A young Lacedaemonian, then, of the privileged class left his home, his tender nurses in those large, quiet old suburban houses early, for a public school, a schooling all the stricter as years went on, to be followed, even so, by a peculiar kind of barrack-life, the temper of which, a sort of military monasticism (it must be repeated) would beset him to the end. Though in the gymnasia of Lacedaemon no idle by- standers, no--well! Platonic loungers after truth or what not--were permitted, yet we are told, neither there nor in Sparta generally, neither there nor anywhere else, were the boys permitted [221] to be alone. If a certain love of reserve, of seclusion, characterised the Spartan citizen as such, it was perhaps the cicatrice of that wrench from a soft home into the imperative, inevitable gaze of his fellows, broad, searching, minute, his regret for, his desire to regain, moral and mental even more than physical ease. And his education continued late; he could seldom think of marriage till the age of thirty. Ethically it aimed at the reality, aesthetically at the expression, of reserved power, and from the first set its subject on the thought of his personal dignity, of self-command, in the artistic way of a good musician, a good soldier. It is noted that "the general accent of the Doric dialect has itself the character not of question or entreaty, but of command or dictation." The place of deference, of obedience, was large in the education of Lacedaemonian youth; and they never complained. It involved however for the most part, as with ourselves, the government of youth by itself; an implicit subordination of the younger to the older, in many degrees. Quite early in life, at school, they found that superiors and inferiors, homoioi and hypomeiones,+ there really were; and their education proceeded with systematic boldness on that fact. Eirên, melleirên, sideunês,+ and the like--words, titles, which indicate an unflinching elaboration of the attitudes of youthful subordination and command with responsibility--remain as a part of what we might [222] call their "public-school slang." They ate together "in their divisions" (agelai)+ on much the same fare every day at a sort of messes; not reclined, like Ionians or Asiatics, but like heroes, the princely males, in Homer, sitting upright on their wooden benches; were "inspected" frequently, and by free use of vivâ voce examination "became adepts in presence of mind," in mental readiness and vigour, in the brief mode of speech Plato commends, which took and has kept its name from them; with no warm baths allowed; a daily plunge in their river required. Yes! The beauty of these most beautiful of all people was a male beauty, far remote from feminine tenderness; had the expression of a certain ascêsis in it; was like un-sweetened wine. In comparison with it, beauty of another type might seem to be wanting in edge or accent.