LESCHE
LESCHE (
λέσχη) seems to be
connected with
λέγω, though the history of
the form which it takes is not quite clear (Curtius,
Greek
Etym. 366). It means conversation, and hence a place of conversation
or council. The definition in Photius is
λέσχας
ἔλεγον δημοσίους τινὰς τόπους, ἐν οἷς σχολὴν ἄγοντες
ἐκαθέζοντο πολλοί . . . . ἐξέδραις δὲ ὁμοίας
γενέσθαι. In early times they were the places for lounging and
gossip, such as could be found in the village smithy,
παρ᾽ δ᾽ἴθι χαλκεῖον θῶκον καὶ ἐπαλέα λέσχην (Hes.
Op. 491). (Compare the mention of
furnus as a place for gossip in Horace.) In
Od. 18.329 the
λέσχη seems to be mentioned as distinct from the smithy, though
both are mentioned as places for gossip. It is probable that even in those
early times there were covered places, porticoes or verandahs, open to the
sun (
ἀλεεινοὶ τόποι, as Hesychius calls
them, and this is probably the sense of
ἐπαλής), which were used as a sort of village club. We gather
from the grammarians that there were commonly in Greek cities such places
called
λέσχαι, where the idle resorted for
conversation, the poor to find warmth and shelter; at Athens it is said that
there were several. (Eustath.
ad Od. 1. c.; Proclus
ad Hes.
l.c.; Kühn
ad
Ael. VH 2.34;
C. I. 93, 23.)
In the Dorian states especially we find the word used for a sort of club-room
and as a place for meeting and consultation. At Sparta every
phyle had its lesche. Pausanias names two, one
called the
λέσχη Κροτανῶν, the other
(from its decoration) the
λέσχη ποικίλη
(
Paus. 3.14.240;
15.245). Plutarch (
Plut. Lyc. 25.55) speaks of them as used for business also, but
especially for the relaxation of the citizens (
ἥδυσμα τοῦ πόνου), in contrast to their severe bodily
exercises and drilling; in fact, “The proper home of the Spartan art
of speech, the original source of so many Spartan jokes, current over
all Greece, was the Lesche, the place of meeting for men at leisure near
the public drilling-grounds, where they met in small bands and exchanged
merry talk, as soldiers do by the watch-fire in the camp. Here men
learnt the give-and-take of Spartan speech” (Curtius,
Hist. of Greece, E. T., vol. i. p. 205). No doubt those
at least mentioned by Pausanias had some architectural pretensions,
[p. 2.32]and we find others such elsewhere, especially those
in connexion with the temples of Apollo (which suggests that, though in
vogue among Ionians also, they belonged more particularly to Dorians); and
hence Apollo as their guardian is called
λεσχηνόριος. Most famous of all was the Lesche of the Cnidians
at Delphi, a court surrounded by colonnades or cloisters and painted in the
colonnades on the right and left by Polygnotus: the Trojan war on the right,
with the taking of the city and the loosing of the fleet; the realms of
death, into which Ulysses descended, on the left. The paintings are
elaborately described by Pausanias (
10.25-
31.859
sq.), who was fortunate enough to have seen them.
[
P.S] [
G.E.M]
