Walter Horatio Pater-plato and Platonism Mobile

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PLATO AND

PLATONISM

WALTER HORATIO PATER∗

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182. +Transliteration: noetos topos. Pa-ter’s translation: ”reasonable world.” Plato,Republic 508b.

184. +Transliteration: homoion homoio.Pater’s translation: ”like to like.” Variantsof the phrase occur in many of Plato’s dia-logues; see, for example, Parmenides 132d.

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185. +Transliteration: hope an ho lo-gos, hosper pneuma, phere, taute iteon. Pa-ter’s translation: ”we must just go wherethe argument carries us, as a vessel runsbefore the wind.” Plato, Republic 394d.

187. +Transliteration: episteme. Lid-dell and Scott definition ”1. knowledge, un-derstanding, skill, experience, wisdom; 2.scientific knowledge.”

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189. +Transliteration: Kindyneuei. Pa-ter’s translation: ”it may chance to be.”

190. +Transliteration: theoria. Liddelland Scott definition: ”a looking at, view-ing, beholding . . . contemplation, reflec-tion.” Pater defines it in Platonic terms as”immediate intuition.” For example, Plato,Republic 486a.

190. +Transliteration: apokamnon. Lid-4



dell and Scott definition: ”grow[ing] quiteweary.” See, for example, Plato, Protagoras333b.

191. +Transliteration: megaloprepos.Liddell and Scott definition / E- text ed-itor’s translation: ”liberally.” The exchangebetween Thrasymachus and Socrates to whichPater refers begins at Republic 345b.

192. +Transliteration: Dialogos peirastikos.5



Pater’s translation: ”a Dialogue of search.”195. +Transliteration: kosmos. Liddell

and Scott definition: ”I. 1. order; 2. goodorder, good behaviour, decency; 3. a setform or order: of states, government; 4. themode or fashion of a thing; II. an ornament.. .; III. the world or universe, from its per-fect arrangement.”

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CHAPTER 8: LACEDAE-

MON

[197] AMONG the Greeks, philosophy hasflourished longest, and is still most abun-

dant, at Crete and Lacedaemon; and therethere are more teachers of philosophy thananywhere else in the world. But the Lacedae-

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monians deny this, and pretend to be un-learned people, lest it should become man-ifest that it is through philosophy they aresupreme in Greece; that they may be thoughtto owe their supremacy to their fighting andmanly spirit, for they think that if the meansof their superiority were made known allthe Greeks would practise this. But now,by keeping it a secret, they have succeeded

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in misleading the Laconisers in the variouscities of Greece; and in imitation of themthese people buffet themselves, and prac-tise gymnastics, and put on boxing-gloves,and wear short cloaks, as if it were by suchthings that the Lacedaemonians excel allother Greeks. But the Lacedaemonians, whenthey wish to have intercourse with their philoso-phers without reserve, and are weary of go-

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ing to them by stealth, make legal procla-mation that those Laconisers should depart,with any other aliens who may be sojourn-ing among them, and thereupon betake them-selves to their sophists unobserved by strangers.And you may know that what I say is true,and that the Lacedaemonians are better in-structed than all other people in philoso-phy and the art of discussion in this way. If

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any one will converse with even the most in-significant of the Lacedaemonians, he mayfind him indeed in the greater part of whathe says seemingly but a poor creature; butthen at some chance point in the conver-sation he will throw in some brief compactsaying, worthy of remark, like a clever archer,so that his interlocutor shall seem no bet-ter than a child. Of [198] this fact some

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both of those now living and of the ancientshave been aware, and that to Laconise con-sists in the study of philosophy far ratherthan in the pursuit of gymnastic, for theysaw that to utter such sayings as those wasonly possible for a perfectly educated man.Of these was Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias the Prienean, and our ownSolon, Cleobulus the Lindian, and Myson

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of Chen, and the seventh among them wascalled Chilon, a Lacedaemonian. These wereall zealous lovers and disciples of the cul-ture of the Lacedaemonians. And any onemay understand that their philosophy wassomething of this kind, short rememberablesayings uttered by each of them. They mettogether and offered these in common, asthe first fruits of philosophy, to Apollo in

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his temple at Delphi, and they wrote uponthe walls these sayings known and read of all men: Gnothi sauton and Meden agan.Protagoras, 343.+

Of course there is something in that of the romance to which the genius of Platoreadily inclined him; something also of thePlatonic humour or irony, which suggests,for example, to Meno, so anxious to be in-

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structed in the theory of virtue, that thephilosophic temper must be departed fromAttica, its natural home, to Thessaly–to therude northern capital whence that ingenu-ous youth was freshly arrived.

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Partly romantic, partly hu-

morous, in his Laconism, Plato

is however

quite serious in locating a certain spirit at

Lacedaemon of which his own ideal Repub-lic would have been the completer devel-opment; while the picture he draws of it

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presents many a detail taken straight fromLacedaemon as it really was, as if by an ad-miring visitor, who had in person paced thestreets of the Dorian metropolis it was sodifficult for any [199] alien to enter. Whatwas actually known of that stern place, of the Lacedaemonians at home, at school, hadcharmed into fancies about it other philo-sophic theorists; Xenophon for instance, who

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had little or nothing of romantic tendencyabout them.

And there was another sort of romanc-ing also, quite opposite to this of Plato, con-cerning the hard ways among themselvesof those Lacedaemonians who were so in-vincible in the field. ”The Lacedaemoni-ans,” says Pausanias, ”appear to have ad-mired least of all people poetry and the

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praise which it bestows.” ”At Lacedaemonthere is more philosophy than anywhere elsein the world,” is what Plato, or the Pla-tonic Socrates, had said. Yet, on the con-trary, there were some who alleged that trueLacedaemonians–Lacedaemonian nobles–fortheir protection against the ”effeminacies”of culture, were denied all knowledge of read-ing and writing. But then we know that

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written books are properly a mere assis-tant, sometimes, as Plato himself suggests,a treacherous assistant, to memory; thoseconservative Lacedaemonians being, so tospeak, the people of memory pre-eminently,and very appropriately, for, whether or notthey were taught to read and write, theywere acknowledged adepts in the Pythagoreanphilosophy, a philosophy which attributes

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to memory so preponderating a function inthe mental life. ”Writing,” says K. O. Mullerin his laborious, [200] yet, in spite of itsair of coldness, passably romantic work onThe Dorians–an author whose quiet enthu-siasm for his subject resulted indeed in a pa-tient scholarship which well befits it: ”Writ-ing,” he says, ”was not essential in a na-tion where laws, hymns, and the praises of

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illustrious men–that is, jurisprudence andhistory–were taught in their schools of mu-sic.” Music, which is or ought to be, as weknow, according to those Pythagorean doc-trines, itself the essence of all things, waseverywhere in the Perfect City of Plato; andamong the Lacedaemonians also, who maybe thought to have come within measur-able distance of that Perfect City, though

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with no conscious theories about it, music(mousike)+ in the larger sense of the word,was everywhere, not to alleviate only butactually to promote and inform, to be thevery substance of their so strenuous andtaxing habit of life. What was this ”mu-sic,” this service or culture of the Muses,this harmony, partly moral, doubtless, butalso throughout a matter of elaborate move-

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ment of the voice, of musical instruments,of all beside that could in any way be as-sociated to such things–this music, for themaintenance, the perpetual sense of whichthose vigorous souls were ready to sacri-fice so many opportunities, privileges, en- joyments of a different sort, so much of theirease, of themselves, of one another?

Platonism is a highly conscious reasser-24



tion [201] of one of the two constituent ele-ments in the Hellenic genius, of the spirit of the highlands namely in which the early Do-rian forefathers of the Lacedaemonians hadsecreted their peculiar disposition, in con-trast with the mobile, the marine and fluidtemper of the littoral Ionian people. TheRepublic of Plato is an embodiment of thatPlatonic reassertion or preference, of Pla-

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tonism, as the principle of a society, idealenough indeed, yet in various degrees prac-ticable. It is not understood by Plato to bean erection de novo, and therefore only onpaper. Its foundations might be laid in cer-tain practicable changes to be enforced inthe old schools, in a certain reformed mu-sic which must be taught there, and wouldfloat thence into the existing homes of Greece,

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under the shadow of its old temples, thesanction of its old religion, its old memo-ries, the old names of things. Given thecentral idea, with its essentially renovatingpower, the well-worn elements of society asit is would rebuild themselves, and a newcolour come gradually over all things as theproper expression of a certain new mind inthem.

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And in fact such embodiments of thespecially Hellenic element in Hellenism, com-pacted in the natural course of political de-velopment, there had been, though in a lessideal form, in those many Dorian constitu-tions to which Aristotle refers. To Lacedae-mon, in The Republic itself, admiring allu-sions abound, covert, yet bold [202] enough,if we remember the existing rivalry between

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Athens and her neighbour; and it becomestherefore a help in the study of Plato’s po-litical ideal to approach as near as we mayto that earlier actual embodiment of its prin-ciples, which is also very interesting in itself.The Platonic City of the Perfect would nothave been cut clean away from the old rootsof national life: would have had many linkswith the beautiful and venerable Greek cities

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of past and present. The ideal, poetic or ro-mantic as it might seem, would but have be-gun where they had left off, where Lacedae-mon, in particular, had left off. Let us then,by way of realising the better the physiog-nomy of Plato’s theoretic building, supposesome contemporary student of The Repub-lic, a pupil, say! in the Athenian Academy,determined to gaze on the actual face of

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what has so strong a family likeness to it.Stimulated by his master’s unconcealed La-conism, his approval of contemporary Lacedae-mon, he is at the pains to journey thither,and make personal inspection of a place,in Plato’s general commendations of whichhe may suspect some humour or irony, butwhich has unmistakably lent many a de-tail to his ideal Republic, on paper, or in

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thought.He would have found it, this youthful

Anacharsis, hard to get there, partly throughthe nature of the country, in part becausethe people of Lacedaemon (it was a pointof system with them, as we heard just now)were suspicious of [203] foreigners. Roman-tic dealers in political theory at Athens weresafe in saying pretty much what they pleased

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about its domestic doings. Still, not so faraway, made, not in idea and by the move-ments of an abstract argument, the merestrokes of a philosophic pen, but solidifiedby constancy of character, fortified anew onemergency by heroic deeds, for itself, for thewhole of Greece, though with such persis-tent hold throughout on an idea, or sys-tem of ideas, that it might seem actually

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to have come ready-made from the mind of some half-divine Lycurgus, or through himfrom Apollo himself, creator of that musicof which it was an example:–there, in thehidden valley of the Eurotas, it was to befound, as a visible centre of actual humanlife, the place which was alleged to havecome, harsh paradox as it might sound toAthenian ears, within measurable distance

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of civic perfection, of the political and so-cial ideal.

Our youthful academic adventurer then,making his way along those difficult roads,between the ridges of the Eastern AcadianMountains, and emerging at last into ”hol-low” Laconia, would have found himself ina country carefully made the most of by thelabour of serfs; a land of slavery, far more

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relentlessly organised according to law thananywhere else in Greece, where, in truth,for the most part slavery was a kind of ac-cident. But whatever rigours these slaves of Laconia were otherwise subjected to, they[204] enjoyed certainly that kind of well- be-ing which does come of organisation, fromthe order and regularity of system, livingunder central military authority, and bound

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themselves to military service; to furnish(as under later feudal institutions) so manyefficient men-at-arms on demand, and main-tain themselves in readiness for war as theylaboured in those distantly-scattered farms,seldom visited by their true masters fromLacedaemon, whither year by year they sentin kind their heavy tribute of oil, barleyand wine. The very genius of conservatism

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here enthroned, secured, we may be sure,to this old-fashioned country life somethingof the personal dignity, of the enjoymentsalso, natural to it; somewhat livelier reli-gious feasts, for example, than their lordsallowed themselves. Stray echoes of theirboisterous plebeian mirth on such occasionshave reached us in Greek literature.

But if the traveller had penetrated a lit-38



tle more closely he would have been toldcertain startling stories, with at least a ba-sis of truth in them, even as regards the ageof Plato. These slaves were Greeks: no rudeScythians, nor crouching, decrepit Asiatics,like ordinary prisoners of war, the sort of slaves you could buy, but genuine Greeks,speaking their native tongue, if with lessof muscular tension and energy, yet proba-

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bly with pleasanter voice and accent thantheir essentially highland masters. Physi-cally they throve, under something of thesame discipline which had made [205] thosemasters the masters also of all Greece. Theysaw them now and then–their younger lords,brought, under strict tutelage, on those longhunting expeditions, one of their so rare en- joyments, prescribed for them, as was be-

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lieved, by the founder of their polity. Butsometimes (here was the report which madeone shudder even in broad daylight, in thoseseemingly reposeful places) sometimes thoseyoung nobles of Lacedaemon reached themon a different kind of pursuit: came by night,secretly, though by no means contrarily tothe laws of a state crafty as it was deter-mined, to murder them at home, or a cer-

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tain moiety of them; one here or there per-haps who, with good Achaean blood in hisveins, and under a wholesome mode of life,was grown too tall, or too handsome, ortoo fruitful a father, to feel quite like aslave. Under a sort of slavery that makeshim strong and beautiful, where personalbeauty was so greatly prized, his mastersare in fact jealous of him.

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But masters thus hard to others, theseLacedaemonians, as we know, were the re-verse of indulgent to themselves. While,as a matter of theory, power and privilegebelonged exclusively to the old, to the se-niors (hoi gerontes, he gerousia)+ ruling bya council wherein no question might be dis-cussed, one might only deliver one’s Aye!or No! Lacedaemon was in truth before all

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things an organised place of discipline, anorganised [206] opportunity also, for youth,for the sort of youth that knew how to com-mand by serving–a constant exhibition of youthful courage, youthful self-respect, yetabove all of true youthful docility; youththus committing itself absolutely, soul andbody, to a corporate sentiment in its verysports. There was a third sort of regulation

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visits the lads of Lacedaemon were driven topay to those country places, the vales, theuplands, when, to brace youthful stomachsand develope resource, they came at statedintervals as a kind of mendicants or thieves,feet and head uncovered through frost andheat, to steal their sustenance, under penal-ties if detected–”a survival,” as anthropol-ogists would doubtless prove, pointing out

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collateral illustrations of the same, from aworld of purely animal courage and keen-ness. Whips and rods used in a kind of mon-itorial system by themselves had a greatpart in the education of these young aristo-crats, and, as pain surely must do, pain notof bodily disease or wretched accidents, butas it were by dignified rules of art, seem tohave refined them, to have made them ob-

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servant of the minutest direction in thosemusical exercises, wherein eye and ear andvoice and foot all alike combined. Therecould be nothing paraleipomenon,+ as Platosays, no ”oversights,” here. No! every one,at every moment, quite at his best; and, ob-serve especially, with no superfluities; see-ing that when we have to do with musicof any kind, with matters of art, in stone,

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in words, [207] in the actions of life, all su-perfluities are in very truth ”superfluities of naughtiness,” such as annihilate music.

The country through which our youngtraveller from his laxer school of Athensseeks his way to Lacedaemon, this land of anoble slavery, so peacefully occupied but forthose irregular nocturnal terrors, was per-haps the loveliest in Greece, with that pe-

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culiarly blent loveliness, in which, as at Flo-rence, the expression of a luxurious lowlandis duly checked by the severity of its moun-tain barriers. It was a type of the Dorianpurpose in life–sternness, like sea-water in-fused into wine, overtaking a matter natu-rally rich, at the moment when fulness maylose its savour and expression. Amid thecorn and oleanders–corn ”so tall, close, and

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luxuriant,” as the modern traveller therestill finds–it was visible at last, Lacedae-mon, koile Sparte,+ ”hollow Sparta,” underthe sheltering walls of Taygetus, the brokenand rugged forms of which were attributedto earthquake, but without proper walls of its own. In that natural fastness, or trap,or falcon’s nest, it had no need of them, thefalcon of the land, with the hamlets (polich-

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nia)+ a hundred and more, dispersed overit, in jealously enforced seclusion from oneanother.

From the first he notes ”the antiquatedappearance” of Lacedaemon, by no meansa ”growing” place, always rebuilding, re-modelling itself, after the newest fashion,with shapeless suburbs [208] stretching far-ther and farther on every side of it, grown

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too large perhaps, as Plato threatens, tobe a body, a corporate unity, at all: notthat, but still, and to the last, itself only agreat village, a solemn, ancient, mountainvillage. Even here of course there had beenmovement, some sort of progress, if so it isto be called, linking limb to limb; but longago. Originally a union, after the manner of early Rome, of perhaps three or four neigh-

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bouring villages which had never lost theirphysiognomy, like Rome it occupied a groupof irregular heights, the outermost roots of Taygetus, on the bank of a river or moun-tain torrent, impetuous enough in winter,a series of wide shallows and deep poolsin the blazing summer. It was every dayhowever, all the year round, that Lacedae-monian youth plunged itself in the Euro-

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tas. Hence, from this circumstance of theunion there of originally disparate parts,the picturesque and expressive irregularity,had they had time to think it such, of the”city” properly so termed, the one openplace or street, High Street, or Corso–Aphetaisby name, lined, irregularly again, with var-ious religious and other monuments. It ra-diated on all sides into a mazy coil, an am-

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bush, of narrow crooked lanes, up and down,in which attack and defence would neces-sarily be a matter of hand-to-hand fight-ing. In the outskirts lay the citizens’ houses,roomier far than those of Athens, with spa-cious, walled courts, almost in the coun-try. Here, in contrast [209] to the homes of Athens, the legitimate wife had a real dig-nity, the unmarried woman a singular free-

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dom. There were no door-knockers: youshouted at the outer gate to be let in. Be-tween the high walls lanes passed into coun-try roads, sacred ways to ancient sacro-sanctlocalities, Therapnae, Amyclae, on this sideor that, under the shade of mighty plane-trees.

Plato, as you may remember, gives ahint that, like all other visible things, the

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very trees–how they grow–exercise an aes-thetic influence on character. The diligentlegislator therefore would have his prefer-ences, even in this matter of the trees underwhich the citizens of the Perfect City mightsit down to rest. What trees? you won-der. The olive? the laurel, as if wrought ingrandiose metal? the cypress? that cameto a wonderful height in Dorian Crete: the

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oak? we think it very expressive of stren-uous national character. Well! certainlythe plane-tree for one, characteristic treeof Lacedaemon then and now; a very tran-quil and tranquillising object, spreading itslevel or gravely curved masses on the airas regally as the tree of Lebanon itself. Avast grove of such was the distinguishingmark of Lacedaemon in any distant view

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of it; that, and, as at Athens, a colossalimage, older than the days of Phidias–theDemos of Lacedaemon, it would seem, tow-ering visibly above the people it protected.Below those mighty trees, on an island intheir national river, [210] were the ”playing-fields,” where Lacedaemonian youth aftersacrifice in the Ephebeum delighted oth-ers rather than itself (no ”shirking” was al-

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lowed) with a sort of football, under rig-orous self-imposed rules–tearing, biting–asport, rougher even than our own, et memetres dangereux, as our Attic neighbours, theFrench, say of the English game.

They were orderly enough perforce, theboys, the young men, within the city–seen,but not heard, except under regulations,when they made the best music in the world.

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Our visitor from Athens when he saw thoseyouthful soldiers, or military students, asXenophon in his pretty treatise on the polityof Lacedaemon describes, walking with down-cast eyes, their hands meekly hidden in theircloaks, might have thought them young monks,had he known of such.

A little mountain town, however ambi-tious, however successful in its ambition,

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would hardly be expected to compete withAthens, or Corinth, itself a Dorian state, inart-production, yet had not only its charac-teristic preferences in this matter, in plasticand literary art, but had also many vener-able and beautiful buildings to show. TheAthenian visitor, who is standing now in thecentral space of Lacedaemon, notes here,as being a trait also of the ”Perfect City”

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of academic theory, that precisely becausethese people find themselves very suscepti-ble to the [211] influences of form and colourand sound, to external aesthetic influence,but have withal a special purpose, a cer-tain strongly conceived disciplinary or ethicideal, that therefore a peculiar humour pre-vails among them, a self-denying humour,in regard to these things. Those ancient

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Pelopid princes, from whom the hereditarykings of historic Lacedaemon, come backfrom exile into their old home, claim to bedescended, had had their palaces, with acertain Homeric, Asiatic splendour, of wroughtmetal and the like; considerable relics of which still remained, but as public or sacredproperty now. At the time when Plato’sscholar stands before them, the houses of

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these later historic kings–two kings, as youremember, always reigning together, in somenot quite clearly evolved differentiation of the temporal and spiritual functions–wereplain enough; the royal doors, when beg-gar or courtier approached them, no dain-tier than Lycurgus had prescribed for alltrue Lacedaemonian citizens; rude, strangethings to look at, fashioned only, like the

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ceilings within, with axe and saw, of oldmountain oak or pine from those great Tayge-tan forests, whence came also the abun-dant iron, which this stern people of ironand steel had super-induced on that earlierdreamy age of silver and gold–steel, how-ever, admirably tempered and wrought inits application to military use, and muchsought after throughout Greece.

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Layer upon layer, the relics of those ear-lier [212] generations, a whole succession of remarkable races, lay beneath the strenuousfootsteps of the present occupants, as therewas old poetic legend in the depths of theirseemingly so practical or prosaic souls. Norbeneath their feet only: the relics of theirworship, their sanctuaries, their tombs, theirvery houses, were part of the scenery of ac-

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tual life. Our young Platonic visitor fromAthens, climbing through those narrow wind-ing lanes, and standing at length on theopen platform of the Aphetais, finds himself surrounded by treasures, modest treasuresof ancient architecture, dotted irregularlyhere and there about him, as if with con-scious design upon picturesque effect, suchirregularities sometimes carrying in them

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the secret of expression, an accent. OldAlcman for one had been alive to the po-etic opportunities of the place; boasts thathe belongs to Lacedaemon, ”abounding insacred tripods”; that it was here the He-liconian Muses had revealed themselves tohim. If the private abodes even of roy-alty were rude it was only that the splen-dour of places dedicated to religion and the

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state might the more abound. Most splen-did of them all, the Stoa Poekile, a cloisteror portico with painted walls, to which thespoils of the Persian war had been devoted,ranged its pillars of white marble on oneside of the central space: on the other, con-necting those high memories with the taskof the living, lay the Choros, where, at theGymnopaedia, the Spartan youth danced in

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honour of Apollo.[213] Scattered up and down among the

monuments of victory in battle were theheroa, tombs or chapels of the heroes whohad purchased it with their blood–Pausanias,Leonidas, brought home from Thermopylaeforty years after his death. ”A pillar too,”says Pausanias, ”is erected here, on whichthe paternal names are inscribed of those

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who at Thermopylae sustained the attack of the Medes.” Here in truth all deities put ona martial habit–Aphrodite, the Muses, Eroshimself, Athene Chalcioecus, Athene of theBrazen House, an antique temple toweringabove the rest, built from the spoils of somevictory long since forgotten. The name of the artist who made the image of the tute-lary goddess was remembered in the an-

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nals of early Greek art, Gitiades, a nativeof Lacedaemon. He had composed a hymnalso in her praise. Could we have seen theplace he had restored rather than constructed,with its covering of mythological reliefs inbrass or bronze, perhaps Homer’s descrip-tions of a seemingly impossible sort of metal-lic architecture would have been less taxingto his reader’s imagination. Those who in

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other places had lost their taste amid thefacile splendours of a later day, might herego to school again.

Throughout Greece, in fact, it was theDoric style which came to prevail as thereligious or hieratic manner, never to besurpassed for that purpose, as the Gothicstyle seems likely to do with us. Thoughit is not exclusively the invention [214] of

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Dorian men, yet, says Muller, ”the Doriancharacter created the Doric architecture,”and he notes in it, especially, the severityof the perfectly straight, smartly taperingline of its column; the bold projection of the capital; the alternation of long unorna-mented plain surfaces with narrower bandsof decorated work; the profound shadows;the expression of security, of harmony, in-

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fused throughout; the magnificent pedimentcrowning the whole, like the cornice of moun-tain wall beyond, around, and above it. Stand-ing there in the Aphetais, amid these vener-able works of art, the visitor could not for-get the natural architecture about him. Asthe Dorian genius had differentiated itself from the common Hellenic type in the heartof the mountains of Epirus, so here at last,

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in its final and most characteristic home, itwas still surrounded by them:–ophrya te kaikoilainetai.+

We know, some of us, what such moun-tain neighbourhood means. The wholesomevigour, the clearness and purity they main-tain in matters such as air, light, water;how their presence multiplies the contrasts,the element of light and shadow, in things;

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the untouched perfection of the minuter or-nament, flower or crystal, they permit onesparingly; their reproachful aloofness, thoughso close to us, keeping sensitive minds atleast in a sort of moral alliance with theirremoter solitudes. ”The whole life of theLacedaemonian community,” says Muller,[215] ”had a secluded, impenetrable, andsecret character.” You couldn’t really know

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it unless you were of it.A system which conceived the whole of

life as matter of attention, patience, a fi-delity to detail, like that of good soldiersand musicians, could not but tell also onthe merest handicrafts, constituting themin the fullest sense of a craft. If the moneyof Sparta was, or had recently been, of cum-brous iron, that was because its trade had

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a sufficient variety of stock to be mainlyby barter, and we may suppose the market(into which, like our own academic youthat Oxford, young Spartans were forbiddento go) full enough of business– many a busyworkshop in those winding lanes. The lowerarts certainly no true Spartan might prac-tise; but even Helots, artisan Helots, wouldhave more than was usual elsewhere of that

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sharpened intelligence and the disciplinedhand in such labour which really dignifythose who follow it. In Athens itself certainLacedaemonian commodities were much indemand, things of military service or forevery-day use, turned out with flawless adap-tation to their purpose.

The Helots, then, to whom this busi-ness exclusively belonged, a race of slaves,

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distinguishable however from the slaves orserfs who tilled the land, handing on theirmastery in those matters in a kind of guild,father to son, through old-established fami-lies of flute- [216] players, wine-mixers, bak-ers, and the like, thus left their hereditarylords, Les Gens Fleur-de-lises (to borrow anexpression from French feudalism) in un-broken leisure, to perfect themselves for the

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proper functions of gentlemen–schole,+ leisure,in the two senses of the word, which in truthinvolve one another–their whole time free,to be told out in austere schools. Longeaseful nights, with more than enough toeat and drink, the ”illiberal” pleasures of appetite, as Aristotle and Plato agree inthinking them, are of course the appropri-ate reward or remedy of those who work

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painfully with their hands, and seem to havebeen freely conceded to those Helots, whoby concession of the State, from first to lasttheir legal owner, were in domestic service,and sometimes much petted in the house,though by no means freely conceded to the”golden youth” of Lacedaemon–youth of gold,or gilded steel. The traditional Helot, drunkperforce to disgust his young master with

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the coarseness of vice, is probably a fable;and there are other stories full of a touch-ing spirit of natural service, of submissive-ness, of an instinctively loyal admiration forthe brilliant qualities of one trained per-haps to despise him, by which the servitormust have become, in his measure, actuallya sharer in them. Just here, for once, wesee that slavish ethos,+ the servile range of

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sentiment, which ought to accompany thecondition of slavery, if it be indeed, as Aris-totle supposes, one of the [217] natural rela-tionships between man and man, idealised,or aesthetically right, pleasant and proper;the arete,+ or ”best possible condition,” of the young servitor as such, including a sortof bodily worship, and a willingness to sharethe keen discipline which had developed the

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so attractive gallantry of his youthful lords.A great wave, successive waves, of in-

vasion, sufficiently remote to have lost al-ready all historic truth of detail, had leftthem–these Helots, and the Perioeci, in thecountry round about–thus to serve amongtheir own kinsmen, though so close to themin lineage, so much on a level with theirmasters in essential physical qualities that

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to the last they could never be entirely sub-dued in spirit. Patient modern research, fol-lowing the track of a deep-rooted nationaltradition veiled in the mythological figmentswhich centre in what is called ”The Returnof the Heraclidae,” reveals those northernimmigrants or invaders, at various points ontheir way, dominant all along it, from a cer-tain deep vale in the heart of the mountains

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of Epirus southwards, gradually through zoneafter zone of more temperate lowland, toreach their perfection, highlanders from firstto last, in this mountain ”hollow” of Lacedae-mon. They claim supremacy, not as Dorianinvaders, but as kinsmen of the old Achaeanprinces of the land; yet it was to the factof conquest, to the necessity of [218] main-taining a position so strained, like that, as

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Aristotle expressly pointed out, of a belea-guered encampment in an enemy’s territory,that the singular institutions of Lacedae-mon, the half-military, half-monastic spirit,which prevailed in this so gravely beautifulplace, had been originally due. But observe!–Its moral and political system, in which thatslavery was so significant a factor, its dis-cipline, its aesthetic and other scruples, its

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peculiar moral ethos,+ having long beforeour Platonic student comes thither attainedits original and proper ends, survived,–thereis the point! survived as an end in itself, asa matter of sentiment, of public and per-haps still more of personal pride, though of the finer, the very finest sort, in one wordas an ideal. Pericles, as you remember, inhis famous vindication of the Athenian sys-

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tem, makes his hearers understand that theends of the Lacedaemonian people mighthave been attained with less self-sacrificethan theirs. But still, there it remained,he diaita Dorike+–the genuine Laconism of the Lacedaemonians themselves, their tra-ditional conception of life, with its earnest-ness, its precision and strength, its loyaltyto its own type, its impassioned complete-

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ness; a spectacle, aesthetically, at least, veryinteresting, like some perfect instrument shap-ing to what they visibly were, the most beau-tiful of all people, in Greece, in the world.

Gymnastic, ”bodily exercise,” of course,does [219] not always and necessarily ef-fect the like of that. A certain perfectlypreserved old Roman mosaic pavement inthe Lateran Museum, presents a terribly

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fresh picture of the results of another sortof ”training,” the monstrous developmentby a cruel art, by exercise, of this or thatmuscle, changing boy or man into a merelymechanic instrument with which his breed-ers might make money by amusing the Ro-man people. Victor Hugo’s odious dreamof L’homme qui rit, must have had some-thing of a prototype among those old Ro-

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man gladiators. The Lacedaemonians, saysXenophon on the other hand, homoios apote ton skelon kai apo cheiron kai apo trachelougymnazontai.+ Here too, that is to say, theyaimed at, they found, proportion, Pythagoreansymmetry or music, and bold as they couldbe in their exercises (it was a Lacedaemo-nian who, at Olympia, for the first timethrew aside the heavy girdle and ran naked

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to the goal) forbade all that was likely todisfigure the body. Though we must notsuppose all ties of nature rent asunder, norall connexion between parents and childrenin those genial, retired houses at an end invery early life, it was yet a strictly pub-lic education which began with them be-times, and with a very clearly defined pro-gramme, conservative of ancient traditional

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and unwritten rules, an aristocratic educa-tion for the few, the liberales–”liberals,” aswe may say, in that the proper sense of theword. It made them, in [220] very deed,the lords, the masters, of those they weremeant by-and-by to rule; masters, of theirvery souls, of their imagination, enforcingon them an ideal, by a sort of spiritual au-thority, thus backing, or backed by, a very

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effective organisation of ”the power of thesword.” In speaking of Lacedaemon, yousee, it comes naturally to speak out of pro-portion, it might seem, of its youth, andof the education of its youth. But in factif you enter into the spirit of Lacedaemo-nian youth, you may conceive Lacedaemo-nian manhood for yourselves. You divinealready what the boy, the youth, so late in

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obtaining his majority, in becoming a man,came to be in the action of life, and on thebattle-field. ”In a Doric state,” says Muller,”education was, on the whole, a matter of more importance than government.”

A young Lacedaemonian, then, of theprivileged class left his home, his tendernurses in those large, quiet old suburbanhouses early, for a public school, a schooling

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all the stricter as years went on, to be fol-lowed, even so, by a peculiar kind of barrack-life, the temper of which, a sort of militarymonasticism (it must be repeated) wouldbeset him to the end. Though in the gym-nasia of Lacedaemon no idle by- standers,no–well! Platonic loungers after truth orwhat not–were permitted, yet we are told,neither there nor in Sparta generally, nei-

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ther there nor anywhere else, were the boyspermitted [221] to be alone. If a certain loveof reserve, of seclusion, characterised theSpartan citizen as such, it was perhaps thecicatrice of that wrench from a soft homeinto the imperative, inevitable gaze of hisfellows, broad, searching, minute, his regretfor, his desire to regain, moral and men-tal even more than physical ease. And his

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education continued late; he could seldomthink of marriage till the age of thirty. Eth-ically it aimed at the reality, aestheticallyat the expression, of reserved power, andfrom the first set its subject on the thoughtof his personal dignity, of self-command, inthe artistic way of a good musician, a goodsoldier. It is noted that ”the general ac-cent of the Doric dialect has itself the char-

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acter not of question or entreaty, but of command or dictation.” The place of def-erence, of obedience, was large in the edu-cation of Lacedaemonian youth; and theynever complained. It involved however forthe most part, as with ourselves, the gov-ernment of youth by itself; an implicit sub-ordination of the younger to the older, inmany degrees. Quite early in life, at school,

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they found that superiors and inferiors, ho-moioi and hypomeiones,+ there really were;and their education proceeded with system-atic boldness on that fact. Eiren, melleiren,sideunes,+ and the like–words, titles, whichindicate an unflinching elaboration of theattitudes of youthful subordination and com-mand with responsibility–remain as a partof what we might [222] call their ”public-

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school slang.” They ate together ”in theirdivisions” (agelai)+ on much the same fareevery day at a sort of messes; not reclined,like Ionians or Asiatics, but like heroes, theprincely males, in Homer, sitting uprighton their wooden benches; were ”inspected”frequently, and by free use of viva voce ex-amination ”became adepts in presence of mind,” in mental readiness and vigour, in

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the brief mode of speech Plato commends,which took and has kept its name from them;with no warm baths allowed; a daily plungein their river required. Yes! The beautyof these most beautiful of all people wasa male beauty, far remote from femininetenderness; had the expression of a certainascesis in it; was like un-sweetened wine. Incomparison with it, beauty of another type

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might seem to be wanting in edge or accent.And they could be silent. Of the posi-

tive uses of the negation of speech, like gen-uine scholars of Pythagoras, the Lacedae-monians were well aware, gaining strengthand intensity by repression. Long spacesof enforced silence had doubtless somethingto do with that expressive brevity of utter-ance, which could be also, when they cared,

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so inexpressive of what their intentions re-ally were–something to do with the habit of mind to which such speaking would comenaturally. In contrast with the ceaselessprattle of Athens, Lacedaemonian assem-blies lasted as short a time as possible, allstanding. A [223] Lacedaemonian ambas-sador being asked in whose name he wascome, replies: ”In the name of the State, if

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I succeed; if I fail, in my own.” What theylost in extension they gained in depth.

Had our traveller been tempted to aska young Lacedaemonian to return his visitat Athens, permission would have been re-fused him. He belonged to a communitybent above all things on keeping indeliblyits own proper colour. Its more strictlymental education centered, in fact, upon

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a faithful training of the memory, again inthe spirit of Pythagoras, in regard to whatseemed best worth remembering. Hard andpractical as Lacedaemonians might seem,they lived nevertheless very much by imag-ination; and to train the memory, to pre-occupy their minds with the past, as in ourown classic or historic culture of youth, wasin reality to develope a vigorous imagina-

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tion. In music (mousike)+ as they con-ceived it, there would be no strictly selfishreading, writing or listening; and if therewas little a Lacedaemonian lad had to reador write at all, he had much to learn, likea true conservative, by heart: those un-written laws of which the Council of El-ders was the authorised depositary, and onwhich the whole public procedure of the

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state depended; the archaic forms of reli-gious worship; the names of their kings, of victors in their games or in battle; the brief record of great events; the oracles they hadreceived; the rhetrai, from [224] Lycurgusdownwards, composed in metrical Lacedae-monian Greek; their history and law, inshort, actually set to music, by Terpanderand others, as was said. What the Lacedae-

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monian learned by heart he was for the mostpart to sing, and we catch a glimpse, anecho, of their boys in school chanting; oneof the things in old Greece one would haveliked best to see and hear–youthful beautyand strength in perfect service–a manifes-tation of the true and genuine Hellenism,though it may make one think of the novicesat school in some Gothic cloister, of our

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own old English schools, nay, of the youngLacedaemonian’s cousins at Sion, singingthere the law and its praises.

The Platonic student of the ways of theLacedaemonians observes then, is interestedin observing, that their education, whichindeed makes no sharp distinction betweenmental and bodily exercise, results as it hadbegun in ”music”–ends with body, mind,

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memory above all, at their finest, on greatshow-days, in the dance. Austere, self-denyingLacedaemon had in fact one of the largesttheatres in Greece, in part scooped out boldlyon the hill-side, built partly of enormousblocks of stone, the foundations of whichmay still be seen. We read what Plato saysin The Republic of ”imitations,” of the im-itative arts, imitation reaching of course its

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largest development on the stage, and areperhaps surprised at the importance he as-signs, in every department of [225] humanculture, to a matter of that kind. But hereas elsewhere to see was to understand. Weshould have understood Plato’s drift in hislong criticism and defence of imitative art,his careful system of rules concerning it,could we have seen the famous dramatic

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Lacedaemonian dancing. They danced atheme, a subject. A complex and elaborateart this must necessarily have been, but,as we may gather, as concise, direct, eco-nomically expressive, in all its varied soundand motion, as those swift, lightly girt, im-promptu Lacedaemonian sayings. With nomovement of voice or hand or foot, par-aleipomenon,+ unconsidered, as Plato for-

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bids, it was the perfect flower of their cor-rection, of that minute patience and carewhich ends in a perfect expressiveness; nota note, a glance, a touch, but told obedi-ently in the promotion of a firmly graspedmental conception, as in that perfect po-etry or sculpture or painting, in which ”thefinger of the master is on every part of hiswork.” We have nothing really like it, and to

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comprehend it must remember that, thoughit took place in part at least on the stage of a theatre–was in fact a ballet-dance, it hadalso the character both of a liturgical ser-vice and of a military inspection; and yet,in spite of its severity of rule, was a natu-ral expression of the delight of all who tookpart in it.

So perfect a spectacle the gods them-119



selves might be thought pleased to witness;were in [226] consequence presented withit as an important element in the religiousworship of the Lacedaemonians, in whoselife religion had even a larger part than withthe other Greeks, conspicuously religious,deisidaimones,+ involved in religion or su-perstition, as the Greeks generally were. Moreclosely even than their so scrupulous neigh-

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bours they associated the state, its acts andofficers, with a religious sanction, religioususages, theories, traditions. While the re-sponsibilities of secular government lay uponthe Ephors, those mysteriously dual, at firstsight useless, and yet so sanctimoniouslyobserved kings, ”of the house of Heracles,”with something of the splendour of the oldAchaean or Homeric kings, in life as also in

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death, the splendid funerals, the passionatearchaic laments which then followed them,were in fact of spiritual or priestly rank, theliving and active centre of a poetic religioussystem, binding them ”in a beneficent con-nexion” to the past, and in the present withspecial closeness to the oracle of Delphi.

Of that catholic or general centre of Greekreligion the Lacedaemonians were the hered-

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itary and privileged guardians, as also thepeculiar people of Apollo, the god of Del-phi; but, observe! of Apollo in a pecu-liar development of his deity. In the dra-matic business of Lacedaemon, centering inthese almost liturgical dances, there was lit-tle comic acting. The fondness of the slavesfor buffoonery and loud [227] laughter, wasto their master, who had no taste for the

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like, a reassuring note of his superiority. Hetherefore indulged them in it on occasion,and you might fancy that the religion of apeople so strenuous, ever so full of their dig-nity, must have been a religion of gloom. Itwas otherwise. The Lacedaemonians, likethose monastic persons of whom they so of-ten remind one, as a matter of fact how-ever surprising, were a very cheerful peo-

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ple; and the religion of which they had somuch, deeply imbued everywhere with anoptimism as of hopeful youth, encouragedthat disposition, was above all a religionof sanity. The observant Platonic visitormight have taken note that something of that purgation of religious thought and sen-timent, of its expression in literature, rec-ommended in Plato’s Republic, had been

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already quietly effected here, towards theestablishment of a kind of cheerful daylightin men’s tempers.

In furtherance then of such a religion of sanity, of that harmony of functions, whichis the Aristotelian definition of health, Apollo,sanest of the national gods, became also thetribal or home god of Lacedaemon. Thatcommon Greek worship of Apollo they made

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especially their own, but (just here is thenoticeable point) with a marked preferencefor the human element in him, for the men-tal powers of his being over those elemen-tal or physical forces of production, whichhe also mystically represents, and which re-sulted [228] sometimes in an orgiastic, anunintellectual, or even an immoral service.He remains youthful and unmarried. In

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congruity with this, it is observed that, ina quasi-Roman worship, abstract qualitiesand relationships, ideals, become subsidiaryobjects of religious consideration around him,such as sleep, death, fear, fortune, laughtereven. Nay, other gods also are, so to speak,Apollinised, adapted to the Apolline pres-ence; Aphrodite armed, Enyalius in fetters,perhaps that he may never depart thence.

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Amateurs everywhere of the virile elementin life, the Lacedaemonians, in truth, im-part to all things an intellectual character.Adding a vigorous logic to seemingly an-imal instincts, for them courage itself be-comes, as for the strictly philosophic mindat Athens, with Plato and Aristotle, an in-tellectual condition, a form of right knowl-edge.

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Such assertion of the consciously humaninterest in a religion based originally on apreoccupation with the unconscious forcesof nature, was exemplified in the great re-ligious festival of Lacedaemon. As a spec-tator of the Hyacinthia, our Platonic stu-dent would have found himself one of a largebody of strangers, gathered together fromLacedaemon and its dependent towns and

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villages, within the ancient precincts of Amy-clae, at the season between spring and sum-mer when under the first fierce heat of theyear the abundant hyacinths fade from thefields. Blue flowers, [229] you remember,are the rarest, to many eyes the loveliest;and the Lacedaemonians with their guestswere met together to celebrate the deathof the hapless lad who had lent his name

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to them, Hyacinthus, son of Apollo, or sonof an ancient mortal king who had reignedin this very place; in either case, greatlybeloved of the god, who had slain him bysad accident as they played at quoits to-gether delightfully, to his immense sorrow.That Boreas (the north-wind) had maliciouslymiscarried the discus, is a circumstance wehardly need to remind us that we have here,

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of course, only one of many transparent,unmistakable, parables or symbols of thegreat solar change, so sudden in the south,like the story of Proserpine, Adonis, andthe like. But here, more completely per-haps than in any other of those stories, theprimary elemental sense had obscured itself behind its really tragic analogue in humanlife, behind the figure of the dying youth.

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We know little of the details of the feast;incidentally, that Apollo was vested on theoccasion in a purple robe, brought in cere-mony from Lacedaemon, woven there, Pau-sanias tells us, in a certain house called fromthat circumstance Chiton.+ You may re-member how sparing these Lacedaemonianswere of such dyed raiment, of any but thenatural and virgin colouring of the fleece;

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that purple or red, however, was the colourof their royal funerals, as indeed Amyclae it-self was famous for purple stuffs–Amyclaeaevestes. As [230] the general order of thefeast, we discern clearly a single day of some-what shrill gaiety, between two days of sig-nificant mourning after the manner of AllSouls’ Day, directed from mimic grief for amythic object, to a really sorrowful com-

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memoration by the whole Lacedaemonianpeople–each separate family for its own de-ceased members.

It was so again with those other youthfuldemi-gods, the Dioscuri, themselves also, inold heroic time, resident in this venerableplace: Amyclaei fratres, fraternal leadersof the Lacedaemonian people. Their stat-ues at this date were numerous in Laconia,

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or the docana, primitive symbols of them,those two upright beams of wood, carriedto battle before the two kings, until it hap-pened that through their secret enmity acertain battle was lost, after which one kingonly proceeded to the field, and one partonly of that token of fraternity, the otherremaining at Sparta. Well! they were twostars, you know, at their original birth in

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men’s minds, Gemini, virginal fresh stars of dawn, rising and setting alternately–thosetwo half-earthly, half-celestial brothers, oneof whom, Polydeuces, was immortal. Theother, Castor, the younger, subject to oldage and death, had fallen in battle, wasfound breathing his last. Polydeuces there-upon, at his own prayer, was permitted todie: with undying fraternal affection, had

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forgone one moiety of his privilege, and layin the grave for a day in his [231] brother’sstead, but shone out again on the morrow;the brothers thus ever coming and going,interchangeably, but both alike gifted nowwith immortal youth.

In their origin, then, very obviously el-emental deities, they were thus become al-most wholly humanised, fraternised with the

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Lacedaemonian people, their closest friendsof the whole celestial company, visitors, asfond legend told, at their very hearths, foundwarming themselves in the half-light at theirrude fire-sides. Themselves thus visible onoccasion, at all times in devout art, theywere the starry patrons of all that youthwas proud of, delighted in, horsemanship,games, battle; and always with that pro-

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found fraternal sentiment. Brothers, com-rades, who could not live without each other,they were the most fitting patrons of a placein which friendship, comradeship, like theirs,came to so much. Lovers of youth theyremained, those enstarred types of it, ar-rested thus at that moment of miraculousgood fortune as a consecration of the clean,youthful friendship, ”passing even the love

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of woman,” which, by system, and underthe sanction of their founder’s name, elabo-rated into a kind of art, became an elemen-tary part of education. A part of their dutyand discipline, it was also their great so-lace and encouragement. The beloved andthe lover, side by side through their longdays of eager labour, and above all on thebattlefield, became respectively, aites,+ the

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[232] hearer, and eispnelas,+ the inspirer;the elder inspiring the younger with his ownstrength and noble taste in things.

What, it has been asked, what was thereto occupy persons of the privileged class inLacedaemon from morning to night, thuscut off as they were from politics and busi-ness, and many of the common interestsof men’s lives? Our Platonic visitor would

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have asked rather, Why this strenuous task-work, day after day; why this loyalty to asystem, so costly to you individually, thoughit may be thought to have survived its orig-inal purpose; this laborious, endless, edu-cation, which does not propose to give youanything very useful or enjoyable in itself?An intelligent young Spartan might havereplied: ”To the end that I myself may be

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a perfect work of art, issuing thus into theeyes of all Greece.” He might have observed–we may safely observe for him–that the in-stitutions of his country, whose he was, hada beauty in themselves, as we may observealso of some at least of our own institutions,educational or religious: that they bringout, for instance, the lights and shadowsof human character, and relieve the present

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by maintaining in it an ideal sense of thepast. He might have added that he had hisfriendships to solace him; and to encouragehim, the sense of honour.

Honour, friendship, loyalty to the idealof the [233] past, himself as a work of art!There was much of course in his answer.Yet still, after all, to understand, to be ca-pable of, such motives, was itself but a re-

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sult of that exacting discipline of characterwe are trying to account for; and the ques-tion still recurs, To what purpose? Why,with no prospect of Israel’s reward, are youas scrupulous, minute, self- taxing, as he?A tincture of asceticism in the Lacedaemo-nian rule may remind us again of the monas-ticism of the Middle Ages. But then, monas-tic severity was for the purging of a troubled

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conscience, or for the hope of an immenseprize, neither of which conditions is to besupposed here. In fact the surprise of SaintPaul, as a practical man, at the slightnessof the reward for which a Greek spent him-self, natural as it is about all pagan per-fection, is especially applicable about theseLacedaemonians, who indeed had actuallyinvented that so ”corruptible” and essen-

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tially worthless parsley crown in place of the more tangible prizes of an earlier age.Strange people! Where, precisely, may bethe spring of action in you, who are so se-vere to yourselves; you who, in the wordsof Plato’s supposed objector that the rulersof the ideal state are not to be envied, havenothing you can really call your own, butare like hired servants in your own houses,–

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qui manducatis panem doloris?+Another day-dream, you may say, about

those [234] obscure ancient people, it wasever so difficult really to know, who hadhidden their actual life with so much suc-cess; but certainly a quite natural dreamupon the paradoxical things we are told of them, on good authority. It is because theymake us ask that question; puzzle us by a

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paradoxical idealism in life; are thus dis-tinguished from their neighbours; that, likesome of our old English places of education,though we might not care to live always atschool there, it is good to visit them on oc-casion; as some philosophic Athenians, as

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