And what sort of character did this strange system produce? Well, it produced the three hundred warriors who died to a man round their king Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylæ. It produced the Spartan king who refused the request of his allies to destroy Athens. It produced the women who mourned after the great defeat of Mantinea because no sons or husbands of _theirs_ had died for Sparta. It produced the only good infantry of Greece, and the only stable form of government. It produced good men like Brasidas and Gylippus. Sparta was the state that swept tyranny out of Greece, and bore the brunt of the land-fighting against the Persians. But, on the other hand, the system encouraged that stupid and bigoted conservatism which ruined Sparta, partly through refusing to learn anything new in the art of warfare, and partly through declining to supplement the dwindling warrior caste by extending the franchise to the other inhabitants of Sparta. No doubt, also, the strict discipline of life in the city led to the moral breakdown of her victorious generals Pausanias and Lysander when they came in contact with the fascinations of Eastern luxury. It made the Spartans oppressive and unjust when they had to govern an empire. The typical Spartan is narrow-minded, superstitious, and covetous, but he is always brave, patriotic, and often chivalrous. Sparta has left us no art or literature, but she has left us an extraordinary experiment (for a warning) of aristocratic communism combined with unfettered militarism. PALLAS ATHENE Sparta and Athens are the counterparts and complements of one another: Sparta drilled, orderly, efficient, and dull; Athens free, noisy, fickle, and brilliant. Sparta’s watchword in history is Eunomia (order); the motto of Athens is Eleutheria (liberty) and Parrhesia (free speech and free thought). But Sparta was orderly and powerful over all the Peloponnese long before Athens was free or cultured. Both Apollo and Athena were deities specially concerned with cities and good government. If Apollo was the god of prophecy, music, poetry, and athletics, Athena’s arts were those of the craftsman, the potter, and the weaver. Athena, though a fair, grey-eyed goddess, was nevertheless an enemy to love, wise in counsel and fond of battle. So strictly maidenly was she that they gave her a virgin birth. No female had a hand in her making, for she sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus at a blow from the hammer of Hephæstus. That was the scene depicted on the front gable of the Parthenon. The worship of Athena is singularly pure and civilised; it is almost [Illustration: PLATE XXIV. ATHENA PROMACHOS. FROM A PANATHENAIC AMPHORA]