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By Root 3212 0

influenced the world, always, through its effect on men's imaginations, ideals, and hopes, not directly through political power. Rome made roads which largely still survive, and laws which are the source of many modern legal codes, but it was the armies of Rome that made these things important. The Greeks, though admirable fighters, made few conquests, because they expended their military fury mainly on each other. It was left to the semi-barbarian Alexander to spread Hellenism throughout the Near East, and to make Greek the literary language in Egypt and Syria and the inland parts of Asia Minor. The Greeks could never have accomplished this task, not for lack of military force, but owing to their incapacity for political cohesion. The political vehicles of Hellenism have always been non-Hellenic; but it was the Greek genius that so inspired alien nations as to cause them to spread the culture of those whom they had conquered.

What is important to the historian of the world is not the petty wars between Greek cities, or the sordid squabbles for party ascendancy, but the memories retained by mankind when the brief episode was ended—like the recollection of a brilliant sunrise in the Alps, while the mountaineer struggles through an arduous day of wind and snow. These memories, as they gradually faded, left in men's minds the images of certain peaks that had shone with peculiar brightness in the early light, keeping alive the knowledge that behind the clouds a splendour still survived, and might at any moment become manifest. Of these, Plato was the most important in early Christianity, Aristotle in the medieval Church; but when, after the Renaissance, men began to value political freedom, it was above all to Plutarch that they turned. He influenced profoundly the English and French liberals of the eighteenth century, and the founders of the United States; he influenced the romantic movement in Germany, and has continued, mainly by indirect channels, to influence German thought down to the present day. In some ways his influence was good, in some bad; as regards Lycurgus and Sparta, it was bad. What he has to say about Lycurgus is important, and I shall give a brief account of it, even at the cost of some repetition.

Lycurgus—so Plutarch says—having resolved to give laws to Sparta, travelled widely in order to study different institutions. He liked the laws of Crete, which were 'very straight and severe',6 but disliked those of Ionia, where there were 'superfluities and vanities'. In Egypt he learned the advantage of separating the soldiers from the rest of the people, and afterwards, having returned from his travels, 'brought the practice of it into Sparta: where setting the merchants, artificers, and labourers every one a part by themselves, he did establish a noble Commonwealth'. He made an equal division of lands among all the citizens of Sparta in order to 'banish out of the city all insolvency, envy, covetousness, and deliciousness, and also all riches and poverty'. He forbade gold and silver money, allowing only iron coinage, of so little value that 'to lay up thereof the value of ten minas, it would have occupied a whole cellar in a house'. By this means he banished 'all superfluous

and unprofitable sciences', since there was not enough money to pay their practitioners; and by the same law he made all external commerce impossible. Rhetoricians, panders, and jewellers, not liking the iron money, avoided Sparta. He next ordained that all the citizens should eat together, and all should have the same food.

Lycurgus, like other reformers, thought the education of children 'the chiefest and greatest matter, that a reformer of laws should establish'; and like all who aim chiefly at military power, he was anxious to keep up the birth rate. The 'plays, sports, and dances the maids did naked before young men, were provocation to draw and allure the young men to marry: not as persuaded by geometrical reasons, as saith Plato, but brought to it by liking, and of very love'. The habit of treating a marriage, for the first few