On the subject of dramatic poetry and its adjuncts, theatres and actors, the Spartans differed as essentially from the Athenians, as the puritans, methodists, quakers, and rigid presbyterians differ from the amateurs of the present day. During a reign of thirty-six years, AGESILAUS who held the drama in contempt, discouraged and kept the actors in depression. This extreme austerity prevailed through all ranks of the rigid Lacedemonian people, who indeed carried it to a length equally absurd and cruel; for they punished with great severity a famous poet and musician, for adding three strings to the harp; grounding their sentence upon a principle universally assented to among them, that the softness of musical sounds produced effeminacy among the people. Of the truth of their proposition in the abstract, there can be little doubt; it is in the rigid application and extreme extension of it the fault lies. Music has certainly a powerful influence on the passions, and produces happy effects upon the human heart and mind when cultivated moderately: but when it becomes the general prevailing passion of a nation, or, as it were, gets dominion over them, it unquestionably produces not effeminacy merely, but a hateful depravity of manners. Whether the unexampled depravation of the modern Italians has been caused by their passionate devotion to music, or their passionate devotion to music by their monstrous depravity shall not be discussed in this place. But the closeness of the connexion between the two things, no matter which may be the cause or which the effect, will serve as an illustration of the subject.
It is related that once, when Callipedes a celebrated tragedian, offered his homage to Agesilaus, and for some time received no notice in return, he said to the king, "Do you not know me, sir?" To which the king replied, "You are Callipedes, the actor," and turned from him with contempt. This harshness and severity extended even to the slaves of the Spartans, some of whom, being taken prisoners of war by the Thebans, and ordered to sing the odes of _Terpander_ for their captors, peremptorily refused to comply, because it was forbidden them by their old masters.
In all Greece, however, Sparta stands a solitary instance of this austerity; for the drama, poetry, and music were enthusiastically cultivated in Athens, and even in every country into which the Grecians penetrated. Players became in many instances the confidential friends, counsellors, and ministers of kings themselves; and Alexander the Great sent Thessalus, an actor, as an ambassador to Pexodorus, the Persian governor of Caria, to forbid a marriage intended by the governor between his daughter and Aridoeus, an illegitimate son of the late king Philip. The proofs which that mighty conqueror has left on record of his partiality to celebrated professors of the histrionic art, are no less extraordinary than numerous, and in some instances, do no great credit to his judgment. Every general in his camp had along with him his poets, musicians, and declaimers. One time Alexander's favourite, Hephestion, accommodated his musician named Evius, with the quarters which belonged of right to EUMENES, the most worthy and renowned of all the Grecian generals. Eumenes boldly remonstrated, and told Alexander that he plainly saw the best way to acquire promotion in his army would be to throw away arms, and learn to play upon the flute or turn actor.