Defences of the Greeks, such as that made so ably by Mr. Murray against the aspersions cast upon "Paganism" by uncritical Christians, are to be sympathetically received in the light of their purport; but the true historical method is surely not to exhibit the historic Greeks as "antitheses" to "the pagan man" of modern anthropology, but to show Christians how they and their creed have evolved from savagery even as did the Greeks. (Cp. the author's Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 77 sq., as to the pro-Hellenic handling of Greek phenomena by other scholars.)
Should the general line of causation here set forth be challenged, it will suffice, by way of test, to turn to the special case of Sparta. If it were "Greek character" that brought forth Greek art, letters, and science, they ought to have flourished in Greek Sparta as elsewhere. It is, however, the notorious historic fact that during all the centuries of her existence, after the pre-Lycurgean period, Sparta contributed to the general deed of man virtually nothing, either in art or letters, in science or philosophy.
The grounds for holding that choral poetry flourished pre-eminently at Sparta (see K.O. Müller, History of the Dorians, Eng. tr. ii, 383) are not very strong. See Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, 1885, i, 158, 159, for what can be finally said on this head. Ernst Curtius (Griechische Geschichte, 1858, i, 240) writes on this subject as a romantic enthusiast. Burckhardt (Griechische Culturgeschichte, i, 116-19) examines the subject with his usual care, but decides only that the Spartans employed music with a special eye to military education. And Müller acknowledges that though many Spartan lyrists are named, "there has not been preserved a single fragment of Spartan lyric poetry, with the exception of Alkman's," the probable reason being "a certain uniformity and monotony in their productions, such as is perceived in the early works of art." On the whole question cp. K.J. Freeman's Schools of Hellas, chs. i and xi.
In the story of Hellas, Sparta stands almost alone among the peoples as yielding no foothold to the life of the mind, bare of nearly all memory of beauty,[335] indigent in all that belongs to the spirit, morally sterile as steel. Yet "the Dorians of Laconia are perhaps the only people in Greece who can be said to have preserved in any measure the purity of their Greek blood."[336] Before such a phenomenon the dogma of race-character instantly collapses, whereas in terms of the reaction of conditions the explanation is entirely adequate. As thus:—
1. Sparta was by situation one of the most secluded of the Greek States. In the words of Euripides, it was "hollow, surrounded by mountains, rugged, and difficult of access to an enemy."[337] Compared in particular with Athens, it was not only landward and mountain-walled, but out of the way of all traffic.[338]
2. From the first the Spartans were balanced in a peculiar degree by the strength of the Achaians, who were in the Peloponnesus before them, the hostilities between the invaders and the older inhabitants lasting longer in the valley of the Eurotas than anywhere else.[339] The Spartan militarism was thus a special product of circumstances, not a result of Doric "character," since other Dorian communities did not develop it.
3. Being thus so little open to commercial influence, and so committed to a life of militarism, Sparta was susceptible of a rigidity of military constitution that was impossible elsewhere in the Hellenic world, save to some extent in the similarly aristocratic and undeveloped communities of Thessaly and Crete, each similarly noted for unintellectuality. Whatever be the political origins of these societies, it is clear that that of Sparta could not have been built up or maintained save under conditions of comparative isolation.
Grote, always somewhat inclined to racial explanations, argues (ed. 1888, ii, 262), as against K.O. Müller, who had still stronger leanings of the kind, that the Spartans were not the "true Doric type," in that their institutions were peculiar to themselves, distinguishing them "not less from Argos, Corinth, Megara, Epidaurus, Sikyôn, Korkyra, or Knidus, than from Athens or Thebes." This is doubtless true as against Müller (cp. Kopstadt, cited by Grote; Cox, General History of Greece, 1877, p. 28; and Ménard, Histoire des Grecs, 1884, pp. 218, 221), but the suggestion that the Spartans varied in respect of being less "Doric" is equally astray. Grote goes on to note that "Krête was the only other portion of Greece in which there prevailed institutions in many respects analogous, yet still dissimilar in those two attributes which form the real mark and pinch of Spartan legislation—viz., the military discipline and rigorous private training. There were doubtless Dorians in Krête, but we have no proof that these peculiar institutions belonged to them more than to the other inhabitants of the island." The argument cuts both ways. If it was not definitely "Dorian" to have such institutions, neither was it un-Dorian. As Cox observes (p. 30), the Spartan constitution in its earlier stages "much resembled the constitution of the Achaians as described in the Iliad." Equally arbitrary seems Grote's argument (i, 451) that "the low level of taste and intelligence among the Thessalians, as well as certain points of their costume, assimilates them more to Macedonians or Epirots than to Hellenes." He notes the equally low level of taste and intelligence among the Spartans, who as a rule could not read or write (ii, 307), and to whom he might as well have assimilated the Thessalians as to the Macedonians. In all cases alike culture conditions supply the true explanation. All through Greece, barring Sparta, stocks were endlessly mixed. M. Ménard well points out in reply to Müller that it is impossible to associate types of government with any of the special "races"—that as against Sparta there were "Ionian aristocracies at Marseilles and at Chalkis, and Dorian democracies at Tarentum and Syracuse," while most of the Greek cities had by turns aristocratic and democratic constitutions.
4. As regards Sparta, the specialisation of all life on the military side developed a spirit of peculiar separateness and arrogance,[340] which clinched the geographical influence. Where Greeks of all States were admitted to the Eleusinian festivals, Sparta kept hers for her own people.[341] This would limit her literary mythology, and by consequence her art.
Among the names of Greek sculptors only three belong to Sparta, and these are all of the sixth century B.C., the beginning of the historic period. After that, nothing. See Radford's Ancient Sculpture, Chron. List at end. Thus Sparta positively retrogressed into militarism. "There is evidence in the character of Alkman's poetry that he did not sing to a Sparta at all resembling the so-called Sparta of Lycurgus" (Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History, p. 77; cp. Burckhardt, Griechische Culturgeschichte, i, 117).