DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49271#0306
The Zulus and the Spartans
231
the spear, ‘it grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength’, making
them, before their maturity, ferocious by profession, and savages from example. With
such a body of people continually encircling the king, and urging him to pursue some
warlike object, the Zoolu monarch has merely the shadow of power. He is called upon,
indeed, to refuse or assent, but under circumstances so peculiarly awing, he usually assents;
though, with Dingan, I believe this proceeds not from choice but from apprehension ”.
* * *
In proceeding, now, to specify the points of similarity — in origin, institutions, and
spirit — between the Zulu system and the Spartan, I shall assume that in the case of the
latter the main facts are commonly known. Hence a tabular view will suffice.
1. The Homeric Greeks, like the Bantus generally, threw the spear. The Spartans
created the Dorian phalanx by holding on to the spear and using it in fighting at close
quarters. Like the assegai it was wielded with one hand.
2. Simultaneously with the retention of the spear the unorganized line of duellists
characteristic of the Homeric age gave way to the ordered array of men in an army, with
tactical subdivisions acting under orders, and with officers, higher and lower, in due sub-
ordination.
3. In the training of the Spartan soldiers war dances — the famous Pyrrhic, for
example — played an important role, and it may have been the case here, as among the
Zulus, that dance formations underlay some of the military formations. Certainly of
the imitative dances common among the Hellenes generally those which by a mimicry
of fighting trained for efficiency in war were a specialty of Sparta,173 whence they spread,
in the sixth century B. C., simultaneously with the Dorian phalanx, to Athens, and to
other places in Greece. Of the Pyrrhic dance Plato says in his Laws 174 that “it imitates
the modes of avoiding blows and darts, by dropping or giving way, or springing aside,
or rising up or falling down; also the opposite postures which are those of action, as,
for example, the imitation of archery and the hurling of javelins, and of all sorts of blows.”
It was danced either by individuals or by companies, and the time, which was rapid, was
given by a woman playing a flute or by men clapping their hands. It was regarded,
Athenaeus tells us, as a Trpoyv^vaa^a tov TroXefiov}™ The Spartan equivalent of the
Zulu Feast of First Fruits was the far-famed Gymnopaedia — a fete at which naked youths
in competition exhibited their skill in war-dances.
4. In both cases the peculiarities of the regime were developments or intensifica-
173 L. Sechan, art. Saltatio, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquitds grecques et romaines.
174 Plato, Opera, ed. Stallbaum, Leipzig, 1821 sqq., Leges, VII, 815a.
176 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, ed. Kaibel, Leipzig, 1887 sqq., XIV, 631a.
231
the spear, ‘it grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength’, making
them, before their maturity, ferocious by profession, and savages from example. With
such a body of people continually encircling the king, and urging him to pursue some
warlike object, the Zoolu monarch has merely the shadow of power. He is called upon,
indeed, to refuse or assent, but under circumstances so peculiarly awing, he usually assents;
though, with Dingan, I believe this proceeds not from choice but from apprehension ”.
* * *
In proceeding, now, to specify the points of similarity — in origin, institutions, and
spirit — between the Zulu system and the Spartan, I shall assume that in the case of the
latter the main facts are commonly known. Hence a tabular view will suffice.
1. The Homeric Greeks, like the Bantus generally, threw the spear. The Spartans
created the Dorian phalanx by holding on to the spear and using it in fighting at close
quarters. Like the assegai it was wielded with one hand.
2. Simultaneously with the retention of the spear the unorganized line of duellists
characteristic of the Homeric age gave way to the ordered array of men in an army, with
tactical subdivisions acting under orders, and with officers, higher and lower, in due sub-
ordination.
3. In the training of the Spartan soldiers war dances — the famous Pyrrhic, for
example — played an important role, and it may have been the case here, as among the
Zulus, that dance formations underlay some of the military formations. Certainly of
the imitative dances common among the Hellenes generally those which by a mimicry
of fighting trained for efficiency in war were a specialty of Sparta,173 whence they spread,
in the sixth century B. C., simultaneously with the Dorian phalanx, to Athens, and to
other places in Greece. Of the Pyrrhic dance Plato says in his Laws 174 that “it imitates
the modes of avoiding blows and darts, by dropping or giving way, or springing aside,
or rising up or falling down; also the opposite postures which are those of action, as,
for example, the imitation of archery and the hurling of javelins, and of all sorts of blows.”
It was danced either by individuals or by companies, and the time, which was rapid, was
given by a woman playing a flute or by men clapping their hands. It was regarded,
Athenaeus tells us, as a Trpoyv^vaa^a tov TroXefiov}™ The Spartan equivalent of the
Zulu Feast of First Fruits was the far-famed Gymnopaedia — a fete at which naked youths
in competition exhibited their skill in war-dances.
4. In both cases the peculiarities of the regime were developments or intensifica-
173 L. Sechan, art. Saltatio, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquitds grecques et romaines.
174 Plato, Opera, ed. Stallbaum, Leipzig, 1821 sqq., Leges, VII, 815a.
176 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, ed. Kaibel, Leipzig, 1887 sqq., XIV, 631a.