Mental and bodily training in Sparta and other Doric states.

1. The education of the youth (νεολαία) in the ancient Doric states of Sparta and Crete, was conducted, as might be supposed, on a very artificial system: indeed, the great number of classes into which the boys and youths were distributed, would itself lead us to this conclusion. For since this separation could not have been made without some aim, each class, we may conjecture, was treated in some way different from the rest, the whole forming a complete scale of mental or bodily acquirements.

Whether a new-born infant should be preserved or not, was decided in Lacedæmon by the state, i. e. a council composed of the elders of the family.

This custom was not by any means more barbarous than that of the ancient world in general, which, in earlier times at least, gave the father full power over the lives of his children. Here we may perceive the great influence of the community over the education of its members, which should not, however, lead us to suppose that all connexion between parents and children was dissolved, or the dearest ties of nature torn asunder. Even Spartan mothers preserved a power over their sons when arrived at manhood, of which we find no traces in the rest of Greece.