The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [258]
6. One of the Rhetras was, that their laws should not be written;
7. Another was particularly levelled against luxury, for by it was ordained that the ceilings of the houses should only be wrought by the axe, and their gates and doors smoothed only by the saw.
8. Epameinondas’ famous dictum about his own table, that ‘Treason and a plain dinner like this do not keep company together,’ may be said to have been anticipated by Lycurgus, for luxury and a plain house could not well be companions.
9. He would lack sense who would furnish simple rooms with silver-footed couches, purple coverlets and gold plate.
10. Doubtless Lycurgus had good reason to think that they would proportion their beds to their houses, and their coverlets to their beds, and the rest of their goods and furniture to these.
11. It is reported that King Leotychides, the first of that name, was so little used to the sight of any kind of decorated work,
12. That, being entertained at Corinth in a stately room, he was much surprised to see the timber and ceiling so finely carved, and asked his host whether the trees grew so in his country.
13. A third ordinance of Rhetra was, that they should not make war often, or long, with the same enemy,
14. Lest they should train and instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves.
15. And this is what Agesilaus was blamed for, a long time after; it being thought that, by his continual incursions into Boeotia, he made the Thebans a match for the Spartans;
16. And therefore Antalcidas, seeing him wounded one day, said that he was well paid for making the Thebans good soldiers despite themselves.
17. For the good education of the youth, which Lycurgus thought the most important and noblest work of a lawgiver,
18. He went so far back as to take into consideration their very conception and birth, by regulating marriages.
19. Aristotle is wrong in saying that, after Lycurgus had tried all ways to reduce the women to more modesty and sobriety, he was at last forced to leave them as they were,
20. Because in the absence of their husbands, who spent the best part of their lives away at war, their wives, whom they had to leave absolute mistresses at home,
21. Took great liberties and assumed the superiority; and were treated with overmuch respect and called by the title of lady or queen.
22. The truth is, Lycurgus took in their case, also, all the care that was possible;
23. He ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the discus and casting the dart,
24. To the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth,
25. And that with this greater vigour, might better undergo the pains of childbearing.
26. And to take away their excessive tenderness and all acquired womanishness, he ordered that the girls should go naked in the processions, as well as the young men,
27. And dance, too, in that condition, at feasts, singing certain songs, while the young men stood around, seeing and hearing them.
28. On these occasions the maidens now and then made, by jests, a reflection on those youths who had misbehaved themselves in the wars;
29. And again sang encomiums upon those who had acted gallantly, and by these means inspired the younger men with an emulation of their glory.
30. Those that were thus commended went away proud, elated and gratified with their honour among the maidens;
31. And those who were rallied were as sensibly touched as if they had been formally reprimanded;
32. So much the more, because the kings and the elders, as well as the rest of the city, saw and heard all that passed.
33. Nor was there anything shameful in this nakedness of the girls; modesty attended them, and all wantonness was excluded.
34. It taught them simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of higher feelings, admitted as they thus were to the field of noble action and glory.
35. Hence it was natural for them