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Many traditions were preserved at Sparta of the severity with

which the magistrates had maintained the primitive rule of music

and poetry; as in the Republic of Plato, the new-fangled poet was

to be expelled. Hymns to the Gods, which are the only kind of

music admitted into the ideal State, were the only kind which was

permitted at Sparta. The Spartans, though an unpoetical race,

were nevertheless lovers of poetry; they had been stirred by the

Elegiac strains of Tyrtaeus, they had crowded around Hippias to

hear his recitals of Homer; but in this they resembled the

citizens of the timocratic rather than of the ideal State. The

council of elder men also corresponds to the Spartan gerousia;

and the freedom with which they are permitted to judge about

matters of detail agrees with what we are told of that

institution.