Of the laws made by Charondas for the new Sybaris a few are preserved.
1. A calumniator was marched round the city in disgrace, crowned with tamarisk. "In consequence," says the Scholiast, "they all left the city." O for such a result, from whatever legislation, in our modern Pedlingtons, great or little!
2. All persons were forbidden to associate with the bad.
3. "He made another law, better than these, and neglected by the older legislators. For he enacted that all the sons of the citizens should be instructed in letters, the city paying the salaries of the teachers. For he held that the poor, not being able to pay their teachers from their own property, would be deprived of the most valuable discipline." There is Free Education for you, two thousand and seventy-six years before the date of your first Massachusetts free school; and the theory of free education completely stated.
4. Deserters or cowards in battle had to sit in women's dresses in the Forum three days.
5. With regard to the amendment of laws, any man or woman who moved one did it with a noose round his neck, and was hanged if the people refused it. Only three laws were ever amended, therefore, all which are recorded in the history. Observe that the women might move amendments,—and think of the simplicity of legislation!
6. The law provided for cash payments, and the government gave no protection for those who sold on credit.
7. Their communication with other nations was perfectly free.
I might give more instances. I should like to tell some of the curious stories which illustrate this simple legislation. Poor Charondas himself fell a victim to it. One of the laws provided that no man should wear a sword into the public assembly. No Cromwells there! Unfortunately, by accident, Charondas wore his own there one day. Brave fellow! when the fault was pointed out, he killed himself with it.
Now do you wonder that a city where there were no calumniators, no long credit, no bills at the grocers, no fighting at town meetings, no amendments to the laws, no intentional and open association with profligates, and where everybody was educated by the state to letters, proved a comfortable place to live in? It is of the old Sybaris that the coppersmith and the rose-leaf stories are told; and it was the new Sybaris that made the laws. But do you not see that there is one spirit in the whole? Here was a nation which believed that the highest work of a nation was to train its people. It did not believe in fight, like Milon or Heenan or the old Spartans; it did not believe in legislation, like Massachusetts and New York; it did not believe in commerce, like Carthage and England. It believed in men and women. It respected men and women. It educated men and women. It gave their rights to men and women. And so the Spartans called them effeminate. And the Greek Reader made fun of them. But perhaps the people who lived there were indifferent to the opinions of the Spartans and of the Greek Reader. Herodotus lived there till he died; wrote his history there, among other things. Lysias, the orator, took part in the administration. It is not from them, you may be sure, that you get the anecdotes which ridicule the old city of Sybaris!