sdom of the Spartan fathers.

3. The food was of the simplest kind.

4. Sparta was divided into nine thousand parts, a part for each of the
nine thousand citizens, or noble families. The provinces under Spartan
rule were divided into thirty thousand parts, a part for each Perioeci
family.

5. Iron was made the only money, so that the people could not become
rich; for its great weight rendered burdensome the possession of a
considerable amount.

6. All children belonged to the State, to which only soldiers were
valuable, therefore weak or deformed children were cast out. Marriage
was also controlled by the State.

Lycurgus exerted a great influence upon Sparta, and his laws were
responsible for her peculiar political system and her resulting
greatness.

PYTHAGORAS

Pythagoras, though not a Spartan, is associated with southern Greece.
Little is known of his early life. He was born on the island of Samos,
about B.C. 582. He was familiar with the Ionic philosophy, and
probably visited Egypt for study, a custom common among scholars of that
time. Such a visit would in part explain his knowledge of mathematics,
as the Egyptians had long been masters in that science. One of his
teachers was Thales, the father of philosophy. The fundamental thought
of the Pythagorean philosophy was the idea of proportion and harmony.

"Through number alone, the quantitative relations of things, extension,
magnitude, figure (triangular, quadrangular, cubic), combination,
distance, etc., obtain their peculiar character; the forms and
proportions of things can all be reduced to number. Therefore, it was
concluded, since without form and proportion nothing can exist, number
must be the principle of things themselves, as well as the order in
which they manifest themselves in the world." (Schwegler's "History of
Philosophy.")

While mathematics was the central idea of his system, medicine, physics,
and philosophy were also taught in his school. He did the world great
service in the discovery of the so-called Pythagorean theorem in
geometry, that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle
is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] The Perioeci (dwellers around) were the older population of the
land, who inhabited the mountains and hillsides about Sparta. They were
farmers, and they also worked the mines and quarries, manufactured
articles for the Spartan market, and carried on the commerc