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The Spartans performed the sacrifice on the top of Mount Taygetus, the beautiful range behind which they saw the great luminary set every night. It was as natural for the inhabitants of the valley of Sparta to do this as it was for the islanders of Rhodes to throw the chariot and horses into the sea, into which the sun seemed to them to sink at evening.
In the fourth year of the reign of king Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, at Sparta, the Lacedæmonian territory was visited by the greatest earthquake ever known there. The earth opened in many places, some of the crags of Taygetus fell down, and the whole city was destroyed, with the exception of five houses.
In the south-east was Laconia, with an area of about nineteen hundred square miles. It consisted mainly of the valley of the Eurotas, which lay between the lofty mountain ranges of Parnon and Taygetus. "Hollow Lacedaemon" was a phrase descriptive of its situation. Sparta, the capital, was on the Eurotas, twenty miles from the sea. It had no other important city.
Wife, wife! when the family council ordained him to be exposed on Taygetus, when thou didst hide thyself lest thy tears should be seen, and my voice trembled as I said 'Be the laws obeyed, who could have guessed that the gods would yet preserve him to be the pride of our house? Blessed be Zeus the saviour and Hercules the warrior!"
Finding the machine obedient, I next made a bolder venture, went up the Acropolis, and launched myself from the cliff right over the theatre. Getting safely to the bottom that time, my aspirations shot up aloft. I took to starting from Parnes or Hymettus, flying to Geranea, thence to the top of the Acrocorinthus, and over Pholoe and Erymanthus to Taygetus.
Agis, nevertheless, little regarding these rumors, procured Lysander's election as ephor; and then took the first occasion of proposing through him his Rhetra to the council, the chief articles of which were these: That every one should be free from their debts; all the lands to be divided into equal portions, those that lay betwixt the watercourse near Pellene and Mount Taygetus, and as far as the cities of Malea and Sellasia, into four thousand five hundred lots, the remainder into fifteen thousand; these last to be shared out among those of the country people who were fit for service as heavy-armed soldiers, the first among the natural born Spartans; and their number also should be supplied from any among the country people or strangers who had received the proper breeding of freemen, and were of vigorous, body and of age for military service.
You know that the valley of Sparta is one of the noblest mountain ravines in the world, and that the western flank of it is formed by an unbroken chain of crags, forty miles long, rising, opposite Sparta, to a height of 8,000 feet, and known as the chain of Taygetus.
"But," replied the stranger, "suppose there were ?" "Then," answered he, "the offender would have to give the plaintiff a bull with a neck so long as that he might drink from the top of Taygetus of the Eurotas river below it." The man, surprised at this, said, "Why, 'tis impossible to find such a bull." Geradas smilingly replied, "'Tis as possible as to find an adulterer in Sparta."
If it was strong and well-proportioned, they gave orders for its education, and assigned it one of the nine thousand shares of land; but if it was weakly and deformed, they ordered it to be thrown into the place called Apothetæ, which is a deep cavern near the mountain Taygetus; concluding that its life could be no advantage either to itself or to the public, since nature had not given it at first any strength or goodness of constitution.
"But when we trace him to his home, we are confounded at the reflection, that the same Spartan heroism, to which he sacrificed himself at Thermopylæ, would have led him to tear his own child, if it had happened to be a sickly babe, the very object for which all that is kind and good in man rises up to plead, from the bosom of his mother, and carry it out to be eaten by the wolves of Taygetus.
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