No More Learning

You see his statue there; the one leaning on the
pillar, with a bow in the left hand. The right arm bent over the
head indicates that the God is resting after some great exertion.

Of the exercises here, that in the clay is called wrestling; the
youths in the dust are also called wrestlers, and those who strike
each other standing are engaged in what we call the pancratium. But
we have other gymnasiums for boxing, quoit-throwing, and high-
jumping; and in all these we hold contests, the winner in which is
honoured above all his contemporaries, and receives prizes.

_An_. Ah, and what are the prizes, now?

_So_. At Olympia a wreath of wild olive, at the Isthmus one of
pine, at Nemea of parsley, at Pytho some of the God's sacred
apples, and at our Panathenaea oil pressed from the temple olives.
What are you laughing at, Anacharsis? Are the prizes too small?

_An_. Oh dear no; your prize-list is most imposing; the givers
may well plume themselves on their munificence, and the competitors
be monstrous keen on winning. Who would not go through this amount
of preparatory toil, and take his chance of a choking or a
dislocation, for apples or parsley? It is obviously impossible for
any one who has a fancy to a supply of apples, or a wreath of
parsley or pine, to get them without a mud plaster on his face, or
a kick in the stomach from his competitor. O So. My dear sir, it is
not the things' intrinsic value that we look at. They are the
symbols of victory, labels of the winners; it is the fame attaching
to them that is worth any price to their holders; that is why the
man whose quest of honour leads through toil is content to take his
kicks. No toil, no honour; he who covets that must start with
enduring hardship; when he has done that, he may begin to look for
the pleasure and profit his labours are to bring.

_An_. Which pleasure and profit consists in their being seen
in their wreaths by every one, and congratulated on their victory
by those who before commiserated their pain; their happiness lies
in their exchange of apples and parsley for toil.

_So_. Ah, you certainly do not understand our ways yet. You
will revise your opinions before long, when you go to the great
festivals and see the crowds gathering to look on, the stands
filling up, the competitors receiving their ovations, and the
victor being idolized.

_An_. Why, Solon, that is just where the humiliation comes in;
they are treated like this not in something like privacy, but with
all these spectators to watch the affronts they endure--who, I am
to believe, count them happy when they see them dripping with blood
or being throttled; for such are the happy concomitants of victory.
In my country, if a man strikes a citizen, knocks him down, or
tears his clothes, our elders punish him severely, even though
there were only one or two witnesses, not like your vast Olympic or
Isthmian gatherings. However, though I cannot help pitying the
competitors, I am still more astonished at the spectators; you tell
me the chief people from all over Greece attend; how can they leave
their serious concerns and waste time on such things? How they can
like it passes my comprehension--to look on at people being struck
and knocked about, dashed to the ground and pounded by one another.

_So_. If the Olympia, Isthmia, or Panathenaea were only on
now, those object-lessons might have been enough to convince you
that our keenness is not thrown away. I cannot make you apprehend
the delights of them by description; you should be there sitting in
the middle of the spectators, looking at the men's courage and
physical beauty, their marvellous condition, effective skill and
invincible strength, their enterprise, their emulation, their
unconquerable spirit, and their unwearied pursuit of victory. Oh, I
know very well, you would never have been tired of talking about
your favourites, backing them with voice and hand.

_An_. I dare say, and with laugh and flout too. All the fine
things in your list, your courages and conditions, your beauties
and enterprises, I see you wasting in no high cause; your country
is not in danger, your land not being ravaged, your friends or
relations not being haled away. The more ridiculous that such
patterns of perfection as you make them out should endure the
misery all for nothing, and spoil their beauty and their fine
figures with sand and black eyes, just for the triumphant
possession of an apple or a sprig of wild olive. Oh, how I love to
think of those prizes! By the way, do all who enter get them?

_So_. No, indeed. There is only one winner.

_An_. And do you mean to say such a number can be found to
toil for a remote uncertainty of success, knowing that the winner
cannot be more than one, and the failures must be many, with their
bruises, or their wounds very likely, for sole reward?

_So_. Dear me; you have no idea yet of what is a good political
constitution, or you would never depreciate the best of our
customs. If you ever take the trouble to inquire how a State may
best be organized, and its citizens best developed, you will find
yourself commending these practices and the earnestness with which
we cultivate them; then you will realize what good effects are
inseparable from those toils which seem for the moment to tax our
energies to no purpose.

_An_. Well, Solon, why did I come all the way from Scythia,
why did I make the long stormy passage of the Euxine, but to learn
the laws of Greece, observe your customs, and work out the best
constitution? That was why I chose you of all Athenians for my
friend and host; I had heard of you; I had been told you were a
legislator, you had devised the most admirable customs, introduced
institutions of great excellence, and in fact built up what you
call a constitution. Before all things, then, teach me; make me
your pupil. Nothing would please me more than to sit by your side
without bit or sup for as long as you could hold out, and listen
open-mouthed to what you have to say of constitution and laws.

_So_. The whole thing can hardly be so shortly disposed of,
friend. You must take the different departments, one by one, and
find out our views upon the Gods, then upon parents, upon marriage,
and so for the rest. But I will let you know at once what we think
about the young, and how we treat them when higher things begin to
dawn upon their intelligence, when their frames begin to set and to
be capable of endurance. Then you will grasp our purpose in
imposing these exercises upon them and insisting on physical
effort; our view is not bounded by the contests, and directed to
their carrying off prizes there--of course only a small proportion
of them ever reach that point; no; the indirect benefit that we
secure for their city and themselves is of more importance. There
is another contest in which all good citizens get prizes, and its
wreaths are not of pine or wild olive or parsley, but of complete
human happiness, including individual freedom and political
independence, wealth and repute, enjoyment of our ancient ritual,
security of our dear ones, and all the choicest boons a man might
ask of Heaven. It is of these materials that the wreath I tell you
of is woven; and they are provided by that contest for which this
training and these toils are the preparation.

_An_. You strange man! you had all these grand prizes up your
sleeve, and you told me a tale of apples and parsley and tufts of
wild olive and pine.

_So_. Ah, you will not think those such trifles either, when
you take my meaning. They are manifestations of the same spirit,
all small parts of that greater contest, and of the wreath of
happiness I told you of. But it is true that instead of beginning
at the beginning I was carried away to the meetings at the Isthmus
and Olympia and Nemea. However, we have plenty of time, and you
profess curiosity; it is a simple matter to go back to the
beginning, to that many-prized contest which I tell you is the real
end of all.

_An_. That will be better; we are more likely to prosper on
the high road; perhaps I shall even be cured of my inclination to
laugh at any one I see priding himself on his olive or parsley
wreath. But I propose that we go into the shade over there and sit
down on the benches, not to be interrupted by these rounds of
cheering. And indeed I must confess I have had enough of this sun;
how it scorches one's bare head! I did not want to look like a
foreigner, so I left my hat at home. But the year is at its
hottest; the dog-star, as you call it, is burning everything up,
and not leaving a drop of moisture in the air; and the noonday sun
right overhead gives an absolutely intolerable heat. I cannot make
out how you at your age, so far from dripping like me, never turn a
hair; instead of looking about for some hospitable shade, you take
your sunning quite kindly.

_So_. Ah, Anacharsis, these useless toils, these perpetual
clay-baths, these miseries in the sand and the open air, are
prophylactics against the sun's rays; _we_ need no hats to
ward off his shafts. But come along.

And you are not to regard me as an authority whose statements are
to be accepted as matter of faith; wherever you think I have not
made out my case, you are to contradict me at once and get the
thing straight. So we shall stand to win; either you, after
relieving your mind of all objections that strike you, will reach a
firm conviction, or, failing that, I shall have found out my
mistake. And in the latter case, Athens will owe you a debt that
she cannot be too quick to acknowledge; for your instructions and
corrections of my ideas will redound to her advantage. I shall keep
nothing back; I shall produce it all in public, stand up in the
assembly and say: _Men of Athens, I drew up for you such laws as
I thought would most advantage you; but this stranger_--and at
that word I point to you, Anacharsis--_this stranger from Scythia
has been wise enough to show me my mistake and teach me better
ways. Let his name be inscribed as your benefactor's; set him up in
bronze beside your name-Gods, or by Athene on the citadel_. And
be assured that Athens will not be ashamed to learn what is for her
good from a barbarian and an alien.

_An_. Ah, now I have a specimen of that Attic irony which I
have so often heard of. I am an unsettled wanderer who lives on his
cart and goes from land to land, who has never dwelt in a city, nor
even seen one till now; how should I lay down a constitution, or
give lessons to a people that is one with the soil it lives on
[Footnote: See _Athenians_ in Notes. ], and for all these ages
has enjoyed the blessings of perfect order in this ancient city?
How, above all, instruct that Solon whose native gift all men say
it is to know how a state may best be governed, and what laws will
bring it happiness? Nevertheless, you shall be my legislator too; I
will contradict you, where I think you wrong, for my own better
instruction. And here we are, safely covered from the sun's
pursuit, and this cool stone invites us to take our ease. Start now
and give me your reasons. Why seize upon the rising generation so
young, and subject them to such toils? How do you develop perfect
virtue out of clay and training? What is the exact contribution to
it of dust and summersaults? That and that only is my first
curiosity. All the rest you shall give me by degrees as occasion
rises later. But, Solon, one thing you must bear in mind: you are
talking to a barbarian. What I mean is, you must be simple, and
brief; I am afraid I shall forget the beginning, if a very abundant
flow follows.

_So_. Why, you had better work the sluice yourself, whenever
the word-stream is either turbid or diverging into a wrong
channel. As for mere continuance, you can cut that up by questions.
However, so long as what I have to say is not irrelevant, I do not
know that length matters. There is an ancient procedure in the
Areopagus, our murder court. When the members have ascended the
hill, and taken their seats to decide a case of murder or
deliberate maiming or arson, each side is allowed to address the
court in turn, prosecution and defence being conducted either by
the principals or by counsel. As long as they speak to the matter
in hand, the court listens silently and patiently. But if either
prefaces his speech with an appeal to its benevolence, or attempts
to stir its compassion or indignation by irrelevant considerations
--and the legal profession have numberless ways of playing upon
juries--, the usher at once comes up and silences him. The court is
not to be trifled with or have its food disguised with condiments,
but to be shown the bare facts. Now, Anacharsis, I hereby create
you a temporary Areopagite; you shall hear me according to that
court's practice, and silence me if you find me cajoling you; but
as long as I keep to the point, I may speak at large. For there is
no sun here to make length a burden to you; we have plenty of shade
and plenty of time.

_An_. That sounds reasonable. And I take it very kindly that
you should have given me this incidental view of the proceedings on
the Areopagus; they are very remarkable, quite a pattern of the way
a judicial decision should be arrived at. Let your speech be
regulated accordingly, and the Areopagite of your appointment shall
listen as his office requires.

_So_. Well, I must start with a brief preliminary statement of
our views upon city and citizens. A city in our conception is not
the buildings--walls, temples, docks, and so forth; these are no
more than the local habitation that provides the members of the
community with shelter and safety; it is in the citizens that we
find the root of the matter; they it is that replenish and organize
and achieve and guard, corresponding in the city to the soul in
man. Holding this view, we are not indifferent, as you see, to our
city's body; that we adorn with all the beauty we can impart to it;
it is provided with internal buildings, and fenced as securely as
may be with external walls. But our first, our engrossing
preoccupation is to make our citizens noble of spirit and strong of
body. So they will in peace time make the most of themselves and
their political unity, while in war they will bring their city
through safe with its freedom and well-being unimpaired. Their
early breeding we leave to their mothers, nurses, and tutors, who
are to rear them in the elements of a liberal education. But as
soon as they attain to a knowledge of good and evil, when reverence
and shame and fear and ambition spring up in them, when their
bodies begin to set and strengthen and be equal to toil, then we
take them over, and appoint them both a course of mental
instruction and discipline, and one of bodily endurance. We are not
satisfied with mere spontaneous development either for body or
soul; we think that the addition of systematic teaching will
improve the gifted and reform the inferior. We conform our practice
to that of the farmer, who shelters and fences his plants while
they are yet small and tender, to protect them from the winds, but,
as soon as the shoot has gathered substance, prunes it and lets the
winds beat upon it and knock it about, and makes it thereby the
more fruitful.

We first kindle their minds with music and arithmetic, teach them
to write and to read with expression. Then, as they get on, we
versify, for the better impressing their memories, the sayings of
wise men, the deeds of old time, or moral tales. And as they hear
of worship won and works that live in song, they yearn ever more,
and are fired to emulation, that they too may be sung and marvelled
at by them that come after, and have their Hesiod and their Homer.
And when they attain their civil rights, and it is time for them to
take their share in governing--but all this, it may be, is
irrelevant. My subject was not how we train their souls, but why we
think fit to subject them to the toils we do. I will silence myself
without waiting for the usher, or for you, my Areopagite, who have
been too considerate, methinks, in letting me maunder on out of
bounds all this way.

_An_. Another point of Areopagite procedure, please, Solon.
When a speaker passes over essential matters in silence, has the
court no penalty for him?

_So_. Why? I do not take you.

_An_. Why, you propose to pass by the question of the soul,
which is the noblest and the most attractive to me, and discuss the
less essential matters of gymnasiums and physical exercise.

_So_. You see, my dear sir, I have my eye on our original
conditions; I do not want to divert the word-stream; it might
confuse your memory with its irregular flow. However, I will do
what I can in the way of a mere summary for this branch of the
subject; as for a detailed examination of it, that must be
deferred.

Well, we regulate their sentiments partly by teaching them the laws
of the land, which are inscribed in large letters and exposed at
the public expense for all to read, enjoining certain acts and
forbidding others, and partly by making them attend good men, who
teach them to speak with propriety, act with justice, content
themselves with political equality, eschew evil, ensue good, and
abstain from violence; sophist and philosopher are the names by
which these teachers are known. Moreover, we pay for their
admission to the theatre, where the contemplation of ancient heroes
and villains in tragedy or comedy has its educational effect of
warning or encouragement. To the comic writers we further give the
licence of mockery and invective against any of their fellow
citizens whose conduct they find discreditable; such exposure may
act both directly upon the culprits, and upon others by way of
example.

_An_. Ah, I have seen the tragedians and comedians you speak
of, at least if the former are men in heavy stilted shoes, and
clothes all picked out with gold bands; they have absurd head-
pieces with vast open mouths, from inside which comes an enormous
voice, while they take great strides which it seems to me must be
dangerous in those shoes. I think there was a festival to Dionysus
going on at the time. Then the comedians are shorter, go on their
own feet, are more human, and smaller-voiced; but their head-pieces
are still more ridiculous, so much so that the audience was
laughing at them like one man. But to the others, the tall ones,
every one listened with a dismal face; I suppose they were sorry
for them, having to drag about those great clogs.

_So_. Oh no, it was not for the actors that they were sorry.
The poet was probably setting forth some sad tale of long ago, with
fine speeches that appealed to the audience's feelings and drew
tears from them. I dare say you observed also some flute-players,
with other persons who stood in a circle and sang in chorus. These
too are things that have their uses. Well, our youths' souls are
made susceptible and developed by these and similar influences.

Then their bodily training, to which your curiosity was especially
directed, is as follows. When their first pithless tenderness is
past, we strip them and aim at hardening them to the temperature of
the various seasons, till heat does not incommode nor frost
paralyse them. Then we anoint them with oil by way of softening
them into suppleness. It would be absurd that leather, dead stuff
as it is, should be made tougher and more lasting by being softened
with oil, and the living body get no advantage from the same
process. Accordingly we devise elaborate gymnastic exercises,
appoint instructors of each variety, and teach one boxing, another
the pancratium. They are to be habituated to endurance, to meet
blows half way, and never shrink from a wound. This method works
two admirable effects in them: makes them spirited and heedless of
bodily danger, and at the same time strong and enduring. Those whom
you saw lowering their heads and wrestling learn to fall safely and
pick themselves up lightly, to shove and grapple and twist, to
endure throttling, and to heave an adversary off his legs.
_Their_ acquirements are not unserviceable either; the one
great thing they gain is beyond dispute; their bodies are hardened
and strengthened by this rough treatment. Add another advantage of
some importance: it is all so much practice against the day of
battle. Obviously a man thus trained, when he meets a real enemy,
will grapple and throw him the quicker, or if he falls will know
better how to get up again. All through we are reckoning with that
real test in arms; we expect much better results from our material
if we supple and exercise their bodies before the armour goes on,
so increasing their strength and efficiency, making them light and
wiry in themselves (though the enemy will rather be impressed with
their weight).

You see how it will act. Something may surely be expected from
those in arms who even without them would be considered awkward
customers; they show no inert pasty masses of flesh, no cadaverous
skinniness, they are not shade-blighted women; they do not quiver
and run with sweat at the least exertion, and pant under their
helmets as soon as a midday sun like this adds to the burden. What
would be the use of creatures who should be overpowered by thirst
and dust, unnerved at sight of blood, and as good as dead before
they came within bow-shot or spear-thrust of the enemy? But our
fellows are ruddy and sunburnt and steady-eyed, there is spirit
and fire and virility in their looks, they are in prime condition,
neither shrunken and withered nor running to corpulence, but well
and truly proportioned; the waste superfluity of their tissues they
have sweated out; the stuff that gives strength and activity,
purged from all inferior admixture, remains part of their
substance. The winnowing fan has its counterpart in our gymnastics,
which blow away chaff and husks, and sift and collect the clean
grain.

The inevitable result is sound health and great capacity of
enduring fatigue. A man like this does not sweat for a trifle, and
seldom shows signs of distress. Returning to my winnowing simile--
if you were to set fire on the one hand to pure wheat grain, and on
the other to its chaff and straw, the latter would surely blaze up
much the quicker; the grain would burn only gradually, without a
blaze and not all at once; it would smoulder slowly and take much
longer to consume. Well, disease or fatigue being similarly applied
to this sort of body will not easily find weak spots, nor get the
mastery of it lightly. Its interior is in good order, its exterior
strongly fortified against such assaults, so that it gives neither
admission nor entertainment to the destroying agencies of sun or
frost. To any place that begins to weaken under toil comes an
accession from the abundant internal heat collected and stored up
against the day of need; it fills the vacancy, restores the vital
force, and lengthens endurance to the utmost. Past exertion means
not dissipation but increase of force, which can be fanned into
fresh life.

Further, we accustom them to running, both of the long distance and
of the sprinting kind. And they have to run not on hard ground with
a good footing, but in deep sand on which you can neither tread
firmly nor get a good push off, the foot sinking in. Then, to fit
them to leap a trench or other obstacle, we make them practise with
leaden dumb-bells in their hands. And again there are distance
matches with the javelin. Yes, and you saw in the gymnasium a
bronze disk like a small buckler, but without handle or straps; you
tried it as it lay there, and found it heavy and, owing to its
smooth surface, hard to handle. Well, that they hurl upwards and
forwards, trying who can get furthest and outdo his competitors--an
exercise that strengthens the shoulders and braces the fingers and
toes.

As to the clay and dust that first moved your laughter, I will tell
you now why they are provided. In the first place, that a fall may
be not on a hard surface, but soft and safe. Secondly, greater
slipperiness is secured by sweat and clay combined (you compared
them to eels, you remember); now this is neither useless nor
absurd, but contributes appreciably to strength and activity. An
adversary in that condition must be gripped tightly enough to
baffle his attempts at escape. To lift up a man who is all over
clay, sweat, and oil, and who is doing his very best to get away
and slip through your fingers, is no light task, I assure you. And
I repeat that all these things have their military uses too: you
may want to take up a wounded friend and convey him out of danger;
you may want to heave an enemy over your head and make off with
him. So we give them still harder tasks in training, that they may
be abundantly equal to the less.

The function we assign to dust is just the reverse, to prevent one
who is gripped from getting loose. After learning in the clay to
retain their hold on the elusive, they are accustomed in turn to
escape themselves even from a firm grasp. Also, we believe the dust
forms a plaster that keeps in excessive sweat, prevents waste of
power, and obviates the ill effects of the wind playing upon a body
when its pores are all relaxed and open. Besides which, it cleanses
the skin and makes it glossy. I should like to put side by side one
of the white creatures who live sheltered lives and, after washing
off his dust and clay, any of the Lyceum frequenters you should
select, and then ask you which you would rather resemble. I know
you would make your choice at the first glance, without waiting to
see what they could do; you would rather be solid and well-knit
than delicate and soft and white for want of the blood that had
hidden itself away out of sight.

Such are the exercises we prescribe to our young men, Anacharsis;
we look to find them good guardians of their country and bulwarks
of our freedom; thus we defeat our enemies if they invade us, and
so far overawe our immediate neighbours that they mostly
acknowledge our supremacy and pay us tribute. During peace also we
find our account in their being free from vulgar ambitions and from
the insolence generated by idleness; they have these things to fill
their lives and occupy their leisure. I told you of a prize that
all may win and of a supreme political happiness; these are
attained when we find our youth in the highest condition alike for
peace and war, intent upon all that is noblest.

_An_.
I see, Solon; when an enemy invades, you anoint yourselves
with oil, dust yourselves over, and go forth sparring at them; then
they of course cower before you and run away, afraid of getting a
handful of your sand in their open mouths, or of your dancing round
to get behind them, twining your legs tight round their bellies,
and throttling them with your elbows rammed well in under their
chin-pieces. It is true they will try the effect of arrows and
javelins; but you are so sunburnt and full-blooded, the missiles
will hurt you no more than if you were statues; you are not chaff
and husks; you will not be readily disposed of by the blows you
get; much time and attention will be required before you at last,
cut to pieces with deep wounds, have a few drops of blood extracted
from you. Have I misunderstood your figure, or is this a fair
deduction from it?

But perhaps you will take the equipment of your tragedians and
comedians, and when you get your marching orders put on those wide-
mouthed headpieces, to scare the foe with their appalling terrors;
of course, and you can put the stilted things on your feet; they
will be light for running away (if that should be advisable), or,
if you are in pursuit, the strides they lend themselves to will
make your enemy's escape impossible. Seriously now, are not these
refinements of yours all child's play--something for your idle,
slack youngsters to do? If you really want to be free and happy,
you must have other exercises than these; your training must be a
genuine martial one; no toy contests with friends, but real ones
with enemies; danger must be an element in your character-
development. Never mind dust and oil; teach them to use bow and
javelin; and none of your light darts diverted by a puff of wind;
let it be a ponderous spear that whistles as it flies; to which add
stones, a handful each, the axe, the shield, the breastplate, and
the helmet.

On your present system, I cannot help thinking you should be very
grateful to some God for not having allowed you to perish under the
attack of any half-armed band. Why, if I were to draw this little
dagger at my girdle and run amuck at your collective youth, I could
take the gymnasium without more ado; they would all run away and
not dare face the cold steel; they would skip round the statues,
hide behind pillars, and whimper and quake till I laughed again. We
should have no more of the ruddy frames they now display; they
would be another colour then, all white with terror. That is the
temper that deep peace has infused into you; you could not endure
the sight of a single plume on an enemy's crest.

_So_. Ah, Anacharsis, the Thracians who invaded us with
Eumolpus told another tale; so did your women who assailed Athens
with Hippolyta; so every one who has met us in the field. My dear
sir, it does not follow from our exercising our youths without arms
that we expose them in the same condition to the real thing; the
independent bodily development once complete, training in arms
follows; and to this they come much the fitter for their previous
work.

_An_. Where is your military gymnasium, then? I have been all
over Athens, and seen no sign of it.

_So_. But if you stay longer you will find that every man has
arms enough, for use at the proper time; you will see our plumes
and horse-trappings, our horses and horsemen; these last amounting
to a quarter of our citizens. But to carry arms and be girded with
scimetars we consider unnecessary in peace time; indeed there is a
fine for going armed in town without due cause, or producing
weapons in public. _You_ of course may be pardoned for living
in arms. The want of walls gives conspiracy its chance; you have
many enemies; you never know when somebody may come upon you in
your sleep, pull you out of your cart, and dispatch you. And then,
in the mutual distrust inseparable from an independence that
recognizes no law or constitution, the sword must be always at hand
to repel violence.

_An_. Oho, you think the wearing of arms, except on occasion,
unnecessary; you are careful of your weapons, avoid wear and tear
for them, and put them away for use when the time comes; but the
bodies of your youth you keep at work even when no danger presses;
you knock them about and dissolve them in sweat; instead of
husbanding their strength for the day of need, you expend it idly
on clay and dust. How is that?

_So_. I fancy you conceive of force as something similar to
wine or water or liquid of some sort. You are afraid of its
dribbling away in exercise as those might from an earthenware jar,
and by its disappearance leaving the body, which is supposed to
have no internal reserves, empty and dry. That is not the case; the
greater the drain upon it in the course of exercise, the greater
the supply; did you ever hear a story about the Hydra? cut off one
of its heads, and two immediately sprang up in its place. No, it is
the unexercised and fibreless, in whom no adequate store of
material has ever been laid up, that will peak and pine under toil.
There is a similar difference between a fire and a lamp; the same
breath that kindles the former and soon excites it to greater heat
will put out the latter, which is but ill provided to resist the
blast; it has a precarious tenure, you see.

_An_. Ah, I cannot get hold of all that, Solon; it is too
subtle for me--wants exact thought and keen intelligence. But I
wish you would tell me--at the Olympic, Isthmian, Pythian, and
other Games, attended, you tell me, by crowds to see your youth
contend, why do you have no martial events? Instead, you put them
in a conspicuous place and exhibit them kicking and cuffing one
another, and when they win give them apples or wild olive. Now your
reason for that would be worth hearing.

_So_. Well, we think it will increase their keenness for
exercise to see the champions at it honoured and proclaimed by name
among the assembled Greeks. It is the thought of having to strip
before such a crowd that makes them take pains with their
condition; they do not want to be a shameful spectacle, so each
does his best to deserve success. And the prizes, as I said before,
are not small things--to be applauded by the spectators, to be the
mark of all eyes and fingers as the best of one's contemporaries.
Accordingly, numbers of spectators, not too old for training,
depart with a passion thus engendered for toilsome excellence. Ah,
Anacharsis, if the love of fair fame were to be wiped out of our
lives, what good would remain? Who would care to do a glorious
deed? But as things are you may form your conclusions from what you
see. These who are so keen for victory when they have no weapons
and only a sprig of wild olive or an apple to contend for, how
would they behave in martial array, with country and wives and
children and altars at stake?

I wonder what your feelings would be if you saw our quail and cock
fights, and the excitement they raise. You would laugh, no doubt,
especially when you were told that they are enjoined by law, and
that all of military age must attend and watch how the birds spar
till they are utterly exhausted. And yet it is not a thing to laugh
at either; a spirit of contempt for danger is thus instilled into
men's souls; shall they yield to cocks in nobility and courage?
shall they let wounds or weariness or discomfort incapacitate them
before there is need? But as for testing our men in arms and
looking on while they gash one another, no, thank you! that would
be brutality and savagery, besides the bad policy of butchering our
bravest, who would serve us best against our enemies.

You say you are going to visit the rest of Greece also. Well, if
you go to Sparta, remember not to laugh at them either, nor think
their labour is all in vain, when they charge and strike one
another over a ball in the theatre; or perhaps they will go into a
place enclosed by water, divide into two troops, and handle one
another as severely as enemies (except that they too have no arms),
until the Lycurgites drive the Heraclids, or vice versa, out of the
enclosure and into the water; it is all over then; not another blow
breaks the peace. Still worse, you may see them being scourged at
the altar, streaming with blood, while their parents look on--the
mothers, far from being distressed by the sight, actually making
them hold out with threats, imploring them to endure pain to the
last extremity and not be unmanned by suffering. There are many
instances of their dying under the trial; while they had life and
their people's eyes were on them, they would not give up, nor
concede anything to bodily pain; and you will find their statues
there, set up _honoris causa_ by the Spartan state. Seeing
these things, never take them for madmen, nor say that, since it is
neither a tyrant's bidding nor a conqueror's ordinance, they
victimize themselves for no good reason. Lycurgus their lawgiver
would have many reasonable remarks to make to you on the subject,
and give you his grounds for thus afflicting them; he was not moved
by enmity or hatred; he was not wasting the state's young blood for
nothing; he only thought it proper that defenders of their country
should have endurance in the highest degree and be entirely
superior to fear. However, you need no Lycurgus to tell you; you
can surely see for yourself that, if one of these men were captured
in war, no tortures would wring a Spartan secret out of him; he
would take his scourging with a smile, and try whether the scourger
would not be tired sooner than the scourged.

_An_. Solon, did Lycurgus take his whippings at the fighting
age, or did he make these spirited regulations on the safe basis of
superannuation?

_So_. It was in his old age, after returning from Crete, that
he legislated. He had been attracted to Crete by hearing that their
laws were the best possible, devised by Minos, son of Zeus.

_An_. Well, and why did you not copy Lycurgus and whip your
young men? It is a fine institution quite worthy of yourselves.

_So_. Oh, we were content with our native exercises; we are
not much given to imitating other nations.

_An_. No, no; you realize what a thing it is to be stripped
and scourged with one's hands up, without benefit to oneself or
one's country. If I do happen to be at Sparta when this performance
is on, I shall expect a public stoning at their hands for laughing
at it all, when I see them being whipped like robbers or thieves or
such malefactors. Really, I think a state that submits to such
ridiculous treatment at its own hands wants a dose of hellebore.

_So_. Friend, do not plume yourself on winning an undefended
case where you have it all your own way in the absence of your
opponents. In Sparta you will find some one to plead properly for
their customs. But now, as I have described ours to you, not
apparently to your satisfaction, I may fairly ask you to take your
turn and tell me how you train your youth in Scythia; what
exercises do you bring them up in? how do you make good men of
them?

_An_. Quite a fair demand, Solon; I will give you the Scythian
customs; there is no grandeur about them; they are not much like
yours; for we would never take a single box on the ears, we are
such cowards; but such as they are, you shall have them. We must
put off our talk till to-morrow, though, if you do not mind; I want
to think quietly over what you have said, and collect materials for
what I am to say myself. On that understanding let us go home; for
it is getting late.




OF MOURNING


The behaviour of the average man in a time of bereavement, his own
language and the remarks offered him by way of consolation, are
things that will reward the attention of a curious observer. The
mourner takes it for granted that a terrible blow has fallen both
upon himself and upon the object of his lamentations: yet for all
he knows to the contrary (and here I appeal to Pluto and
Persephone) the departed one, so far from being entitled to
commiseration, may find himself in improved circumstances. The
feelings of the bereaved party are in fact guided solely by custom
and convention. The procedure in such cases--but no: let me first
state the popular beliefs on the subject of death itself; we shall
then understand the motives for the elaborate ceremonial with which
it is attended.

The vulgar (as philosophers call the generality of mankind),
implicitly taking as their text-book the fictions of Homer and
Hesiod and other poets, assume the existence of a deep subterranean
hole called Hades; spacious, murky, and sunless, but by some
mysterious means sufficiently lighted to render all its details
visible. Its king is a brother of Zeus, one Pluto; whose name--so
an able philologer assures me--contains a complimentary allusion to
his ghostly wealth. As to the nature of his government, and the
condition of his subjects, the authority allotted to him extends
over all the dead, who, from the moment that they come under his
control, are kept in unbreakable fetters; Shades are on no account
permitted to return to Earth; to this rule there have been only two
or three exceptions since the beginning of the world, and these
were made for very urgent reasons. His realm is encompassed by vast
rivers, whose very names inspire awe: Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon, and
the like. Most formidable of all, and first to arrest the progress
of the new-comer, is Acheron, that lake which none may pass save by
the ferryman's boat; it is too deep to be waded, too broad for the
swimmer, and even defies the flight of birds deceased. At the very
beginning of the descent is a gate of adamant: here Aeacus, a
nephew of the king, stands on guard. By his side is a three-headed
dog, a grim brute; to new arrivals, however, he is friendly enough,
reserving his bark, and the yawning horror of his jaws, for the
would-be runaway. On the inner shore of the lake is a meadow,
wherein grows asphodel; here, too, is the fountain that makes war
on memory, and is hence called Lethe. All these particulars the
ancients would doubtless obtain from the Thessalian queen Alcestis
and her fellow-countryman Protesilaus, from Theseus the son of
Aegeus, and from the hero of the Odyssey. These witnesses (whose
evidence is entitled to our most respectful acceptance) did not, as
I gather, drink of the waters of Lethe; because then they would not
have remembered. According to them, the supreme power is entirely
in the hands of Pluto and Persephone, who, however, are assisted in
the labours of government by a host of underlings: such are the
Furies, the Pains, the Fears; such too is Hermes, though he is not
always in attendance. Judicial powers are vested in two satraps or
viceroys, Minos and Rhadamanthus, both Cretans, and both sons of
Zeus. By them all good and just men who have followed the precepts
of virtue are sent off in large detachments to form colonies, as it
were, in the Elysian Plain, and there to lead the perfect life.
Evil-doers, on the contrary, are handed over to the Furies, who
conduct them to the place of the wicked, where they are punished in
due proportion to their iniquities. What a variety of torments is
there presented! The rack, the fire, the gnawing vulture; here
Ixion spins upon his wheel, there Sisyphus rolls his stone. I have
not forgotten Tantalus; but he stands elsewhere, stands parched on
the Lake's very brink, like to die of thirst, poor wretch! Then
there is the numerous class of neutral characters; these wander
about the meadow; formless phantoms, that evade the touch like
smoke. It seems that they depend for their nourishment upon the
libations and victims offered by us upon their tombs; accordingly,
a Shade who has no surviving friends or relations passes a hungry
time of it in the lower world.

So profoundly have the common people been impressed with these
doctrines that, when a man dies, the first act of his relations is
to put a penny into his mouth, that he may have wherewithal to pay
the ferryman: they do not stop to inquire what is the local
currency, whether Attic or Macedonian or Aeginetan; nor does it
occur to them how much better it would be for the departed one if
the fare were not forthcoming,--because then the ferryman would
decline to take him, and he would be sent back into the living
world. Lest the Stygian Lake should prove inadequate to the
requirements of ghostly toilets, the corpse is next washed,
anointed with the choicest unguents to arrest the progress of
decay, crowned with fresh flowers, and laid out in sumptuous
raiment; an obvious precaution, this last; it would not do for the
deceased to take a chill on the journey, nor to exhibit himself to
Cerberus with nothing on. Lamentation follows. The women wail; men
and women alike weep and beat their breasts and rend their hair and
lacerate their cheeks; clothes are also torn on the occasion, and
dust sprinkled on the head. The survivors are thus reduced to a
more pitiable condition than the deceased: while they in all
probability are rolling about and dashing their heads on the
ground, he, bravely attired and gloriously garlanded, reposes
gracefully upon his lofty bier, adorned as it were for some
pageant. The mother--nay, it is the father, as likely as not,--now
advances from among the relatives, falls upon the bier (to heighten
the dramatic effect, we will suppose its occupant to be young and
handsome), and utters wild and meaningless ejaculations; the corpse
cannot speak, otherwise it might have something to say in reply.
His son--the father exclaims, with a mournful emphasis on every
word,--his beloved son is no more; he is gone; torn away before his
hour was come, leaving him alone to mourn; he has never married,
never begotten children, never been on the field of battle, never
laid hand to the plough, never reached old age; never again will he
make merry, never again know the joys of love, never, alas! tipple
at the convivial board among his comrades. And so on, and so on. He
imagines his son to be still coveting these things, and coveting
them in vain. But this is nothing: time after time men have been
known to slaughter horses upon the tomb, and concubines and pages;
to burn clothes and other finery, or bury it, in the idea that the
deceased will find a profitable use for such things in the lower
world. Now the afflicted senior, in delivering the tragic
utterances I have suggested above, and others of the same kind, is
not, as I understand it, consulting the interests of his son (who
he knows will not hear him, though he shout louder than Stentor),
nor yet his own; he is perfectly aware of his sentiments, and has
no occasion to bellow them into his own ear. The natural conclusion
is, that this tomfoolery is for the benefit of the spectators; and
all the time he has not an idea where his son is, or what may be
his condition; he cannot even have reflected upon human life
generally, or he would know that the loss of it is no such great
matter. Let us imagine that the son has obtained leave from Aeacus
and Pluto to take a peep into the daylight, and put a stop to these
parental maunderings. 'Confound it, sir,' he might exclaim, 'what
is the noise about? You bore me. Enough of hair-plucking and face-
scratching. When you call me an ill-fated wretch, you abuse a
better man than yourself, and a more fortunate. Why are you so
sorry for me? Is it because I am not a bald, bent, wrinkled old
cripple like yourself? Is it because I have not lived to be a
battered wreck, nor seen a thousand moons wax and wane, only to
make a fool of myself at the last before a crowd? Can your sapience
point to any single convenience of life, of which we are deprived
in the lower world? I know what you will say: clothes and good
dinners, wine and women, without which you think I shall be
inconsolable. Are you now to learn that freedom from hunger and
thirst is better than meat and drink, and insensibility to cold
better than plenty of clothes? Come, I see you need enlightenment;
I will show you how lamentation ought to be done. Make a fresh
start, thus: Alas, my son! Hunger and thirst and cold are his no
longer! He is gone, gone beyond the reach of sickness; he fears not
fever any more, nor enemies nor tyrants. Never again, my son, shall
love disturb your peace, impair your health, make hourly inroads on
your purse; oh, heavy change! Never can you reach contemptible old
age, never be an eyesore to your juniors! --Confess, now, that my
lamentation has the advantage of yours, in veracity, as in
absurdity.

'Perhaps it is the pitchy darkness of the infernal regions that
runs in your head? is that the trouble? Are you afraid I shall be
suffocated in the confinement of the tomb? You should reflect that
my eyes will presently decay, or (if such is your good pleasure) be
consumed with fire; after which I shall have no occasion to notice
either light or darkness. However, let that pass. But all this
lamentation, now; this fluting and beating of breasts; these wholly
disproportionate wailings: how am I the better for it all? And what
do I want with a garlanded column over my grave? And what good do
you suppose you are going to do by pouring wine on it? do you
expect it to filter through all the way to Hades? As to the
victims, you must surely see for yourselves that all the solid
nutriment is whisked away heavenwards in the form of smoke, leaving
us Shades precisely as we were; the residue, being dust, is
useless; or is it your theory that Shades batten on ashes? Pluto's
realm is not so barren, nor asphodel so scarce with us, that we
must apply to you for provisions. --What with this winding-sheet and
these woollen bandages, my jaws have been effectually sealed up,
or, by Tisiphone, I should have burst out laughing long before this
at the stuff you talk and the things you do. '

And at the word Death sealed his lips for ever.

Thus far our corpse, leaning on one side, supported on an elbow.
Can we doubt that he is in the right of it? And yet these
simpletons, not content with their own noise, must call in
professional assistance: an artist in grief, with a fine repertoire
of cut-and-dried sorrows at his command, assumes the direction
of this inane choir, and supplies a theme for their woful
acclamations. So far, all men are fools alike: but at this point
national peculiarities make their appearance. The Greeks burn their
dead, the Persians bury them; the Indian glazes the body, the
Scythian eats it, the Egyptian embalms it. In Egypt, indeed, the
corpse, duly dried, is actually placed at table,--I have seen it
done; and it is quite a common thing for an Egyptian to relieve
himself from pecuniary embarrassment by a timely visit to the
pawnbroker, with his brother or father deceased. The childish
futility of pyramids and mounds and columns, with their short-lived
inscriptions, is obvious. But some people go further, and attempt
to plead the cause of the deceased with his infernal judges, or
testify to his merits, by means of funeral games and laudatory
epitaphs. The final absurdity is the funeral feast, at which the
assembled relatives strive to console the parents, and to prevail
upon them to take food; and, Heaven knows, they are willing enough
to be persuaded, being almost prostrated by a three days' fast.
'How long is this to go on? ' some one expostulates. 'Suffer the
spirit of your departed saint to rest in peace. Or if mourn you
will, then for that very reason you must eat, that your strength
may be proportioned to your grief. ' At this point, a couple of
lines of Homer go the round of the company:

Ev'n fair-haired Niobe forgat not food,

and

Not fasting mourn th' Achaeans for their dead.

The parents are persuaded, though they go to work at first in a
somewhat shamefaced manner; they do not want it to be thought that
after their bereavement they are still subject to the infirmities
of the flesh.

Such are some of the absurdities that may be observed in mourners;
for I have by no means exhausted the list. And all springs from the
vulgar error, that Death is the worst thing that can befall a man.




THE RHETORICIAN'S VADE MECUM

_See note at end of piece_.


You ask, young man, how you may become a rhetorician, and win
yourself the imposing and reverend style of Professor. You tell me
life is for you not worth living, if you cannot clothe yourself in
that power of the word which shall make you invincible and
irresistible, the cynosure of all men's admiration, the desired of
all Grecian ears. Your one wish is to be shown the way to that
goal. And small blame, youngster, to one who in the days of his
youth sets his gaze upon the things that are highest, and knowing
not how he shall attain, comes as you now come to me with the
privileged demand for counsel. Take then the best of it that I can
give, doubting nothing but you shall speedily be a man accomplished
to see the right and to give it expression, if you will henceforth
abide by what you now hear from me, practise it with assiduity, and
go confidently on your way till it brings you to the desired end.

The object of your pursuit is no poor one, worth but a moderate
endeavour; to grasp it you might be content to toil and watch and
endure to the utmost; mark how many they are who once were but
cyphers, but whom words have raised to fame and opulence, ay, and
to noble lineage.

Yet fear not, nor be appalled, when you contemplate the greatness
of your aim, by thought of the thousand toils first to be
accomplished. It is by no rough mountainous perspiring track that I
shall lead you; else were I no better than those other guides who
point you to the common way, long, steep, toilsome, nay, for the
most part desperate. What should commend my counsel to you is even
this: a road most pleasant and most brief, a carriage road of
downward slope, shall bring you in all delight and ease, at what
leisurely effortless pace you will, through flowery meadows and
plenteous shade, to that summit which you shall mount and hold
untired and there lie feasting, the while you survey from your
height those panting ones who took the other track; they are yet in
the first stage of their climb, forcing their slow way amid rough
or slippery crags, with many a headlong fall and many a wound from
those sharp rocks. But you will long have been up, and garlanded
and blest; you have slept, and waked to find that Rhetoric has
lavished upon you all her gifts at once.

Fine promises, these, are they not? But pray let it not stir your
doubts, that I offer to make most easy that which is most sweet. It
was but plucking a few leaves from Helicon, and the shepherd Hesiod
was a poet, possessed of the Muses and singing the birth of Gods
and Heroes; and may not a rhetorician ('tis no such proud title as
that of poet) be quickly made, if one but knows the speediest way?

Let me tell you of an idea that came to nothing for want of faith,
and brought no profit to the man it was offered to. Alexander had
fought Arbela, deposed Darius, and was lord of Persia; his orders
had to be conveyed to every part of his empire by dispatch-runners.
Now from Persia to Egypt was a long journey; to make the necessary
circuit round the mountains, cross Babylonia into Arabia, traverse
a great desert, and so finally reach Egypt, took at the best full
twenty days. And as Alexander had intelligence of disturbances in
Egypt, it was an inconvenience not to be able to send instructions
rapidly to his lieutenants there. A Sidonian trader came to him and
offered to shorten the distance: if a man cut straight across the
mountains, which could be done in three days, he would be in Egypt
without more ado. This was a fact; but Alexander took the man for
an impostor, and would have nothing to say to him. That is the
reception any surprisingly good offer may expect from most men.

Be not like them. A trial will soon show you that you may fly over
the mountains from Persia to Egypt, and in a day, in part of a day,
take rank as rhetorician. But first I will be your Cebes and give
you word-pictures of the two different ways leading to that
Rhetoric, with which I see you so in love. Imagine her seated on a
height, fair and comely; her right hand holds an Amalthea's horn
heaped high with all fruits, and at her other side you are to see
Wealth standing in all his golden glamour. In attendance too
are Repute and Might; and all about your lady's person flutter
and cling embodied Praises like tiny Loves. Or you may have
seen a painted Nilus; he reclines himself upon a crocodile or
hippopotamus, with which his stream abounds, and round him play the
tiny children they call in Egypt his _Cubits_; so play the
Praises about Rhetoric. Add yourself, the lover, who long to be
straightway at the top, that you may wed her, and all that is hers
be yours; for him that weds her she must endow with her worldly
goods.

When you have reached the mountain, you at first despair of scaling
it; you seem to have set yourself the task that Aornus [Footnote:
i. e. , birdless. ] presented to the Macedonians; how sheer it was on
every side! it was true, they thought, even a bird could hardly
soar that height; to take it would be work for a Dionysus or
Heracles. Then in a little while you discern two roads; or no, one
is no more than a track, narrow, thorny, rough, promising thirst
and sweat.