"Sparta" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sentiment in favour of local self-government. This feeling was scarcely less strong as between states like Connecticut and Rhode Island, or Maryland and Virginia, than it was between Athens and Megara, Argos and Sparta, in the great days of Grecian history. A most wholesome feeling it was, and one which needed not so much to be curbed as to be guided in the right direction. It was a feeling which was shared by some of the foremost Revolutionary leaders, such as Samuel Adams ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, was the most beautiful woman in the world. And from her beauty and faithlessness came the most celebrated of ancient wars, with death and disaster to numbers of famous heroes and the final ruin of the ancient city of Troy. The story of these striking events has been told only in poetry. ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... gymnastics alone. The laws of Solon regulated the use of the gymnasia, and for very many years these laws were strictly enforced. It appears that married women did not attend the gymnasia, and unmarried women only in some parts of Greece, such as Sparta, but this custom was relaxed ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... everywhere—in the classroom, in the camp, and in the wider field of life. There is something almost monumentally impressive to the outsider in the German alliance of School and Army in the service of the State. Since the days of Sparta and Rome, there has been no such wonderful governmental disciplinary machine. It is not surprising that "German organisation" and "German methods" should have stimulated interest and emulation throughout ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Rousseau perfectly understood the influence of the milieu and of wants on the organism; and this brilliant writer seems to have been the first to suggest natural selection, though only in the case of man, when he says that the weaker in Sparta were eliminated in order that the superior and stronger of the race might ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... what you have to say in her presence, too," said King Cleomenes of Sparta, when his visitor Anistagoras asked him to send away his little daughter Gorgo, ten years old, knowing how much harder it is to persuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side. So Gorgo sat at her father's feet, and listened ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Hercules and Cadmus once. When in a wood of Creete they bayed the Beare With hounds of Sparta; neuer did I heare Such gallant chiding. For besides the groues, The skies, the fountaines, euery region neere, Seeme all one mutuall cry. I neuer heard So musicall ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... syl.). Plutarch tells us that Agesilaus, king of Sparta, was one day discovered riding cock-horse on a long stick, to please and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... scrambled eggs was owing to some of them being rotten. There were four waiters to a hundred guests, and it was a sight long to be remembered to see Mrs. Seymour and Mrs. Atwood carry their broiled chicken back to the kitchen and pick the feathers off, while good Uncle McBride, of Sparta, got into an altercation over his fried fish because the fish had not been scaled; where it was said the only thing that was not sour was the vinegar, and where the only thing that was not too small was the bill, and where every room ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... king of the Lacedaemonians, put himself and those three hundred men, whom he had led from Sparta, in the way of the enemy of Thermopylae,(40) when the alternative was a base flight, or a glorious death. The deaths of generals are glorious, but philosophers usually die in their beds. But still Epicurus ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of mankind are swayed and pre-influenced by manners and habits is strongly illustrated in the discrepance which maintained between the taste, the amusements, and opinions of the lively Athenians, and those of the austere and exact people of Sparta, though they were in fact one people. In their amusements, and partly in their taste for literature, they differed essentially. The Athenians loved poetry and music; while the Spartans, whose schemes were founded on utility alone, rather ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... William Bankes's rooms. He was tolerated in this state among the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to write, or rather vomit, pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot; and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser exhibition than ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Grecian princess, formerly the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, but she had eloped from Greece some years before, with Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, and this elopement had been the whole cause of the Trojan war. In the first instance, Menelaus, accompanied by another ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... nobility and people in counterpoise in each scale. Thus the kingdom of Media is represented by Xenophon before the reign of Cyrus; so Polybius tells us, the best government is a mixture of the three forms, regno, optimatium, et populi imperio: the same was that of Sparta in its primitive institution by Lycurgus, made up of reges, seniores, et populus; the like may be asserted of Rome, Carthage, and other states: and the Germans of old fell upon the same model, from whence the Goths their neighbours, with the rest of those northern ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Aethalides; Mercurius his son, Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done. From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmigration To goldy-lock'd Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion, At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta. Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta) To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn'd to go a fishing; And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece. From Pythagore, she went into a beautiful piece, Hight Aspasia, the meretrix; and the next ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... graduate of the high school at Sparta—think of a modern high school in ancient Sparta!—after two years in the army, was ready for life. "All these later years I had been hearing from America. An elder brother was there who had found it a fine country and was urging me to join him. Fortunes could easily be made, he said. ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... wrote probably his "Anabasis" and some other of his books. At last he was driven out by the Eleans. In the battle of Mantineia the Spartans and Athenians fought as allies, and Xenophon's two sons were in the battle; he had sent them to Athens as fellow-combatants from Sparta. His banishment from Athens was repealed by change of times, but it does not appear that he returned to Athens. He is said to have lived, and perhaps died, at Corinth, after he had been driven ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... host swept down through Greece, passing Thermopylae unopposed, ransoming Athens (where Alaric enjoyed a Greek bath and a public banquet, and tried to behave for a day like a Roman gentleman); sacking Corinth, Argos, Sparta, and all the cities and villages far and wide, and carrying off plunder inestimable, and troops ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... in a manner the most judicious. Many of their leaders were greatly versed in ancient as well as modern learning, and were even enthusiastically attached to the great names of antiquity; but they never conceived the wild project of assimilating the government of England to that of Athens, of Sparta, or of Rome. They were content with applying to the English constitution, and to the English laws, the spirit of liberty which had animated and rendered illustrious the ancient republics. Their first object was to obtain redress of past grievances, with a proper regard to the individuals who ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... The Zaconic dialect of Lacedaemon is the sole exception. It is not derived from the Koine, but stems directly from the Doric dialect of Sparta.] ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Roman Catholics were permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish the earth; but they were doomed to be what the Helots were in Sparta, what the Greeks were under the Ottoman, what the blacks now are at New York. Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from any public trust. Take what path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by some vexatious restriction. It was only ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and luxurious forms. The relation of the individual to the community is represented chiefly as one of education and training; and many strange theories—as of the equal {148} training of men and women, and the community of wives, ideas partially drawn from Sparta—are woven into the ideal structure. Then the dialogue rises to a larger view of education, as a preparation of the soul of man, not for a community on earth, but for that heavenly life which was suggested above (p. 144) in the myth ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... of a primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast. The eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type of a primitive community, the model on which society was to be refashioned. What the "pure word of God" had been to the Reformers, that "Nature" became to the revolutionists in all departments of thought and action, in poetry and music as in philosophy and politics—a shibboleth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... movement as desired. Inform me if you think you can sustain yourself until this time. I can hardly conceive of the enemy breaking through at Kingston and pushing for Kentucky. If they should, however, a new problem would be left for solution. Thomas has ordered a division of cavalry to the vicinity of Sparta. I will ascertain if they have started, and inform you. It will be entirely out of the question to send you ten thousand men, not because they cannot be spared, but how would they be fed after they got even one day ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... two [three] men who have been able permanently to impress their stamp on an entire people—Lycurgus and Calvin [and Knox], whose characters in fact have much in common."[209] The Athenians made merry over the black broth of the Spartans; but Sparta conquered Athens. How many accusations and witticisms have been launched against the Calvinistic spirit, and yet Calvinistic countries led the way in Christian activity and civil freedom, and to them even those who abuse them are largely ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife; if ye are men, follow me! strike down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work as did your sires at old Thermopylae! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like base-born slaves beneath your master's lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we must die, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... is about eleven thousand four hundred square miles, or less than that of any European State, except Belgium, Saxony, and Servia. Magnitude is, however, but an insignificant element in the greatness of States—witness Athens, Sparta, Rhodes, Genoa, Florence, Venice. Egypt is the richest and most productive land in the whole world. In its most flourishing age we are told that it contained twenty thousand cities. It deserved to be called, more (probably) than even Belgium, "one great town." ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... life. These Greeks, however, our histories promptly teach us, did not form a single unified nation. They lived in many "city-states" of more or less importance, and some of the largest of these contributed very little directly to our civilization. Sparta, for example, has left us some noble lessons in simple living and devoted patriotism, but hardly a single great poet, and certainly never a philosopher or sculptor. When we examine closely, we see that the civilized life of Greece, during the centuries when she was accomplishing ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... consent they set rulers over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of their governors, and forms of government. Sec. 103. And I hope those who went away from Sparta with Palantus, mentioned by Justin, 1. iii. c. 4. will be allowed to have been freemen independent one of another, and to have set up a government over themselves, by their own consent. Thus I have given several examples, out of history, of people free and in the ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... benefits which former ages had bequeathed to them, and hatred of the wrongs and abuses which had come down from earlier times. Among them the word gothic was a violent term of reproach, aimed indiscriminately at buildings, laws, and customs. History, with the exception of that of Sparta, was thought to consist far more of warnings than of models. Just before the Revolution, a number of persons who had met in a lady's parlor were discussing the education of the Dauphin. "I think," said Lafayette," ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... infanticide as an established, legalized custom in Greece, is well summed up by Westermark, who says: "The exposure of deformed or sickly infants was undoubtedly an ancient custom in Greece; in Sparta, at least, it was enjoined by law. It was also approved of by the most enlightened among the Greek philosophers. Plato condemns all those children who are imperfect in limbs as well as those who are born of ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... show how perfection on this point was to be obtained. Clogs, so indispensable in the dirt of an unpaved French street, he always abhorred; yet, under cover of night, he could, now and then, condescend to wear them. "Theft," as the biographer observes, "in Sparta was a crime—but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... ask what I think of the Bulgarian outrage.... In the present instance the one thing primarily to be desired, and eminently difficult to attain, was cohesion of the little Powers. As of old, Sparta and Athens could not coalesce, and therefore after weakening one another they ill- resisted Philip, and were overpowered by Alexander armed from Macedonia and Thrace, and under-propt by gold from Asia; so now the little States— Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... pride and lust prepare." He is said to have visited a temple at Heraclea, where he had her spirit called up and implored her pardon. She duly appeared, and told him that "he would soon be delivered from all his troubles after his return to Sparta"—an ambiguous way of prophesying his death, which occurred soon afterwards. She was certainly avenged in the manner ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... a republic in France. A royalist by inborn inclination, I have now, in France, become one from conviction. For I am convinced that the French could never tolerate any republic, neither according to the constitution of Athens or of Sparta, nor, least of all, to that of the United States. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their constitution was a species of academic freedom, and it would be mere folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to revive it in our senile ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return! See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no specter that speaks! Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you, "Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid! Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed, Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire runs through Was the space between city and city; two days, two ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... Athens. He was one of the primates of Marna; his family, as his name indicates, have for many generations back been famous for their hereditary medical talents, and the tradition exists among them that a branch of their family formerly passed from Sparta to Italy, translated their name into Medici, and gave rise to the celebrated family of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... freedom hatches out colossi and extremes, O that the spirit of Hermann were still glowing in the ashes! Place me at the head of an army of fellows like myself, and Germany shall become a republic in comparison with which Rome and Sparta were nunneries.' Such, monstrous egotism needs no motive, but only an occasion, for breaking with the order of civilization. An occasion ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... fewness of the people in each. Tribe and nation, however, are not strict equivalents. A nation does not arise, under gentile institutions, until the tribes united under the same government have coalesced into one people, as the four Athenian tribes coalesced in Attica, three Dorian tribes at Sparta, and three Latin and Sabine tribes at Rome. Federation requires independent tribes in separate territorial areas; but coalescence unites them by a higher process in the same area, although the tendency to local separation by gentes and by tribes would continue. The confederacy is ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake—as supposed—of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... constitute a common danger. His representations were effectual. The kings of Babylon and Egypt, alive to their own peril, accepted his proposals; and a joint league was formed between the three monarchs and the republic of Sparta for the purpose of resisting the presumed aggressive spirit ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... No! and to every other commentator who has wantonly tampered with the text, or obscured it with his inky cloud of paraphrase, we feel inclined to apply the quadrisyllable name of the brother of Agis, king of Sparta. Clearly, we should be grateful to an editor who feels it his chief duty to scrape away these barnacles from the brave old hull, to replace with the original heart-of-oak the planks where these small but patient terebrators have bored away the tough fibre ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Psychagogi, or dead-evokers, at Heraclea, to call up the spirit of Cleonice (whose injured apparition haunted him incessantly), in order that he might entreat her forgiveness. She appeared accordingly, and informed him that, on his return to Sparta, he would be delivered from all his sorrows—meaning, by death. This was five hundred years before Christ. The story resembles that of the apparition of Samuel before Saul: "To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... much which may, at least, have mixed itself with the recollections of Sheridan, and influenced the course of his fancy—it being often found that the images with which the memory is furnished, like those pictures hung up before the eyes of pregnant women at Sparta, produce insensibly a likeness to themselves in the offspring which the imagination brings forth. The admirable drollery in Congreve about Lady Froth's verses ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Lacedaemonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... it is a very great misfortune for those who have to associate with you now that you were not raised in Sparta, where it was everybody's privilege to whip their neighbor's vicious, spoiled children. Such a regimen would doubtless have converted you into an amiable, or at ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... his stay. To his dear native land Depart he cannot; ship, arrayed with oars, And seamen has he none, to bear him o'er The breast of the broad ocean. Nay, even now, Against his well-beloved son a plot Is laid, to slay him as he journeys home From Pylos the divine, and from the walls Of famous Sparta, whither he had gone To gather tidings of his father's fate." Then answered her the ruler of the storms: "My child, what words are these that pass thy lips? Was not thy long-determined counsel this, That, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... organisation incredible, our minds play freely about possibilities that would have struck the men of the Academy as outrageous extravagance, and it is in regard to politico-social expedients that our imaginations fail. Sparta, for all the evidence of history, is scarcely more credible to us than a motor-car throbbing in the agora would have ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... raised her voice of warning, but as usual her words were not heeded, and so Paris set sail. He reached the shores of Greece in safety; but instead of proceeding to Salamis to demand Hesione from King Ajax, he steered his vessels to the coast of Sparta. This he did under the guidance and direction of Venus, who was now about to fulfill the promise by which she had won the golden prize on ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... Bas. ann. 1549. Non Argos pugilem, non me Messana creavit; Patria Sparta mihi est, patria clara virum. Arte valent isti, mihi robo revivere solo est, Convenit ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... probably true that our schools and our education have stood, to too great an extent, for mere intellectual acquisition and training. In Sparta of old, education was probably nine tenths physical and one tenth mental. In these modern days education seems to be about ninety-nine parts mental. A sound body is the foundation of a sound mind, and time is not lost in devoting much attention to the play and games of children and ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... the disposicion of order and lawe, did never harme, but rather alwaies it doeth good, and mainteineth the citee, moche lenger in suretie, through helpe of this armure, then without. Rome continued free CCCC. yeres, and was armed. Sparta viii.C. Many other citees have been disarmed, and have remained free, lesse then xl. For as moche as citees have nede of defence, and when thei have no defence of their owne, thei hire straungers, and the straunges ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... proper places. The Greeks had come to Egypt to stay. We have learned from the remains of Naukratis that throughout the Persian domination, which superseded the Saitic before the close of the sixth century, a constant importation of products of Ionia, Attica, Sparta, Cyprus and other Hellenic centres was maintained. The place was in full life when Herodotus visited Egypt, and it continued to prosper until the Greek race, becoming rulers of all the land, enthroned Hellenism at ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... that was the sure way of greatness. I have marvelled, sometimes, at Spain, how they clasp and contain so large dominions, with so few natural Spaniards; but sure the whole compass of Spain, is a very great body of a tree; far above Rome and Sparta at the first. And besides, though they have not had that usage, to naturalize liberally, yet they have that which is next to it; that is, to employ, almost indifferently, all nations in their militia of ordinary soldiers; yea, and sometimes in their highest ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... beguiled!" he said, "but now it seems Thou art——" She shook her head. "Nay, now come dreams; Nay, now I think, remember, now I see." "What callest thou to mind?" "Hermione," She said, "our child, and Sparta my own land, And all the honour that lay to my hand Had I but chosen it, as now I would"— And sudden hid her face up in her hood, Her courage ebbed in grief, all hardness drowned In bitter weeping. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... were mistaken, that though they rightly thought, that those things which are the objects of contention amongst mankind are better procured by virtue than vice, yet they wrongfully preferred the things themselves to virtue. Nor was the public revenue well managed at Sparta, for the state was worth nothing while they were obliged to carry on the most extensive wars, and the subsidies were very badly raised; for as the Spartans possessed a large extent of country, they were not exact upon each other as to what they paid in. ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... dreadfully scornful, while her husband curled up his, too, till he looked as proud as Alcibiades. [Footnote: Alcibiades was a particularly handsome and particularly proud Greek, who lived in the time of the great wars between the two Greek states of Athens and Sparta. He took part in these wars, first on the side of Athens, then on the side of Sparta, and finally succeeded in gaining the hatred of both states by his treachery and unscrupulousness. He went into exile, but was finally put to death ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... be. For lo! another day, when, as the sun was rising, came the race swift-footed of the chariot and the horse, he entered the contest with many charioteers. One was an Achaean, one was from Sparta, two were from Libya with four-horsed chariots, and Orestes with swift Thessalian mares came as the fifth. A sixth, with bright bay colts, came from AEtolia; the seventh was born in far Magnesia; the eighth was an AEnian with white horses; the ninth was from Athens, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... gave rise. His father subsequently received him at court, and treated him as his son. After spending some time in his native city among the Trojan princes, Paris set out for the court of Menelaus, king of Sparta, with a view to carry off his wife Helena, the most beautiful woman in the world, as the reward of the judgment which he had pronounced in favour of Venus. The young Trojan met with a most welcome reception at the Spartan court; ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Sparta there came Paris, with eyes blue as the sea, and hair that gleamed like gold on his purple robe, gallant and brave, and more beautiful than any mortal man, glad was the welcome ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... out for Greece on a tour of inspection: and when you get to Sparta, Helen will see you; and for the rest—her falling in love, and going back with ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... was once in Sparta a great legislator named Lycurgus, who attempted to introduce a kind of human selection into the laws. He wished to make the Spartans a strong nation, because at that time bodily strength was almost ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... indeed, been repeatedly pronounced by ancient philosophers and lawgivers. Our remarks hitherto referred chiefly to the Ionic-Attic tribe, renowned for the modesty of its women and maidens. The Doric principle, expressed in the constitution of Sparta, gave, on the contrary, full liberty to maidens to show themselves in public, and to steel their strength by bodily exercise. This liberty, however, was not the result of a philosophic idea of the equality of the two sexes, but was founded on the desire of producing ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... XVI Feeling against Sparta in Peloponnese—League of the Mantineans, Eleans, Argives, and Athenians—Battle of Mantinea and breaking up ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... Hobbes himself so far, as to be the foundation of all the political mistakes in his book, where he perpetually confounds the executive with the legislative power, though all well-instituted states have ever placed them in different hands, as may be obvious to those who know anything of Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and other republics of Greece, as well as the greater ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... of contests for beauty, which in ancient times were established by Cypselus, King of Arcadia, by the river Alpheus; and, at the feast of Apollo of Philae, a prize was offered to the youths for the deftest kiss. This was decided by an umpire; as also at Megara, by the grave of Diocles. At Sparta, and at Lesbos, in the temple of Juno, and among the Parrhasii, there were contests for beauty among women. The general esteem for beauty went so far, that the Spartan women set up in their bedchambers a Nireus, a Narcissus, or ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... armor:—"Plato says that it imitated all the attitudes of defence, by avoiding a thrust or a cast, retreating, springing up, and crouching-as also the opposite movements of attack with arrows and lances, and also of every kind of thrust. So strong was the attachment to this dance at Sparta that, long after it had in the other Greek states degenerated into a Bacchanalian revel, it was still danced by the Spartans as a warlike exercise, and boys of fifteen were instructed in it." Of the Hunting-dance I have already ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... are pitched in the same high strain. The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and the Greek and Latin classics were the foundation of the Renaissance. The revival of learning was the revival of Athens and Sparta and of the Imperial City. Modern science is their product. To be included with the classics are modern history and literature, the philosophers, the orators, the statesmen, and poets,—Milton and ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... of Sparta, was asked, "What should boys be taught?" he answered, "What they ought to do when they become men." Such a declaration was worthy of later times, since the most intelligent now admit that the great end of all education is the formation ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... yield up your treasured gold; Can liberty be priced and sold? Fair matrons, maids, and tender brides, Gird weapons to your lovers' sides; And, though your hearts break at the deed, Give them your blessing and God-speed; Then point them to the field of fame, With words like those of Sparta's dame! And when the ranks are full and strong, And the whole army moves along, A vast result of care and skill, Obedient to the master will, And our young hero draws the sword, And gives the last commanding word That hurls your strength upon the foe— Oh, let ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out loud, like Lady Louisa Stuart, when Mause exclaims: "Neither will I peace for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it be painted as red as a brick from the tower o' Babel, and ca' itsel' a corporal." Manse, as we have said, is not more comic than heroic, a mother in that Sparta of the Covenant. The figure of Morton, as usual, is not very attractive. In his review, Scott explains the weakness of his heroes as usually strangers in the land (Waverley, Lovel, Mannering, Osbaldistone), who need to have everything explained to them, and who are ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ship and go in search of his destined bride. The prince said nothing of this quest, but urged his kindred to let him go; and giving out a rumor that he was to find his father's lost sister Hesione, he set sail for Greece, and finally landed at Sparta. ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... any event as my title is an effect of the social contract it is precarious like the contract itself; a new stipulation suffices to limit it or to destroy it. "The sovereign[3423] may legitimately appropriate to himself all property, as was done in Sparta in the time of Lycurgus." In our lay convent whatever each monk possesses is only a revocable gift ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the blockade by quailing before power, the majority were beset by no temptation so strong as that of routing at once the insignificant number of troops who had come to overawe them. But Samuel Adams, while he compared their spirit to that of Sparta or Rome, was ever inculcating patience as the characteristic of a true patriot; and the people having sent forth their cry to the continent, waited self-possessed ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Georgia, at a place called Tatum Square, where slaves were held, housed and sold. "Speculators" (persons who traveled from place to place with slaves for sale) had housed 84 slaves there—many of whom were pregnant women. Besides "Parson," two other slave-children, Ed Jones who now lives in Sparta, Georgia, and George Bailey were born in Tatum Square that night. The morning after their births, a woman was sent from the nearby A.J. Lane plantation to take care of the three mothers; this nurse ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... now looks like one of the patricians of Sparta; marry, his wit's after ten i' the hundred: a good bloodhound, a close-mouthed dog, he follows the scent well; marry, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... political web with singular lucidity. Here it must be sufficient to say that, after the death of Pyrrhus, a conflict between Macedonia and Egypt, which stood at the head of an anti-Macedonian coalition of which Athens, Epirus, and Sparta were the principal members, became inevitable. The rivalry between the two States led to the Chremonidean war—so called because in 266 the Athenian Chremonides moved the declaration of war against Antigonus. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... for his acts of valour and feats of strength, is as mythical as the tale of Ninus: Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, could have stood by the side of Pausanias, having as signally defeated at Mont Olmo the great general Francis Piccinino as the King of Sparta crushed at Plataea the brilliant chief, Mardonius; the Hungarian sovereigns, John Corvinus Hunniades and his son Matthias occupied the ground that was held by the Theban princes, Pelopidas and Epaminondas; for the two Woiwodes of Transylvania ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... conducted the war as to have ended it with advantage and honour to my country. For, having secured to her the sovereignty of the sea by the defeat of the Samians, before I let her engage with the power of Sparta, I knew that our enemies would be at length wearied out and compelled to sue for a peace, because the city, from the strength of its fortifications and the great army within it, being on the land side impregnable to the Spartans, and drawing continual supplies from the ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... the Life of Mr. Stephens, was a very large and fine white poodle, named Rio, a dog of unusual intelligence and affection, to which Mr. Stephens became very strongly attached. While Mr. Stephens was in Washington, Rio staid with Linton Stephens, at Sparta, Georgia, until his master returned. Mr. Stephens would usually come on during the session of Greene County court, where Linton would meet him, having Rio with him in his buggy, and the dog would then return ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Sir Thomas More—Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know, however," continued he musingly, "that at Sparta (which is now Palae; ochori,) at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are still legible the letters 7!9. They are undoubtedly part of '7!9!. Now, at Sparta were a thousand ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the people of Israel, and singular establishments, like those of Sparta and Crete, have furnished examples of its actual execution; but in most other states, even the democratical spirit could attain no more than to prolong the struggle for Agrarian laws; to procure, on occasion, the expunging of debts; and to keep ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... empire at Constantinople haunts her dreams. She stirs up Greek against Ottoman, and her trumpeter Voltaire heralds a new Sparta and Athens; she calls her grandson Constantine, and surrounds him with Greek nurse and servants. Her famous progress southward, the most eccentric pageant in history, is typical of Patiomkin's regime. This extraordinary man—mountebank, writes the English envoy, "esprit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... to Rome that he had sealed up the gates of Carthage with fear. His followers and the people of Rome thought the same way, and this caused their undoing. Allies of various sorts came to the Carthaginians, among them Xanthippus from Sparta. He assumed the general superintendence of the Carthaginians, for the populace was eager to entrust matters to his charge and Hamilcar together with the other officials stepped aside voluntarily. The new leader, then, disposed things excellently in every way, and particularly ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... soldiers into precisely-acting automata, as in a modern army, but to make each separate soldier as vigorous and active as possible. The leading object of Greek education was to make men physically perfect. In this respect, Sparta may be taken as the typical Greek community, for nowhere else was physical development so entirely made the great end of social life. In these matters Sparta was always regarded by the other cities as taking ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... held in high esteem in Greece. To be sure, barbaric Sparta made a bold stand for equality, and almost instituted a gynecocracy, but the usual idea was that a woman's opinion was not worth considering. Hence the caricaturists of the day made sly sport of the love of Pericles and Aspasia. These two were intellectual equals, comrades; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... afterwards made a goddess by Artemis under the name of Dictynna ([Greek: diktuon], "a [v.04 p.0617] net"). She was the patroness of hunters, fishermen and sailors, and also a goddess of birth and health. The centre of her worship was Cydonia, whence it extended to Sparta and Aegina (where she was known as Aphaea) and the islands of the Mediterranean. By some she is considered to have been a moon-goddess, her flight from Minos and her leap into the sea signifying the revolution ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... so influenced each other for the last two thousand years that there is a mixed ethos which includes local variations. The European kharma is currently called Christian. In the ancient world Egypt and Sparta were the two cases of groups with the firmest and best-defined ethos. In modern European history the most marked case is that of Venice. In no one of these cases did the elements of moral strength and societal ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... never return to Scio to live under Turkish rule. The station was not continued. In 1837, Mr. Houston, with the Rev. George W. Leyburn, who had been sent out to join him, made a tour of observation in Mane, the ancient Sparta, to see if a station ought not to be formed there, in compliance with repeated solicitations from Petron Bey, the hereditary chief in that region. Indeed, in view of causes beyond the control of missionary societies, the Prudential Committee ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... Pyrrhus marched to Sparta to reinstate the deposed Cleonymus, and quietly pitched his tents before Laconia, not anticipating resistance. In consternation, the Spartans in council decided to send their women to Crete for safety. But the women met and asked Queen Archidamia to remonstrate. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... is a fool, but you are not a rogue.' JOHNSON. 'That's much about the truth, Sir. It must be considered, that a man who only does what every one of the society to which he belongs would do, is not a dishonest man. In the republick of Sparta, it was agreed, that stealing was not dishonourable, if not discovered. I do not commend a society where there is an agreement that what would not otherwise be fair, shall be fair; but I maintain, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and Cadmus once When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard So musical ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... take another instance, and one better known. In ancient Sparta it was the custom to teach children to steal. And here there would seem to be a contradiction to our proposition—here it would seem as if right and wrong were matters merely conventional; for surely stealing ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... her poniard! And Sparta sheathe the sword; Be none too prompt to punish, And cast indignant word! Bear back your spectral Brutus From robber Bonaparte; Time rarely will refute us ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the view of defending it with their small army against the invading host of Xerxes. The Spartan troops were under the command of Cleombrotus, the brother of Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae. He had been consulting the oracles at Sparta, and Herodotus states that "while he was offering sacrifice to know if he should march out against the Persian, the Sun was suddenly darkened in mid-sky." This occurrence so frightened Cleombrotus that he drew off his forces and returned home. It is uncertain from ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... holds the last place in your line, Lingering in quest, and scanning the fresh print Of his late footsteps, to be certified If he keep house or no. Right well thy sense Hath led thee forth, like some keen hound of Sparta! The man is even but now come home, his head And slaughterous hands reeking with ardent toil. Thou, then, no longer strain thy gaze within Yon gateway, but declare what eager chase Thou followest, that a god may give ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... noticed during my first visit. They were portraits of great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words had been Finis Poloniae;* Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the reincarnation of Sparta's King Leonidas; Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a believer in slavery; and finally, that martyr for ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... this is of extreme importance, as I will show by examples. To begin with the last case, some who have put their hands to unjust gains, have lost all the fruits of their former life, as the Lacedaemonian Gylippus,[28] who was exiled from Sparta for embezzling the public money. To be able to govern the temper also argues a wise man. For Socrates, when a very impudent and disgusting young fellow kicked him on one occasion, seeing all the rest of his class vexed and impatient, even to the point of wanting to prosecute the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a very popular god, yet his tricksy ways caused him to be looked upon with suspicion. Every one was anxious to stand well with him. In some of the cities of ancient Greece, as Sparta and Athens, he was worshipped with great solemnity, and every five years festivals ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in the government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it scarcely rose above Municipalism. In more modern times, ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... obey, and divided the governing from the governed, an essential characteristic of all forms of government. Military organization frequently accompanied or preceded the formation of the modern state. Sparta and Rome, and in more modern times Prussia, were built upon ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... heroes in the siege of Troy, famous for his size, physical strength, and beauty. In bravery and feats of valor he was second only to Achilles. Not being awarded the armor of Achilles after that hero's death, he slew himself. [190] 16. Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, was celebrated for her beauty, by reason of which frequent references are made to her by both classic and modern writers. Goethe introduces her in the second part of Faust, and Faustus, in Marlowe's play of that name, addresses ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... this contest of eight years, between the feeble colonies and the strong mother-land, of a courage that ancient Sparta would have applauded. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... before him, Plato conceived an ideal Republic in which moral laws, as commonly accepted, were to be set aside. Marriage was to be done away with; births were to be scientifically regulated; children were to be taken from their mothers; sickly infants were to be destroyed. In Sparta the committee of the elders did not permit the promptings of sympathy and the cries of wounded maternal love to influence the decision touching the life or death of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... was two years old; Rome displaced Sparta, Napoleon already was visible in Bonaparte, And the narrow mask of the First Consul, in many places, Was already pierced by ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... liberty depends upon each of the three powers being kept entirely separate. It is in this way that the balance of the constitution is preserved. As all human things have an end, England will one day lose its liberty, and perish. Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have not been able to last. England will perish when the legislative power grows more ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... now no alternative, but must besiege the city, sent persons to bring up all the marine forces from Gythium; and, in the mean time, rode himself, with some military tribunes, round the walls, to take a view of the situation of the place. In former times, Sparta had no wall; of late, the tyrants had built walls in the places where the ground Was open and level; but the higher places, and those more difficult of access, they secured by placing guards of soldiers instead ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... move quietly and rapidly through Benton, cross the Hiwassee, and then push forward in the direction of Kingston, while you, taking such a route as to be safe from a flank attack, would join him at or after his crossing the Tennessee River. The two commands, upon reaching Sparta, would be in position to select their future course; would necessitate the evacuation of Chattanooga and Knoxville, and by rapidity and skill unite on either army." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... indeed, is a logical thing common in states innocent of fanaticism, as in the great agnostic empire of China. What was really arresting and remarkable about the Middle Ages, as the Spartan discipline was peculiar to Sparta, or the Russian communes typical of Russia, was precisely its positive social scheme of production, of the making, building and growing of all the good things ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Thermopylae. Hence they pretend to be too enlightened for belief, and despise all governments not founded on the Contrat Social, or the Profession de Foi.—They are an age removed from the useful literature and general information of the middle classes in their own country—they talk familiarly of Sparta and Lacedemon, and have about the same idea of Russia as they have of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... my readers at any time visit the small town of Sparta, and encounter in the street a little old lady dressed in a brown cloak and hood, and firmly grasping in her right hand a faded blue cotton umbrella, they may feel quite certain that they are in the presence of Mrs. Mehitabel Payson, relict ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Constantino, Duke of Sparta, is leaving Athens, to take command of the Greek forces in Thessaly, and be ready to lead them if ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... things be explained, unless we accept a maternal stage? There are numerous other facts all indicating this same conclusion. We find relationships on the mother's side regarded as much more close than those on the father's side. In Athens and Sparta a man might marry his father's sister, but not his mother's sister. Lycaon, in pleading with Achilles, says in order to appease him, that he is not the uterine brother of Hector. It is also noteworthy to find ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Grecian temples thoroughly, as I have,—I who was passing more than two years from the hands of one guide to those of another? Hast thou been in Rhodes to examine the site of the Colossus? Hast thou seen in Panopeus, in Phocis, the clay from which Prometheus shaped man; or in Sparta the eggs laid by Leda; or in Athens the famous Sarmatian armor made of horse-hoofs; or in Euboea the ship of Agamemnon; or the cup for whose pattern the left breast of Helen served? Hast thou seen Alexandria, Memphis, the Pyramids, the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... diffused over that populous country. In a very early period, the islands of Cyprus and Crete, the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia, gave a favorable reception to the new religion; and Christian republics were soon founded in the cities of Corinth, of Sparta, and of Athens. [155] The antiquity of the Greek and Asiatic churches allowed a sufficient space of time for their increase and multiplication; and even the swarms of Gnostics and other heretics serve to display the flourishing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... pitiful helplessness, endure All flouts and outrage; nor in our own land Abide we till the storm of Argive war O'erwhelm us. Nay, even now, late though it be, Better it were for us to render back Unto the Danaans Helen and her wealth, Even all that glory of women brought with her From Sparta, and add other treasure—yea, Repay it twofold, so to save our Troy And our own souls, while yet the spoiler's hand Is laid not on our substance, and while yet Troy hath not sunk in gulfs of ravening flame. I pray you, take to heart my counsel! None Shall, well I wot, be given to ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... is meant only of the modern citizen or country-gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of the art of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense, be predicated of the English nation. War, without art, we seem, with God's help, able still ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... on, our numbers reduced to six, in order that a lighter vehicle might be adopted. The way in which this drafting was effected was on principles perfectly fair, and submitted to without a murmur: at Sparta, the agent informed us that only six passengers could be taken on; and that, unless we arranged otherwise, he should strike off the last three names entered in the way-bill, as being the juniors in this hard service: luckily for me, I had just ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... time of Alexander, Greece had been highly celebrated. It was divided into several small states, the principal of which were, Sparta and Athens. Sparta was governed by kings; Lycurgus was their famous legislator; he framed many wise laws, which greatly added to the prosperity of the kingdom. Athens was a commonwealth, and even more renowned for wisdom than Sparta. Solon was their lawgiver, ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... to pass some time among them, to learn as much as you can of their language, and to acquaint yourself with their customs. Their towns are virtually independent republics, like those of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. The power lies wholly in the hands of the democracy, and rough fellows are they. The nobles have little or no influence, save in the country districts. The Flemings are at present on ill terms with France, seeing ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty |
