was always occupied with drill and gymnastics. Everything was contrived to test and tax his courage and endurance; he was to be superior to heat and cold, hunger and fatigue. To test their fortitude they were cruelly scourged before the altar of Artemis (Diana), until their blood would stain the altar, and they sometimes died in silence beneath the infliction. They were not allowed enough to eat, but were permitted to hunt in the mountains and woods, and to steal what they could. If they were detected they were punished, not for the theft but for their inability to conceal it. The story is told of a boy who stole a fox and hid it beneath his garment, and let the fox tear out his very bowels rather than be detected. Many lives must have been lost under such a system of torture. It is no wonder that the Spartans were so strong, because all who were weak and delicate must have perished.

All through his life, as we have said, the Spartan was considered public property. When he became a man he was not allowed to live at home and take his meals with his wife and children. The Spartans dined together in messes, and slept at night in the public barracks. At the public meals1 they sat down in companies of fifteen to a humble and frugal meal, which was, however, enlivened by conversation and music. Each individual contributed monthly a small sum to buy the little fish and flesh that were consumed, and sent his share of meal and wine, cheese and figs. The famous black broth formed a principal part of the fare. The tyrant Dionysius, who tried it, did not at all like the taste, but his cook told him that it needed the flavour which was imparted by fatigue and hunger. Spartans were forbidden the use of the precious metals, and the little coinage they required was made of iron. No Spartan was allowed to travel, and no traveller was allowed to come to Sparta without express permission. The education of a Spartan was almost entirely muscular. He learned nothing but music, and his songs were either martial lays or hymns. The Spartan was taught to hate long speeches. He would use the fewest words

The

They were called not only Syssitia (ovoσitía), but peiditía, Spare or frugal meals.

He

possible, and this is called the Laconic way of speaking. The Spartan was also trained to be very cautious. was not to pursue an enemy too far, and he was not to make war on the same enemy too often.

It cannot be doubted but the Spartan system produced a race of warriors of extraordinary fortitude and intrepidity. The Spartan women boasted that they alone were the mothers of men. In their youth the females were subjected to a discipline only less severe than that of the other sex, in order to make them healthful and robust. They were treated with greater respect and enjoyed a higher degree of importance than was usual in the rest of Greece. The Spartan mother was in many respects like the Roman matron. Her sons were her jewels, but she was willing that they should risk or lose their lives on behalf of their country. The Spartan matron would even heap insults and reproaches on the husband or son who did not do his best in the day of battle. "Return with your shield or upon it," is the renowned speech of one Spartan mother. "I only bore them to die for Sparta," is the speech attributed to another. After a most disastrous battle the mothers whose sons had fallen returned thanks to the gods, while others, whose sons had escaped, were overwhelmed with shame and disgrace. It must, however, be added, that when the Spartan woman married she was released from the rigorous training to which she had been subjected, and often maintained a luxurious household, while her husband and sons were enduring the hardest toil and the scantiest fare. To this circumstance is to be attributed that excessive love of money, which the legislation of Lycurgus and his iron coinage were ineffectual to restrain.

Sparta was unfortified. Her bulwarks were her warlike sons, who "stood, a wall of fire," around her. The city was never regularly laid out. It was, in fact, a cluster of five villages, which were never welded into a whole. "If the city of the Lacedæmonians were destroyed," says Thucydides, " and only its temples and the foundations of its buildings left, remote posterity would greatly doubt whether their power was ever equal to their renown; yet they are actually in occupation of two parts out of five of the Peloponnese, and

at the head of the whole peninsula, and many external allies; nevertheless, as their city is not continuous and compact, and has no costly monuments, sacred or civil, but is divided into villages after the old fashion of Greece, it would seem to fall short of its fame." We must not pass over without mention the great natural defences of Sparta. Its seaboard was protected by a rocky coast, and its northern and western frontiers by ranges of lofty mountains.

CHAPTER VI.

SPARTAN WARS AND CONQUESTS.

Ar the time of Lycurgus the Spartans were in possession of their own city alone, but they eventually obtained possession of a hundred cities. Armed and disciplined among unwarlike untrained populations; even when at peace, and at home resembling a garrison in a hostile country, it is not likely that they would long refrain from aggressions on weaker neighbours. The wolf soon finds some pretext for accusing the lamb of disturbing the stream.

The first conquests of Sparta would be over those neighbouring districts which were completely annexed and identified with her under the name of Laconia. In one of these wars was conquered the maritime town of Helos on the left bank of the Eurotas, from which the term Helots is said to have been derived. Subsequently there were two long wars with Messenia, in which, after many reverses, the Spartans were at last completely and triumphantly successful. The Messenian wars happened about the time that the ten tribes of Israel were carried captive by Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, and a little after the date ordinarily assigned to the foundation of Rome.

The origin and circumstances of the first Messenian wars cannot now be known with exactness. The quarrel is said to have begun in circumstances connected with a temple on the frontiers dedicated to Artemis in which the Lacedæmonians and Messenians had a joint interest. It was a private quarrel, however, which pre