Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/408

 392 HISTORY OF GREECE. which Brasidas in the Peloponnesian war addresses to his armj in reference to the original Spartan settlement, was still more powerfully present to the mind of Lykurgus four centuries earlier " We are a few in the midst of many enemies ; we can only maintain ourselves by fighting and conquering." 1 Under such circumstances, the exclusive aim which Lykurgua proposed to himself is easily understood ; but what is truly sur- prising, is the violence of his means and the success of the result. He realized his project of creating, in the eight thousand or nine thousand Spartan citizens, unrivalled habits of obedience, hardihood, self-denial, and military aptitude, complete subjec- tion on the part of each individual to the local public opinion, and preference of death to the abandonment of Spartan maxims, intense ambition on the part of every one to distinguish himself within the prescribed sphere of duties, with little ambition for anything else. In what manner so rigofbus a system of indi- vidual training can have been first brought to bear upon any community, mastering the course of the thoughts and actions from boyhood to old age, a work far more difficult than any political revolution, we are not permitted to discover. Nor does the influence of an earnest and energetic Herakleidman, seconded by the still more powerful working of the Delphian god behind, upon the strong pious susceptibilities of the Spartan mind, sufficiently explain a phenomenon so remarkable in the history of mankind, unless we suppose them aided by some com- bination of cooperating circumstances which history has not transmitted to us, 2 and preceded by disorders so exaggerated a* to render the citizens glad to escape from them at any price. Respecting the ante-Lykurgean Sparta we possess no positive information whatever. But although this unfortunate gap cannot be filled up, we may yet master the negative probabilities of the 1 Thucyd, iv. 126. OJ ye. fir^de uitb iroTitrettiv TOIOVTUV //Kert, tv alf ov nofaol biyuv upgovai, uTi^a Ttfaiovuv fj.a}^ov fkaaaovt; oi ftaxopevoi Kparelv. The most remarkable circumstance is, that these words are addressed by Brasidas to an army composed, in large proportion, of manumitted Helot* (Thucyd. iv. 81). 3 Plato treats of the system of Lykurgns, as emanating fi ow- the Delphi** Apollo and Lykurgus as his missionary (Legg. i. p. 632).