the establishment of the kingdom in the present century, education is spread over every corner of free Greece. In education the Greek child does not learn the grammar of the modern language, but of the ancient. Perhaps no nation now produces so much literature in proportion to its numbers. The Greeks seem restless in their desire to give expression to their thoughts. Many rich Greeks have published books at their own expense. Very frequently scholars produce their best works for periodicals, or even newspapers. Almost every literary man of eminence makes efforts in every literary direction. An American classical school has recently been opened in Athens by Prof. Goodwin, of Cambridge, Mass., on the site of an old school of philosophy. The University of Athens is assuming special prominence as a literary institution.
5. Homer was Blind Melesigenes. He was so called because he was supposed to have been born on the borders of the river Meles.
6. The Delphic Oracle pronounced Socrates “the wisest of mankind.”
7. The monk Planudes is apparently relieved of the imputation concerning the authorship of the biography of Æsop ascribed to him, by the discovery at Florence of a manuscript of this life that was in existence a century before Planudes’s time.
8. Some of the reasons for supposing that this biography is a falsifying one are as follows: His being represented as a monster of ugliness and deformity, was doubtless intended to heighten his wit by contrast. In Plutarch’s Convivium Æsop is a guest, and there are many jests on his original servile condition, but none on his appearance, and a delicacy on such points does not usually restrain ancient writers. The Athenians erected a noble statue in honor of Æsop, which they doubtless would not have done had he been deformed. Pliny states that Æsop was the Contubernalis of Rhodopis, his fellow slave, whose extraordinary beauty passed into a proverb.
9. The hecatomb was strictly the sacrifice of a hundred oxen. All hecatombs were sacred. This sacrifice is said to have been particularly observed by the Lacedæmonians when they possessed a hundred cities. The sacrifices were subsequently reduced in number, and goats and lambs substituted for oxen.
10. The ceremony of taking a prisoner by the girdle in token that he is to suffer death was, ancient writers state, a custom among the Persians. After the trial was over, instead of formally pronouncing sentence upon the accused, all the members of the tribunal arose from their seats and, turning their heads away from the prisoner, took hold of his girdle, the highest in command taking hold first. Even the relatives, if any were in the tribunal, went through the same ceremony. Those in rank below the accused continued to bow before him, notwithstanding his condemnation.
11. The scythed chariots of the Persians had two wheels with knives fastened to each axle, extending obliquely outward. They were ordinary wooden chariots, with a platform large enough for two to stand on, resting on the axles without springs. Each chariot was drawn by four horses abreast. Later, long spikes were placed in the ends of the poles, and the back parts of the chariot were armed with several rows of sharp knives. The horses were driven by a charioteer, whose duty it was to manage his steeds, and with a shield ward off the missiles of the enemy, while his chief stood behind and with his sword endeavored to hew down those who escaped the scythes.
12. The quotation, “When Greek joined Greek, then was the tug of war,” is from the play of Alexander the Great, written by Nathaniel Lee, an English dramatic writer of the latter part of the seventeenth century.