I recall the astonishment with which I[1] first noted the unique
position[2] of Sparta amongst the states of Hellas, the relatively
sparse population,[3] and at the same time the extraordinary power and
prestige of the community. I was puzzled to account for the fact. It
was only when I came to consider the peculiar institutions of the
Spartans that my wonderment ceased. Or rather, it is transferred to
the legislator who gave them those laws, obedience to which has been
the secret of their prosperity. This legislator, Lycurgus, I must
needs admire, and hold him to have been one of the wisest of mankind.
Certainly he was no servile imitator of other states. It was by a
stroke of invention rather, and on a pattern much in opposition to the
commonly-accepted one, that he brought his fatherland to this pinnacle
of prosperity.

[1] See the opening words of the "Cyrop." and of the "Symp."

[2] Or, "the phenomenal character." See Grote, "H. G." ix. 320 foll.;
Newman, "Pol. Arist." i. 202.

[3] See Herod. vii. 234; Aristot. "Pol." ii. 9, 14 foll.; Muller,
"Dorians," iii. 10 (vol. i. p. 203, Eng. tr.)

Take for example--and it is well to begin at the beginning[4]--the
whole topic of the begetting and rearing of children. Throughout the
rest of the world the young girl, who will one day become a mother
(and I speak of those who may be held to be well brought up), is
nurtured on the plainest food attainable, with the scantiest addition
of meat or other condiments; whilst as to wine they train them either
to total abstinence or to take it highly diluted with water. And in
imitation, as it were, of the handicraft type, since the majority of