“My dear sir, how could there be such a monstrous animal?”
Plate Plate 23.—Running Girl.
Anderson.
“My dear sir, how could there be adultery at Sparta?”
At birth the babe was taken away from its parent to a hall where the elders of the tribe sat to examine it. If it was plump and strong they said, “Rear it.” If not it was exposed to die in a cleft of the mountain. “For they thought better, both for it and the city, that it should die than that it should live if it was not naturally healthy and strong. That was why the women washed it with wine instead of water as a test of its strength.” They had scientific methods of rearing babies, no swaddling-clothes, no fear of the dark or solitude. Foreigners used to hire Laconian women for their nurses.
As soon as they were seven years old the children were drafted off into “herds.” The most “sensible and combative” of each herd was made prefect, whose orders the others had to obey implicitly and suffer his punishments without wincing. The older men watched them at their play, and set them to fight one another. They learnt letters, but nothing else except music and drill. They walked without sandals, and generally played naked.
At the age of twelve they were allowed one mantle a year, no tunic. “They had no experience of baths and unguents; only for a few days each year they were allowed such luxuries.” They slept in their herds on rushes, which they had to cut from the river-banks. “In winter they used to mix thistles with their bedding, from the idea that there was some warmth in them.” At this age they began to associate with older youths on those curious terms of male love peculiar to the Greeks. Their elders would take a fatherly interest in the achievements of their beloved, chastise and encourage them.