Reader

ANACHARSIS

And why are your young men doing all this, Solon? Some of them, locked in each other’s arms, are tripping one another up, while others are choking and twisting each other and grovelling together in the mud, wallowing like swine. Yet, in the beginning, as soon as they had taken their clothes off, they put oil on themselves and took turns at rubbing each other down very peacefully—I saw it. Since then, I do not know what has got into them that they push one another about with lowered heads and butt their foreheads together like rams. And see there! That man picked the other one up by the legs and threw him to the ground, then fell down upon him and will not let him get up, shoving him all down into the mud; and now, after winding his legs about his middle and putting his forearm underneath his throat, he is choking the poor fellow, who is slapping him sidewise on the shoulder, by way of begging off, I take it, so that he may not be strangled completely.

1

Even out of consideration for the oil, they do not avoid getting dirty; they rub off the ointment, plaster themselves with mud, mixed with streams of

sweat, and make themselves a laughing-stock, to me at least, by slipping through each other's hands like eels.

Another set is doing the same in the uncovered part of the court, though not in mud. They have a layer of deep sand under them in the pit, as you see, and not only besprinkle one another but of their own accord heap the dust on themselves like so many cockerels, in order that it may be harder to break away in the clinches, I suppose, because the sand takes off the slipperiness and affords a firmer grip on a dry surface.

Others, standing upright, themselves covered with dust, are attacking each other with blows and kicks. This one here looks as if he were going to spew out his teeth, unlucky man, his mouth is so full of blood and sand; he has had a blow on the jaw, as you see. But even the official there does not separate them and break up the fight—I assume from his purple cloak that he is one of the officials; on the contrary, he urges them on and praises the one who struck the blow.

Others in other places are all exerting themselves; they jump up and down as if they were running, but stay in the same place; and they spring high up and kick the air.

1

I want to know, therefore, what good it can be to do all this, because to me at least the thing looks more like insanity than anything else, and nobody can easily convince me that men who act in that way are not out of their minds.

SOLON It is only natural, Anacharsis, that what they are doing should have that appearance to you, since it is unfamiliar and very much in contrast with Seythian customs. In like manner you yourselves probably have much io your education and training which would appear strange to us Greeks if one of us should look in upon it as you are doing now. But have no fear, my dear sir; it is not insanity, and it is not out of brutality that they strike one another and tumble each other in the mud, or sprinkle each other with dust. The thing has a certain usefulness, not unattended by pleasure, and it gives much strength to their bodies. As a matter of fact, if you stop for some time, as I think you will, in Greece, before long you yourself will be one of the muddy or dusty set; so delightful and at the same time so profitable will the thing seem to you. ANACHARSIS Get out with you, Solon! You Greeks may have those benefits and pleasures. For my part, if one of you should treat me like that, he will find out that we do not carry these daggers at our belts for nothing!

But tell me, what name do you give to these performances? What are we to say they are doing? SOLON The place itself, Anacharsis, we call a gymnasium, and it is consecrated to Lyceian Apollo; you see his statue—the figure leaning against the pillar, with the bow in his left hand; his right arm bent back above his head indicates that the god is resting, as if after long exertion.

As for these forms of athletics, that one yonder in the mud is called wrestling, and the men in the dust are wrestling too. When they stand upright and strike one another, we call it the pancratium.

1

. We have other such athletic exercises, too—boxing, throwing the discus, and jumping— in all of which we hold contests, and the winner is considered best in his class and carries off the prizes.

ANACHARSIS And these prizes of yours, what are they? SOLON At the Olympic games, a wreath made of wild olive, at the Isthmian one of pine, and at the Nemean one of parsley, at the Pythian some of the apples sacred to Apollo, and with us at the Panathenaea, the oil from the holy olive.The one planted on the Acropolis by Athena. As to the prize in the Pythia, it may have been apples before the reorganization of the games in 586. But in that year the competition had prizes “in kind,” spoils of the Crisaean war (χρηματίτης ἀπὸ λαφύρων: Marmor Parium); and from 582 it was orepavirns, like the other three Panhellenic Festivals, with a wreath of laurel. What made you laugh, Anacharsis? Because you think these prizes trivial? ANACHARSIS No, the prizes that you have told off are absolutely imposing, Solon; they may well cause those who have offered them to glory in their munificence and the contestants themselves to be tremendously eager to carry off such guerdons, so that they will go through all these preliminary hardships and risks, getting choked and broken in two by one another, for apples and parsley, as if it were not possible for anyone who wants them to get plenty of apples without any trouble, or to wear a wreath of parsley or of pine without having his face bedaubed with mud or letting himself be kicked in the belly by his opponent!

SOLON But, my dear fellow, it is not the bare gifts that we have in view! They are merely tokens of the victory and marks to identify the winners. But the reputation that goes with them is worth everything to the victors, and to attain it, even to be kicked is nothing to men who seek to capture fame through hardships. Without hardships it cannot be acquired; the man who covets it must put up with many unpleasantnesses in the beginning before at last he can expect the profitable and delightful outcome of his exertions, ANACHARSIS By this delightful and profitable outcome, Solon, you mean that everybody will see them wearing wreaths and will applaud them for their victory after having pitied them a long time beforehand for their hard knocks, and that they will be felicitous to have apples and parsley in compensation for their hardships! SOLON You are still unacquainted with our ways, I tell you. After a little you will think differently about them, when you go to the games and see that great throng of people gathering to look at such spectacles, and amphitheatres filling that will hold thousands, and the contestants applauded, and the one among them who succeeds in winning counted equal to the gods.

ANACHARSIS That is precisely the most pitiable part of it, Solon, if they undergo this treatment not before just a few but in the presence of so many spectators and witnesses of the brutality, who no doubt felicitate them on seeing them streaming with blood or getting strangled by their opponents; for these are the extreme felicities that go with their victory! With us Scythians, Solon, if anyone strikes a citizen, or assaults him and throws him down, or tears his clothing, the elders impose severe penalties upon him, even if the offence takes place before just a few witnesses, not to speak of such great assemblies as that at the Isthmus and that at Olympia which you describe. I assure you, I cannot help pitying the contestants for what they go through, and I am absolutely amazed at the spectators, the prominent men who come, you say, from all sides to the games, if they neglect their urgent business and fritter their time away in such matters. I cannot yet conceive what pleasure it is to them to see men struck, pummelled, dashed on the ground, and crushed by one another.

SOLON If it were the time, Anacharsis, for the Olympic or the Isthmian or the Panathenaic games, what takes place there would itself have taught you that we had not spent our energy on all this in vain. Just by talking about the delightfulness of the doings there, one cannot convince you of it as thoroughly as if you yourself, sitting in the midst of the spectators, were to see manly perfection, physical beauty, wonderful condition, mighty skill, irresistible strength, daring, rivalry, indomitable resolution, and inexpressible ardour for victory. I am very sure that you would never have stopped praising and cheering and clapping.

ANACHARSIS No doubt, Solon; and laughing and gibing, into the bargain; for I see that all these things which you have enumerated—the perfection, the condition, the beauty, the daring—are being wasted for you without any great object in view, since your country is not in peril nor your farm-lands being ravaged, nor your friends and kinsmen insolently carried off. So the competitors are all the more ridiculous if they are the flower of the country, as you say, and yet endure so much for nothing, making themselves miserable and defiling their beautiful, great bodies with sand and black eyes to get possession of an apple and an olive-branch when they have won! You see, I like to keep mentioning the prizes, which are so fine! But tell me, do all the contestants get them? SOLON Not by any means; only one among them all, the victor. ANACHARSIS Then do so many undergo hardships upon the uncertain and precarious chance of winning, Solon, knowing too that there will surely be but one winner and very many losers, who, poor fellows, will have received blows and in some cases even wounds for nothing?

SOLON It seems, Anacharsis, that you have never yet done any thinking about the proper way to direct a state; otherwise you would not disparage the best of institutions. If ever you make it your object to find out how a state is to be organized in the best way possible, and how its citizens are to reach the highest degree of excellence, you will then praise these exercises and the rivalry which we display in regard to them, and you will know that they have . much that is useful intermingled with the hardships, even if you now think our energy is spent on them for nothing. ANACHARSIS T assure you, Solon, I had no other object in coming to your country from Scythia, over such a vast stretch of land and across the wide and tempestuous Euxine, than to learn the laws of the Greeks, to observe your institutions, and to acquaint myself with the best form of polity. Thatis why I selected you in particular out ofall the Athenians for my friend and host, in deference to your reputation, for I used to hear that you were a maker of laws, an inventor of excellent institutions, an introducer of advantageous practices, and in a word, the fashioner of a polity. So do be quick about teaching me and making a disciple of me. For my part I would gladly sit beside you without meat or drink as long as you could endure to talk, and listen to you with avidity while you described government and laws.

SOLON To describe everything, my friend, in brief compass is not an easy task, but if you take it up a little at a time, you will find out in detail all the opinions we hold about the gods and about parents, marriage, and everything else. And I shall now tell you what we think about our young men, and how we deal with them from the time when they begin to know good from bad, to be physically mature, and to bear hardships, in order that you may learn why we prescribe these exercises for them and compel them to train their bodies. It is not simply on account of the contests, in order that they may be able to take the prizes—very few out of the entire number have the capacity for that—but because we seek a certain greater good from it for the entire state and for the young men themselves. There is another competition which is open to all good citizens in common, and a wreath that is not made of pine or olive or parsley, but contains in itself all human felicity,—that is to say, freedom for each individual singly and for the state in general, wealth, glory, enjoyment of ancestral feast-days, safety for one’s family, and in short, the fairest blessings that one could pray to receive from the gods. All these things are interwoven in the wreath that I speak of and accrue from the contest to which these exercises and hardships lead.

ANACHARSIS Then, Solon, you amazing person, when you had such magnificent prizes to tell of, you spoke of apples and parsley and a sprig of wild olive and a bit of pine? SOLON But really, Anacharsis, even those prizes will no longer appear trivial to you when you understand what I mean. They originate in the same purpose, and are all small parts of that greater contest and of the wreath of complete felicity which I mentioned. Our conversation, departing somehow or other from the natural sequence, touched first upon the doings at the Isthmus and Olympia and Nemea. However, as we are at leisure and you are eager, you say, to hear, it will be an easy matter for us to hark back to the -beginning, to the common competition which is, as I say, the object of all these practices. ANACHARSIS It would be better, Solon, to do so, for by keeping to the highway our talk would make greater progress, and perhaps knowing these prizes may persuade me never again to laugh at those others, if I should see a man putting on airs because he wears a wreath of wild olive or parsley. But if it is all the same to you, let us go into the shade over yonder and sit on the benches, so as not to be annoyed by the men who are shouting at the wrestlers. Besides—I may as well be frank!—I no longer find it easy to stand the sun, which is fierce and burning as it beats upon my bare head. I thought it best to leave my cap at home, so as not to be the only person among you in a foreign costume.A great pointed cap of felt or skin was part of the Scythian costume. The Greeks went bare-headed, unless they were ill, or on a journey, or regularly exposed to bad weather, like sailors and farm-labourerr, who wore a similar but smaller cap. _ But the season of the year is the very fieriest, for the star which you call the Dog burns everything up and makes the air dry and parching, and the sun, now hanging overhead at midday, produces this blazing heat, insupportable to the body. I wonder, therefore, how it is that you, an elderly man, do not perspire in the heat as I do, and do not seem to be troubled by it at all; you do not even look about for a shady spot to enter, but stand the sun with ease. SOLON These useless exertions, Anacharsis, the continual somersaults in the mud and the open-air struggles in the sand give us our immunity from the shafts of the sun and we have no further need of a cap to keep its rays from striking our heads.

Let us go, however. And take care not to regard everything that I may say to you as a law, so as to believe it at all hazards. Whenever you think I am incorrect in anything that I say, contradict me at once and set my reasoning straight. One thing or the other, certainly, we cannot fail to accomplish: either you will become firmly convinced after you have exhausted all the objections that you think ought to be made, or else I shall be taught that I am not correct in my view of the matter. In that event the entire city of Athens could not be too quick to

acknowledge its gratitude to you, because in so far as you instruct me and convert me to a better view, you will have conferred the grgatest possible benefit upon her. For I could not keep anything from her, but shall at once contribute it all to the public. Taking my stand in the Pnyx, I shall say to everyone: “Men of Athens, I made you the laws which I thought would’ be most beneficial to the city, but this guest of mine”—and then I shall point to you, Anacharsis,—“a Scythian, indeed, but a man of learning, has converted me and taught me other better forms of education and training. Therefore let him be written down as your benefactor, and set his statue up in bronze beside the Namesakes

1

or on the Acropolis beside Athena.” You may be very sure that the city of Athens will not be ashamed to learn what is to her advantage from a foreign guest.

ANACHARSIS Ah! that is just what I used to hear about you Athenians, that you never really mean what you say. For how could I, a nomad and a rover, who have lived my life on a wagon, visiting different lands at different seasons, and have never dwelt in a city or seen one until now—how could I hold forth upon statecraft and teach men sprung from the soil, who have inhabited this very ancient city for so many years in law and order? Above all, how could I teach you, Solon, who from the first, they say, have made it a special study to know how the government of a state can be conducted best and what laws it should observe to be prosperous? However, in this too, since you are a law-giver, I must obey you; so I shall contradict you if I think that you are incorrect in anything that you say, in order that I may learn my lesson more thoroughly. See, we have escaped the sun and are now in the shade; here is a very delightful and opportune seat on the cool stone. So begin at the beginning and tell why you take your young men in hand and train them from their very boyhood, how they turn out excellent men as a result of the mud and the exercises, and what the dust and the somersaults contribute to their excellencé. That is what I was most eager to hear at the beginning: the rest you shall teach me later, as opportunity offers, each particular in its turn. But bear this in mind, please, Solon, throughout your talk, that you will be speaking to a foreigner. I say this in order that you may not make your explanations too involved or too long, for I am afraid that I may forget the commencement if the sequel should be too profuse in its flow.

SOLON You yourself, Anacharsis, can regulate that better, wherever you think that my discussion is not fully clear, or that it is meandering far from its channel in a random stream; for you can interpose any question that you will, and cut it short. But if what I say is not foreign to the case and beside the mark, there will be nothing, I suppose, to hinder, even if I should speak at length, since that is the tradition in the court of the Areopagus, which judges our cases of manslaughter. Whenever it goes up to the Areopagus and holds a sitting to judge a case of manslaughter or premeditated wounding or arson, an opportunity to be heard is given to each party to the case, and the plaintiff and defendant plead in turn, either in person or through professional speakers whom they bring to the bar to plead in their behalf. As long as they speak about the case, the court tolerates them and listens in silence; but if anyone prefaces his speech with an introduction in order to make the court more favourable, or brings emotion or exaggeration into the case— tricks that are often devised by the disciples of rhetoric to influence the judges,—then the crier appears and silences them at once, preventing them from talking nonsense to the court and from tricking the case out in words, in order that the Areopagites may see the facts bare. So, Anacharsis, I make you an Areopagite for the present. Listen to me according to the custom of the court and tell me to be silent if you perceive that I am plying you with rhetoric. But as long as what I say is germane to the case, let me have the right to speak at length. Besides, we are not going to converse in the sun now, so that you would find it burdensome if my talk were prolonged; the shade is thick, and we have plenty of time. ANACHARSIS What you say is reasonable, Solon, and already I am more than a little grateful to you for incidentally teaching me about what takes place in the Areopagus, which is truly admirable and what good judges would do, who intend to cast their ballot in accordance with the facts. On these conditions, therefore, proceed, and in my _ capacity of Areopagite, since you have made me that, I shall give you a hearing in the manner of that court.

SOLON Then you must first let me tell you briefly what our ideas are about a city and its citizens. We consider that a city is not the buildings, such as walls and temples and docks. These constitute a firm-set, immovable body, so to speak, for the shelter and protection of the community, but the whole significance is in the citizens, we hold, for it is they _ who fill it, plan and carry out everything, and keep it safe; they are something like what the soul is within the individual. So, having noted this, we naturally take care of the city’s body, as you see, beautifying. it so that it may be as fair as possible, not only well furnished inside with buildings but most securely fenced with these external ramparts. But above all and at all hazards we endeavour to insure that the citizens shall be virtuous in soul and strong in body, thinking that such men, joined together in public life, will make good use of themselves in times of peace, will bring the city safe out of war, and will keep it always free and prosperous. Their early upbringing we entrust to mothers, nurses, and tutors, to train and rear them with liberal teachings; but when at length they become able to understand what is right, when modesty, shame, fear, and ambition spring up in them, and when at length their very bodies seem well fitted for hardships as they get firmer and become more strongly compacted, then we take them in hand and teach them, not only prescribing them certain disciplines and exercises for the soul, but in certain other ways habituating their bodies also to hardships. We have not thought it sufficient for each man to be as he was born, either in body or in soul, but we want education and disciplines for them by which their good traits may be much improved and their bad altered for the better. We take example from the farmers, who shelter and enclose their plants while they are small and young, so that they may not be injured by the breezes: but when the stalk at last begins to thicken, they prune away the excessive growth and expose them te the winds to be shaken and tossed, in that way making them more fruitful.

Their souls we fan into flame with music and arithmetic at first and we teach them to write their letters and to read them trippingly. As they progress, we recite for them sayings of wise men, deeds of olden times, and helpful fictions, which we have adorned with metre that they may remember them better. Hearing of certain feats of arms and famous exploits, little by little they grow covetous and are incited to imitate them, in order that they too may be sung and admired by men of after time. Both Hesiod and Homer have composed much poetry of that sort for us. When they enter political life and have at length to handle public affairs—but this, no doubt, is foreign to the case, as the subject proposed for discussion at the outset was not how we discipline their souls, but why we think fit to train their bodies with hardships like these. Therefore I order myself to be silent, without waiting for the crier to do it, or for you, the Areopagite; it is out of deference, I suppose, that you tolerate my saying so much that is beside the point. ANACHARSIS Tell me, Solon, when people do not say what is most essential in the Areopagus, but keep it to themselves, has the court devised no penalty for them? SOLON Why did you ask me that question? I do not understand. ANACHARSIS Because you propose to pass over what is best and: for me most delightful to hear about, what concerns the soul, and to speak of what is less essential, gymnastics and physical exercises. SOLON Why, my worthy friend, I remember your admonitions in the beginning and do not wish the discussion to meander out of its channel for fear of confusing your memory with its flow. However, I shall discuss this, too, in brief, as best I can. To consider it carefully would be matter for another conversation.

We harmonize their minds by causing them to learn by heart the laws of the community, which are exposed in public for everyone to read, written in large letters, and tell what one should do and what one should refrain from doing; also by causing them to hold converse with good men, from whom they learn to say what is fitting and do what is right, to associate with one another on an equal footing, not to aim at what is base, to seek what is noble, and to do no violence. These men we call sophists and philosophers. Furthermore, assembling them in the theatre, we instruct them publicly through comedies and tragedies, in which they behold both the virtues and the vices of the ancients, in order that they may recoil from the vices and emulate the virtues. The comedians, indeed, we allow to abuse and ridicule any citizens whom they perceive to be following practices that are base and unworthy of the city, not only for the sake of those men themselves, since they are made better by chiding, but for the sake of the general public, that they may shun castigation for similar offences.

ANACHARSIS I have seen the tragedians and comedians that you are speaking of, Solon, if I am not mistaken; theyThe tragedians. There may be a lacuna in the text. had on heavy, high footgear, clothing that was gay with gold stripes, and very ludicrous head- pieces with great, gaping mouths; they shouted loudly from out of these, and strode about in the footgear, managing somehow or other to do it safely. The city was then holding a feast, in honour, I think, of Dionysus. The comedians were shorter, nearer to the common level, more human, and less given to shouting, but their headpieces were far more ludicrous. In fact the whole audience laughed at them; but they all wore long faces while they listened to the tall fellows, pitying them, I suppose, because they were dragging such clogs about! SOLON It was not the actors that they pitied, my dear fellow. No doubt the poet was presenting some calamity of old to the spectators and declaiming mournful passages to the audience by which his hearers were moved to tears. Probably you also saw flute-players at that time, and others who sang in concert, standing in a circle. Even singing and flute-playing is not without value, Anacharsis. By all these means, then, and others like them, we whet their souls and make them better.

As to their bodies—for that is what you were especially eager to hear about—we train them as follows. When, as I said,

1

they are no longer soft and wholly strengthless, we strip them, and think it best to begin by habituating them to the weather, making them used to the several seasons, so as not to be distressed by the heat or give in to the cold. Then we rub them with olive-oil and supple them in order that they may be more elastic, for since we believe that leather, when softened by oil, is harder to break and far more durable, lifeless as it

is, it would be extraordinary if we should not think that the living body would be put in better condition by the oil. After that, having invented many forms of athletics and appointed teachers for each, we teach one, for instance, boxing, and another the pancratium, in order that they may become accustomed to endure hardships and to meet blows, and not recoil for fear of injuries. This helps us by creating in them two effects that are most useful, since it makes them not only spirited in facing dangers and unmindful of their bodies, but healthy and strong into the bargain. Those of them who put their bent heads together and wrestle learn to fall safely and get up easily, to push, grip and twist in various ways, to stand being choked, and to lift their opponent high in the air. They too are not engaging in useless exercises; on the contrary, they indisputably acquire one thing, which is first and greatest: their bodies become less susceptible and more vigorous through being exercised thoroughly. There is something else, too, which itself is not trivial: they become expert as a result of it, in case they should ever come to need what they have learned in battle. Clearly such a man, when he closes with an enemy, will trip and throw him more quickly, and when he is down, will know how to get up again most easily. For we make all these preparations, Anacharsis, with a view to that contest, the contest under arms, and we expect to find men thus disciplined far superior, after we have suppled and trained their bodes naked, and so have made them healthier and stronger, light and

elastic, and at the same time too heavy for their opponents.

You can imagine, I suppose, the consequence— what they are likely to be with arms in hand when even unarmed they would implant fear in the enemy. They show no white and ineffective corpulence or pallid leanness, as if they were women’s bodies bleached out in the shade, quivering and streaming with profuse sweat at once and panting beneath the helmet, especially if the sun, as at present, blazes with the heat of noon. What use could one make of men like that, who get thirsty, who cannot stand dust, who break ranks the moment they catch sight of blood, who lie down and die before they get within a spear’s cast and come to grips with the enemy? But these young men of ours have a ruddy skin, coloured darker by the sun, and manly faces; they reveal great vitality, fire, and courage; they are aglow with such splendid condition; they are neither lean and emaciated nor so full-bodied as to be heavy, but symmetrical in their lines; they have sweated away the useless and superfluous part of their tissues, but what made for strength and elasticity is left upon them uncontaminated by what is worthless, and they maintain it vigorously. In fact, athletics do in our bodies just what winnowers do to wheat: they blow away the husks and the chaff, but separate the grain out cleanly and accumulate it for future use.

Consequently a man like that cannot help keeping well and holding out protractedly under exhausting labours; it would be long before he would begin to sweat, and he would rarely be found ill. It is as if you should take firebrands and throw them simultaneously into the wheat itself and into its straw and chaff—for I am going back again to the winnower. The straw, I take it, would blaze up far more quickly, while the wheat would burn slowly, not with a great blaze springing up nor at a single burst, but smouldering gradually, until in course of time it too was totally consumed. Neither illness nor fatigue, then, could easily invade and rack such a body, or readily overmaster it; for it has been well stocked within and very strongly fortified against them without, so as not to admit them, nor yet to receive either sun itself or frost to the detriment of the body. To prevent giving way under hardships, abundant energy that gushes up from within, since it has been made ready long beforehand and stored away for the emergency, fills them at once, watering them with vigour, and makes them unwearying for a very long period, for their great preliminary hardships and fatigues do not squander their strength but increase it; the more you fan its flame, the greater it becomes.

Furthermore, we train them to be good runners, habituating them to hold out for a long distance, and also making them light-footed for extreme speed in a short distance. And the running is not done on hard, resisting ground but in deep sand, where it is not easy to plant one’s foot solidly or to get a purchase with it, since it slips from under one as the sand gives way beneath it. We also train them to jump a ditch, if need be, or any other obstacle, even carrying lead weights as large as they can grasp. Then too they compete in throwing the javelin for distance. And you saw another implement in the gymnasium, made of bronze, circular, resembling a little shield without handle or straps; in fact, you tested it as it lay there, and thought it heavy and hard to hold on account of its smoothness. Well, they throw that high into the air and also to a distance, vying to see who can go the farthest and throw beyond the rest. This exercise strengthens their shoulders and puts muscle into their arms and legs.

As for the mud and the dust, which you thought rather ludicrous in the beginning, you amazing person, let me tell you why it is put down. In the first place, so that instead of taking their tumbles on a hard surface they may fall with impunity on a soft one; secondly, their slipperiness is necessarily greater when they are sweaty and muddy. This feature, in which you compared them to eels, is not useless or ludicrous; it contributes not a little to strength and muscle when both are in this condition and each has to grip the other firmly and hold him fast while he tries to slip away. And as for picking up a. man who is muddy, sweaty, and oily while he does his best to break away and squirm out of your hands, do not think it a trifle! All this, as I said before, is of use in war, in case one should need to pick up a wounded friend and carry him out of the fight with ease, or to snatch up an enemy and come back with him in one’s arms, So we train them beyond measure, setting them hard tasks that: they may manage smaller ones with far greater ease.

The dust we think to be of use for the opposite purpose, to prevent them from slipping away when they are grasped. After they have been trained in the mud to hold fast what eludes them because of its oiliness, they are given practice in escaping out of their opponent’s hands when they themselves are caught, even though they are held in a sure grip. Moreover, the dust, sprinkled on when the sweat is pouring out in profusion, is thought to check it; it makes their strength endure long, and hinders them from being harmed by the wind blowing upon their bodies, which are then unresisting and have the pores open. Besides, it rubs off the dirt and makes the man cleaner. I should like to put side by side one of those white-skinned fellows who have lived in the shade and any one you might select of the athletes in the Lyceum, after I had washed off the mud and the dust, and to ask you which of the two you would pray to be like. I know that even without testing each to see what he could do, you would immediately choose on first sight to be firm and hard rather than delicate and mushy and white because your blood is scanty and withdraws to the interior of the body.

That, Anacharsis, is the training we give our young men, expecting them to become stout guardians of our city, and that we shall live in freedom through them, conquering our foes if they attack us and keeping our neighbours in dread of us, so that most of them will cower at our feet and pay tribute. In peace, too, we find them far better, for nothing that is base appeals to their ambitions and idleness does not incline them to arrogance, but exercises such as these give them diversion and keep them occupied. The chief good of the public and the supreme felicity of the state, which I mentioned before, are attained when our young men, striving at our behest for the fairest objects, have been most efficiently prepared both for peace and for war.

ANACHARSIS Then if the enemy attack you, Solon, you yourselves will take the field rubbed with oil and covered with dust, shaking your fists at them, and they, of course, will cower at your feet and run away, fearing that while they are agape in stupefaction you may sprinkle sand in their mouths, or that after jumping behind them so as to get on their backs, you may wind your legs about their bellies and strangle them by putting an arm under their helmets. Yes, by Zeus, they will shoot their arrows, naturally, and throw their spears, but the missiles will not affect you any more than as if you were statues, tanned as you are by the sun and supplied in abundance with blood. You are not straw or chaff, so as to give in quickly under their blows; it would be only after Jong and strenuous effort, when you are all cut up with deep wounds, that you would show a few drops of blood. This is the gist of what you say, unless I have completely misunderstood your comparison.

Or else you will then assume those panoplies of the comedians and tragedians, and if a sally is proposed to you, you will put on those wide-mouthed headpieces in order that you may be more formidable to your opponents by playing bogey-man, and will of course wear those high shoes, for they will be light to run away in, if need be, and hard for the enemy to escape from, if you go in pursuit, when you take such great strides in chase of them. No, I am afraid that all these clever tricks of yours are silliness, nothing but child’s play, amusements for your young men who have nothing to do and want to lead an easy life. If you wish, whatever betides, to be free and happy, you will require other forms of athletics and real training, that is to say, under arms, and you will not compete against each other in sport, but against the enemy, learning courage in perilous conflict. So let them give up the dust and the oil; teach them to draw the bow and throw the spear; and do not give them light javelins that can be deflected by the wind, but let them have a heavy lance that whistles when it is hurled, a stone as large as they can grasp, a double axe, a target in their left hand, a breastplate, and a helmet.

In your present condition, it seems to me that you are being saved by the grace of some god or other, seeing that you have not yet been wiped out by the onfall ef a handful of light-armed troops. Look here, if I should draw this little dirk at my belt and fall upon all your young men by myself, I should capture the gymnasium with a mere hurrah, for they would run away and not one would dare to face the steel; no, they would gather about the statues and hide behind the pillars, making me laugh while most of them cried and trembled. Then you would see that they were no longer ruddy-bodied as they are now; they would all turn pale on the instant, dyed to another hue by fright. Profound peace has brought you to such a pass that you could not easily endure to see a single plume of a hostile helmet.

SOLON The Thracians who campaigned against us with Eumolpus did not say so, Anacharsis, nor your women who marched against the. city with Hippolyta,The Amazons. nor any others who have tested us under arms. It does not follow, my unsophisticated friend, that because our young men’s bodies are thus naked while we are developing them, they are therefore undefended by armour when we lead them out into dangers. When they become efficient in themselves, they are then trained with arms and can make far better use of them because they are so well conditioned. ANACHARSIS Where do you do this training under arms? I have not seen anything of the sort in the city, though I have gone all about the whole of it. SOLON But you would see it, Anacharsis, if you should stop with us longer, and also arms for every man in great quantity, which we use when it is necessary, and crests and trappings and horses, and cavalrymen amounting to nearly a fourth of our citizens. But to bear arms always and carry a dirk at one’s belt is, we think, superfluous in time of peace; in fact, there is a penalty prescribed for anyone who carries weapons unnecessarily within the city limits or brings armour out into a public place. As for your people, you may be pardoned for always living under arms. Your dwelling in unfortified places makes it easy to attack you, and your wars are very numerous, and nobody knows when someone may come upon him asleep, drag him down from his wagon, and kill him. Besides, your distrust of one another, inasmuch as your relations with each other are adjusted by individual caprice and not by law, makes steel always necessary, so as to be at hand for defence if anyone should use violence.

ANACHARSIS Then is it possible, Solon, that while you think it superfluous to carry weapons without urgent reason, and are careful of your arms in order that they may not be spoiled by handling, keeping them in store with the intention of using them some day, when need arises; yet when no danger threatens you wear out the bodies of your young men by mauling them and wasting them away in sweat, not husbanding their strength until it is needed but expending it fruitlessly in the mud and dust? SOLON Apparently, Anacharsis, you think that strength is like wine or water or some other liquid. Anyhow, you are afraid that during exertions it may leak away unnoticed as if from an earthen jar, and then be gone, leaving our bodies empty and dry, since they are not filled up again with anything from within. As a matter of fact, this is not the case, my friend: the more one draws it out by exertions, the more it flows in, like the fable of the Hydra, if you have heard it, which says that when one head was cut off, two others always grew up in ‘its place. But if a man is undeveloped from the beginning, and untempered, and has an insufficient substratum of reserve material, then he may be injured and reduced in flesh by exertions. Something similar is the case with a fire and a lamp; for with one and the same breath you can start the fire afresh and speedily make it greater, stimulating it with your blowing, and you can put out the light of the lamp, which has not an adequate supply of fuel to maintain itself against the oppvsing blast: the root from which it sprang was not strong, I suppose.

ANACHARSIS I do not understand this at all, Solon; what you have said is too subtle for me, requiring keen intellect and penetrating discernment. But do by all means tell me why it is that in the Olympic and Isthmian and Pythian and the other games, where many, you say, come together to see the young men competing, you never match them under arms but bring them out naked and show them receiving kicks and blows, and when they have won you give them apples and parsley. It is worth while to know why you do so SOLON We think, Anacharsis, that their zeal for the athletic exercises will be increased if they see those who excel in them receiving honours and having their names proclaimed before the assembled Greeks. For this reason, expecting to appear unclothed before so many people, they try to attain good physical condition so that they may not be ashamed of themselves when they are stripped, and each makes himself as fit to win as he can. Furthermore, the prizes, as I said before, are not trivial—to be praised by the spectators, to become a man of mark, and to be pointed at with the finger as the best of one’s class. Therefore many of the spectators, who are still young enough for training, go away immoderately in love with manfulness and hard work as a result of all this. Really, Anacharsis, if the love of fame should be banished out of the world, what new blessing should we ever acquire, or who would want to do any glorious deed? But as things are, even from these contests they give you an opportunity to infer what they would be in war, defending country, children, wives, and fanes with weapons and armour, when contending naked for parsley and apples they bring into it so much zeal for victory.

What would your feelings be if you should see quail-fights and cock-fights here among us, and no little interest taken in them? You would laugh, of course, particularly if you discovered that we do it in compliance with law, and that all those of military age are required to present themselves and watch the birds spar to the uttermost limit of exhaustion. Yet this is not laughable, either: their souls are gradually penetrated by an appetite for dangers, in order that they may not seem baser and more cowardly than the cocks, and may not show the white feather early on account of wounds or weariness or any other hardship.

As for testing them under arms, and watching them get wounded—no! It is bestial and terribly cruel and, more than that, unprofitable to kill off the most efficient men who can be used to better advantage against the enemy. As you say that you intend to visit the rest of Greece, Anacharsis, bear it in mind if ever you go to Sparta not to laugh at them, either, and not to suppose that they are exerting themselves for nothing when they rush together and strike one another in the theatre over a ball, or when they go into a place surrounded by water, divide into companies and treat one another like enemies, naked as with us, until one company drives the other out of the enclosure, crowding them into the water—the Heraclids driving out the Lycurgids, or the reverse—after which there is peace in future and nobody would think of striking a blow. Above all, do not laugh if you see them getting flogged at the altar and dripping blood while their fathers and mothers stand by and are so far from being distressed by what is going on that they actually threaten to punish them if they should not bear up under the stripes, and beseech them to endure the pain as long as possible and be staunch under the torture. Asa matter of fact, many have died in the competition, not deigning to give in before the eyes of their kinsmen while they still had life in them, or even to move a muscle of their bodies; you will see honours paid to their statues, which have been set up at public cost by the state of Sparta. When you see all that, do not suppose them crazy, and do not say that they are undergoing misery without any stringent reason, since it is due neither to a tyrant’s violence nor to an enemy’s maltreatment. Lycurgus, their law-giver, could defend it by telling you many good reasons which he has discerned for punishing them; he is not unfriendly to them, and does not do it out of hatred, nor is he wantonly wasting the young blood of the city, but he desires that those who are destined to preserve their country should be tremendously staunch and superior to every fear. Yet, even if Lycurgus does not say so, you see for yourself, I suppose, that such aman, on being captured in war, would never betray any Spartan secret under torture inflicted by the enemy, but would laugh at them and take his whipping, matching himself against his flogger to see which would give in.

ANACHARSIS But how about Lycurgus himself, Solon? Did he get flogged in his youth, or was he then over the agelimit for the competition, so that he could introduce such an innovation with impunity? SOLON He was an old man when he made the laws for them on his return from Crete. He had gone to visit the Cretans because he was told that they enjoyed the best laws, since Minos, a son of Zeus, had been their law-giver. ANACHARSIS Then why is it, Solon, that you have not imitated Lycurgus and do not flog your young men? It isa splendid practice, and worthy of you Athenians! SOLON Because we are content, Anacharsis, with these exercises, which are our own; we do not much care to copy foreign fashions. ANACHARSIS No: you understand, I think, what it is like to be flogged naked, holding up one’s arms, for no advantage either to the individual himself or to the city in general. Oh, if ever I am at Sparta at the time when they are doing this, I expect I shall very soon be stoned to death by them publicly for laughing at them every time I see them getting beaten like robbers or sneak-thieves or similar malefactors. Really, it seems to me that the city stands in need of helleboreThe specific for insanity. if it mishandles itself so ridiculously.

SOLON Do not think, my worthy friend, that you are winning your case by default, or in the absence of your adversaries, as the only speaker. There will be someone or other in Sparta who will reply to you properly in defence of this. However, as I have told you about our ways and you do not seem to be much pleased with them, I do not think it will be unfair to ask you to tell me in your turn how you Scythians discipline your young men, what exercises you use in bringing them up, and how you make them good men. ANACHARSIS It is entirely fair, to be sure, Solon, and I shall tell you the Scythian customs, which are not imposing, perhaps, or on the same plane as yours, since we should not dare to receive a single blow in the face; we are cowards! They shall be told, however, no matter what they are. But let us put off the discussion, if you will, till to-morrow, so that I may quietly ponder a little longer over what you have said, and get together what I must say, going over it in my memory. At present, let us go away with this understanding, for it is now evening.