which the individual is not conscious, and which he cannot discover without assistance from the society into which he is born.
The Dorian society, therefore, first judged of the body, and decided whether or not it was sufficiently well organized to be capable of its place in the social body, and then assumed, without hesitation, the direction of its development. For a certain number of years, indeed, the child was left with its parents, whose instincts, enlightened by the general tone of the state, were believed to be the most faithful guardians of its physical well-being; but, at seven years old in Sparta, and at a somewhat later date in some other Dorian states,[1] the more public education began, and the child joined classes to be taught song and the choral dance, with other exercises of body, by which a complete physical development and action might take place. Here let us observe, that the Dorian gymnastic was always accompanied by music, as the intellectual exercises were called. Not a shade of brutality was ever allowed in the Spartan gymnasium. Boxing and violent wrestling were prohibited; also gladiators, i. e. combatants who used arms. The wrestling was never permitted to touch upon that violence which would injure the body, or give occasion for the combatants to cry for mercy. The foot-race was the exercise in which the Dorians oftenest bore away the crown of victory at the Olympic games. Their bodies were strengthened and hardened by hunting, and exposure to the extremes of heat and cold, hunger and fatigue, in the refreshing open air. The scourging at the temple of Diana Orthia, mentioned in history, was not Dorian. The Diana Orthia was not Apollo's sister, but the earth-goddess, spoken of above; and this gloomy and bloody superstition was the tenacity of the old religion upon the Doric ground. The custom of compelling or allowing the children to steal their food, in order to educate them in dexterity and self-dependence, seems an exception to the common probity of Dorian life; but, in judging of it, we must remember that food was in common, and thus no individual right seemed to
- ↑ In Crete the education was directed by the parents till seventeen.
