perform indecent dances, as a warning to the Spartan youth; but common sense is opposed to so absurd a method of education. Is it possible that the Spartans should have so degraded the men whom they appointed as tutors over their young children? Female Helots also discharged the office of nurse in the royal palaces,(146) and doubtless obtained all the affection with which the attendants of early youth were honoured in ancient times. It is, however, certain that the Doric laws did not bind servants to strict temperance;(147) and hence examples of drunkenness among them might have served as a means of recommending sobriety. It was also an established regulation, that the national songs and dances of Sparta were forbidden to the Helots,(148) who, on the other hand, had some extravagant and lascivious dances peculiar to themselves, which may have given rise to the above report.(149) We must, moreover, bear in mind, that most of the strangers who visited Sparta, and gave an account of its institutions, seized upon particular cases which they had imperfectly observed, and, without knowing their real nature, described them in the light suggested by their own false prepossessions. 4. But are we not labouring in vain to soften the bad impression of Myron’s account, since the fearful word _crypteia_ is of itself sufficient to show the unhappy fate of the Helots, and the cruelty of their masters? By this word is generally understood, a chase of the Helots, annually undertaken at a fixed time by the youth of Sparta, who either assassinated them by night, or massacred them formally in open day, in order to lessen their numbers, and weaken their power.(150) Isocrates speaks of this institution in a very confused manner, and from mere report.(151) Aristotle however, as well as Heraclides of Pontus,(152) attribute it to Lycurgus, and represent it as a war which the Ephors themselves, on entering upon their yearly office, proclaimed against the Helots. Thus it was a regularly legalised massacre, and the more barbarous, as its periodical arrival could be foreseen by the unhappy victims. And yet were not these Helots, who in many districts lived entirely alone, united by despair for the sake of common protection, and did they not every year kindle a most bloody and determined war throughout the whole of Laconia? Such are the inextricable difficulties in which we are involved by giving credit to the received accounts: the solution of which is, in my opinion, to be found in the speech of Megillus the Spartan, in the Laws of Plato,(153) who is there celebrating the manner of inuring his countrymen to hardships. “There is also amongst us,” he says, “what is called the _crypteia_, the pain of undergoing which is scarcely credible. It consists in going barefoot in storms, in enduring the privations of the camp, performing menial offices without a servant, and wandering night and day through the whole country.” The same is more clearly expressed in another