Paıdeía 15
depiction of the Spartiate way of life as grim and forbidding can scarcely do
full justice to the place of honor which the Lacedaemonians accorded sports,
music, and the dance. As virtually all who have been comrades-in-arms can
easily testify, the army camp does have its own peculiar charms.^32
To grasp the true nature of Spartan life, one must ponder the connection
of music with war. The poetry which the Spartiates taught their young was
vital for the overall process of indoctrination through which they sought to
achieve that total subordination of the individual to the community which the
law commanded.^33
Poetry
It is not easy for the citizens of modern, liberal republics to imagine, much
less assess, the influence which poetry exercised over the Lacedaemonians.
For the most part, modern political life is prosaic, and our literature reflects
little but private concerns. At best, great literature exists—or at least is gen-
erally thought to exist—only on the margins of the larger public world. As a
result, we tend to forget that there was a time when this was not the case at all.
Without Dante, there would arguably never have been an Italian people. Lu-
ther’s translation of the Bible shaped not only the German language but the
generations of men and women who were to speak it. Much the same could
be said of the impact of the King James Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton on
English and the English-speaking peoples. To begin to grasp the importance
which poetry had at Sparta, we must remember that it was once considered
the supreme form of rhetoric—a form with more immediate power and far
greater longevity than ordinary writing and speech.
Though utterly foreign to us, this understanding of the dignity of po-
etry was still very much alive when Goethe remarked to his companion
Eckermann,
If a great dramatic poet is at the same time productive and occupied by a
powerful, noble way of thinking, which runs through all his works, he may
achieve the result that the soul of his plays becomes the soul of the people.
I should think that this would be something well worth the trouble. From
Corneille proceeded an influence capable of forming the souls of heroes.
This was a matter of no small consequence for Napoleon, who had need of
an heroic people; for this reason, he said of Corneille that, if he were still
alive, he would make him a prince. A dramatic poet who knows his in-
tended purpose should therefore work without ceasing at its higher devel-