190 HISTORY OF GREECE. mities from the ephors of Sparta. That harmost, among many other acts of brutal violence, seized a beautiful youth, son of a free citizen at Oreus, out of the palaestra, carried him off, and after vainly endeavoring to overcome his resistance, put him to death. The father of the youth went to Sparta, made known the atrocities, and appealed to the ephors and Senate for redress. But a deaf ear was turned to his complaints, and in anguish of mind he slew himself. Indeed, we know that these Spartan authorities would grant no redress, not merely against harmosts, but even against private Spartan citizens, who had been guilty of gross crime out of their own country. A Boeotian near Leuktra, named Skedasus, pre- ferred complaint that two Spartans, on their way from Delphi, after having been hospitably entertained in his house, had first violated, and afterwards killed, his two daughters ; but even for so flagitious an outrage as this, no redress could be obtained. 1 Doubtless, when a powerful foreign ally, like the Persian satrap Pharnabazus, 2 complained to the ephors of the conduct of a Lacedaemonian har- most or admiral, his representations would receive attention ; and '#e learn that the ephors were thus induced not merely to recall Lysander from the Hellespont, but to put to death another officer, Thorax, for corrupt appropriation of money. But for a private citizen in any subject city, the superintending authority of Sparta would be not merely remote but deaf and immovable, so as to afford him no protection whatever, and to leave him altogether at the mercy of the harmost It seems, too, that the rigor of Spartan training, and peculiarity of habits, rendered individual Lacedaemo- nians on foreign service more self- willed, more incapable of enter- ing into the customs or feelings of others, and more liable to degenerate when set free from the strict watch of home, than other Greeks generally. 3 1 Plntarch, Amator. Narration, p. 773 ; Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. 20. In Diodorus (xv, 54) and Pansanins, (ix. 13, 2), the damsels thus outraged are stated to have slain themselves. Compare another story in Xencj>h. Hellen. v, 4, 56, 57.
- Plutarch, Lysand. c, 19.
- This seems to have been the impression not merely of the enemies ol
Sparta, but even of the Spartan authorities themselves. Compare t*vo remarkable passages of Thucydides, i, 77, and i, 95. 'Apt/era yup (says ihe Athenian envoy at Sparta) TO. re KOI?' vfidf avToitf ropi/ia TOI( u^.oi( i^ere,
