Note 853 — Chapter VIII · EDUCATION OF THE SPARTANS, CRETANS, ARCADIANS, ETC.

To destroy the power of Sparta the Achæans could imagine no better means than to change their system of education.—Plut. Vit. Philop. § 16. Paus. vii. 8. 5. The Mityleneans, too, desirous of breaking the military spirit of certain of their allies, forbade them to give the least instruction to their children.—Ælian, V. H. vii. 15. With the same view the Emperor Julian closed the public schools against the Christians.—Gibbon, iv. 111. Among our ancestors, too, when a blow was meditated against Dissenters, no measure more severe could be devised than to deprive them of education.—Lord John Russell, Hist. of Eur. i. 273.