No More Learning

_Si_. Oh, I will give you a list; not bad names either; the
_elite_, if I am correctly informed; they will rather surprise
you. Aeschines the Socratic, now, author of dialogues as witty as
they are long, brought them with him to Sicily in the hope that
they would gain him the royal notice of Dionysius; having given a
reading of the _Miltiades_, and found himself famous, he settled
down in Sicily to sponge on Dionysius and forget Socratic
composition.

Again, I suppose you will pass Aristippus of Cyrene as a
distinguished philosopher?

_Tyc_. Assuredly.

_Si_. Well, he was living there too at the same time and on
the same terms. Dionysius reckoned him the best of all spongers; he
had indeed a special gift that way; the prince used to send his
cooks to him daily for instruction. He, I think, was really an
ornament to the profession.

Well then, Plato, the noblest of you all, came to Sicily with the
same view; he did a few days' sponging, but found himself
incompetent and had to leave. He went back to Athens, took
considerable pains with himself, and then had another try, with
exactly the same result, however. Plato's Sicilian disaster seems
to me to bear comparison with that of Nicias.

_Tyc_. Your authority for all this, pray?

_Si_. Oh, there are plenty of authorities; but I will specify
Aristoxenus the musician, a weighty one enough, and himself
attached as a sponger to Neleus. Then you of course know that
Euripides held this relation to Archelaus till the day of his
death, and Anaxarchus to Alexander.

As for Aristotle, that tiro in all arts was a tiro here too.

I have shown you, then, and without exaggeration, the philosophic
passion for sponging. On the other hand, no one can point to a
sponger who ever cared to philosophize.

But of course, if never to be hungry, thirsty, or cold, is to be
happy, the sponger is the man who is in that position. Cold hungry
philosophers you may see any day, but never a cold hungry sponger;
the man would not be a sponger, that is all, but a wretched pauper,
no better than a philosopher.

_Tyc_. Well, let that pass. And now what about those many
points in which your art is superior to Rhetoric and Philosophy?

_Si_. Human life, my dear sir, has its times and seasons;
there is peace time and there is war time. These provide unfailing
tests for the character of arts and their professors. Shall we take
war time first, and see who will do best for himself and for his
city under those conditions?

_Tyc_. Ah, now comes the tug of war. It tickles me, this queer
match between sponger and philosopher.

_Si_. Well, to make the thing more natural, and enable you to
take it seriously, let us picture the circumstances. Sudden news
has come of a hostile invasion; it has to be met; we are not going
to sit still while our outlying territory is laid waste; the
commander-in-chief issues orders for a general muster of all liable
to serve; the troops gather, including philosophers, rhetoricians,
and spongers. We had better strip them first, as the proper
preliminary to arming. Now, my dear sir, have a look at them
individually and see how they shape. Some of them you will find
thin and white with underfeeding--all goose-flesh, as if they were
lying wounded already. Now, when you think of a hard day, a stand-
up fight with press and dust and wounds, what is it but a sorry
jest to talk of such starvelings' being able to stand it?

Now go and inspect the sponger. Full-bodied, flesh a nice colour,
neither white like a woman's nor tanned like a slave's; you can see
his spirit; he has a keen look, as a gentleman should, and a high,
full-blooded one to boot; none of your shrinking feminine glances
when you are going to war! A noble pike-man that, and a noble
corpse, for that matter, if a noble death is his fate.

But why deal in conjecture when there are facts to hand? I make the
simple statement that in war, of all the rhetoricians and
philosophers who ever lived, most never ventured outside the city
walls, and the few who did, under compulsion, take their places in
the ranks left their posts and went home.

_Tyc_. A bold extravagant assertion. Well, prove it.

_Si_. Rhetoricians, then. Of these, Isocrates, so far from serving
in war, never even ventured into a law-court; he was afraid,
because his voice was weak, I understand. Well, then Demades,
Aeschines, and Philocrates, directly the Macedonian war broke out,
were frightened into betraying their country and themselves to
Philip. They simply espoused his interests in Athenian politics;
and any other Athenian who took the same side was their friend. As
for Hyperides, Demosthenes, and Lycurgus, supposed to be bolder
spirits, and always raising scenes in the assembly with their abuse
of Philip, how did they ever show their prowess in the war?
Hyperides and Lycurgus never went out, did not so much as dare show
their noses beyond the gates; they sat snug inside in a domestic
state of siege, composing poor little decrees and resolutions. And
their great chieftain, who had no gentler words for Philip in the
assembly than 'the brute from Macedon, which cannot produce even a
slave worth buying'--well, he did take heart of grace and go to
Boeotia the day before; but battle had not been joined when he
threw away his shield and made off. You must have heard this
before; it was common talk not only at Athens, but in Thrace and
Scythia, whence the creature was derived.

_Tyc_. Yes, I know all that. But then these are orators,
trained to speak, not to fight. But the philosophers; you cannot
say the same of them.

_Si_. Oh, yes; they discuss manliness every day, and do a
great deal more towards wearing out the word Virtue than the
orators; but you will find them still greater cowards and
shirkers. --How do I know? --In the first place, can any one name a
philosopher killed in battle? No, they either do not serve, or else
run away. Antisthenes, Diogenes, Crates, Zeno, Plato, Aeschines,
Aristotle, and all their company, never set eyes on a battle array.
Their wise Socrates was the solitary one who dared to go out; and
in the battle of Delium he ran away from Mount Parnes and got safe
to the gymnasium of Taureas. It was a far more civilized
proceeding, according to his ideas, to sit there talking soft
nonsense to handsome striplings and posing the company with
quibbles, than to cross spears with a grown Spartan.

_Tyc_. Well, I have heard these stories before, and from
people who had no satirical intent. So I acquit you of slandering
them by way of magnifying your own profession.

But come now, if you don't mind, to the sponger's military
behaviour; and also tell me whether there is any sponging recorded
of the ancients.

_Si_. My dear fellow, the most uneducated of us has surely
heard enough of Homer to know that he makes the best of his heroes
spongers. The great Nestor, whose tongue distilled honeyed speech,
sponged on the King; Achilles was, and was known for, the most
upright of the Greeks in form and in mind; but neither for him, for
Ajax, nor for Diomede, has Agamemnon such admiring praise as for
Nestor. It is not for ten Ajaxes or Achilleses that he prays; no,
Troy would have been taken long ago, if he had had in his host ten
men like--that old sponger. Idomeneus, of Zeus's own kindred, is
also represented in the same relation to Agamemnon.

_Tyc_. I know the passages; but I do not feel sure of the
sense in which they were spongers.

_Si_. Well, recall the lines in which Agamemnon addresses
Idomeneus.

_Tyc_. How do they go?

_Si_.

For thee the cup stands ever full,
Even as for me, whene'er it lists thee drink.

When he speaks of the cup ever full, he means not that it is
perpetually ready (when Idomeneus is fighting or sleeping, for
instance), but that he has had the peculiar privilege all through
his life of sharing the King's table without that special
invitation which is necessary for his other followers. Ajax, after
a glorious single combat with Hector, 'they brought to lordly
Agamemnon,' we are told; he, you see, is admitted to the royal
table (and high time too) as an honour; whereas Idomeneus and
Nestor were the King's regular table companions; at least that is
my idea. Nestor I take to have been an exceedingly good and skilful
sponger on royalty; Agamemnon was not his first patron; he had
served his apprenticeship under Caeneus and Exadius. And but for
Agamemnon's death I imagine he would never have relinquished the
profession.

_Tyc_. Yes, that was a first-class sponger. Can you give me
any more?

_Si_. Why, Tychiades, what else was Patroclus's relation to
Achilles? and he was as fine a fellow, all round, as any Greek of
them all. Judging by his actions, I cannot make out that he was
inferior to Achilles himself. When Hector had forced the gates and
was fighting inside by the ships, it was Patroclus who repelled him
and extinguished the flames which had got a hold on Protesilaus's
ship; yet one would not have said the people aboard her were
inefficient--Ajax and Teucer they were, one as good in the _melee_
as the other with his bow. A great number of the barbarians,
including Sarpedon the son of Zeus, fell to this sponger. His own
death was no common one. It took only one man, Achilles, to slay
Hector; Paris was enough for Achilles himself; but two men and a
God went to the killing of the sponger. And his last words bore no
resemblance to those of the mighty Hector, who prostrated himself
before Achilles and besought him to let his relations have his
body; no, they were such as might be expected from one of his
profession. Here they are:--

But of thy like I would have faced a score,
And all the score my spear had given to death.

_Tyc_. Yes, you have proved him a good man; but can you show
him to have been not Achilles's friend, but a sponger?

_Si_. I will produce you his own statement to that effect.

_Tyc_. What a miracle-worker you are!

_Si_. Listen to the lines, then:

Achilles, lay my bones not far from thine;
Thou and thine fed me; let me lie by thee.

And a little further on he says:

Peleus me received,
And nurtured gently, and thy henchman named,

that is, gave him the right of sponging; if he had meant to allude
to Patroclus as his son's friend, he would not have used the word
henchman; for he was a free man. What is a henchman, slaves and
friends being excluded? Why, obviously a sponger. Accordingly Homer
uses the same word of Meriones's relation to Idomeneus. And by the
way it is not Idomeneus, though he was son of Zeus, that he
describes as 'peer of Ares'; it is the sponger Meriones.

Again, did not Aristogiton, poor and of mean extraction, as
Thucydides describes him, sponge on Harmodius? He was also, of
course, in love with him--a quite natural relation between the two
classes. This sponger it was, then, who delivered Athens from
tyranny, and now adorns the marketplace in bronze, side by side
with the object of his passion. And now I have given you an example
or two of the profession.

But what sort of a guess do you make at the sponger's behaviour in
war? In the first place, he will fight on a full belly, as Odysseus
advises. You must feed the man who is to fight, he says, however
early in the morning it may happen to be. The time that others
spend in fitting on helmet or breastplate with nervous care, or in
anticipating the horrors of battle, he will devote to putting away
his food with a cheerful countenance, and as soon as business
begins you will find him in front. His patron will take his place
behind him, sheltering under his shield as Teucer under Ajax's;
when missiles begin to fly the sponger will expose himself for his
patron, whose safety he values more than his own.

Should he fall in battle, neither officer nor comrade need feel
ashamed of that great body, which now reclines as appropriate an
ornament of the battle-field as it once was of the dining-room. A
pretty sight is a philosopher's body by its side, withered,
squalid, and bearded; he was dead before the fight began, poor
weakling. Who would not despise the city whose guards are such
miserable creatures? Who would not suppose, seeing these pallid,
hairy manikins scattered on the ground, that it had none to fight
for it, and so had turned out its gaol-birds to fill the ranks?
That is how the spongers differ from the rhetoricians and
philosophers in war.

Then in peace time, sponging seems to me as much better than
philosophy as peace itself than war. Be kind enough to glance first
at the scenes of peace.

_Tyc_. I do not quite know what they are; but let us glance at
them, by all means.

_Si_. Well, you will let me describe as civil scenes the
market, the courts, the wrestling-schools and gymnasia, the hunting
field and the dining-room?

_Tyc_. Certainly.

_Si_. To market and courts the sponger gives a wide berth they
are the haunts of chicanery; there is no satisfaction to be got out
of them. But at wrestling-school and gymnasium he is in his
element; he is their chief glory. Show me a philosopher or orator
who is in the same class with him when he strips in the wrestling-
school; look at them in the gymnasium; they shame instead of
adorning it. And in a lonely place none of them would face the
onset of a wild beast; the sponger will, though, and find no
difficulty in disposing of it; his table familiarity with it has
bred contempt. A stag or a wild boar may put up its bristles; he
will not mind; the boar may whet its tusks against him; he only
returns the compliment. As for hares, he is more deadly to them
than a greyhound. And then in the dining-room, where is his match,
to jest or to eat? Who will contribute most to entertainment, he
with his song and his joke, or a person who has not a laugh in him,
sits in a threadbare cloak, and keeps his eyes on the ground as if
he was at a funeral and not a dinner? If you ask me, I think a
philosopher has about as much business in a dining-room as a bull
in a china-shop.

But enough of this. What impression does one get of the sponger's
actual life, when one compares it with the other? First it will be
found that he is indifferent to reputation, and does not care a jot
what people think about him, whereas all rhetoricians and
philosophers without exception are the slaves of vanity,
reputation, and what is worse, of money. No one could be more
careless of the pebbles on the shore than the sponger is of money;
he would as soon touch fire as gold. But the rhetoricians and, as
if that were not bad enough, the professed philosophers, are
beneath contempt in this respect. No need to illustrate in the case
of the rhetoricians; but of the philosophers whose repute stands
highest at present, one was lately convicted of taking a bribe for
his verdict in a law-suit, and another expects a salary for giving
a prince his company, and counts it no shame to go into exile in
his old age, and hire himself out for pay like some Indian or
Scythian captive. The very name his conduct has earned him calls no
blush to his cheek.

But their susceptibilities are by no means limited to these; pain,
temper, jealousy, and all sorts of desires, must be added; all of
which the sponger is beyond the reach of; he does not yield to
temper because on the one hand he has fortitude, and on the other
hand he has no one to irritate him. Or if he is by any chance moved
to wrath, there is nothing disagreeable or sullen about it; it
entertains and amuses merely. As to pain, he has less of that to
endure than anybody, one of his profession's recommendations and
privileges being just that immunity. He has neither money, house,
slave, wife, nor children--those hostages to Fortune. He desires
neither fame, wealth, nor beauty.

_Tyc_. He will feel pain if the supplies run short, I presume.

_Si_. Ah, but you see, he is not a sponger if that happens. A
courageous man is not courageous if he has no courage, a sensible
one not sensible if he has no sense. He could not be a sponger
under those conditions. We are discussing the sponger, not the non-
sponger. If the courageous is so in virtue of his courage, the
sensible sensible in virtue of his sense, then the sponger is a
sponger in virtue of sponging. Take that away, and we shall be
dealing with something else, and not with a sponger at all.

_Tyc_. So his supplies will never run short?

_Si_. Manifestly. So he is as free from that sort of pain as
from others.

Then all philosophers and rhetoricians are timorous creatures
together. You may generally see them carrying sticks on their
walks; well, of course they would not go armed if they were not
afraid. And they bar their doors elaborately, for fear of night
attacks. Now our man just latches his room door, so that the wind
may not blow it open; if there is a noise in the night, it is all
the same to him as if there were none; he will travel a lonely road
and wear no sword; he does not know what fear is. But I am always
seeing philosophers, though there is nothing to be afraid of,
carrying bows and arrows; as for their sticks, they take them to
bath or breakfast with them.

Again, no one can accuse a sponger of adultery, violence, rape, or
in fact of any crime whatsoever. One guilty of such offences will
not be sponging, but ruining himself. If he is caught in adultery,
his style thenceforth is taken from his offence. Just as a piece of
cowardice brings a man not repute, but disrepute, so, I take it,
the sponger who commits an offence loses his previous title and
gets in exchange that proper to the offence. Of such offences on
the part of rhetoricians and philosophers, on the other hand, we
have not only abundant examples in our own time, but records
against the ancients in their own writings. There is an Apology of
Socrates, of Aeschines, of Hyperides, of Demosthenes, and indeed of
most of their kind. There is no sponger's apology extant, and you
will never hear of anybody's bringing a suit against one.

Now I suppose you will tell me that the sponger's life may be
better than theirs, but his death is worse. Not a bit of it; it is
a far happier one. We know very well that all or most philosophers
have had the wretched fate they deserved, some by poison after
condemnation for heinous crimes, some by burning alive, some by
strangury, some in exile. No one can adduce a sponger's death to
match these; he eats and drinks, and dies a blissful death. If you
are told that any died a violent one, be sure it was nothing worse
than indigestion.

_Tyc_. I must say, you have done well for your kind against
the philosophers. And now look at it from the patron's point of
view; does he get his money's worth? It strikes me the rich man
does the kindness, confers the favour, finds the food, and it is
all a little discreditable to the man who takes them.

_Si_. Now, really, Tychiades, that is rather silly of you. Can
you not see that a rich man, if he had the gold of Gyges, is yet
poor as long as he dines alone, and no better than a tramp if he
goes abroad unattended? A soldier without his arms, a dress without
its purple, a horse without its trappings, are poor things; and a
rich man without his sponger is a mean, cheap spectacle. The
sponger gives lustre to the patron, never the patron to the other.
Moreover, none of the reproach that you imagine attaches to
sponging; you refer, of course, to the difference in their degrees;
but then it is an advantage to the rich man to keep the other;
apart from his ornamental use, he is a most valuable bodyguard. In
battle no one will be over ready to undertake the rich man with
such a comrade at his side; and you can hardly, having him, die by
poison. Who would dare attempt such a thing, with him tasting your
food and drink? So he brings you not only credit, but insurance.
His affection is such that he will run all risks; he would never
leave his patron to face the dangers of the table alone; no, he
would rather eat and die with him.

_Tyc_. You have stated your case without missing a point,
Simon. Do not tell me you were unprepared again; you have been
trained in a good school, man. But one thing more I should like to
know. There is a nasty sound about the word sponger, don't you
think?

_Si_. See whether I have a satisfactory answer to that. Oblige
me by giving what you consider the right answers to my questions.
Sponging is an old word; what does it really mean?

_Tyc_. Getting your dinner at some one else's expense.

_Si_. Dining out, in fact?

_Tyc_. Yes.

_Si_. And we may call a sponger an out-diner?

_Tyc_. The gravamen's in that; he should dine at home.

_Si_. A few more answers, please. Of these pairs, which do you
consider the best? Which would you take, if you had the choice? -To
sail, or to out-sail?

_Tyc_. The latter.

_Si_. To run or out-run?

_Tyc_. The latter.

_Si_. Ride or out-ride, shoot or out-shoot?

_Tyc_. Still the same.

_Si_. So I presume an out-diner is better than a diner?

_Tyc_. Indisputable. Henceforward I shall come to you morning
and afternoon like a schoolboy for lessons. And I am sure you ought
to do your very best for me, as your first pupil. The first child
is always the mother's joy, you know. [Footnote: It has been
necessary, in Section 60, to tamper a little with the Greek in
order to get the point, such as it is; but it has not been
seriously misrepresented. ]




ANACHARSIS, A DISCUSSION OF PHYSICAL TRAINING

_Anacharsis. Solon_


_An_. Why do your young men behave like this, Solon? Some of
them grappling and tripping each other, some throttling,
struggling, intertwining in the clay like so many pigs wallowing.
And yet their first proceeding after they have stripped-I noticed
that-is to oil and scrape each other quite amicably; but then I do
not know what comes over them--they put down their heads and begin
to push, and crash their foreheads together like a pair of rival
rams. There, look! that one has lifted the other right off his
legs, and dropped him on the ground; now he has fallen on top, and
will not let him get his head up, but presses it down into the
clay; and to finish him off he twines his legs tight round his
belly, thrusts his elbow hard against his throat, and throttles the
wretched victim, who meanwhile is patting his shoulder; that will
be a form of supplication; he is asking not to be quite choked to
death. Regardless of their fresh oil, they get all filthy, smother
themselves in mud and sweat till they might as well not have been
anointed, and present, to me at least, the most ludicrous
resemblance to eels slipping through a man's hands.

Then here in the open court are others doing just the same, except
that, instead of the clay, they have for floor a depression filled
with deep sand, with which they sprinkle one another, scraping up
the dust on purpose, like fowls; I suppose they want their
interfacings to be tighter; the sand is to neutralize the
slipperiness of the oil, and by drying it up to give a firmer grip.

And here are others, sanded too, but on their legs, going at each
other with blows and kicks. We shall surely see this poor fellow
spit out his teeth in a minute; his mouth is all full of blood and
sand; he has had a blow on the jaw from the other's fist, you see.
Why does not the official there separate them and put an end to it?
I guess that he is an official from his purple; but no, he
encourages them, and commends the one who gave that blow.

Wherever you look, every one busy-rising on his toes, jumping up
and kicking the air, or something.

Now I want to know what is the good of it all. To me it looks more
like madness than anything else. It will not be very easy to
convince me that people who behave like this are not wrong in their
heads.

_So_. It is quite natural it should strike you that way, being
so novel, and so utterly contrary to Scythian customs. Similarly
you have no doubt many methods and habits that would seem
extraordinary enough to us Greeks, v if we were spectators of them
as you now are of ours. But be reassured, my dear sir; these
proceedings are not madness; it is no spirit of violence that sets
them hitting each other, wallowing in clay, and sprinkling dust.
The thing has its use, and its delight too, resulting in admirable
physical condition. If you make some stay, as I imagine you will,
in Greece, you are bound to be either a clay-bob or a dust-bob
before long; you will be so taken with the pleasure and profit of
the pursuit.

_An_. Hands off, please. No, I wish you all joy of your
pleasures and your profits; but if any of you treats me like that,
he will find out that we do not wear scimetars for ornament.

But would you mind giving a name to all this? What are we to say
they are doing?

_So_. The place is called a gymnasium, and is dedicated to the
Lycean Apollo. 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.