Into the character of the Greeks, generally, there entered an element but faintly discernible in the moral composition of modern nations, I mean a most exquisite and exalted sensibility, which rendered them to the last degree susceptible, and liable to be swayed irresistibly for good or for evil by poetry and music. And this characteristic distinguished in some degree the Doric as well as the Ionic race. They could be excited, past belief, by the agency of sound. Music, therefore, with us at least a mere source of enjoyment, among them was invested with a moral character, and employed in education as a powerful means of harmonising, purifying, ennobling the principles and the affections of the heart. For this reason the government, which in Greece was in reality a Committee of Public Safety,[[911]] watched over the music no less sedulously than over the morals of the people, which it powerfully influenced. It must, nevertheless, be confessed that many ancient authors are little philosophical in relating or reasoning upon the effects of music. They often confound consequences with causes. Thus, in the example which certain authors undoubtingly adduce of the Sicilian Dorians,[[912]] whose morals we are told were corrupted by their fiddlesticks, they omit to inquire whether it was not rather the natural and necessary degeneracy of a wealthy people, which corrupted the music. This is my interpretation. For, in the history of the ancient Sicilians, I can discover causes enough of lax and imperfect morals, without calling in the aid of lyre or cithara. But some writers on this point have an easy faith. They suppose that the strict domestic discipline of Sparta “would hardly have been preserved”[[913]] without the old-fashioned music.
In whatever way we decide on the metaphysics of the matter, certain it is that in old times music was an universal accomplishment in most parts of Greece; but this was when it was little more than the chanting of savages, in which, however ignorant, any one may join. Exactly in proportion as it rose into an art its cultivators diminished in number, until, when a high degree of perfection had been attained, it was abandoned almost wholly to professional musicians. The Athenians had been commanded by the Pythian oracle to chant chorically in the streets, a divine service in honour of Bacchos.[[914]] At Sparta similar performances took place during the gymnopædia, when choruses of naked men and boys, with crowns of palm leaves on their heads, proceeded through the streets singing the songs of Thaletas and Alcman and the pæans of Dionysidotos.[[915]] Mr. Müller, who loves to complete or round off the accounts he finds in ancient authors, says that, doubtless, a large portion of the inhabitants of the city took part in these exhibitions. Perhaps they did, but we have no authority for such a supposition. The place in the agora which contained statues of Apollo, Artemis and Leto, was called Choros,[[916]] because there the Ephebi danced in choruses in honour of Apollo. On these occasions unwarlike persons were sometimes thrust into the least honourable places,[[917]] while bachelors were excluded; so that, as Schneider has well remarked, cowardice was less dishonourable than celibacy. But it does not at all appear that the Spartans themselves were ever good musicians, though they were not incapable of relishing good music;[[918]] and hence the foreign musicians who flocked thither found a welcome reception. The developement of the warlike constitution of the state threw the favourable side of their discipline into the shade.[[919]]
The Arcadians, likewise, made great use of music in their system of education, and, though otherwise a rude race, continued to practise it up to the age of thirty. Among them alone, in fact, were children accustomed from infancy to sing, in certain measures, hymns and poems, in which they celebrated the praises of the gods and heroes of their country. After this, observes Polybius,[[920]] they learned the nomoi of Timotheus and Philoxenos, and every year during the Dionysia formed choruses in the theatre, where they danced to the sound of the flute. Here boys contended with antagonists of their own age, and the young men with those more advanced towards their prime. During the whole of their lives they frequented these public assemblies, where they instructed each other by their songs, and not by means of foreign actors. With respect to other branches of education they considered it no disgrace to profess themselves ignorant; but not to know how to sing would, in Arcadia, have been a mark of extreme vulgarity. They habituated themselves to walk with gravity to the sound of the flute, and, having been thus instructed at the expense of the state, proceeded once a year in public procession to the theatre. Their ancestors introduced these customs, not with any view to pleasure, or that they might grow rich by the exercise of their talents, but in order to soften the austerity of character which their cold and murky atmosphere would otherwise have engendered. For the character of nations is invariably analogous to the air they breathe, and it is the geographical position of races which determines alone their temper of mind and the colour and configuration of their bodies.
Besides what has already been said of the Arcadians, it may be added, that it was customary among them for the men and women to unite in chanting certain odes, and to offer up sacrifices in common. There were also dances in which the youth of both sexes joined, and their object was to create and diffuse humane and gentle manners.
But the same habits were not prevalent throughout the whole country. The Kynæthes made no progress in these humanising arts, and as they dwelt in the rudest districts of Arcadia, and breathed the crudest air, their ferocity became proverbial; they addicted themselves to strife and contention, and degenerated into the fiercest and most untameable savages in Greece. In fact, obtaining possession of several cities, they shed so much blood that the whole nation was roused, and at length united in expelling them the land. Even after their departure the Mantinæans thought it necessary to purify the soil by sacrifices, expiations, and the leading of victims round the whole boundary line.
Dancing very naturally constituted a separate branch of education at Sparta as in Crete. In both places the execution of the Pyrrhic appears to have been regarded as a necessary accomplishment, the youths, from the age of fifteen or earlier, having been taught to perform it in arms.[[921]] It was or is—for the Pyrrhic still lingers in Greece,
“Ye have the Pyrrhic dance as yet—”
an exhibition purely military. The dancers, accoutred with spear and shield, went gracefully and vigorously through a number of movements, wheeling, advancing, giving blows or shunning them, as in real action.[[922]] In other parts of Greece, however, the Pyrrhic quickly degenerated in character, becoming little better than a wild dance of Bacchanals.[[923]] It has been rightly observed that at Sparta “the chief object of the Gymnopædia was to represent gymnastic exercises and dancing in intimate union, and, indeed, the latter only as the accomplishment and end of the former.”[[924]] One of the dances, resembling the Anapale, partook of a Bacchanalian character.”[character.”][[925]] The youth, also, when skilled in these exercises, danced in rows behind each other to the music of flutes, both military and choral dances, at the same time, repeating an invitation in verse to Aphrodite and Eros to join them, and an exhortation to each other.[[926]]
It will be seen from the above details that the object of education at Sparta was rather the formation of habits and the disciplining of the mind to act in exact conformity with the laws, than to develope to their fullest extent the intellectual powers of individuals. They desired to amalgamate the whole energies of the people into one mass, upon the supposition that being thus impelled in any particular direction they would prove irresistible. No account was made of private happiness. Everything seems to have been devised for the effecting of national purposes, though from the known laws of the human mind even the restraint and tyrannical interference of such a system would with time be reconciled to the feelings and contribute to individual content. But very much of what renders life sweet, was sacrificed. Letters and arts, that subordinate creation, that world within a world which the beneficence of Providence has permitted man to call into existence, were at Sparta unknown. They enjoyed little or nothing of that refined delight which arises from multiplying the almost conscious fruits of the soul, from sending winged thoughts abroad to move, enchant, electrify millions, from deifying truth and confounding error, from ascending to the greatest heights of mortality, and diffusing from thence a light and a glory to warm and illuminate and gladden the human race for ever. This greater felicity was reserved for the education of Athens, which must, therefore, in all enlightened times, bear away the palm of excellence and utility.
CHAPTER IX.