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 Sparta was the most purely military state of antiquity. All public and even private life was organized and disciplined to the sole end of war. Family duties and affections were almost obliterated by the exaggerated preponderance of the State. All citizens fit for war lived permanently in barracks, and fed at a common mess, the austere simplicity of which has become proverbial. There was daily and laborious drill even for the middle-aged men. No full citizen ever demeaned himself to industry of any kind. This he left to his serfs called Helots. In an age and environment all astir with revolutionary growth, Sparta was the representative of steady, unchanging conservatism. Her government, although virtually an oligarchy, still remained in form a monarchy of the old Homeric type. Art, science, and philosophy found no more encouragement than they did in early Rome. In fact, as far as regards mere militarism, the Spartans were more Roman than the Romans. But of conquest and incorporation they proved as incapable as any other Greek State. Hence Comte calls them "Romains avortés."
At the time of the Persian invasions the other Greek States looked to Sparta to lead the resistance, a duty which she discharged in such a dilatory, unintelligent, and selfish fashion, that the chief honour and advantage of the victory remained with democratic Athens. She was too late for Marathon. She had little to do with Salamis. At Platæa she bore her share and no more. It is characteristic that the one episode of the struggle which was peculiarly her own, and where she won imperishable glory, was a defeat. The enormous host of Xerxes met with no opposition till it reached the narrow pass of Thermopylæ. There it found its way blocked by the confederate Greeks commanded by LEONIDAS, King of Sparta. For two days the assaults of the Persians were hurled back with heavy slaughter by the better-disciplined and better-armed Greeks; but on the third the betrayal of a path over the mountains exposed the defenders to be taken in the rear. Finding that he was about to be surrounded, Leonidas dismissed all his army, except his own contingent of three hundred Spartans, whose national discipline required them to die at their post. However briefly this story be told, it would be wrong not to record that the Thespian contingent remained with them and shared their fate. When the last battle began the devoted band charged into the thick of the enemy inflicting prodigious slaughter, Leonidas fell, and round his body the combat long raged. There two brothers of Xerxes fell fighting gallantly. While their arms lasted the Greeks kept their swarming enemies at bay. At last, their spears being broken, they retired to a hillock and sat down round the body of their king, exposed to a shower of missiles. There they perished to a man, defending themselves to the last against all who approached, with daggers, hands, and teeth. Six centuries later the names of the three hundred could still be read on a column at Sparta. A monument on the field bore the simple inscription: "Stranger, tell the Lacedæmonians that we lie here in obedience to their orders."
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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