According to the laws of Lycurgus the heir-apparent to the throne was exempted from the necessity of mixing with his fellow-citizens in the public schools, though the younger members of the royal family occupied the same level with other boys.[[867]] That this was an unwise regulation, however, will be at once evident, since no man stands so much in need of severe discipline as a prince, who in spite of correction is too apt to be guided by his unbridled passions. Fact, too, bears out this view, for two of the noblest sovereigns of Sparta, Leonidas and Agesilaos, had been subjected, while boys,[[868]] to the correction of their teachers.
It has been already remarked that the spirit of Spartan education was severe. It was, in fact, precisely the same as that which, in the last generation, pervaded the discipline of the Seneka and Mohawk Indians, and produced those numerous examples of patience, fortitude, and magnanimity, together with that force, agility and suppleness of body so greatly admired and, perhaps, envied by civilised nations. It was this stern and martial system that constituted the secret model, according to which Locke fashioned his plan of youthful training, designed rather to produce a sound mind in a sound body than to shatter and enervate the latter by the piling up in the brain of miscellaneous and often useless knowledge. But in his attempts at hardening the frame and rendering it invulnerable to the stings of suffering, our countryman did not dare to go the lengths of the Spartan legislator, who in this, at least, exhibited superior wisdom, that he did not consider the chastisement of stripes to have any tendency towards creating a base and servile habit of mind.[[869]]
Consistently with the general aim of his institutions, Lycurgus, instead of ordaining, like Locke, that his alumni should wear leaky shoes, dispensed with the incumbrance altogether. And, certainly, in a soldier, the habit of trampling with the naked foot on ice and snow and the sharpest rocks, is worthy of acquisition.
Institutions are generally based on the actual circumstances of society. Lycurgus legislated for a people to whom it was important to be able easily to climb steeps, or descend them with a sure foot, to spring forward also, to run, to bend, and perform innumerable acts of personal dexterity. He, therefore, commenced with boyhood the inculcating of those habits and exercises which their manhood would imperatively require of them.
It has been seen that for change of linen an especial aversion was entertained at Sparta. Children were, therefore, taught to be content with one clean shirt per annum, at the termination of which period it was probably as well peopled as the Emperor Julian’s beard, particularly as, during all that time, it was considered low and unfashionable to bathe or make use of the ordinary ointments, an indulgence permitted to them but for a few days in the course of the year. All this time, however, they might more properly, perhaps, be said to be shirtless, since the himation only was left them, the chiton being taken away.[[870]] They were compelled also, as incipient soldiers, to lie hard on pallet beds, made with the tops of reeds collected, perfunctorily, without the help of the knife or dagger, from the banks of the Eurotas. To this, as an especial indulgence, they were in winter permitted to add a quantity of thistle-down, which material was supposed to contain much warmth.[[871]]
The initiation into these accomplishments commenced at the age of twelve. At the same time, acting upon the Galenian maxim, that “a fat stomach makes a lean wit,” the boys were reduced to short commons, the Bouagor, or leader of the juvenile troop, being instructed to pinch them as closely as possible on that score, in order that when the chances of war should reduce them to the necessity of subsisting on famine rations, they might be prepared without murmuring to submit to it. Persons so educated, moreover, would be little delicate in the choice of provisions. Anything, from a sea hedgehog to a snail, would suit their stomachs; and it would be hard indeed if war could ever place them in circumstances where such food as they were accustomed to might not be found. Health, too, and light spirits, as Lycurgus well understood, are the offspring of an abstemious diet. The spare warrior, clean-limbed and agile, would leap round the man puffed out and bloated with overfeeding, and, therefore, to be fat was at Sparta an offence punishable at law.[[872]] However, not to be too hard on the young gentlemen, it was always permitted, when hunger grew troublesome, to have recourse to what, for want of a fitter name, we must call stealing.[[873]]
In modern times it would be thought a poor compliment to any system of education to represent it as an admirable method for rendering a man an accomplished thief. But the Spartan sophists, whose wisdom Plato, in a jocular mood, so greatly extols, held a different theory. They did not undertake the teaching of morals, but such habits as became a soldier, among which thieving always maintains a distinguished place. Xenophon, however, is careful to guard us against the supposition that this habit of appropriation arose from want. The object of the legislator was, without the incurring of moral guilt, to nourish all the useful habits commonly found in a thief,—as, the power to watch by night, to wear the mask of honesty by day, craftily to lay snares, and even to set spies upon the individual to be plundered. To men designed to spend their lives in war such qualities are, doubtless, of the highest importance, since they enable them to procure provisions and overreach the enemy.[[874]] To this practice Xenophon alludes in the Anabasis, where the army is placed in circumstances of much difficulty. “I understand,” he says to Cheirisophos, “that among you Lacedæmonians the habit of stealing is carefully cultivated from childhood; and that, so far from being disgraceful, it is considered a necessary accomplishment, so long as you keep within the bounds prescribed by law. When detected, however, it is equally lawful to be scourged.”[[875]]
Were they scourged, then, for stealing? Not at all, but simply for being caught; and Xenophon is right in remarking, that, in all human arts, they who unskilfully perform what they undertake are punished, and so should a bungling thief.[[876]] The passage immediately following is mutilated or inextricably corrupt,[[877]] but, from an attentive examination, it would appear that the boys detected on these occasions were selected to be flogged[[878]] during the festival of Artemis Orthia, or Orthosia, whose altar was thus annually smeared with human blood. This impartial superstition extended its empire over all ranks and conditions of men, servile or free, from the beggar to the prince; for here, we are told, Helots had sometimes the honour to be scourged in company perhaps with a scion of the Eurypontid or Agid kings. At Alea, in Arcadia, women, by the command of an oracle, were subjected to the same discipline. “Here,” says Pausanias,[[879]] “during the festival of Dionysos women, by command of an oracle, were flogged like the youth of Sparta at the altar of Artemis Orthia.”
The above ordinance of Lycurgus led in the next instance to the hybernation of the youth upon the mountains:[[880]] to inure them still further to hardships, and, practically to teach them the art of providing for themselves, they were sent forth with a roving commission to prowl about the highlands and less frequented parts of Laconia, armed for self-protection, and that they might be able to bring down their game. At first, perhaps, they confined themselves within the limits prescribed by law. But almost of necessity they would become involved in quarrels with the Helots, by plundering whose farms and villages they chiefly subsisted. The Helots would sometimes resist and sometimes resent their incursions. Ill blood would be engendered. Hot and fiery youths, abandoned to their own guidance, would easily discover excuses for cruelty and revenge. From quarrels they would proceed to blows—from blows to assassination; and beaten, perhaps, by day, they would fall suddenly on the defenceless peasants in the dead of night, and butcher whole hamlets to avenge an affront offered to them perhaps by an individual. Thus, out of a custom blameless enough in its origin, grew the terrible institution of the Crypteia,[[881]] or annual massacre of the Helots, denied by some modern writers, but too well authenticated, and too much in keeping with the Spartan character and general policy, to allow of our indulging in any scepticism on the point.
But, in addition to the above, there were other branches of education taught at Sparta,—that is gymnastics and music. Writers, desirous of enhancing the mental acquisitions of the Dorians, adhere somewhat too strictly to the meaning often affixed by the Greeks to the word music, which they employed to signify literature. But Xenophon, in his treatise on the Lacedæmonian Commonwealth, appears invariably to use it in its limited and modern signification.