Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 1 · Plutarch
THAT VIRTUE MAY BE TAUGHT.
1. Men deliberate and dispute variously concerning virtue, whether prudence and justice and the right ordering of one’s life can be taught. Moreover, we marvel that the works of orators, shipmasters, musicians, carpenters, and husbandmen are infinite in number, while good men are only a name, and are talked of like centaurs, giants, and the Cyclops, and that as for any virtuous action that is sincere and unblamable, and manners that are without any touch and mixture of bad passions and affections, they are not to be found; but if Nature of its own accord should produce any thing good and excellent, so many things of a foreign nature mix with it (just as wild and impure productions with generous fruit) that the good is scarce discernible. Men learn to sing, dance, and read, and to be skilful in husbandry and good horsemanship; they learn how to put on their shoes and their garments; they have those that teach them how to fill wine, and to dress and cook their meat; and none of these things can be done as they ought, unless they be instructed how to do them. And will ye say, O foolish men! that the skill of ordering one’s life well (for the sake of which are all the rest) is not to be taught, but to come of its own accord, without reason and without art?
Not to devour their meat in haste, nor giggle, Nor awkwardly their feet across to wriggle,[44] and yet are men fit to enter into the fellowship of a family, city, married estate, private conversation, or public office, and to manage it without blame, without any previous instruction concerning good behavior in conversation? When one asked Aristippus this question, What, are you everywhere? he laughed and said, I throw away the fare of the waterman, if I am everywhere. And why canst not thou also answer, that the salary given to tutors is thrown away and lost, if none are the better for their discipline and instruction. But, as nurses shape and form the body of a child with their hands, so these masters, when the nurses have done with them, first receive them into their charge, in order to the forming of their manners and directing their steps into the first tracks of virtue. To which purpose the Lacedaemonian, that was asked what good he did to the child of whom he had the charge, answered well: I make good and honest things pleasant to children. These masters also teach them to bend down their heads as they go along, to touch salt fish with one finger only, but fresh fish, bread, and flesh with two; thus to scratch themselves, and thus to tuck up their garments.
3. Now he that says that the art of physic may be proper for a tetter or a whitlow, but not to be made use of for a pleurisy, a fever, or a frenzy, in what does he differ from him that should say that it is fit there should be schools, and discourses, and precepts, to teach trifling and childish things, but that all skill in greater and more manly things comes from use without art and from accidental opportunity? For as he would be ridiculous who should say, that one who never learned to row ought not to lay hand on the oar, but that he might guide the helm who was never taught it; so is he that gives leave for men to be instructed in other arts, but not in virtue. He seems to be quite contrary to the practice of the Scythians, who, as Herodotus[45] tells us, put out their servants’ eyes, to prevent them from running away; but he puts the eye of reason into these base and slavish arts, and plucks it from virtue. But the general Iphicrates—when Callias, the son of Chabrias, asked him, What art thou? Art thou an archer or a targeteer, a trooper or a foot-soldier?—answered well, I am none of all these, but one that commands them all.
He therefore would be ridiculous that should say that the skill of drawing a bow, of handling arms, of throwing with a sling, and of good horsemanship, might indeed be taught, but the skill of commanding and leading an army came as it happened, one knew not how. And would not he be still more ridiculous who should say that prudence only could not be taught, without which all those arts are useless and unprofitable? When she is the governess, ranking all things in due place and order, every thing is assigned to become useful; for instance, how ungraceful would a feast be, though all concerned were skilful and enough practised in cookery, in dressing and serving up the meat, and in filling the wine as they ought, if all things were not well disposed and ordered among those that waited at the table?... THE ACCOUNT OF THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF THE LACEDAEMONIANS.[46]
1. It was a singular instance of the wisdom of this nation, in that they took the greatest care they could, by an early sober education, to instil into their youth the principles of virtue and good manners, that so, by a constant succession of prudent and valiant men, they might the better provide for the honor and security of their state, and lay in the minds of every one a solid and good foundation of love and friendship, of prudence and knowledge, of temperance and frugality, of courage and resolution. And therefore their great lawgiver thought it necessary for the ends of government to institute several distinct societies and conventions of the people; amongst which was that of their solemn and public living together at one table, where their custom was to admit their youth into the conversation of their wise and elderly men, that so by daily eating and drinking with them they might insensibly, as it were, be trained up to a right knowledge of themselves, to a just submission to their superiors, and to the learning of whatever might conduce to the reputation of their laws and the interest of their country. For here they were taught all the wholesome rules of discipline, and daily instructed how to demean themselves from the example and practice of their great ones; and though they did not at this public meeting confine themselves to set and grave discourses concerning the civil government, but allowed themselves a larger freedom, by mingling sometimes with their politics the easy and familiar entertainments of mirth and satire, yet this was ever done with the greatest modesty and discretion, not so much to expose the person of any one, as to reprove the fault he had committed. Whatever was transacted at these stated and common feasts was to be locked up in every one’s breast with the greatest silence and secrecy, insomuch as the eldest among them at these assemblies, pointing to the door, acquainted him who entered the room that nothing of what was done or spoken there was to be talked of afterwards.
2. At all these public meetings they used a great deal of moderation, they being designed only for schools of temperance and modesty, not for luxury and indecency; their chief dish and only delicacy being a sort of pottage (called by them their black broth, and made of some little pieces of flesh, with a small quantity of blood, salt, and vinegar), and this the more ancient among them generally preferred to any sort of meat whatsoever, as the more pleasing entertainment and of a more substantial nourishment. The younger sort contented themselves with flesh and other ordinary provisions, without tasting of this dish, which was reserved only for the old men. It is reported of Dionysius, the Sicilian tyrant, that having heard of the great fame and commendation of this broth, he hired a certain cook of Lacedaemon, who was thoroughly skilled in the make and composition of it, to furnish his table every day with so great and curious a dainty; and that he might have it in the greatest perfection, enjoined him to spare no cost in the making it agreeable and pleasant to his palate. But it seems the end answered not the pains he took in it; for after all his care and niceness, the king, as soon as he had tasted of it, found it both fulsome and nauseous to his stomach, and spitting it out with great distaste, as if he had taken down a vomit, sufficiently expressed his disapprobation of it. But the cook, not discouraged at this dislike of his master, told the tyrant that he humbly conceived the reason of this disagreeableness to him was not in the pottage, but rather in himself, who had not prepared his body for such food according to the Laconic mode and custom. For hard labors and long exercises and moderate abstinence (the best preparatives to a good and healthy appetite) and frequent bathings in the river Eurotas were the only necessaries for a right relish and understanding of the excellency of this entertainment.
3. ’Tis true, their constant diet was very mean and sparing; not what might pamper their bodies or make their minds soft and delicate, but such only as would barely serve to supply the common necessities of nature. This they accustomed themselves to, that so they might become sober and governable, active and bold in the defence of their country; they accounting only such men serviceable to the state, who could best endure the extremes of hunger and cold, and with cheerfulness and vigor run through the fatigues of labor and the difficulties of hardship. Those who could fast longest after a slender meal, and with the least provision satisfy their appetites, were esteemed the most frugal and temperate, and most sprightly and healthful, the most comely and well proportioned; nature, through such a temperance and moderation of diet, not suffering the constitution to run out into an unwieldy bulk or greatness of body (the usual consequence of full tables and too much ease), but rather rendering it thereby nervous and sinewy, of a just and equal growth, and consolidating and knitting together all the several parts and members of it. A very little drink did serve their turn, who never drank but when an extreme thirst provoked them to it; for at all their common entertainments they studied the greatest measures of sobriety, and took care they should be deprived of all kinds of compotations whatsoever. And at night when they returned home, they went cheerfully to their sleep, without the assistance of any light to direct them to their lodging; that being prohibited them as an indecent thing, the better to accustom them to travel in the dark, without any sense of fear or apprehensions of danger.
4. They never applied their minds to any kind of learning, further than what was necessary for use and service; nature indeed having made them more fit for the purposes of war than for the improvements of knowledge. And therefore for speculative sciences and philosophic studies, they looked upon them as foreign to their business and unserviceable to their ends of living, and for this reason they would not tolerate them amongst them, nor suffer the professors of them to live within their government. They banished them their cities, as they did all sorts of strangers, esteeming them as things that did debase the true worth and excellency of virtue, which they made to consist only in manly actions and generous exercises, and not in vain disputations and empty notions. So that the whole of what their youth was instructed in was to learn obedience to the laws and injunctions of their governors, to endure with patience the greatest labors, and where they could not conquer, to die valiantly in the field. For this reason likewise it was, that all mechanic arts and trades, all vain and insignificant employments, such as regarded only curiosity or pleasure, were strictly prohibited them, as things that would make them degenerate into idleness and covetousness, would render them vain and effeminate, useless to themselves, and unserviceable to the state; and on this account it was that they would never suffer any scenes or interludes, whether of comedy or tragedy, to be set up among them, lest there should be any encouragement given to speak or act any thing that might savor of contempt or contumely against their laws and government, it being customary for the stage to assume an indecent liberty of taxing the one with faults and the other with imperfections.
5. As to their apparel, they were as thinly clad as they were dieted, never exceeding one garment, which they wore for the space of a whole year. And this they did, the better to inure them to hardship and to bear up against all the injuries of the weather, that so the extremities of heat and cold should have no influence at all upon their constitution. They were as regardless of their selves as they were negligent of their clothes, denying themselves (unless it were at some stated time of the year) the use of ointments and bathings to keep them clean and sweet, as too expensive and signs of a too soft and delicate temper of body. 6. Their youth, as they were instructed and ate in public together, so at night slept in distinct companies in one common chamber, and on no other beds than what were made of reeds, which they had gathered out of the river Eurotas, near the banks of which they grew. This was the only accommodation they had in the summer, but in winter they mingled with the reeds a certain soft and downy thistle, having much more of heat and warmth in it than the other.
7. It was freely allowed them to place an ardent affection upon those whose excellent endowments recommended them to the love and consideration of any one; but then this was always done with the greatest innocency and modesty, and every way becoming the strictest rules and measures of virtue, it being accounted a base and dishonorable passion in any one to love the body and not the mind, as those did who in their young men preferred the beauty of the one before the excellency of the other. Chaste thoughts and modest discourses were the usual entertainments of their loves; and if any one was accused at any time either of wanton actions or impure discourse, it was esteemed by all so infamous a thing, that the stains it left upon his reputation could never be wiped out during his whole life.
8. So strict and severe was the education of their youth, that whenever they were met with in the streets by your grave and elderly persons, they underwent a close examination; it being their custom to enquire of them upon what business and whither they were going, and if they did not give them a direct and true answer to the question demanded of them, but shamed them with some idle story or false pretence, they never escaped without a rigorous censure and sharp correction. And this they did to prevent their youth from stealing abroad upon any idle or bad design, that so, through the uneasy fears of meeting these grave examiners, and the impossibility of escaping punishment upon their false account and representations of things, they might be kept within due compass, and do nothing that might entrench upon truth or offend against the rules of virtue. Nor was it expected only from their superiors to censure and admonish them upon any miscarriage or indecency whatsoever, but it was strictly required of them under a severe penalty; for he who did not reprove a fault that was committed in his presence, and showed not his just resentments of it by a verbal correction, was adjudged equally culpable with the guilty, and obnoxious to the same punishment. For they could not imagine that person had a serious regard for the honor of their laws and the reputation of their government, who could carelessly pass by any immorality and patiently see the least corruption of good manners in their youth; by which means they took away all occasions of fondness, partiality, and indulgence in the aged, and all presumption, irreverence, and disobedience, and especially all impatiency of reproof, in the younger sort. For not to endure the reprehension of their superiors in such cases was highly disgraceful to them, and ever interpreted as an open renunciation of their authority, and a downright opposing of the justice of their proceedings.
9. Besides, when any was surprised in the commission of some notorious offence, he was presently sentenced to walk round a certain altar in the city, and publicly to shame himself by singing an ingenious satire, composed by himself, upon the crime and folly he had been guilty of, that so the punishment might be inflicted by the same hand which had contracted the guilt. 10. Their children were brought up in a strict obedience to their parents, and taught from their infancy to pay a profound reverence to all their dictates and commands. And no less were they enjoined to show an awful regard and observance to all their superiors in age and authority, so as to rise up before the hoary head, and to honor the face of the old man, to give him the way when they met him in the streets, and to stand still and remain silent till he was passed by; insomuch as it was indulged them, as a peculiar privilege due to their age and wisdom, not only to have a paternal authority over their own children, servants, and estates, but over their neighbors too, as if they were a part of their own family and propriety; that so in general there might be a mutual care, and an united interest, zealously carried on betwixt them for the private good of every one in particular, as well as for the public good of the communities they lived in. By this means they never wanted faithful counsellors to assist with good advice in all their concerns, nor hearty friends to prosecute each other’s interest as it were their own; by this means they never wanted careful tutors and guardians for their youth, who were always at hand to admonish and instruct them in the solid principles of virtue.
11. No one durst show himself refractory to their instructions, nor at the least murmur at their reprehensions; insomuch that, whenever any of their youth had been punished by them for some ill that had been done, and a complaint thereupon made by them to their parents of the severity they had suffered, hoping for some little relief from their indulgence and affection, it was accounted highly dishonorable in them not to add to their punishment by a fresh correction for the folly and injustice of their complaint. For by the common interest of discipline, and that great care that every one was obliged to take in the education of their youth, they had a firm trust and assurance in one another, that they never would enjoin their children the performance of any thing that was in the least unnecessary or unbecoming them.
12. Though it might seem very strange and unaccountable in this wise nation, that any thing which had the least semblance of baseness or dishonesty should be universally approved, commended, and encouraged by their laws, yet so it was in the case of theft, whereby their young children were allowed to steal certain things, as particularly the fruit of their orchards or their messes at their feasts. But then this was not done to encourage them to the desires of avarice and injustice, but to sharpen their wits, and to make them crafty and subtle, and to train them up in all sorts of wiles and cunning, watchfulness and circumspection, whereby they were rendered more apt to serve them in their wars, which was upon the matter the whole profession of this commonwealth. And if at any time they were taken in the act of stealing, they were most certainly punished with rods and the penance of fasting; not because they esteemed the stealth criminal, but because they wanted skill and cunning in the management and concealing of it.[47]
That active courage youthful blood contains Did once with equal vigor warm our veins. To which the chorus, consisting of young men only, thus answers:— Valiant and bold we are, let who will try: Who dare accept our challenge soon shall die. The third, which were of young children, replied to them in this manner:— Those seeds which Nature in our breast did sow Shall soon to generous fruits of virtue grow; Then all those valiant deeds which you relate We will excel, and scorn to imitate.[48] 16. They made use of a peculiar measure in their songs, when their armies were in their march towards an enemy, which being sung in a full choir to their flutes seemed proper to excite in them a generous courage and contempt of death. Lycurgus was the first who brought this warlike music into the field, that so he might moderate and soften the rage and fury of their minds in an engagement by solemn musical measures, and that their valor (which should be no boisterous and unruly thing) might always be under the government of their reason, and not of passion. To this end it was always their custom before the fight to sacrifice to the Muses, that they might behave themselves with as much good conduct as with courage, and do such actions as were worthy of memory, and which might challenge the applauses and commendations of every one.
17. And indeed so great an esteem and veneration had they for the gravity and simplicity of their ancient music, that no one was allowed to recede in the least from the established rules and measures of it, insomuch as the Ephori, upon complaint made to them, laid a severe mulct upon Terpander (a musician of great note and eminency for his incomparable skill and excellency in playing upon the harp, and who, as he had ever professed a great veneration for antiquity, so ever testified by his eulogiums and commendations the esteem he always had of virtuous and heroic actions), depriving him of his harp, and (as a peculiar punishment) exposing it to the censure of the people, by fixing it upon a nail, because he had added one string more to his instrument than was the usual and stated number, though done with no other design and advantage than to vary the sound, and to make it more useful and pleasant. That music was ever accounted among them the best, which was most grave, simple, and natural. And for this reason too, when Timotheus in their Carnean feasts, which were instituted in honor of Apollo, contended for a preference in his art, one of the Ephori took a knife in his hand, and cut the strings of his harp, for having exceeded the number of seven in it. So severely tenacious were they of their ancient customs and practices, that they would not suffer the least innovation, though in things that were indifferent and of no great importance, lest an indulgence in one thing might have introduced another, till at length by gradual and insensible alterations the whole body of their laws might be disregarded and contemned, and so the main pillar which did support the fabric of their government be weakened and undermined.
18. Lycurgus took away that superstition, which formerly indeed had been the practice among them, concerning their sepulchre and funeral solemnities, by permitting them to bury the remains of their departed friends within the city, that so they might the better secure them from the rude and barbarous violence of an enemy, and to erect their monuments for them in separated places joining to their temples; that, having their graves and tombs always before their eyes, they might not only remember but imitate the worthy actions they had done, and so lessen the fears and apprehensions of death with the consideration of those honors they paid their memories when they put off their mortalities. He took away those pollutions which they formerly looked upon as arising from their dead bodies, and prohibited all costly and sumptuous expenses at their funerals, it being very improper for those who while alive generally abstained from whatever was vain and curious to be carried to the grave with any pomp and magnificence. Therefore without the use of drugs and ointments, without any rich odors and perfumes, without any art or curiosity, save only the little ornament of a red vestment and a few olive-leaves, they carried him to the place of burying, where he was, without any formal sorrows and public lamentations, honorably and securely laid up in a decent and convenient sepulchre. And here it was lawful for any one who would be at the trouble to erect a monument for the person deceased, but not to engrave the least inscription on it; this being the peculiar reward of such only who had signalized themselves in war, and died gallantly in defence of their country.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.