They gad abroad with young men from their homes,
And--with bare thighs and loose, disgirdled vesture-Race,
wrestle with them--things intolerable
To me! And is it wonder-worthy then
That ye train not your women to be chaste?"
The Spartan laws, it is true, permitted and encouraged certain practices regarded as morally wrong in this day, yet that which was lawful could not well be considered immoral. Xenophon and Plutarch were ardent admirers of the Spartan system, and strongly affirm the uprightness and nobility of the Spartans. Plutarch tells an incident to illustrate Spartan virtue in the old days. Geradas, a very ancient Spartan, being asked by a stranger what punishment their law had appointed for adulterers, answered: "There are no adulterers in our country." "But," replied the stranger, "suppose there were." "Then," answered he, "the offender would have to give the plaintiff a bull with a neck so long that he might drink from the top of Taygetus of the Eurotas River below it." The man, surprised at this, said: "Why, 'tis impossible to find such a bull." Geradas smilingly replied: "It is as impossible to find an adulterer in Sparta."
Though we have to recognize much in the Spartan polity which is repugnant to our ideas of the sacredness of family ties, yet we must feel the utmost respect for the Spartan matron in the best days of Lacedæmon. This rigid system provided for four or five centuries "a succession of the strongest men that possibly ever existed on the face of the earth," and the strength of character of the mothers made the sons what they were. Only the Roman matron can be fitly compared to the Spartan mother.
It is not surprising that such mothers possessed an influence envied throughout Greece. "You Spartan women are the only ones who rule over men," said a stranger to Gorgo, wife of Leonidas. "True," she rejoined; "for we are the only ones who are the mothers of men."
For several centuries, owing to her peculiar discipline, Sparta was, excepting Athens, the foremost State of Greece. But time is an enemy often not taken sufficiently into consideration by men who establish peculiar systems. And Lycurgus, who wished to make his system perpetual, did not fully consider the disintegrating effects which time exerts on all things temporal. "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret [You may repress natural propensities by force, but they will be certain to reappear]," says Horace, the wisest of Roman satirists; and the Spartan polity had attempted to repress nature in men and women and to control it by law. The great fault in the Lacedæmonian constitution was in effect the violation of the eternal laws which assign to each creature his rôle in the harmony of the world. Men are made for war, but they are made for peace as well. Therefore, as Lycurgus made the city an armed camp, in periods of peace the Spartan man "rusted like an unused sword in its scabbard," and in idleness at home or in garrison duty abroad fell an easy victim to avarice and lust.
In his legislation concerning women, Lycurgus violated natural propensities to an even greater extent than he had in his laws governing the conduct of men. Woman was destined primarily for domestic life. She was created to bear children; but her kingdom is the home, with its manifold duties, and rearing children is as much her function as bearing them. Yet the Spartan lad was taken forcibly from his mother at the tender age of seven, and the Spartan maiden, while living at home, was subject to stringent regulations formulated and enforced by the State.