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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2011
Domestic occupations of the Spartans. Funeral ceremonies of the Dorians. On the national character of the Dorians in general. Its varieties in the Dorians of Sparta, Crete, Argos, Rhodes, Corinth, Syracuse, Sicyon, Phlius, Megara, Byzantium, Ægina, Cyrene, Crotona, Tarentum, Messenia, and Delphi.
1. After Anacharsis the Scythian had visited the different states of Greece, and lived among them all, he is reported to have said, that “all wanted leisure and tranquillity for wisdom, except the Lacedæmonians, for that these were the only persons with whom it was possible to hold a rational conversation.” The life of all the other Greeks had doubtless appeared to him as a restless and unquiet existence, as a constant struggle and effort without any object. In addition to the love of ease, which belonged to the original constitution of the Dorians, there was a further cause for this mode of life, viz. the entire exemption from necessary labour which the Spartans enjoyed, their wants being supplied by the dependent and industrious classes. Several writers have dwelt on the tedium and listlessness of such an existence; but the Spartans considered an immunity from labour an immunity from pain, and as constituting entire liberty. But, it may be asked, what was there to occupy the Spartan men from morning to night?
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