lages, never united into a regular town; was never surrounded
by walls, its walls being the bravery of its citizens; its mythical
founder was Lacedemon, who called the city Sparta from the name of his
wife; one of its early kings was Menelaus, the husband of Helen;
LYCURGUS (q. v.) was its law-giver; its policy was aggressive,
and its sway gradually extended over the whole Peloponnesus, to the
extinction at the end of the Peloponnesian War of the rival power of
Athens, which for a time rose to the ascendency, and its unquestioned
supremacy thereafter for 30 years, when all Greece was overborne by the
Macedonian power.

SPARTACUS, leader of the revolt of the slaves at Rome, which broke
out about 73 B.C.; was a Thracian by birth, a man of powerful physique,
in succession a shepherd, a soldier, and a captain of banditti; was in
one of his predatory expeditions taken prisoner and sold to a trainer of
gladiators, and became one of his slaves; persuaded his fellow-slaves to
attempt their freedom, and became their chief and that of other runaways
who joined them; for two years they defied and defeated one Roman army
after another sent to crush them, and laid Italy waste, till at the end
of that time Licinius Crassus, taking up arms in earnest, overpowered
them in a decisive battle at the river Silarus, in which Spartacus was
slain.

SPASMODIC SCHOOL, name given to a small group of minor poets about
the middle of the 19th century, represented by Philips, James Bailey,
Sydney Dobell, and Alexander Smith, from their strenuous, overstrained,
and unnatural style.

SPECIFIC GRAVITY, the weight of a body compared with another of
equal bulk taken as a standard, such as the weight of a cubic inch of
water.

SPECTRUM, the name given to coloured and other rays of pure light
separated by refraction in its transmission through a prism, as exhibited
on a screen in a darkened chamber.

SPECTRUM ANALYSIS, name given to the method of determining the
composition of a body by means of the spectrum of light which it gives
forth or passes through it, founded on the principle that a substance
powerfully absorbs exactly the rays it radiates, and every substance has
its own absorbing powers; or it may be defined the method of
distinguishing different kinds of matter by their properties in relation
to light.

SPECULATIVE, THE, that which we think and which as such goes no
deeper than the intellect, which is but the eye of the soul,