Ælian,[901] too, coming in the rear of Plutarch, observes that the Lacedæmonians were ignorant of mental culture (μουσικῆς) meaning evidently as Perizonius has already observed, not “music” as Kühn would translate it, (for in this they were learned,) but a knowledge of poetry and eloquence.[902] Footnote 901: Var. Hist. xii. 50. Footnote 902: So again in Ælian. Var. Hist. iv. 15. Gelo, king of Syracuse, an illiterate person is termed ἄμουσος. That the Spartans were noted for their indifference to literature, is well known. Even Xenophon, their apologist, instituting a comparison between their system of education and that prevailing among the other Greeks, observes that the latter sent their boys to school that they might learn their letters, music, and the exercises of the palæstra, while the former placed them under the care of a grave man who might punish them if slothful and inactive, and inculcate great modesty and obedience in lieu of the usual accomplishments. Plato also, in the Greater Hippias,[903] having observed that their laws were averse from the reception of foreign learning, adds immediately after that the majority of them were even ignorant of arithmetic. In another place,[904] indeed, the philosopher appears to hold a different language, and is literally understood by Perizonius. But the reader who examines the passage attentively, will probably agree with me in considering it nothing more than one of those profoundly ironical strokes in which, above all writers, he abounds. He in fact remarks, what in another sense may have been very true, that no countries were more fertile in sophists than Crete and Lacedæmon, but that they dissembled their wisdom and feigned ignorance, lest they should appear to excel all their countrymen in sapience, of which in reality there was very little danger. He observes, however, no less ironically, that those rude and unrhetorical nations were of all men most philosophical and eloquent, and that it had long been understood by a great many that to _laconise_, or act the Spartan, was rather to be a philosopher than a diligent student of gymnastics. Perizonius,[905] indeed, conceives that all this is to be understood of natural sound sense, applied to morals and those brief and pithy sayings or λογοὶ, which constituted the science of laconics. Footnote 903: T. v. p. 418. Footnote 904: Protag. t. i. p. 209. Footnote 905: Not. ad Ælian. xii. 50.—From an ironical passage of Plato we may likewise infer that they were able genealogists and story-tellers.—Hipp. Maj. t. v. p. 419.