From such an education and such habits tastes essentially unfeminine would naturally spring. Accordingly we find Laconian ladies of the first rank,—Cynisca daughter of king Archidamos, for example,—attending to the breed of horses, and sending chariots to contend at the Olympic games. Nor was her masculine ambition condemned by the Greeks. A statue of the lady herself, together with her chariot, and charioteer, existed among other Olympian monuments in the age of Pausanias. Afterwards many other women, but chiefly among the half barbarous Macedonians, followed the example of Cynisca and Euryleonis another Spartan dame who had been honoured with a statue at Olympia for the success of her chariot at the games.[[1114]]
In strict keeping with the rough manners and masculine bearing of these ladies was the habit of swearing,[[1115]] to which in common with most other Greek women they were grievously addicted. At Athens, however, gentlewomen swore by Demeter, Persephone and Agraulos,[[1116]] an oath by divinities of their own sex[[1117]] being considered more suitable to female lips; but the viragos of Sparta spiced their conversation with oaths by Castor and Polydeukes. According, moreover, to the poet whose testimony is commonly adduced against the Athenian ladies, the women of Sparta drank[[1118]] as well as swore, and we know from authority altogether indisputable, that in the age of Socrates their licentiousness had already become universally notorious in Greece.[[1119]] A scholar, and a diligent inquirer, whose merits are too often overlooked, observes very justly that it was probably the austerity, or more properly the pedantry of Lycurgus’s institutions that gave rise to the notion that chastity was a common virtue at Sparta.[[1120]] It was supposed because occasionally subjected to violent exercise, that they must necessarily be temperate in their pleasures. But we might à priori have inferred the contrary, and the uniform testimony of antiquity proves it. Their wantonness and licentiousness knew no bounds. Even during the ages immediately succeeding the establishment of their constitution, that is at the time of the Messenian wars, to preserve for any length of time their chastity while their husbands were absent in the field was beyond their power, and substitutes were selected and sent home to become the husbands of the whole female population.[[1121]]
But for this ungovernable sway of temperament the institutions of the state were chiefly to blame.[[1122]] We have seen by the whole tenor of their education, modesty and virtue were sapped and undermined; no merit, it was visible, attached to them in the eye of the law; and shrewdly gifted as they were with good sense, they must quickly have discovered that marriage was a mere unmeaning ceremony, and that provided they gave good citizens to the state it would be of little consequence who might be their fathers.[[1123]] The ceremonies attending that lax union which for lack of a better term we must call marriage, resembled closely those which have been found to prevail among other savages in very distant parts of the world.
Having gone through the ceremony of betrothment,[[1124]] in which the bride’s interest was represented by her father or brother, the lover chose some fitting occasion to seize and carry her away from amongst her companions. She was then received into the house of the bridesmaid, where her hair was cut short and her dress exchanged for that of a young man, after which custom directed that she should be left reclining on a pallet bed, in a dark chamber, alone. Thither the bridegroom repaired by stealth, and, afterwards, with equal secresy, returned to his companions, among whom he continued for some time to live as if no change in his condition had taken place. During this period, therefore, their union must be regarded rather as a clandestine intercourse than a marriage, since the husband continued, as at first, to steal secretly into the company of his wife and to effect his escape with equal care, it being considered disreputable for them to be seen together. Even the children springing from this connexion have been supposed to have ranked as bastards; but of this there is no sufficient proof.
A different account is given by other authors of the marriage ceremony at Sparta, but, if properly examined, both relations may very well be reconciled. The above, in fact, appears to have been the ordinary mode when young women of property who had dowries[[1125]] to bestow upon their husbands, were to be disposed of. But the portionless girls, excepting, perhaps, the more beautiful, finding some difficulty in providing themselves with helpmates, a contrivance was hit upon by the legislator, calculated to give a fair chance to all. The unmarried damsels of the city, thus circumstanced, were shut up in the dark, in a spacious edifice,[[1126]] into which the young unmarried men were introduced to scramble for wives, the understanding being, that each was to remain content with the maiden he happened to seize upon. And it would appear that the awards of chance were, in most cases, satisfactory, since we read of no one but Lysander who abandoned the wife he had thus chosen. He, however, having been presented, by fortune, with a maiden of homely features, immediately deserted her for one more beautiful. The bad example thus set was not without its evil consequences, for the men who married his daughters put them away in like manner after his death.[[1127]] But, in both cases, fines for contumacy were exacted by the Ephori. According to the laws of Sparta, men were likewise fined for leading a life of celibacy,[[1128]] for marrying late, or for marrying unsuitably. Thus, king Archidamos was fined for selecting a little woman to be his queen, as if there was something regal in loftiness[loftiness] of stature.[[1129]]
On almost every point connected with Spartan marriages the accounts transmitted to us are contradictory. Thus, we are by some told, as has been seen above, that the union of the bride and bridegroom took place secretly, and remained for some time almost unknown. Nevertheless, there are not wanting those who speak of public ceremonies which took place on the occasion, as for example Sosibios,[[1130]] who informs us, that the cake, called cribanos, shaped like the female breast, was eaten at that repast which the Lacedæmonian women gave in honour of a betrothed maiden when her youthful companions assembled in chorus to chaunt her praises. At Argos, another Doric state, it was customary before the bride joined her husband for her to send him, as a present, the cake called creion, which his friends were invited to partake of with honey. It was baked upon the coals as cakes are still in the East.
When at Sparta the state had recognised the marriage, by permitting cohabitation, no man could call his wife his own. Any person might legally claim the favour of borrowing her for a certain time, in order, if he did not choose to be burdened with a wife, to have a family by her while she remained in the house of her lord. An elderly man was sure to have his connubial privileges invaded in this way, and the most able and philosophical advocates of Lycurgus’s institutions inform us that the Spartan ladies highly approved of all these arrangements. Yet, famous and learned authors undertake to break a lance for the chastity of the Spartan dames, and maintain with infinite complacency that adultery was unknown among them. The truth is that the Spartan laws recognised no such offence.[[1131]] It was legal, common, of every day occurrence, though, from many circumstances, it would appear, that such Lacedæmonians as travelled into other parts of Greece, and learned in what light manners and morals so lax were by them viewed, blushed for their country’s institutions, and, in defence of them, put in practice those arts of delusion and hypocrisy which constituted so distinguished a part of their education.
Much has been said of the stern virtue and patriotism of the Spartan women, and high praise has been bestowed on the callous indifference which they sometimes exhibited on learning the death of their sons;[[1132]] but English mothers, who have given birth to sons as brave as ever fought or bled for Sparta, will, I think, agree with me in rating very low their boasted stoicism, which, if properly analysed, might prove to be nothing more than a coarse and unnatural apathy. The reader of the Greek Anthologia will here remember her who meeting her son a fugitive among the flying from a victorious enemy, inflicted on him with her own hands the death he sought to shun. Had Nature, which is but the voice of God indistinctly heard, anything to do with virtue such as that? Supposing the youth to have been a coward, which the fact of his flying before the enemy by no means proves, was it for the hands that had nursed him to become his executioners? A mother, deserving of the name, would no doubt have sorrowed not to find her boy numbered among the brave, but her maternal heart would not the less have yearned towards the unhappy youth; she would have fled with him into obscurity, and uttered her mild reproaches and shed her tears there.
As often happens, however, these female stoics who were so lavish of the blood of their children, displayed no readiness to set them the example of making light of death when the fortunes of war afforded them an occasion of putting their heroic maxims in practice; for when the Theban army[[1133]] burst forth from the depths of the Menelaion, and swept down the valley of the Eurotas like a torrent, wasting everything before them with fire and sword, the women of Sparta, who had never before seen the smoke of an enemy’s camp, lost in a moment their presence of mind, and, instead of encouraging their sons and husbands calmly to rely upon their valour, ran to and fro through the streets, filling the air with their effeminate wailings, and distracting and impeding the movements of their natural protectors. Very different from this was the conduct of the female citizens of Argos. For when Cleomenes and Demaratos, after having defeated the Argive army, approached the city in the expectation of being able to take it by storm, the poetess Telesilla armed her countrywomen, who, hastening to the defence of the walls, repulsed the Lacedæmonian kings, and preserved the state. In commemoration of this event a festival was annually celebrated, in which the ladies appeared in male attire while the men concealed their heads beneath the female veil.[[1134]]
Again, when the Thebans broke into Platæa during the night, the women, instead of delivering themselves up pusillanimously to fear, joined the men in defence of the city, casting stones and tiles from the housetops upon the enemy. Yet when defeated and flying for their lives, it was one of these same women who, with the characteristic humanity of her sex, supplied them with a hatchet to cut their way through the gates.[[1135]]