to the orders of the Ephori, when recalled by them to the support of his country; a delicate occasion for a king and a conqueror: but to him it seemed more * glorious to obey his country and the laws, than to command númerous armies, or even to conquer Asia.

SECT. II. LOVE OF POVERTY INSTITUTED AT SPARTA.— To this entire submission to the laws of the state, Lycurgus added another principle of government no less admirable, which was to remove from Sparta all luxury, profusion, and magnificence; to bring riches absolutely into discredit, to make poverty honourable, and at the same time necessary, by substituting a species of iron money in the place of gold and silver coin, which till then had been current. I have explained elsewhere the measures that he used to make so difficult an undertaking succeed, and shall confine myself here.to examining what judgment should be passed on it, as it affects a government.

Was the poverty to which Lycurgus reduced Sparta, and which seemed to prohibit to that state all conquest, and to deprive it of all means of augmenting its force and grandeur, well adapted to render it powerful and flourishing? Does such a constitution of government, which till then had no example, nor has since been imitated by any state, evince a great fund of prudence and policy in a legislator? And was not the modification conceived afterwards under Lysander, of continuing private persons in their poverty, and restoring to the public the use of gold and silver coin, a wise amendment of what was too strained and excessive in that law of Lycurgus of which we are speaking?

It seems, if we consult only the common views of human prudence, that it is just to reason in this manner; but the event, which is an infallible evidence and arbiter in this place, obliges me to be of a quite different opinion. Whilst Sparta remained poor, and persisted in the contempt of gold and silver, which continued for several ages, she was still powerful and glorious; and the commencement of her decline may

be

Multo gloriosius duxit, si institutis patriæ paruisset, quàm si bello superâsset Asiam. Corn. Nep. in Agesil. c. iv.

dated from the time when she began to break through the severe prohibition of Lycurgus against the use of gold and silver money. ·

The education which he instituted for the young Lacedæmonians, the hard and sober life which he recommended with so much care, the laborious and violent exercises of the body prescribed by him, the abstraction from all other application and employment, in a word, all his laws and institutions show, that his view was to form a nation of soldiers, solely devoted to arms and military functions. I do not pretend absolutely to justify this scheme, which had its great inconveniences, and I have expressed my thoughts of it elsewhere But, admitting this to be his view, we must confess that legislator showed great wisdom in the means he took to carry it into execution.

The almost inevitable danger of a people solely trained up for war, who have always their arms in their hands, and that which is most to be feared, is injustice, violence, ambition, the desire of increasing their power, of taking advantage of their neighbours' weakness, of oppressing them by force, of invading their lands under false pretexts, which the lust of dominion never fails to suggest, and of extending their bounds as far as possible; all vices and extremes which are horrid in private persons, and the ordinary intercourse of life, but which men have thought fit to applaud as grandeur and glory in the persons of princes and conquerors.

*

The great care of Lycurgus was to defend his people against this dangerous temptation. Without mentioning the other means he made use of, he employed two which could not fail of producing their effect. The first was to prohibit all navigation and war at sea to his citizens. The situation of his city, and the fear lest commerce, the usual source of luxury and disorder, should corrupt the purity of the Spartan manners, might have a share in this prohibition. But his principal motive was to put it out of his citizens' power to project conquests, which a people shut up within the narrow bounds of a peninsula, could not carry very far without being masters

at sea.

The second means, still more efficacious, was to forbid all * Απείργετο δὲ αὐτοῖς ναύταις εἶναι, καὶ ναυμαχεῖν. Plut. in instit. Lacon. p. 239.

use of gold or silver money, and to introduce a species of iron coin in its stead, which was of great weight and small value, and could only be current at home. How with such money could foreign troops be raised and paid, fleets fitted out, and numerous armies kept up either by land or sea?

So that the design of Lycurgus, in rendering his citizens warlike, and putting arms into their hands, was not, as° Polybius observes, and Plutarch after him, to make them illustrious conquerors, who might carry war into remote regions, and subject great numbers of people. His sole end was, that, shut up within the extent of the lands and domain left them by their ancestors, they should have no thoughts but of maintaining themselves in peace, and defending themselves successfully against such of their neighbours as should have the rashness to invade them; and for this they had occasion for neither gold nor silver, as they found in their own country, and still more in their sober and temperate manner of life, all that was sufficient for the support of their armies, when they did not quit their own lands, or the neighbouring territories.

Now, says Polybius, this plan once admitted, it must be allowed that nothing could be more wise nor more happily conceived than the institutions of Lycurgus, for the maintaining a people in the possession of their liberty, and securing to them the enjoyment of peace and tranquillity. In fact, let us imagine a little republic, like that of Sparta, of which all the citizens are inured to labour, accustomed to live on little, warlike, courageous, intrepid; and that the fundamental principle of this small republic is to do no wrong to any one, nor to disturb its neighbours, nor invade their lands or property; but, on the contrary, to declare in favour of the oppressed against the injustice and violence of oppressors; is it not certain, that such a republic, surrounded by a great number of states of equal extent, would be generally respected by all the neighbouring nations, would become the supreme arbiter of all their quarrels, and exercise an empire over them, by so much the more glorious and lasting, as it would be voluntary, and founded solely upon the opinion which those neighbours would have of its virtue, justice, and valour?

P This was the end that Lycurgus proposed to himself. Convinced that the happiness of a city, like that of a private person, depends upon virtue, and upon being well within itself, he regulated Sparta so as that it might always suffice to its own happiness, and act upon principles of wisdom and equity. From thence arose that universal esteem of the neighbouring people, and even of strangers, who asked from the Lacedæmonians neither money, ships, nor troops; but only that they would lend them a Spartan to command their armies; and when they had obtained their request, they paid him entire obedience, with every kind of honour and respect. In this manner the Sicilians obeyed Gylippus, the Chalcidians Brasidas, and all the Greeks of Asia, Lysander, Callicratidas, and Agesilaus; regarding the city of Sparta as a model for all others, in the arts of living and governing well.

*

The epocha of the declension of Sparta begins with the open violation of Lycurgus's laws. I do not pretend that they had always been exactly observed till that time, which was far from the case; but the spirit and genius of those laws had almost always prevailed with the majority of the persons who governed. As soon as the ambition of reigning over all Greece had inspired them with the design of having naval armies and foreign troops, and that money was necessary for the support of those forces, Sparta, forgetting her ancient maxims, saw herself reduced to have recourse to the barbarians, whom till then she had detested, and basely to make her court to the kings of Persia, whom she had formerly vanquished with so much glory; and that, only to draw from them some aids of money and troops against her own brethren, that is to say, against people born and settled in Greece like themselves. Thus had they the imprudence and misfortune to recall with gold and silver into Sparta, all the vices and crimes which the iron money had banished; and to prepare the way for the changes which ensued, and were the cause of their ruin. And this infinitely exalts the wisdom of Lycurgus, in having foreseen, at such a distance, what might strike at the happiness of his citizens, and provided salutary remedies against it in the P Plut. p. 58.

* Πρὸς σύμπασαν τὴν τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν πόλιν, ὥσπερ παιδαγωγὸν ἢ διδάσκαλον ευσχήμονος μία καὶ τεταγμένης πολιτείας ἀποβλέποντες.

form of government which he established at Sparta. We must not, however, attribute the whole honour of this plan to him alone. Another legislator, who had preceded him several ages, has a right to share this glory with him.

SECT. III. LAWS ESTABLISHED BY MINOS IN CRETE, THE MODEL OF THOSE OF SPARTA.-All the world knows, that Lycurgus had formed the plan of most of his laws upon the model of those observed in the island of Crete, where he passed a considerable time for the better studying of them. It is proper I should give some idea of them here, having forgotten to do it in the place where it would have been more natural, that is, when I spoke for the first time of Lycurgus and his institutions.

A. M. 2720.

Minos, whom fabulous history calls the son of Jupiter, was the author of these laws. He lived about a hundred He was a powerful, 1284. wise, and gentle prince; and still more estimable for his moral virtues than his military abilities. After having conquered the island of Crete, and several others in its neighbourhood, he applied himself to strengthen by wise laws the new state, of which he had possessed himself by the force of arms. The end which he proposed in the establishment of these laws, was to render his subjects happy by making them virtuous. He banished idleness and voluptuousness from his states, and with them luxury and effeminate pleasures, the fruitful sources of all vice. Well knowing that liberty is justly regarded as the most precious and greatest good, and that it cannot subsist without a perfect union of the people, he endeavoured to establish a kind of equality amongst them; which is the tie and basis of it, and well calculated to remove all envy, jealousy, hatred, and dissension. He did not undertake to make any new divisions of lands, nor to prohibit the use of gold and silver. He applied himself to the uniting of his subjects by other ties, which seemed to him neither less firm nor less reasonable.

Ant. J. c. years before the Trojan war.

He decreed, that the children should be all brought up and educated together, by troops and bands; in order that they Strab. 1. x. p. 480.