If any enthusiastic believer in the power of education desire to fortify his cause by means of a brilliant example, he will find none superior to Epaminondas; for there can hardly be any question that it was the earnest, systematic, religious, and moral Pythagorean training which he received from the aged Lysis, whom he treated as a father, that made him what he was, and enabled him to do what he did,--which was nothing less than to place Thebes at the head of Greece. Thebes rose and fell with Epaminondas. But that was not all. It was the example of Epaminondas that kindled the ambition of Philip of Macedon, who was educated under his eye, and of his far more famous son, Alexander, who made all Greece a province of his empire. Pythagoras, Lysis, Epaminondas, Philip, Alexander--in five brief generations an earnest teacher conquers a world! From the time of Epaminondas on, Thebes followed the ordinary course of Greek education. CHAPTER III DORIAN OR SPARTAN EDUCATION Go, tell at Sparta, thou that passest by, That here, obedient to her laws, we lie. --Simonides (_Epitaph on the Three Hundred who fell at Thermopylæ_). This is a matter for which the Lacedæmonians deserve approbation: they are extremely solicitous about the education of their youth and make it a public function.--Aristotle. The Lacedæmonians impart to their children the look of wild beasts, through the severity of the exercises to which they subject them, their notion being that such training is especially calculated to heighten courage.--_Id._ These are so far behind in education and philosophy that they do not learn even letters.--Isocrates. OLD MEN. We _were_ once strong men (youths). MEN. And we _are_; if you will, behold. BOYS. And we _shall be_ far superior.--_Spartan Choric Anthem._ They asked no clarion's voice to fire Their souls with an impulse high: But the Dorian reed and the Spartan lyre For the sons of liberty! So moved they calmly to their field, Thence never to return, Save bearing back the Spartan shield, Or on it proudly borne!--Hemans. There was a law that the cadets should present themselves naked in public before the ephors every ten days; and, if they were well knit and strong, and looked as if they had been carved and hammered into shape by gymnastics, they were praised; but if their limbs showed any flabbiness or softness, any little swelling or suspicion of adipose matter due to laziness, they were flogged and justiced there and then. The ephors, moreover, subjected their clothing every day to a strict examination, to see that everything was up to the mark. No cooks were permitted in Lacedæmon but flesh-cooks. A cook who knew anything else was driven out of Sparta, as physic for invalids.--Ælian.