Part 14

For this reason, Numa was able to effect his purpose without difficulty, and without any loss of popularity and respect; while Lykurgus was struck and pelted, and in danger of his life, and even so could scarcely carry out his reforms. Yet the genius of Numa was kindly and gentle, and so softened and changed the reckless fiery Romans that they became peaceful, law-abiding citizens; and if we must reckon Lykurgus' treatment of the Helots as part of his system, it cannot be denied that Numa was a far more civilised lawgiver, seeing that he allowed even to actual slaves some taste of liberty, by his institution of feasting them together with their masters at the festival of Saturn.

For this custom of allowing the labourers to share in the harvest-feast is traced to Numa. Some say that this is in remembrance of the equality which existed in the time of Saturn, when there was neither master nor slave, but all were kinsmen and had equal rights.

II. Both evidently encouraged the spirit of independence and self-control among their people, while of other virtues, Lykurgus loved bravery, and Numa loved justice best; unless indeed we should say that, from the very different temper and habits of the two states, they required to be treated in a different manner. It was not from cowardice, but because he scorned to do an injustice, that Numa did not make war; while Lykurgus made his countrymen warlike, not in order that they might do wrong, but that they might not be wronged. Each found that the existing system required very important alterations to check its excesses and supply its defects. Numa's reforms were all in favour of the people, whom he classified into a mixed and motley multitude of goldsmiths and musicians and cobblers; while the constitution introduced by Lykurgus was severely aristocratic, driving all handicrafts into the hands of slaves and foreigners, and confining the citizens to the use of the spear and shield, as men whose trade was war alone, and who knew nothing but how to obey their leaders and to conquer their enemies. In Sparta a free man was not permitted to make money in business, in order that he might be truly free.

Each thing connected with the business of making money, like that of preparing food for dinner, was left in the hands of slaves and helots. Numa made no regulations of this kind, but, while he put an end to military plundering, raised no objection to other methods of making money, nor did he try to reduce inequalities of fortune, but allowed wealth to increase unchecked, and disregarded the influx of poor men into the city and the increase of poverty there, whereas he ought at the very outset, like Lykurgus, while men's fortunes were still tolerably equal, to have raised some barrier against the encroachments of wealth, and to have restrained the terrible evils which take their rise and origin in it. As for the division of the land among the citizens, in my opinion, Lykurgus cannot be blamed for doing it, nor yet can Numa for not doing it. The equality thus produced was the very foundation and corner-stone of the Lacedaemonian constitution, while Numa had no motive for disturbing the Roman lands, which had only been recently distributed among the citizens, or to alter the arrangements made by Romulus, which we may suppose were still in force throughout the country.

III. With regard to a community of wives and children, each took a wise and statesman-like course to prevent jealousy, although the means employed by each were different. A Roman who possessed a sufficient family of his own might be prevailed upon by a friend who had no children to transfer his wife to him, being fully empowered to give her away, by divorce, for this purpose; but a Lacedaemonian was accustomed to lend his wife for intercourse with a friend, while she remained living in his house, and without the marriage being thereby dissolved. Many, we are told, even invited those who, they thought, would beget fine and noble children, to converse with their wives. The distinction between the two customs seems to be this: the Spartans affected an unconcern and insensibility about a matter which excites most men to violent rage and jealousy; the Romans modestly veiled it by a legal contract which seems to admit how hard it is for a man to give up his wife to another. Moreover Numa's regulations about young girls were of a much more feminine and orderly nature, while those of Lykurgus were so highflown and unbecoming to women, as to have been the subject of notice by the poets, who call them Phainomerides, that is with bare thighs, as Ibykus says; and they accuse them of lust, as Euripides says--

"They stay not, as befits a maid, at home, But with young men in shameless dresses roam."

For in truth the sides of the maiden's tunic were not fastened together at the skirt, and so flew open and exposed the thigh as they walked, which is most clearly alluded to in the lines of Sophokles--

"She that wanders nigh, With scanty skirt that shows the thigh, A Spartan maiden fair and free, Hermione."

On this account they are said to have become bolder than they should be, and to have first shown this spirit towards their husbands, ruling uncontrolled over their households, and afterwards in public matters, where they freely expressed their opinions upon the most important subjects. On the other hand, Numa preserved that respect and honour due from men to matrons which they had met with under Romulus, who paid them these honours to atone for having carried them off by force, but he implanted in them habits of modesty, sobriety, and silence, forbidding them even to touch wine, or to speak even when necessary except in their husbands' presence. It is stated that once, because a woman pleaded her own cause in the Forum, the Senate sent to ask the oracle what this strange event might portend for the state.

A great proof of the obedience and modesty of the most part of them is the way in which the names of those who did any wrong is remembered. For, just as in Greece, historians record the names of those who first made war against their own kindred or murdered their parents, so the Romans tell us that the first man who put away his wife was Spurius Carvilius, nothing of the kind having happened in Rome for two hundred and thirty years from its foundation; and that the wife of Pinarius, Thalaea by name, was the first to quarrel with her mother-in-law Gegania in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus--so well and orderly were marriages arranged by this lawgiver.

IV. The rest of their laws for the training and marriage of maidens agree with one another, although Lykurgus put off the time of marriage till they were full-grown, in order that their intercourse, demanded as it was by nature, might produce love and friendship in the married pair rather than the dislike often experienced by an immature child towards her husband, and also that their bodies might be better able to support the trials of child-bearing, which he regarded as the sole object of marriage; whereas the Romans gave their daughters in marriage at the age of twelve years or even younger, thinking thus to hand over a girl to her husband pure and uncorrupt both in body and mind. It is clear that the former system is best for the mere production of children, and the latter for moulding consorts for life. But by his superintendence of the young, his collecting them into companies, his training and drill, with the table and exercises common to all, Lykurgus showed that he was immensely superior to Numa, who, like any commonplace lawgiver, left the whole training of the young in the hands of their fathers, regulated only by their caprice or needs; so that whoever chose might bring up his son as a shipwright, a coppersmith, or a musician, as though the citizens ought not from the very outset to direct their attention to one object, but were like people who have embarked in the same ship for various causes, who only in time of danger act together for the common advantage of all, and at other times pursue each his own private ends. Allowance must be made for ordinary lawgivers, who fail through want of power or of knowledge in establishing such a system; but no such excuse can be made for Numa, who was a wise man, and who was made king of a newly-created state which would not have opposed any of his designs. What could be of greater importance than to regulate the education of the young and so to train them that they might all become alike in their lives and all bear the same impress of virtue? It was to this that Lykurgus owed the permanence of his laws; for he could not have trusted to the oaths which he made them take, if he had not by education and training so steeped the minds of the young in the spirit of his laws, and by his method of bringing them up implanted in them such a love for the state, that the most important of his enactments remained in force for more than five hundred years; for the lives of all Spartans seem to have been coloured by these laws. That which was the aim and end of Numa's policy, that Rome should be at peace and friendly with her neighbours, ceased immediately upon his death; at once the double-gated temple, which he kept closed as if he really kept war locked up in it, had both its gates thrown open and filled Italy with slaughter. His excellent and righteous policy did not last for a moment, for the people were not educated to support it, and therefore it could not be lasting. But, it may be asked, did not Rome flourish by her wars? It is hard to answer such a question, in an age which values wealth, luxury, and dominion more than a gentle peaceful life that wrongs no one and suffices for itself. Yet this fact seems to tell for Lykurgus, that the Romans gained such an enormous increase of power by departing from Numa's policy, while the Lacedaemonians, as soon as they fell away from the discipline of Lykurgus, having been the haughtiest became the most contemptible of Greeks, and not only lost their supremacy, but had even to struggle for their bare existence. On the other hand, it was truly glorious for Numa that he was a stranger and sent for by the Romans to be their king; that he effected all his reforms without violence, and ruled a city composed of discordant elements without any armed force such as Lykurgus had to assist him, winning over all men and reducing them to order by his wisdom and justice.

LIFE OF SOLON.

I. Didymus the grammarian, in the book about Solon's laws which he wrote in answer to Asklepiades, quotes a saying of one Philokles, that Solon was the son of Euphorion, which is quite at variance with the testimony of all other writers who have mentioned Solon: for they all say that he was the son of Exekestides, a man whose fortune and power were only moderate, but whose family was of the noblest in Athens; for he was descended from Kodrus the last Athenian king. Herakleides of Pontus relates that the mother of Solon was first cousin to the mother of Peisistratus. The two boys, we are told, were friends when young, and when in after years they differed in politics they still never entertained harsh or angry feelings towards one another, but kept alive the sacred flame of their former intimate friendship. Peisistratus is even said to have dedicated the statue of Love in the Academy where those who are going to run in the sacred torch-race light their torches.

II. According to Hermippus, Solon, finding that his father had by his generosity diminished his fortune, and feeling ashamed to be dependent upon others, when he himself was come of a house more accustomed to give than to receive, embarked in trade, although his friends were eager to supply him with all that he could wish for. Some, however, say that Solon travelled more with a view to gaining experience and learning than to making money. He was indeed eager to learn, as he wrote when an old man,

"Old to grow, but ever learning,"

but disregarded wealth, for he wrote that he regarded as equally rich the man who owned

"Gold and broad acres, corn and wine; And he that hath but clothes and food, A wife, and youthful strength divine."

Yet elsewhere he has written, but

"I long for wealth, not by fraud obtained, For curses wait on riches basely gained."

There is no reason for an upright statesman either to be over anxious for luxuries or to despise necessaries. At that period, as Hesiod tells us, "Work was no disgrace," nor did trade carry any reproach, while the profession of travelling merchant was even honourable, as it civilised barbarous tribes, and gained the friendship of kings, and learned much in many lands. Some merchants founded great cities, as, for example, Protis, who was beloved by the Gauls living near the Rhone, founded Marseilles. It is also said that Thales the sage, and Hippocrates the mathematician, travelled as merchants, and that Plato defrayed the expenses of his journey to Egypt by the oil which he disposed of in that country.

III. Solon's extravagance and luxurious mode of life, and his poems, which treat of pleasure more from a worldly than a philosophic point of view, are attributed to his mercantile training; for the great perils of a merchant's life require to be paid in corresponding pleasures. Yet it is clear that he considered himself as belonging to the class of the poor, rather than that of the rich, from the following verses:

"The base are rich, the good are poor; and yet Our virtue for their gold we would not change; For that at least is ours for evermore, While wealth we see from hand to hand doth range."

His poetry was originally written merely for his own amusement in his leisure hours; but afterwards he introduced into it philosophic sentiments, and interwove political events with his poems, not in order to record them historically, but in some cases to explain his own conduct, and in others to instruct, encourage, or rebuke the Athenians. Some say that he endeavoured to throw his laws into an epic form, and tell us that the poem began--

"To Jove I pray, great Saturn's son divine, To grant his favour to these laws of mine."

Of ethical philosophy, he, like most of the sages of antiquity, was most interested in that branch which deals with political obligations. As to natural science, his views are very crude and antiquated, as we see from the following verses:

"From clouds the snow and hail descend, And thunderbolts the lightnings send; The waves run high when gales do blow, Without the wind they're still enow."

Indeed, of all the sages of that time, Thales alone seems to have known more of physics than was necessary to supply man's every-day needs; all the others having gained their reputation for political wisdom.

IV. These wise men are said to have met at Delphi, and again at Corinth, where they were entertained by the despot Periander. Their reputation was greatly increased by the tripod which was sent to all of them and refused by all with a gracious rivalry. The story goes that some men of Cos were casting a net, and some strangers from Miletus bought the haul of them before it reached the surface.