To gymnastics the Dorians, upon the whole an unintellectual people, were naturally much addicted,—far too much according to ancient writers; but here again their modern historian steps in to their defence. He will have it, that it was in later times that they became philogymnasts, and quotes Dion Chrysostom as if he was the principal witness. Plato, to be sure, is referred to as a parasitical authority, and so is Aristotle;[[882]] but then the latter only says, that their constant violent exercises rendered them brutal, in which the historian appears to discover no harm. “This want of moderation, however, though it occurred in later times, is never perceivable in the maxims and ideas of the Dorians, who in this, as in several other cases, know how to set bounds to youthful ardour, and check its pernicious effects.”[[883]] This, it appears to me, is the language of an apologist. If they had such knowledge, how culpable must they have been not to check it in the matter of the Crypteia?
It may be observed, however, that though they devoted to gymnastics too much of their leisure, the fault lay in them, not in the system of exercises, which was in itself one of extreme beauty and simplicity. Its object,—which it was excellently calculated to attain,—was not to create athletæ but soldiers, not gigantic strength, but an elastic, agile, beautiful frame, adapted for all the movements of war. Boxing, accordingly, and the pancration[[884]] were banished from their gymnasia, a regulation evincing at the same time their wisdom and their taste; the former being the most barbarous and useless, the latter the most unseemly portion of gymnastics, often exhibiting the antagonists rolling and struggling, like savages or animals devoid of reason, on the ground.
As the ancient idea of education included every thing employed to develope the powers of body or mind, we must regard in this light the military games peculiar to the Spartans and Cretans.[[885]] Among the former the youth, having sacrificed to Ares in a temple at Therapne, passed over into an island dyked round and called Platanistas, where, dividing off into separate parties, they engaged in a contest which wanted nothing but arms to render it a genuine battle. A learned historian, seldom sparing of words, avoids describing this interesting scene; and wherefore?—Because a faithful description of it must convey a striking idea of Spartan ferocity. “They exerted” says he, “every means in their power to obtain the victory.”—Exactly; but what were those means? “Adolescentium greges Lacedæmone vidimus ipsi indibili contentione certantes, pugnis, calcibus, unguibus, morsu denique; quum exanimarentur priusquam se victos faterentur.[[886]]” Yet were these battles carried on under the eyes of magistrates, the five Bidiæi[[887]] appointed to superintend these exercises as well as those performed elsewhere. The little island where they fought was a spot of great natural beauty, encircled by a sheet of clear water, and approached on all sides through thick and lofty groves of platane trees. A bridge thrown over the canal led to the island on both sides, and on the one stood a statue of Heracles, on the other of Lycurgus. This battle was reckoned among the institutions of the latter, and under the protection probably of the former. The preliminaries to the fight were as follow. They first sacrificed in the Phœbaion which stands without the city, not far from Therapne. Here each of the two divisions of the youth offered up a dog’s whelp to Ares, the bravest of domestic animals, sacred in their opinion to the bravest of the Gods. No other Grecian people sacrificed the dog excepting the Colophonians, who offered up a black bitch to Hecate. In both cities the sacrifice was performed by night. After the ceremony two tame boars were brought forward, one by each party, which they compelled to fight; and they whose brute champion proved superior, thence augured that victory awaited them in the Platanistas. On the following day, a little before noon, they entered by the bridges into the island, one party by one bridge, the other by the other. But the choice was not left to them, having been determined on the preceding night by lot. Being arrived, they faced each other, and commenced the battle, striking with the fist, kicking, leaping on each other, tearing one another with their teeth, and gouging after the most approved Kentucky fashion. Thus they struggled, man to man, urging forward together and thrusting each other into the water.[[888]] From these words, as well as from the testimony of Cicero cited above, it is clear the combat was conducted with no other arms than those furnished by nature, though Lucian, misemploying the verb ὁπλομάχειν,[[889]] would lead us to a different conclusion. But this kind of battle is always enumerated among the gymnastic exercises or contests; and what necessity would there have been to have recourse to fists, feet, teeth, and nails, had they been permitted the use of arms? Fatigued with this violent exertion they betook themselves for a short time to repose, refreshed by which they resumed their exercises, dancing in most intricate measures to the sound of the pipe.[[890]] Akin in spirit to the contests in the Platanistas were the ever-recurring battles fought by the young men with the three hundred followers of the Hippagretæ; three inferior magistrates appointed by the Ephori, who selected each one hundred followers from among the healthiest and bravest of the youthful population. Against this chosen band all the other young men of the city were bound by custom to make war; and, but that they could be parted by any citizen who might happen to be passing by, it is probable that these fierce boxing matches would often have terminated fatally.
Similar customs prevailed in Crete, where, as in most other parts of Greece, the business of education appears to have commenced at the age of seven years, when the cake called Promachos was given to the boys, because, as it has been conjectured, they were thenceforward to be trained for fighting. Up to the age of seventeen they were denominated Apageli, since they were not until then admitted into those Agelæ[[891]] or bands, in which they thenceforward performed their exercises. Here, as in Sparta, the greatest possible care was taken to extirpate from the character every germ of effeminacy. They ate whatever food was given them squatting on the ground, not being permitted to join their elders at the board, and went abroad in all weathers clad in a single garment, like the boys of Sparta during their hibernation. However, the youth of the several Agelæ, armed with stones, and iron weapons, marching to the sound of flutes, and assailing each other, converted their exercises into something very like real warfare. Our cudgel-playing, single-stick, &c. are pastimes of the same description; and boxing now nearly exploded, can plead classical precedent. They were habituated, says Ephoros, to labours and arms, and taught to despise both heat and cold, rough roads and cliffs, and the blows they received in the gymnasium and their mock battles. The use of the bow formed part of their education, as well as the armed dance, at first taught by the Curetes, and afterwards named the Pyrrhic; so that a warlike spirit breathed through the whole system of their education.[[892]]
With all these facts before him, though many of them he has suppressed, the historian of the Doric race, in direct contradiction to Plato and Aristotle, contends naïvely that it would be erroneous to conclude that the aim of bodily exercise among the Dorians was war, or that in their result they rendered the youth either brutal or ferocious. Their object, in his opinion, was to obtain something like ideal beauty of form, strength, and health, which, he says, they accordingly attained, being, about B. C. 540, the healthiest of the Greeks and most renowned for beautiful men and women. But Xenophon whom, on the subject of health he quotes, does not authorise his superlative:—"It would not be easy," are his words, “to find healthier or more active men.”[[893]] Again, the language of Herodotus by no means bears him out. He, indeed, affirms that Callicrates, a Spartan, was the handsomest man in the army at Platæa, but says nothing of the Spartans being handsomer than the other Greeks; but rather the contrary. He was not merely the handsomest man among his countrymen, but, which he evidently considered more remarkable, among all the other Greeks.[[894]]
Not, however, to insist on such points as these, let us proceed to examine the intellectual cultivation of the Dorians.[[895]] That the art of writing never flourished very generally at Sparta appears to be on all hands admitted, though we can by no means doubt that among them numerous individuals possessing this accomplishment might always be found. Thus, in the old story of the combat of the three hundred Spartans and Argives, it is related that Othryades, the sole survivor of the Laconian band, having remained last on the field of battle, erected a trophy and wrote upon it with his blood Λακεδαιμόνιοι κατ᾽ Ἀργείων, immediately after which he died of his wounds.[[896]] Generally, however, no great stress was laid on a knowledge of the art of writing, which, in the opinion of some authors, was of comparatively little value where the people were taught to chant their laws as well as their songs. Similar customs and regulations prevailed on this head in Crete, where, nevertheless, letters appear to have been viewed with a more favourable eye.[[897]] In addition to their body of legal poetry, which was probably less voluminous than a metrical version of the statutes at large, the youth were taught to sing hymns in honour of the gods and the praises of illustrious men.[[898]] In music, too, they were permitted to make some proficiency, though generally, we are told, it was their ambition to excel rather in the regularity of their manners than in the extent of their acquirements.
With respect to the Spartans it is probable, though the testimony of ancient writers be sufficiently contradictory, that no great stress was laid even on the ability to read; for, while Plutarch[[899]] conceives this art to have been among their ordinary acquirements, Isocrates, a grave and more competent authority, is decidedly of the opposite opinion.[[900]]
Ælian,[[901]] too, coming in the rear of Plutarch, observes that the Lacedæmonians were ignorant of mental culture (μουσικῆς) meaning evidently as Perizonius has already observed, not “music” as Kühn would translate it, (for in this they were learned,) but a knowledge of poetry and eloquence.[[902]]
That the Spartans were noted for their indifference to literature, is well known. Even Xenophon, their apologist, instituting a comparison between their system of education and that prevailing among the other Greeks, observes that the latter sent their boys to school that they might learn their letters, music, and the exercises of the palæstra, while the former placed them under the care of a grave man who might punish them if slothful and inactive, and inculcate great modesty and obedience in lieu of the usual accomplishments. Plato also, in the Greater Hippias,[[903]] having observed that their laws were averse from the reception of foreign learning, adds immediately after that the majority of them were even ignorant of arithmetic. In another place,[[904]] indeed, the philosopher appears to hold a different language, and is literally understood by Perizonius. But the reader who examines the passage attentively, will probably agree with me in considering it nothing more than one of those profoundly ironical strokes in which, above all writers, he abounds. He in fact remarks, what in another sense may have been very true, that no countries were more fertile in sophists than Crete and Lacedæmon, but that they dissembled their wisdom and feigned ignorance, lest they should appear to excel all their countrymen in sapience, of which in reality there was very little danger. He observes, however, no less ironically, that those rude and unrhetorical nations were of all men most philosophical and eloquent, and that it had long been understood by a great many that to laconise, or act the Spartan, was rather to be a philosopher than a diligent student of gymnastics. Perizonius,[[905]] indeed, conceives that all this is to be understood of natural sound sense, applied to morals and those brief and pithy sayings or λογοὶ, which constituted the science of laconics.
But, after all, there never was, as Cicero observes, a single orator among the Spartans; nor could it be otherwise, since all the arts which beget and foster eloquence, and, more important still, every political institution which favours it, were unknown in their state. Nay, so far did they push their aversion for the oratorical art, that if any citizen of Sparta acquired, in his experience abroad, the skill artificially to wield a syllogism or a trope, he was subjected to punishment,[[906]] while rhetoricians were expelled the city.[[907]] Ignorance, therefore, of whatever learned nations prize, was their chief boast. To them the sublime speculations of the Academy, and the logic, sharp and irresistible, of the Lyceum, were equally strangers; yet their discipline, and the habits of youth, imparted to them what in modern jargon is termed a kind of practical “philosophy.” They understood the great art, at least among them, how to command their passions; as Maximus Tyrius[[908]] relates of Agesilaos who, though educated in no school of philosophy, was nevertheless not a slave to love, which therefore the sophist infers could not be a matter of great difficulty. However there were limitations to their aversions for learning. They opened in their state an asylum for those antique teachers of mankind, the poets,[[909]] proscribed by Plato, and were in this respect so superior in good taste to that philosopher, that they at length, in imitation of the Great Preceptors of Greece, instituted public recitations of Homer. And this, Maximus Tyrius adduces as a proof that many well-constituted states had existed in which Homer was not publicly studied, for he could not mean that he was once entirely unknown at Sparta.[[910]]