earer approach
was made than in any other Greek State to equality of the sexes, and
to community of property; and while there was probably less of
licentiousness in the sense of immorality, the tie of marriage was
regarded more lightly than in the rest of Greece. The 'suprema lex'
was the preservation of the family, and the interest of the State. The
coarse strength of a military government was not favourable to purity
and refinement; and the excessive strictness of some regulations seems
to have produced a reaction. Of all Hellenes the Spartans were most
accessible to bribery; several of the greatest of them might be
described in the words of Plato as having a 'fierce secret longing
after gold and silver.' Though not in the strict sense communists, the
principle of communism was maintained among them in their division of
lands, in their common meals, in their slaves, and in the free use of
one another's goods. Marriage was a public institution: and the women
were educated by the State, and sang and danced in public with the men.

Many traditions were preserved at Sparta of the severity with which the
magistrates had maintained the primitive rule of music and poetry; as in
the Republic of Plato, the new-fangled poet was to be expelled. Hymns
to the Gods, which are the only kind of music admitted into the ideal
State, were the only kind which was permitted at Sparta. The Spartans,
though an unpoetical race, were nevertheless lovers of poetry; they had
been stirred by the Elegiac strains of Tyrtaeus, they had crowded around
Hippias to hear his recitals of Homer; but in this they resembled the
citizens of the timocratic rather than of the ideal State. The council
of elder men also corresponds to the Spartan gerousia; and the freedom
with which they are permitted to judge about matters of detail agrees
with what we are told of that institution. Once more, the military rule
of not spoiling the dead or offering arms at the temples; the moderation
in the pursuit of enemies; the importance attached to the physical
well-being of the citizens; the use of warfare for the sake of defence
rather than of aggression--are features probably suggested by the spirit
and practice of Sparta.

To the Spartan type the ideal State reverts in the first decline; and
the character of the individual timocrat is borrowed from the Spartan
citizen. The love of Lacedaemon not only affected Plato and Xenophon,
but was shared by many undistinguished At