Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
their bodies healthy and vigorous, and their affections fresh and
lively, unsated and undulled by easy access and long continuance with
each other; while their partings were always early enough to leave
behind unextinguished in each of them some remainder fire of longing and
mutual delight. After guarding marriage with this modesty and reserve,
he was equally careful to banish empty and womanish jealousy. For this
object, excluding all licentious disorders, he made it, nevertheless,
honorable for men to give the use of their wives to those whom they
should think fit, that so they might have children by them; ridiculing
those in whose opinion such favors are so unfit for participation as to
fight and shed blood and go to war about it. Lycurgus allowed a man who
was advanced in years and had a young wife to recommend some virtuous
and approved young man, that she might have a child by him, who might
inherit the good qualities of the father, and be a son to himself. On
the other side, an honest man who had love for a married woman upon
account of her modesty and the wellfavoredness of her children, might,
without formality, beg her company of her husband, that he might raise,
as it were, from this plot of good ground, worthy and well-allied
children for himself. And, indeed, Lycurgus was of a persuasion that
children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole
commonwealth, and, therefore, would not have his citizens begot by the
first comers, but by the best men that could be found; the laws of other
nations seemed to him very absurd and inconsistent, where people would
be so solicitous for their dogs and horses as to exert interest and pay
money to procure fine breeding, and yet kept their wives shut up, to be
made mothers only by themselves, who might be foolish, infirm, or
diseased; as if it were not apparent that children of a bad breed would
prove their bad qualities first upon those who kept and were rearing
them, and well-born children, in like manner, their good qualities.
These regulations, founded on natural and social grounds, were certainly
so far from that scandalous liberty which was afterwards charged upon
their women, that they knew not what adultery meant. It is told, for
instance, of Geradas, a very ancient, Spartan, that, being asked by a
stranger what punishment their law had appointed for adulterers, he
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 as 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, "'Tis as possible as to find an
adulterer in Sparta." So much I had to say of their marriages.
Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as he
thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain triers at a place
called Lesche; these were some of the elders of the tribe to which the
child belonged; their business it was carefully to view the infant, and,
if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing,
and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above
mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny and ill-
shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort
of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the
child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up,
if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and
vigorous. Upon the same account, the women did not bathe the new-born
children with water, as is the custom in all other countries, but with
wine, to prove the temper and complexion of their bodies; from a notion
they had that epileptic and weakly children faint and waste away upon
their being thus bathed, while, on the contrary, those of a strong and
vigorous habit acquire firmness and get a temper by it, like steel.
There was much care and art, too, used by the nurses; they had no
swaddling bands; the children grew up free and unconstrained in limb and
form, and not dainty and fanciful about their food; not afraid in the
dark, or of being left alone; without any peevishness or ill humor or
crying. Upon this account, Spartan nurses were often bought up, or
hired by people of other countries; and it is recorded that she who
suckled Alcibiades was a Spartan; who, however, if fortunate in his
nurse, was not so in his preceptor; his guardian, Pericles, as Plato
tells us, chose a servant for that office called Zopyrus,
no better than any common slave.
Lycurgus was of another mind; he would not have masters bought out of
the market for his young Spartans, nor such as should sell their pains;
nor was it lawful, indeed, for the father himself to breed up the
children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were seven years old
they were to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they
all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and
taking their play together. Of these, he who showed the most conduct
and courage was made captain; they had their eyes always upon him,
obeyed his orders, and underwent patiently whatsoever punishment he
inflicted; so that the whole course of their education was one continued
exercise of a ready and perfect obedience. The old men, too, were
spectators of their performances, and often raised quarrels and disputes
among them, to have a good opportunity of finding out their different
characters, and of seeing which would be valiant, which a coward, when
they should come to more dangerous encounters. Reading and writing they
gave them, just enough to serve their turn; their chief care was to make
them good subjects, and to teach them to endure pain and conquer in
battle. To this end, as they grew in years, their discipline was
proportionably increased; their heads were close-clipped, they were
accustomed to go bare-foot, and for the most part to play naked.
After they were twelve years old, they were no longer allowed to wear
any under-garment; they had one coat to serve them a year; their bodies
were hard and dry, with but little acquaintance of baths and unguents;
these human indulgences they were allowed only on some few particular
days in the year. They lodged together in little bands upon beds made
of the rushes which grew by the banks of the river Eurotas, which they
were to break off with their hands without a knife; if it were winter,
they mingled some thistle-down with their rushes, which it was thought
had the property of giving warmth. By the time they were come to this
age, there was not any of the more hopeful boys who had not a lover to
bear him company. The old men, too, had an eye upon them, coming often
to the grounds to hear and see them contend either in wit or strength
with one another, and this as seriously and with as much concern as if
they were their fathers, their tutors, or their magistrates; so that
there scarcely was any time or place without someone present to put
them in mind of their duty, and punish them if they had neglected it.
Besides all this, there was always one of the best and honestest men in
the city appointed to undertake the charge and governance of them; he
again arranged them into their several bands, and set over each of them
for their captain the most temperate and boldest of those they called
Irens, who were usually twenty years old, two years out of the boys; and
the eldest of the boys, again, were Mell-Irens, as much as to say, who
would shortly be men. This young man, therefore, was their captain when
they fought, and their master at home, using them for the offices of his
house; sending the oldest of them to fetch wood, and the weaker and less
able, to gather salads and herbs, and these they must either go without
or steal; which they did by creeping into the gardens, or conveying
themselves cunningly and closely into the eating-houses; if they were
taken in the fact, they were whipped without mercy, for thieving so ill
and awkwardly. They stole, too, all other meat they could lay their
hands on, looking out and watching all opportunities, when people were
asleep or more careless than usual. If they were caught, they were not
only punished with whipping, but hunger, too, being reduced to their
ordinary allowance, which was but very slender, and so contrived on
purpose, that they might set about to help themselves, and be forced to
exercise their energy and address. This was the principal design of
their hard fare; there was another not inconsiderable, that they might
grow taller; for the vital spirits, not being overburdened and oppressed
by too great a quantity of nourishment; which necessarily discharges
itself into thickness and breadth, do, by their natural lightness, rise;
and the body, giving and yielding because it is pliant, grows in height.
The same thing seems, also, to conduce to beauty of shape; a dry and
lean habit is a better subject for nature's configuration, which the
gross and over-fed are too heavy to submit to properly. Just as we find
that women who take physic whilst they are with child, bear leaner and
smaller but better-shaped and prettier children; the material they come
of having been more pliable and easily molded. The reason, however, I
leave others to determine.
To return from whence we have digressed. So seriously did the
Lacedaemonian children go about their stealing, that a youth, having
stolen a young fox and hid it under his coat, suffered it to tear out
his very bowels with its teeth and claws, and died upon the place,
rather than let it be seen. What is practiced to this very day in
Lacedaemon is enough to gain credit to this story, for I myself have
seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot of the
altar of Diana surnamed Orthia.
The Iren, or under-master, used to stay a little with them after supper,
and one of them he bade to sing a song, to another he put a question
which required an advised and deliberate answer; for example, Who was
the best man in the city? What he thought of such an action of such a
man? They used them thus early to pass a right judgment upon persons and
things, and to inform themselves of the abilities or defects of their
countrymen. If they had not an answer ready to the question Who was a
good or who an ill-reputed citizen, they were looked upon as of a dull
and careless disposition, and to have little or no sense of virtue and
honor; besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they said,
and in as few words and as comprehensive as might be; he that failed of
this, or answered not to the purpose, had his thumb bit by his master.
Sometimes the Iren did this in the presence of the old men and
magistrates, that they might see whether he punished them justly and in
due measure or not; and when he did amiss, they would not reprove him
before the boys, but, when they were gone, he was called to an account
and underwent correction, if he had run far into either of the extremes
of indulgence or severity.
Their lovers and favorers, too, had a share in the young boy's honor or
disgrace; and there goes a story that one of them was fined by the
magistrates, because the lad whom he loved cried out effeminately as he
was fighting. And though this sort of love was so approved among them,
that the most virtuous matrons would make professions of it to young
girls, yet rivalry did not exist, and if several men's fancies met in
one person, it was rather the beginning of an intimate friendship,
whilst they all jointly conspired to render the object of their
affection as accomplished as possible.