Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/287

 SLAVE-MARKET AT EPHESUS. 265 jiold during the winter as slaves for the profit of the army. Age- silaus, being then busily employed in training his troops to military efficiency, especially for the cavalry service during the ensuing campaign, thought it advisable to impress them with contempt for the bodily capacity and prowess of the natives. He therefore directed the heralds who conducted the auction, to put the prisoners up to sale in a state of perfect nudity. To have the body thus exposed, was a thing never done, and even held dis- graceful by the native Asiatics ; while among the Greeks the practice was universal for purposes of exercise, or at least, had become universal during the last two or three centuries, for we are told that originally the Asiatic feeling on this point had prevailed throughout Greece. It was one of the obvious differences between Grecian and Asiatic customs, 1 that in the former, both the exercises of the palaestra, as well as the matches in the solemn games, required competitors of every rank to contend naked. Agesilaus himself stripped thus habitually ; Alexander, prince of Macedon, had done so, when he ran at the Olympic stadium, 2 also the combatants out of the great family of the Diagorids of Ehodes, when they gained their victories in the Olympic pankratium, and all those other noble pugilists, wrestlers, and runners, descended from gods and heroes, upon whom Pindar pours forth his complimentary ides. On this occasion at Ephesus, Agesilaus gave special orders to out up the Asiatic prisoners to auction naked ; not at all by way of insult, but in order to exhibit to the eye of the Greek soldier, as he contemplated them, how much he gained by his own bodily training and frequent exposure, and how inferior was the condition of men whose bodies never felt the sun or wind. They displayed a white skin, plump and soft limbs, weak and undeveloped muscles, like men accustomed to be borne in carriages instead of walking or running ; from whence we indirectly learn that many of them were men in wealthy circumstances. And the purpose of Agesi- laus was completely answered ; since his soldiers, when they wit- nessed such evidences of bodily incompetence, thought that " the 1 Herodot. i, 10. Trapd yap rolat AvSolci, a^edov ds irapa roiai u (SapfSupoiai, not fivdpa 6(j>-9rjvai yvfj.vbv, ef aia%vvrjv peyfiXriv tyrpft. Com- pare Thucyd. i, 6 ; Plato, Republic, v, 3, p. 452, T>. Herodot. v, 22. VOL. IX. 12