It is clear that
the former system is best for the mere production of children, and the
latter for moulding consorts for life. But by his superintendence of the
young, his collecting them into companies, his training and drill, with
the table and exercises common to all, Lykurgus showed that he was
immensely superior to Numa, who, like any commonplace lawgiver, left the
whole training of the young in the hands of their fathers, regulated
only by their caprice or needs; so that whoever chose might bring up his
son as a shipwright, a coppersmith, or a musician, as though the
citizens ought not from the very outset to direct their attention to one
object, but were like people who have embarked in the same ship for
various causes, who only in time of danger act together for the common
advantage of all, and at other times pursue each his own private ends.
Allowance must be made for ordinary lawgivers, who fail through want of
power or of knowledge in establishing such a system; but no such excuse
can be made for Numa, who was a wise man, and who was made king of a
newly-created state which would not have opposed any of his designs.
What could be of greater importance than to regulate the education of
the young and so to train them that they might all become alike in their
lives and all bear the same impress of virtue? It was to this that
Lykurgus owed the permanence of his laws; for he could not have trusted
to the oaths which he made them take, if he had not by education and
training so steeped the minds of the young in the spirit of his laws,
and by his method of bringing them up implanted in them such a love for
the state, that the most important of his enactments remained in force
for more than five hundred years; for the lives of all Spartans seem to
have been coloured by these laws.
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