The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [261]
2. Using them for the offices of his house; sending the eldest of them to fetch wood, and the less able to gather salads;
3. And these they must either go without or steal; which they did by getting cunningly into gardens or the eating-houses.
4. If they were caught they were whipped, not for stealing but for being found out.
5. They stole all the other food they could, watching all opportunities when people were asleep or careless.
6. If they were caught, they were punished not only by whipping but by hunger also,
7. Being reduced to their ordinary allowance, which was very slender,
8. This to induce them to help themselves and exercise their energy and cunning.
9. This hard and spare fare, and the work of getting it, had another purpose:
10. It conduced to beauty of shape; for a dry and lean habit is a better subject for nature’s configuration, which the gross and overfed are too heavy to submit to properly.
11. Just as we find that women who take physic whilst they are with child bear leaner and smaller but better-shaped and prettier children.
12. So seriously did the Spartan children go about their stealing,
13. That it is reputed that a youth, having stolen a young fox and hid it under his coat,
14. Suffered it to tear out his very bowels with its teeth and claws, and died rather than let it be discovered.
15. The Iren used to stay with the boys after supper, and bade one of them to sing; to another he put a question requiring a thoughtful answer,
16. For example, who was the best man in the city? What he thought of such an action of such a man?
17. Thus the boys were taught early to pass careful judgement on persons and things, and to keep themselves informed.
18. If they had not an answer ready they were looked upon as dull and careless, with little sense of honour;
19. Besides this, they were to give a good reason for what they said, and in as few and comprehensive words as possible.
20. He that failed of this, or answered not to the purpose, had his thumb bitten by the master.
21. Sometimes the Iren did this in the presence of the older men and magistrates, that they might see whether he punished them justly and proportionately,
22. And when he did amiss, they would not reprove him before the boys, but afterwards called him to account and corrected him.
Chapter 11
1. The boys’ lovers and favourers, too, had a share in their honour or disgrace;
2. There goes a story that one of them was fined by the magistrates, because the lad he loved cried out effeminately when fighting.
3. And though this sort of love was approved among them, yet rivalry did not exist,
4. And if several men’s fancies met in one person, it was rather the beginning of an intimate friendship,
5. In which they all jointly conspired to render the object of their affection as accomplished as possible.
6. They taught them, also, to speak with a natural and graceful raillery, and to comprehend much matter of thought in few words.
7. For Lycurgus disapproved of discourse which did not contain its matter in few words.
8. Children in Sparta, by habits of silence, came to give brief, just and sententious answers.
9. King Agis, when an Athenian laughed at the Spartans’ short swords, and said that the jugglers on the stage swallowed them with ease, answered,
10. ‘We find them long enough to reach our enemies.’ As their swords were short and sharp, so were their sayings;
11. They reach the point and arrest the attention of hearers better than any.
12. Lycurgus spoke thus, as appears by his answer to one who would set up a democracy in Lacedaemon;
13. ‘Begin, friend,’ said he, ‘and set it up in your family.’
14. When a man named Hecataeus was criticised for speaking not one word all suppertime, Archidamidas answered in his vindication,
15. ‘He who knows how to speak, knows also when.’
Chapter 12
1. When they were at war the Spartans’ exercises were generally more moderate, their fare not so hard, nor the rule of their officers so strict,
2. So that they were the only people in the world to