royalty Better be chieftain to a king than servant to a mob! But in
Eretria, at least, pleasure was not denied. In Sparta the very Graces
preside over discipline and war only."

"Your fire falls upon flax," said Pausanias, rising, and with
passionate emotion. "And if you, the Greek of a happier state, you who
know but by report the unnatural bondage to which the Spartans are
subjected, can weary of the very name of Greek, what must be the
feelings of one who from the cradle upward has been starved out of the
genial desires of life? Even in earliest youth, while yet all other
lands and customs were unknown, when it was duly poured into my ears
that to be born a Spartan constituted the glory and the bliss of
earth, my soul sickened at the lesson, and my reason revolted against
the lie. Often when my whole body was lacerated with stripes,
disdaining to groan, I yet yearned to strike, and I cursed my savage
tutors who denied pleasure even to childhood with all the madness
of impotent revenge. My mother herself (sweet name elsewhere) had no
kindness in her face. She was the pride of the matronage of Sparta,
because of all our women Alithea was the most unsexed. When I went
forth to my first crypteia, to watch, amidst the wintry dreariness of
the mountains, upon the movements of the wretched Helots, to spy upon
their sufferings, to take account of their groans, and if one more
manly than the rest dared to mingle curses with his groans, to mark
_him_ for slaughter, as a wolf that threatened danger to the fold; to
lurk, an assassin, about his home, to dog his walks, to fall on him
unawares, to strike him from behind, to filch away his life, to bury
him in the ravines, so that murder might leave no trace; when upon
this initiating campaign, the virgin trials of our youth, I first set
forth, my mother drew near, and girding me herself with my grandsire's
sword, 'Go forth,' she said, 'as the young hound to the chase, to