5/5/2023 0 Comments Magna graecia importance![]() ![]() The brilliant chapter on Sparta in the late Mr. It is therefore, I think, an erroneous or at least questionable view which refers peculiarities of Spartan marriage customs to a survival from savage life, before the family had become a settled institution. The development of a rich civilisation, largely under Dorian laws, in Sicily and southern Italy affords further evidence upon this point. ![]() The celebration of the Hyacinthia which was common to all Dorian states remained to indicate the freƫr workings of a former time. And such an independent personality as that of the adventurous Dorieus, whose picturesque career is so familiar to readers of Herodotus, implies the existence of elements that were not easily subdued to the stiff framework of Spartan discipline. The fragments of Alcman in fact reveal to us the complexion of a time when Laconian civilisation was full of grace and charm, and the stress of war had not yet hardened the city into a camp. And it is impossible to believe that those who listened to the songs of Alcman, which the Lydian singer made for Laconian maidens who sported on Taygetus, can as yet have been drilled into the monotonous uniformity of life which contrasted so unfavourably with the liberal culture of the Athenians. Argos, at a time when she was already Dorian, was according to Herodotus conspicuous amongst Greek states for the cultivation of music. The Dorians elsewhere, although strict in the observance of law and custom, and in the maintenance of ceremonial rites, do not present the same features of rigid militarism with the Spartans of history. It is tolerably clear, however, that these features became intensified during the obscure contentions of the sixth century. The laws of marriage, of childbirth, of education, the regulations of conduct, were all laid down with a view to the perfecting of individual citizens as instruments for supporting Spartan rule, and to maintaining the number of free citizens at a constant figure. The Spartans might be called the drill-sergeants of Hellas. Pericles speaks of Athenian public life as the education of Greece. The dominant note in all Laconian institutions is, that everything else is sacrificed to the unity and effectiveness of the state. In pursuance of the same wise foresight, Spartan supremacy at an early period identified itself with the Olympic games and the worship of Apollo at Delphi. The recovery of the bones of Orestes, and the foundation of a temple in his honour on the site of his reputed tomb, which is said to have determined the last contest with Tegea, gave the sanction of the old Pelopidan ascendency to the de facto rule of Sparta. The remodelling of the myth of Herakles, for this end, has been already touched upon. The conquerors, whose persistence was equal to their valour in war, seem to have used policy as well as strategy in completing their title to possession. The Dorian conquest of the Peloponnese, though in some mythical accounts it is represented as a single act, was really the result of a long-continued struggle, and the same is true of the domination of Sparta over her neighbours and former allies. The peculiar constitution of Lacedaemon, in which the power of the kings was limited by the control of the Ephors and the privileges accorded to the senate, may have been partly due to the ingenuity of some great statesman, but the realisation of it must have been a gradual process. The relation, of the true Spartan to the Lacedaemonian of the surrounding cities was that of an occupying army to a conquered population while the Helots, who were mostly captives from Messenia, although kept in strict subjection, were not excluded from all warlike exercises. The position of the plain of Lacedaemon, encircled by hills, the paucity of harbours, and even of roadsteads, available for the shipping of a primitive age, conspired with the pride of a military race in isolating the community. T HE religion of Sparta represents Dorian tradition in a pure but somewhat intensified form, modified not from without, but by the special circumstances of the community. ![]()
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