TRAINING OF THE SPARTAN
CITIZEN
The object of the peculiar training of Spartan citizens, ascribed to Lycurgus, was the maintenance of Spartan supremacy over the subject population. It was necessary for safety that the small body of men, surrounded by enemies in their own land, should be ready at all points, [375] against every attempt at opposition or rebellion, and against the outside world as well.
As every man had to be a soldier, and the citizen existed only for the state, the state took the Spartan citizen in hand at his birth, and regulated him almost from the cradle to the grave. From the age of seven the body was cultivated, and every means was used to give the instrument the finest temper, in a physical sense, and to bring it to the sharpest edge. Such training lasted till the sixtieth year of life, when the Spartan became qualified by age, if not by wisdom, for election to the Senate, or “assembly of old men,” above described.
The girls were trained in athletic exercises like those of the youths, and everything was done to produce vigorous and stern women, prepared to gladly see their sons die on the battle-field for Sparta.
The result of all was that the Spartans became a race of well-drilled and intrepid warriors, but a state distinguished in the history of Greece for the display of a domineering arrogance, a rapacity, and a corruption, which contributed not a little to its downfall. However, the Spartan institutions were very successful in giving the state security at home and success in war abroad. Sparta was free from domestic revolutions, and the spectacle it presented of constancy to fixed maxims of policy gave it a great ascendancy over the Hellenic mind.
EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS.
THESEUS
The Athenians became by far the most famous, in political ascendancy and in artistic and intellectual eminence, of all the Ionian race, to which they belonged.
At first they were under kings like the other Hellenes; but about 1050 B. C. the title of king became changed to that of archon (“ruler”), though the office was still held for life, and continued in the same family. The archon was responsible for his acts to a general assembly of the people, in which, however, the nobles had the chief influence; and down to long after the time of the first Olympiad, Athens may be regarded as an oligarchic republic, in which the supreme office, the archonship, was confined to one family; and members of the chief court of justice, called Areopagus (lit. “hill of Ares,” the place of its assembly at Athens), were elected only from the noble houses.
IMPORTANCE OF THE OLYMPIADS
IN GREEK CHRONOLOGY
We come, in the year 776 B. C., to the era when the chronology of Grecian history becomes consecutive, and dates are reckoned by Olympiads. These were the periods of four years each which elapsed between the successive celebrations of the Olympic games in honor of the Olympian Zeus (the chief Greek deity) in the plain of Olympia in Elis (in Peloponnesus). The First Olympiad began at midsummer, 776 B. C., the Second Olympiad at midsummer, 772 B. C., and so on—any event being dated by a particular year of a specified Olympiad.