TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 649 
revival of the old discipline. Sparta nolonger had an army, and the training of 
the boys in manly virtues became an end in itself, pursued—as the inscriptions 
found at Sparta attest—in a curiously antiquarian spirit. 
(4) From the first century B.c. onwards the scourging of the lads appears to 
have been a regular competitive examination, conducted under rigid rules at 
an annual festival, before crowds of spectators. It was called the Contest of 
Endurance, or simply the Scourges. The winner was the lad who bore the 
greatest number of blows without sound or movement, and the emulation of the 
boys, and even of their parents, led to protracted contests in which a competitor 
sometimes expired under the lash. 
(5) The theatre recently excavated by the British School at Athens was built 
soon after A.D. 200 round about the altar and temple to accommodate the visitors 
who flocked to the festival. It was maintained far into the fourth century. 
(6) It follows that the cruel scourgings described by Cicero, Plutarch, and 
many other writers were a late perversion of the old Spartan discipline grafted 
on a traditional recollection of the rough game of running the gauntlet mentioned 
by Xenophon. A false idea of the antiquity of the custom has coloured the views 
of Roman and recent writers on the cult of Orthia. At Sparta, as elsewhere, 
Artemis seems to have been worshipped, on the one hand, as the goddess of 
fertility, therefore as protectress of women and children; and on the other as 
mistress of mountains and woods and the wild life in them, and so as protectress 
of man, first in the chase and then also in war. The evidence of the archaic 
strata suggests intimate relations with Ionia, perhaps especially with Ephesus, 
where ivories of very similar character have veen found, 
4. Door-step Art: a Traditional Folk Art. 
(i) The Art Relations. By F. H. NEwBery, 
The early scribblings of children, though apparently meaningless, may be 
shown to be instinctive art products. As development, physical and mental, pro- 
ceeds, the drawings become more purposeful and regulated, and forms are evolved 
that come under the heading of applied art. Jlustrations of such forms occur in 
many of the historic styles of ornament, notably in primitive and savage art, and 
the whole region of ‘ door-step’ art is filled with the designs and application of 
geometrical patterns and drawings created in this stage of artistic evolution. 
Patterns are produced in infinite variety, and are used chiefly to decorate door- 
steps, hearths, and the borders of rooms, 
(ii) Some Remarks on its Anthropological Bearings. By T. H. Brycn, M.D. 
The designs of the numerous examples of ‘ door-step’ art which have been col- 
lected are traditional in character, being handed down from generation to genera- 
tion. They are purely geometrical and conventional. There is no zodmorphic 
motive, and very rarely any attempt to represent natural vegetable forms. The 
art is practised entirely by women, and is entirely independent of any outside 
influence. The question arises whether the designs are, as Mr. Newbery interprets 
them, the expression of primitive art-instinct, or whether they are a survival. In 
any case it is very desirable that attention should be directed to the existence in 
this country of such primitive, untaught folk-designs, so that some adequate col- 
lection of examples may be formed before the art of the Board School kills the 
spontaneity of the designs. 
5. The Origin of the Crescent as a Muhammadan Badge. 
By Professor W. Rincrway, J.A. 
Primitive peoples are in the habit of wearing as an amulet the claws or tusks 
of the most powerful and dangerous animals, In time these claws were placed 
