Instituta Laconia

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).

Affectionate regard for boys of good character was permissible, but embracing them was held to be disgraceful, on the ground that the affection was for the body and not for the mind. Any man against whom complaint was made of any disgraceful embracing was deprived of all civic rights for life.[*](Ibid. chap. xviii. (51 d); Xenophon, Constitution of Sparta, 2. 12-14; Aelian, Varia Historia, iii. 10 and 12.)

It was the custom that the younger men should be questioned by the elder as to where they were going and for what, and also that the elder should

rebuke the one who did not answer or tried to contrive plausible reasons.[*](Cf. Xenophon, Constitution of Sparta, 2. 10.) And the elder who did not rebuke a younger who did wrong in his presence was liable to the same reprimand as the wrongdoer. And anyone who showed resentment, if he was reprimanded, was in great opprobrium.

If anyone was detected in wrongdoing he had to go round and round a certain altar in the city, chanting lines composed as a reprehension of himself, and this was nothing else than his own self rebuking himself.[*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, chap. xv. (48 c), where this form of punishment is visited upon the bachelors.)