"Sparta" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me, thou must go without a pot-herb! Wist thou what conflict thou must soon contend in To proffer speech and full defence for Sparta? Forward, my soul! the barriers are before thee. What, dost loiter? hast not imbibed Euripides? And yet I blame thee not. Courage, sad heart! And forward, though it be to lay thy head Upon the block. Rouse thee, and speak thy mind. Forward there! ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... overturn: and so we journeyed 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 the magic three under my name,—a piece of good fortune ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of Sparta, it was a constant practice on the birth of a male infant, to set a military granny to examine him, as a butcher would a veal for the market, and if he were found any ways puny, he was presently thrown into a horse ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... night, bidding him "go to the fate which 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 ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... fully convinced that he had 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 of fortifications. When he had sufficiently ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... great speculative thinkers or practical organizers may well have been one. Who can tell how profoundly the whole subsequent history of China may have been influenced by the individuality of Confucius? and of Sparta (and hence of Greece and the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Athens, Bulger County, whose desthruction iv Captain Cassius Glaucus Wiggins at th' meetin' iv' th' thrustees in th' Sicond Baptist Church excited so much comment among spoortin' men three or four years ago, Gin'ral Rangefinder iv Thebes, Colonel Chivvy iv Sparta, who whittled Major Lycurgus Gam iv Thermopylae down to th' wishbone at th' anti-polygamist meetin' las' June, an' other ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... body but rivet on the mind. They bend it from the loftiest virtue to a debasement beneath calculation. They disgrace honor; they trample upon justice. They transform the legions of Rome into a band of singers. They prostrate the sons of Athens and of Sparta at the feet of cowards. They make man abjure his birth right, bind himself to another's will, and give that into a tyrant's hands which he received as a deposit from Heaven—his reason, his conscience, and his soul. Think on this, and then, if you can, subjugate Poland ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... 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 ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... he intended till that day was over, and to hasten that of another grandson of the great Perseus. This child was named Eurystheus, and, as he had been born on the right day, Jupiter was forced to let him be King of Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, and all the Dorian race; while the boy whom he had meant to be the chief was kept in subjection, in spite of having wonderful gifts of courage and strength, and a kind, generous nature, that always was ready to help the weak ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... even suspected, and when there was no greater and more exceptional crime than that of discussing the gods, the laws and the customs of the city? What did such a word as "fatherland" signify to an Athenian or Spartan unless it were the cult of Athens or Sparta, and in no wise that of Greece, composed of rival cities always at war with each other? What meaning had the same word "fatherland" among the ancient Gauls, divided into rival tribes and races, and possessing different languages and religions, and who were easily vanquished by Caesar ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... 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 Grecian chieftain, went to Troy and demanded ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... procreation of children was held to be of such importance at Sparta(41) that if a wife had no children, with the full knowledge of her husband she admitted some other citizen to her, and children born from such a union were reckoned as born to the continuation of her husband's family, without breach of the former relations of husband ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... 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 ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 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, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... victims of emotional hurricanes, "brainstorms," neurotic excess, and intemperate desire are legion. A nation that is overfed, under-exercised, and notably neurasthenic should neglect nothing that makes for prompt and reliable self-control. Lycurgus said, "The citizens of Sparta must be her walls," and in building up a defense for the modern state against forces more disastrous than Persian armies we must turn to the ancient device of the playground and ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... young men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to recite, 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 this ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that look had fallen might have seen, not Nelly Lebrun in the cheap dance hall, but Helen of Sparta and all Troy's dead. But Donnegan was clever, not wise. And he saw only Nelly Lebrun and the broad shoulders ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... the side of the Greek, the Latin dialect within it bears a relation to the Umbro-Samnite somewhat similar to that of the Ionic to the Doric; and the differences of the Oscan and Umbrian and kindred dialects may be compared with the differences between the Dorism of Sicily and the Dorism of Sparta. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More—a very fine man was 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... founded in some single island by or for the sake of Homer. We hear that Lycurgus was the first who brought Homer—the works, not the man—into continental Greece; importing them from Crete. That means, probably, that he induced Homeridae to settle in Sparta. European continental Greece would in any case have been much behind the rest of the Greek world in culture; because furthest from and the least in touch with West Asian civilization. Crete was nearer to Egypt; the Greeks of Asia Minor to Lydia; as for the islanders of the Cyclades and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... qualities that excite admiration 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 ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... 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
... ephors of ancient Sparta amongst their duties had that of the superintendence of ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... youths Castor and Polydeuces. They came riding on white horses, two noble-looking brothers. From Sparta they came, and their mother was Leda, who, after the twin brothers, had another child born to her—Helen, for whose sake the sons of many of Jason's friends were to wage war against the great city of Troy. These were the first heroes ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... not believe was in earnest, but thought they had carried me to the op'era-comique. The three acts of the piece(961) were three several interludes, of the Loves of Antony and Cleopatra, of Alcibiades and the Queen of Sparta, and of Tibuilus with a niece of Macenas; besides something of Circe, who was screamed by a Mademoiselle Hermans, seven feet high. She was in black, with a nosegay of black (for on the French stage they pique themselves on propriety,) and without ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... to land in the island of Margarita, whose inhabitants had distinguished themselves by their heroism in the long war for independence to such an extent that, upon becoming a province, the island changed its name to New Sparta. Two men of equal bravery, Arismendi and Bermudez, were in command of a few more than 400 men. Morales was about to lead 5,000 to 6,000 men against the island, with 32 boats, of which 12 were armed with artillery, when Morillo appeared with his huge ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... by forming themselves into confederations, but were powerless to unite in the defense of a common cause. The Achaean and Etolian leagues were weakened by internal discords; and it was in vain that Sparta tried to ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... abrogate slavery. Society was so accustomed to this degradation of the species, that Epictetus, who was assuredly worth more than his master, never expresses any surprise at his being a slave." Egypt, Sparta, Athens, Carthage, and Rome had their thousands of slaves. In the Bible, the best and chosen servants of God owned slaves, while in profane history the purest and greatest men did the same. In the very nation over whose devoted head hung the curse of God, slavery, vindictive, ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... or pro eorum importunitate. See Zumpt, S 705. [202] Rex, according to Roman notions, always contains the idea of an absolute ruler, and is therefore frequently used in the sense of 'a tyrant.' The idea of a constitutional or limited monarchy was not known in antiquity, except perhaps at Sparta. [203] Perditum eatis; that is, perdatis. See Zumpt, S 669. [204] Practically, it is quite correct, that in the administration of a state it is more necessary to punish criminals than to reward good services; for it ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... years,) where it says "Rebekah took a veil when she saw Isaac coming towards her, and covered herself;" it being customary even in those early times to wear them, especially with brides. Now, by referring to the History of Greece, it appears that Sparta, near which this scene of Penelope's is said to have taken place, was not founded or instituted till about A.M. 2650, or before Christ 1354, which alone makes a difference of 500 years, setting aside the time from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... The modern Sparta may be vanquished by the imperial democrats assailing her from East and West. But let the world ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... does, a most marked distinction between the master and the slave, so as to increase this stigma and to perpetuate antipathies between them. Nor did the slaves of antiquity, except perhaps once in Sparta, form the whole labouring population of the land; nor did they work incessantly, like the Africans, under the whip; nor were they generally so behind their masters in cultivated intellect. Neither does ancient history give us in the cases ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... his naval ally, Demosthenes; and his troops were sent to the quarries, where the plague and the hard labour lessened their numbers and increased their miseries. When this bad news reached Rhodes, the islanders rose in revolt against the supremacy of Athens, and resolved to side with Sparta. Balaustion[96:1] was there, and she passionately protested against this decision, crying to "who would hear, and those ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... in Sparta about 650 B. C. His mother was a Lydian slave in Sardes, and he came into the possession of Agesides, who gave him his freedom. His beautiful songs soon procured him the rights of a Lacedaemonian ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fleets of iron framed; Vain, those all-shattering guns; Unless proud England keep, untamed, The strong heart of her sons! So, let his name through Europe ring— A man of mean estate Who died, as firm as Sparta's king, Because ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... be worth the trouble of saving. As Mr. Cox well observes, "It is of the very essence of the narrative that Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of the stream Kebren, and before whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as claimants for the golden apple, steals from Sparta the beautiful sister of the Dioskouroi; that the chiefs are summoned together for no other purpose than to avenge her woes and wrongs; that Achilleus, the son of the sea-nymph Thetis, the wielder of invincible ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... 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
... over which none other can have jurisdiction in the kingdom, if by any means a misgovernment should any way fall upon it, the subjects of this kingdom are left without all manner of remedy. To the same purpose the president Montesquieu, though I trust too hastily, presages[e]; that as Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberty and perished, so the constitution of England will in time lose it's liberty, will perish: it will perish, whenever the legislative power shall become ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... puissance of the barbarian arms or the corruption and enervation of the character of her people which worked the downfall of Rome? Was it influences from without or influences from within which corrupted the integrity of the people of Sparta and led to their subjugation by a more sturdy people? Let us learn by the striking examples of history. A people's greatness should be measured, not by its magnificent palaces, decked out in all the gaudy splendors of art and needless luxuries, the price of piracy or direct ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... starting from the Argive legend of Proetus and Acrisius, he tells how the Arcadian cult of Artemis [Greek: Hemera] was founded. In one of his dithyrambs (xix.) he treated the legend of Idas (a Messenian hero) and Marpessa in the form of a hymenaeus sung by maidens of Sparta. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... honored at resembling some Jews. It is only a misfortune to be born a Hebrew, and be deprived of eating ham. The Jews are compelled to wear an offensive badge, but many a Christian child is born with one. For instance, in Sparta they would have hurled me into the gulf, on account of my big head, and deformed shoulder. Nowadays, people are less merciful, and let men like us drag the cripple's mark through life. God sees the heart; but men cannot forget their ancestor, the clod of earth—the outside is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... at them. This Sybarite at Sparta said, that in war death was often easier than the hardships of life. Well, is not that true? Have not thousands of brave men said it? When the English and French got themselves established on the wrong side of Sebastopol, what did that engineer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... goddess Hera is in Homer attached especially to Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, but at a very early time was Pan-Hellenic. The meaning of her name and her origin are uncertain. There is no good ground for regarding her as having been originally a moon-goddess (Selene was the real moon-goddess). What ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... 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 a ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... bridegroom, Smiled as thou enteredst in To Sparta, like thy brother kings, And told thee thou should'st win! What hero son-in-law of Zeus Hath e'er aspired to be? Yet lo! one coverlet enfolds The child of Zeus, and thee. Ne'er did a thing so lovely ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... it with that sort of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. And, withal, a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood, as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... exchanges; and the instinctive or experimental perception of this truth, combined with other motives, is what has led men to their various attempts to provide a money substitute for gold and silver. Lycurgus, in Sparta, found it, as he supposed, in stamped leather; but modern wisdom has preferred paper. The degree of success attained by Lycurgus we do not know; but of the success of the moderns we do know, by some one hundred and fifty years of recurring disaster. There are some steeds that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... supernatural marvels are more than a compensation for the loss of pagan mythology. The time chosen for his epopee in prose is the reign of the persecutor Diocletian; Rome and the provinces of the Empire, Gaul, Egypt, the deserts of the Thebaid, Jerusalem, Sparta, Athens, form only portions of the scene; heaven and hell are open to the reader, but Chateaubriand, whose faith was rather a sentiment than a passion, does not succeed in making his supernatural habitations and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... along with the rest of Greece, the father-right ruled, Sparta, the rival for supremacy with Athens, still continued under the mother-right, a condition that had become wholly foreign to most Greeks. The story runs that one day a Greek asked a Spartan what punishment was meted out ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... combination, although they were political opponents; but it was Aristides who, seizing the opportunity afforded by the discredit brought upon the Lacedaemonians by Pausanias, guided the public policy in the matter of the defection of the Ionian states from the alliance with Sparta. It follows that it was he who made the first assessment of tribute from the various allied states, two years after the battle of Salamis, in the archonship of Timosthenes; and it was he who took the oath of offensive and defensive alliance with the Ionians, on which ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... no other nation was in a condition to attack us; others that they were disgraceful, because it was un-English and mean to skulk behind stone walls, and because Lycurgus had refused to trust to stone walls for the safety of Sparta; and one member, the chief spokesman of a new and small party, commonly known as the "peace-at-any-price party," boldly denounced the members of the commission as a set of "lunatics" for framing such a report, and the ministers as guilty of "contemptible cowardice" for ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... From this wellspring in my head, Fountain-drop of spicier worth Than all vintage of the earth. There's fruit upon my barren soil Costlier far than wine or oil. There's a berry blue and gold,— Autumn-ripe, its juices hold Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart, Asia's rancor, Athens' art, Slowsure Britain's secular might, And the German's inward sight. I will give my son to eat Best of Pan's immortal meat, Bread to eat, and juice to drain; So the coinage of his brain Shall not be ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began, and I pray God, that none like us ever may live again until time shall be no more. They tell us of the Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in Sparta, and of the Roman Slaves, which last, were made up from almost every nation under heaven, whose sufferings under those ancient and heathen nations were, in comparison with ours, under this enlightened and christian nation, no more than a cypher—or in other words, those heathen nations ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... her lamentation pour'd. [19]Ah dearer far than all my brothers else 960 Of Priam's house! for being Paris' spouse, Who brought me (would I had first died!) to Troy, I call thy brothers mine; since forth I came From Sparta, it is now the twentieth year, Yet never heard I once hard speech from thee, 965 Or taunt morose, but if it ever chanced, That of thy father's house female or male Blamed me, and even if herself the Queen (For in the King, whate'er befell, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... 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
... brick, although on the outside the entablature and columns of the temple are of stone; in Italy, at Arezzo, an ancient wall excellently built; at Tralles, the house built for the kings of the dynasty of Attalus, which is now always granted to the man who holds the state priesthood. In Sparta, paintings have been taken out of certain walls by cutting through the bricks, then have been placed in wooden frames, and so brought to the Comitium to adorn the aedileship of Varro ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... smithy, hobbled forward at Harris's call. "Lawd, marster, enny news? I specs, sah, I'll hab ter ax you 'bout dat. I ain' heard none but dat dar wuz er skirmish at Rude's Hill, en er skirmish at New Market, en er-nurr skirmish at Sparta, en dat Gineral Jackson hold de foht, sah, at Harrisonburg, en dat de Yankees comin', lickerty-split, up de Valley, en dat de folk at Magaheysville air powerful oneasy in dey minds fer fear dey'll deviate dis way. Howsomever, we's got er home guard ef dey do come, wid ole Mr. Smith ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... 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
... expression and a turn of phrase which was to have more influence on Sylvia's development than its brevity seemed to warrant. She had, one day, called Sylvia a little Athenian, growing up, by the oddest of mistakes, in Sparta. Sylvia, who was in the Pater-reading stage of development, caught at her friend's phrase as at the longed-for key to her situation. It explained everything. It made everything appear in the light she wished for. Above all it enabled her to clarify her attitude towards ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... lords assemble;—every town Their kings intreat condolence to bestow, And all to Thebes repair. First Argos sends; Sparta; Mycene; Calydon, not yet By stern Diana hated; Corinth, fam'd For beauteous brass; Orchomenus the fierce; Messene fertile; Patrae; Pylos, rul'd By Neleus; Troezen, yet unus'd to own The sway of Pittheus; Cleona the low; And all those towns the two-sea'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... king 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 ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... 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 ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... not a single spot of land in either of these countries from which mountains are not discernible; almost always they form the principal feature of the scenery. The mountain outlines seen from Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the Greeks for mountain ruggedness, their placing the shrine of Apollo under the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnassus, was a testimony ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... this commanding eminence, some chosen spirits soared beyond the reach of a vulgar eye; and the chances of superior merit in a great and populous kingdom, as they are proved by experience, would excuse the computation of imaginary millions. The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their allies, do not exceed a moderate province of France or England; but after the trophies of Salamis and Platea, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victorious Greeks. But the subjects ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Chattanooga. The corps moved from Hillsboro, Manchester, and McMinnville, and when in the Tennessee Valley were joined by Wilder's brigade of mounted infantry,—a portion of the fourteenth corps. To these bodies were added Minty's cavalry, which, riding on the left, through Sparta and Pikeville, operated along the river for twenty-eight miles above ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... years a fleet of one thousand one hundred and eighty-six ships and an army of more than one hundred thousand Greeks, under the command of Agamemnon, lay before King Priam's city of Troy to avenge the wrongs of Menelaus, King of Sparta, and to reclaim Helen, his wife, who had been carried away by Priam's son Paris, at the instigation ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... have visited Greece about 770 B.C., or two or three centuries later. According to the legend, he travelled throughout the country, living without food and riding on a golden arrow, the gift of the god; he healed the sick, foretold the future, worked miracles, and delivered Sparta from a plague (Herod. iv. 36; Iamblichus, De Fit. Pythag. xix. 28). Suidas credits him with several works: Scythian oracles, the visit of Apollo to the Hyperboreans, expiatory formulas and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in preparing for war was not to transform the 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 lead,—as having attained the ideal after which all alike were striving. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... excellent ports, drew all that traffic of the Ionian and Aegean seas to it; and yet the country about it was curva et superciliosa, as [560]Strabo terms it, rugged and harsh. We may say the same of Athens, Actium, Thebes, Sparta, and most of those towns in Greece. Nuremberg in Germany is sited in a most barren soil, yet a noble imperial city, by the sole industry of artificers, and cunning trades, they draw the riches of most countries to them, so expert in manufactures, that as Sallust long ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... men should be held eligible who were under seventy. But in all governments, the councils of power were held by the old; and patricians or patres, senate or senes, seigneurs or seniors, gerousia, the senate of Sparta, the presbytery of the Church, and the like, all signify ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... replaces the sovereignty of one; but not all have yet the consciousness of freedom, the slaves have no share in the government. The principle of the Greek world, with its fresh life and delight in beauty, is individuality; hence the plurality of small states, in which Sparta is an anticipation of the Roman spirit. The Roman Republic is internally characterized by the constitutional struggle between the patricians and the plebeians, and externally by the policy of world conquest. Out of the repellent relations ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... 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 corrupt than the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... was once made by a philosopher in ancient times, who being interrogated if he had a woman whom they named him to his wife? I have her, quoth he, but she hath not me,—possessing her, by her I am not possessed. Such another answer, quoth Pantagruel, was once made by a certain bouncing wench of Sparta, who being asked if at any time she had had to do with a man? No, quoth she, but sometimes men have had to do with me. Well then, quoth Rondibilis, let it be a neuter in physic, as when we say a body ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... freedom. A republic that, like Sparta, permits the enslavement of any portion of its people, is surely not predicated upon the true idea of a republic; and it is worth while to consider that the ancient republics found their bane in slavery, and that the aristocratic republics of modern times, like Venice, have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Law has never made a great man, but 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 is furnished ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... 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 were held in ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... important was the ACHAEAN LEAGUE, which embraced Corinth, Arcadia, and the greater part of the Peloponnesus.[36] The AETOLIAN LEAGUE included at this time a considerable portion of Central Greece. ATHENS and SPARTA still retained their independence, but with scarcely a shadow of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... 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 the redemption of the black race, John ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Bribery can show its face, There Freedom has no dwelling place. And such a blessing Freedom is, That boldly Sparta, as we wis, Unto Hydarmes gave reply: 'Freedom must stand by Bravery Sheltered and guarded evermore.' Amid the bloody ranks of war, Amid the fearful dance of death, Let gleaming swords drawn from the sheath, And sharp-edged spears and axes be Thy ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... from that legal sphinx—Erle Palma? Mamma only now and then receives epistles fashioned after those once in vogue in Laconia. (I wonder if even the old toothless gossips in Sparta were ever laconic?) I am truly sorry for Erle Palma. That beautifully crystallized quartz heart of his is no doubt being ground between the upper and nether millstones of his love and his pride; and Hymen ought to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... consisted of about 380 vessels. Of these, Athens contributed 180, Sparta and the rest of the Peloponnesus were represented by 89 and the remainder were made up of squadrons from the island states. Some of these island contingents contained a type of ship different from the triremes, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... noted of the legends is the story of the Trojan war. The deeds of the heroes of this war are the subject of the Iliad. Paris, son of Priam, king of Ilios (Troy), in Asia Minor, carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. To recover her, the Greeks united in an expedition against Troy, which they took after a siege of ten years. Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus (Ulysses), Ajax son of Telamon, and Ajax son of Oileus, Diomedes, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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 ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... master was murdered by an unknown hand, the whole body of his slaves should suffer death,—a law which more than once was carried into effect under the reigns of the Emperors. Slavery, as we see in the case of Sparta and many other nations, always involves its own retribution. The class of free peasant proprietors gradually disappears. Long before this time Tib. Gracchus, in coming home from Sardinia, had observed that there ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... must, but regards romantic love as a thing of which Deity is jealous, and also a bit ashamed. The Oneida Community clung to the same thought, and to obliterate selfishness held women in common, tracing pedigree, after the manner of ancient Sparta, through the female line, because there was no other way. The Mormon incidentally ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... than he; and the superiour skill carries it.' ERSKINE. 'He 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, that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... than which nothing can be more excellent, which I shall endeavor to describe as accurately as possible, because it is of such a character that nothing analogous can be discovered in ancient states; for these political elements which I have noticed were so united in the constitutions of Rome, of Sparta, and of Carthage, that they were not counterbalanced by any modifying power. For in a state in which one man is invested with a perpetual domination, especially of the monarchical character, although there be a senate in it, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... this contest of eight years, between the feeble colonies and the strong mother-land, of a courage that ancient Sparta ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Towns! Cities! Counties! States! We are pioneers; but civilization is treading on our heels. I feel it galling my kibes[8]—and what are a few blisters to me! I see in my own adopted city of Lithopolis, Iowa, a future Sparta or Athens or Rome, or anyhow, a Louisville or Cincinnati or Dubuque—a place in which to achieve greatness—or anyhow, a chance to deal in town lots, defend criminals, or prosecute them, and where the unsettled will have ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... which deals with events antecedent to the Iliad, such as the apple of Discord, the visit of Paris at Sparta and the taking of Helen, the mustering at Aulis, the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and many incidents at Troy. Ulysses, to avoid going to the war, feigns madness (his first disguise) and ploughs the sea-sand; but he is detected by ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... joined in one; nothing but reviewing and poetry day by day. The Algarottis, the Maupertuises, are here; have each his work, serious for himself; then gay Supper with a King, who is a great man and the soul of good company."... Sparta and Athens, I tell you: "a Camp of Mars and the Garden of Epicurus; trumpets and violins, War and Philosophy. I have my time all to myself; am at Court and in freedom,—if I were not entirely free, neither an enormous Pension, nor a Gold Key tearing out ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... she writes her husband, "is all wrapped in the bosom of futurity. Uncertainty and expectation leave the mind great scope. Did ever any kingdom or State regain its liberty, when once it was invaded, without bloodshed? I cannot think of it without horror. Yet we are told that all the misfortunes of Sparta were occasioned by their too great solicitude for present tranquillity, and, from an excessive love of peace, they neglected the means of making it sure and lasting. They ought to have reflected, says Polybius, that, 'as there is nothing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and I intend to make the best of things. I am going to do what I like with my life. Wrong and right are merely relative terms. They change to fit their environment. Baudelaire would not have been tolerated in the Hampstead Garden Suburb; Catullus would not have been received in Sparta. But at Paris and Rome customs were different. We only frame philosophies to suit our wishes. And I prefer to follow my own inclinations to those of ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... what had been formerly decreed concerning their friendship with the Jews, and gave them letters to carry to all the kings of Asia and Europe, and to the governors of the cities, that they might safely conduct them to their own country. Accordingly, as they returned, they came to Sparta, and delivered the epistle which they had received of Jonathan to them; a copy of which here follows: "Jonathan the high priest of the Jewish nation, and the senate, and body of the people of the Jews, to the ephori, and senate, and people of the Lacedemonians, send greeting. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Helenus foretells the future to him, and Aphrodite order Aeneas to sail with him, while Cassandra prophesies as to what will happen afterwards. Alexandrus next lands in Lacedaemon and is entertained by the sons of Tyndareus, and afterwards by Menelaus in Sparta, where in the course of a feast he gives ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... superiour, is not supreme; that is to say not Soveraign. The Soveraignty therefore was alwaies in that Assembly which had the Right to Limit him; and by consequence the government not Monarchy, but either Democracy, or Aristocracy; as of old time in Sparta; where the Kings had a priviledge to lead their Armies; but the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... of the kings of Sparta that the last was always regretted as the best the country had ever had. Colonel Wetherall's merit did not depend on his being the last of a series. Phrases such as 'he was worshipped by the men' have become so hackneyed as to be meaningless, nor shall I use an even worse commonplace, ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Sparta, of historic fame, was not magnificent except in public buildings. It had a famous portico, the columns of which, of white marble, represented the illustrious persons ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... story of the mother of Demaratus, king of Sparta, which bears a striking resemblance to the fairy tales of modern times. This lady, afterward queen of Sparta, was sprung from opulent parents, but, when she was born, was so extravagantly ugly, that her parents hid her ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... and public harmony was secured; but Athenian burghership still remained a privilege which could not be acquired by the native of any other city. Similar revolutions, with a similarly limited purpose and result, occurred at Sparta, Elis, and other Greek cities. At Rome, by a like revolution, the plebeians of the Capitoline and Aventine acquired parallel rights of citizenship with the patricians of the original city on the Palatine; but this revolution, as we shall presently see, had different results, ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... those who were so unanimous in rejecting, were extremely discordant in adopting, and their own disputes and indecision might have convinced them of their presumption in condemning what they now found it so difficult to excel. Some decided in favour of public schools, after the example of Sparta— this was objected to by others, because, said they, if you have public schools you must have edifices, and governors, and professors, who will, to a certainty, be aristocrats, or become so; and, in short, this ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... quoted in the speeches of the time. Hypnotised by their classical memories of Greece and Rome, the new legislators re- read their Plato and their Plutarch. They wished to revive the constitution of Sparta, with its manners, its ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... tremble for his popularity on that score. He must have been a great liar, indeed, to have excelled or even equalled the most ordinary story-teller in the Comanche nation; for the mendacity of these Indians would have been a match for Sparta herself. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... 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 the nearest analogue ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... quite needless to say that Aunt Edie was a slave all her life up to the year 1866. She was born in Hancock County, Georgia, between Milledgeville and Sparta. She was the property of Thomas Schlatter. She came to Columbus just after the town had been laid off, when she was a comparatively young woman. She became the property of the family of Judge Hines Holt, the distinguished ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... specimen is in the home of the leading merchant of Smyrna. It is in the softest shades of rose and blue, with a lustrous sheen. The texture is as fine as velvet, and the medallion in the centre is most gracefully designed. Many rugs are sold under the name of Cassaba, which are really woven at Sparta. ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... 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
... Athens; in the early days of June, 1860, she arrived at Venice. In the interval she had visited Nauplia, Argos, and Corinth; had sailed amongst the beautiful islands of the blue AEgean; had wandered in the classic vale of Eurotas, and amongst the ruins of Sparta; had traversed Thessaly, and surveyed the famous Pass where Leonidas and his warriors stood at bay against the hosts of Persia; had mused in the oracular shades of Delphi and gazed at the haunted peak of Parnassus, and ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Tor-Chom, or Chomus, in Palestine, Tricomis. In antient times the title of Anac was often conferred upon the Deities; and their temples were styled Tor-Anac, and Anac-Tor. The city Miletus was named [251]Anactoria: and there was an Herouem at Sparta called [Greek: Anaktoron], Anactoron; where Castor and Pollux had particular honours, who were peculiarly styled Anactes. It was from Tor-Anac that Sicily was denominated Trinacis and Trinacia. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... 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. The result of the war was that on land Antigonus remained ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... through all that we have made a part of our nature by education and custom. We would give more to know what Xenophon's soldiers gossiped about round their camp-fires, than for all the particulars of their retreat. Sparta becomes human to us when we think of Agesilaus on his hobby-horse. Finding that those heroic figures romped with their children, we begin for the first time to suspect that they ever really existed as much as Robinson ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... undertook to make laws for Sparta, in what condition did he find this republic? On this point all historians agree. The people and the nobles were at war. The city was in a confused state, and divided by two parties,—the party of the poor, and the party of the rich. Hardly escaped from the barbarism of the heroic ages, society was ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the brilliant delusion of the possibility of 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... repeated over and over again until it became a statesmanlike creed. But even Thucydides gave not to that dictum such a general sense, and Macchiavelli scorned the fallacy and exposed it. When poor, the Spartans have been the bravest. The historical halo surrounding the name of Sparta originated at that epoch when the use of money and of gold had been almost forbidden. The wealth of Athens began after the victories over the Persians; but those victories were won when the Athenians were comparatively poor. So it ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the Latin empire had none in the sense of land producing revenue. What it held was held with the drawn sword in the hand ready for use. The kingdom of Thessalonica was gone; and though the dukedoms, marquisates, and countships of Achaia, Athens, Sparta, and other independent petty states were still held by the emperors or their sons, they were like the outlying provinces of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem—Edessa, Tripoli, and the rest—a source of weakness rather ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Lycurgus.—There 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 only ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Penn Harding. Mah daddy wuz sold at Sparta, Tennessee 'fore I wuz bawn en Marster Harding bought 'im. Mah mammy erready 'longed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the story of the traveller who inquired the way to Sparta, much to the amusement of the postmaster, who, in his enjoyment of the joke, forgot to tell Ben that his conduct ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... from the city of Sparta, Icarius placed a statue of MODESTY, for the purpose of perpetuating the following incident:—Icarius having married his daughter to Ulysses, solicited his son-in-law to fix his household in Sparta, and remain there with his wife, to which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, 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 kept their country free from the enslavement ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... home. And I will go to Ithaca, and stir up the spirit of his son Telemachus [Footnote: Te-lem'-a-chus.], that first he speak out his mind to the suitors of his mother who waste his substance, [Footnote: substance, property.] and next that he go to Sparta and to Pylos [Footnote: Py'-los.], seeking tidings of his father. So shall the youth win good ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... first century after Christ, and in his parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans, the most famous of his many writings, he took occasion to paint an Ideal Commonwealth as the conception of Lycurgus, the half mythical or all mythical Solon of Sparta. To Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus, as well as to Plato, Thomas More and others have been indebted for some part of the shaping ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... completely socialised polity thousands of years ago, perhaps before man existed, and then to have stopped—stopped dead, as we say. But mankind has never stopped. If a country's progress is arrested—if a people becomes simply conservative in habits, they may die slowly, like Egypt, or quickly, likes Sparta, but they die and disappear, unless inspired by new life, like Japan, or by revolution, like France and possibly Russia. For, as we are almost too frequently told, change is the law ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... a little journey, and already we want to take a longer one. Whither? To Sparta, to Mycene, to Delphi? There are a hundred places at whose names the heart beats with the desire of travel. On horseback we go up the mountain paths, through brake and through brier. A single traveller makes an appearance like a whole caravan. He ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... all the evils and calamities to which that memorable struggle 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; but he abused the laws of hospitality ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 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 nights ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... Montemayor, a Portuguese author. It was in prose, but intermixed with songs and sonnets, and Sidney finished only two books and a portion of a third. It describes the adventures of two cousins, Musidorus and Pyrocles, who are wrecked on the coast of Sparta. The plot is very involved and is full of the stock episodes of romance: disguises, surprises, love intrigues, battles, jousts and single combats. Although the insurrection of the Helots against the Spartans ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... a thief. And therefore an impertinent jeerer makes the whole company seem ill-natured and abusive, as being pleased with and consenting to the scurrility of the jeer. It was one of the excellent laws in Sparta, that none should be bitter in their jests, and the jeered should patiently endure; but if he took offence, the other was to forbear, and pursue the frolic no farther. How is it possible therefore to determine such raillery as shall ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... singular institutions of Sparta, the wisest legislators have disapproved an agrarian law as a false and dangerous innovation. Among the Romans the enormous disproportion of wealth surmounted the ideal restraints of a doubtful tradition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... that of all those whose safety depends upon him; and vice versa. Wherefore Kallikratidas, although otherwise a great man, yet did not make a good answer to the soothsayer; for when he begged him to beware of death, which was presaged by the sacrifices, he replied that Sparta had more men besides himself. No doubt, in fighting either by sea or land[1] Kallikratidas only counted for one, but as a general, he combined in his own person the strength of all the rest, so that he by whose death so many perished, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... "Have thou no fear The hollow words of one long slain to hear! Thou livest, and thy hope is not yet dead, And if thou heedest me, thou well may'st tread The road to hell, and yet return again. "For thou must go o'er many a hill and plain Until to Sparta thou art come at last, And when the ancient city thou hast passed A mountain shalt thou reach, that men now call Mount Taenarus, that riseth like a wall 'Twixt plain and upland, therein shalt thou find The wide mouth of a cavern huge and blind, Wherein there cometh never any sun, Whose ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... kinsman's; for the Stephanopouli were of blood the emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina, and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... me related by blood to my mother?"], and Orestes gains his cause by the casting vote of Athene." According to tradition, "in Greece, before the time of Cecrops, children always bore the name of their mothers," in marked contrast to tha state of affairs in Sparta, where, according to Philo, "the marriage tie was so loose that men lent their wives to one another, and cared little by whom children were begotten, provided they turned out strong ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... any generous outlook on the wider possibilities of human life there is scarcely a trace. His essay is the apotheosis of social mediocrity. By Procrustean methods he would have forced mankind back to the dull levels of Sparta: the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond his ken. But perhaps the most curious passage is that in which he preaches against the sin and folly of ambition. He pictures Ambition as a figure with pallid cheeks, wild eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and sardonic smile, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Old Person of Sparta, Who had twenty-five sons and one daughter; He fed them on snails, And weighed them in scales, ...
— Book of Nonsense • Edward Lear
... France, and it would be well for you 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, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... assemblies of Greece—the Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella of Sparta—the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither to be traced for its origin to Greece or Rome, nor found to be evolved ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... 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, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... 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 in ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... independence, General JATRAKO, is just dead at 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 ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Moreover Aetolian Leda sent from Sparta strong Polydeuces and Castor, skilled to guide swift-footed steeds; these her dearly-loved sons she bare at one birth in the house of Tyndareus; nor did she forbid their departure; for she had thoughts worthy ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius |
