Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/47

 gymnastic exercises — running, leaping, throwing the discus, wrestling, boxing, and the chase. These exercises were performed naked, in certain buildings called gymnasia. Besides gymnastics, dancing and the military exercises were practiced. A singular custom was the flogging the boys on the annual festival of Diana Orthia, for the purpose of inuring them to bear pain with firmness: the priestess stood by with a small, light, wooden imago of Diana, and if she observed that any boy was spared, she called out that the image of the goddess was so heavy, that she could not support it, and the blows were then redoubled. The men who were present exhorted their sons to fortitude, while the boys endeavored to surpass each other in firmness. Whoever uttered the least cry during the scourging, which was so severe as sometimes to prove fatal, was considered as disgraced, while he who bore it without shrinking was crowned, and received the praises of the whole city. According to some, this usage was established by Lycurgus; others refer it to the period of the battle of Platææ. To teach the youth cunning, vigilance and activity, they were encouraged, as has been already mentioned, to practice theft in certain cases; but if detected, they were flogged, or obliged to go without food, or compelled to dance round an altar, singing songs in ridicule of themselves. The fear of the shame of being discovered sometimes led to the most extraordinary acts. Thus it is related that a boy who had stolen a young fox, and concealed it under his clothes, suffered it to gnaw out his bowels, rather than reveal the theft, by suffering the fox to escape. Swimming was considered indispensable among them; they had a proverb to intimate that a man was good for nothing, — He cannot swim. Modesty of deportment was particularly attended to; and conciseness of language was much studied. The Spartans were the only people of Greece who despised learning, and excluded it from the education of youth. Their whole [sic]instrutions consisted in learning obedience to their superiors, the endurance of hardships, and to conquer or die in war. The youth were, however, carefully instructed in a knowledge of the laws, which, not being reduced to writing, were taught orally. The education of females was entirely different from that of the Athenians. Instead of remaining at home, as in Athens, spinning, &c., they danced in public, wrestled with each other, ran on the course, threw the discus, &c., This was not only done in public, but in a half-naked state. The object of this training of the women, was to give a vigorous constitution to the children.

From a valuable work on the manners and customs of ancient Greece, by a distinguished English author, to whom we have been indebted in our description of the Athenian slavery, we gather some interesting particulars relative to the Spartan Helots, who, he says, were Greeks of the Achaian race, who fell together with the land into the power of the conquerors. He quotes the remark of Ephoros, that "they were, in a certain point of view,