manners; which must have been the consequence of some deviation from the maxims of Lycurgus.
It appears evidently from the testimony of Polybius and Plutarch, that the great scheme of the Spartan legislator was, to provide for the lasting security of his country against all foreign invasions, and to perpetuate the blessings of liberty and independency to the people. By the generous plan of discipline which he established, he rendered his countrymen invincible at home. By banishing gold and silver, and prohibiting commerce and the use of shipping, he proposed to confine the Spartans within the limits of their own territories; and by taking away the means, to repress all desires of making conquests upon their neighbours. But the same love of glory and of their country which made them so terrible in the field, quickly produced ambition and a lust of domination; and ambition as naturally opened the way for avarice and corruption. For Polybius truly observes, that as long as they extended [35] their views no farther than the dominion over their neighbouring states, the produce of their own country was sufficient for what supplies they had occasion for in such short excursions.a But when, in direct violation of the laws of Lycurgus, they began to undertake more distant expeditions both by sea and land, they quickly felt the want of a publick fund to defray their extraordinary expences. For they found by experience, that neither their iron money, nor their method of trucking25 the annual produce of their own lands for such commodities as they wanted (which was the only traffick allowed by
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the laws of Lycurgus) could possibly answer their demands upon those occasions. Hence their ambition, as the same historian remarks, laid them under the scandalous necessity of paying servile court to the Persian monarchs for pecuniary supplies and subsidies, to impose heavy tributes upon the conquered islands, and to exact money from the other Grecian states, as occasions required.
Historians unanimously agree, that wealth, with its attendants luxury and corruption, gained admission at Sparta in the reign of the first Agis. Lysander, like a Hero and a Politician; a man of the greatest abilities and the greatest dishonesty that Sparta ever produced; rapacious after money, which at the same time he despised, and a slave only to [36] ambition, was the author of an innovation so fatal to the manners of his countrymen. After he had enabled his country to give law to all Greece by his conquest of Athens,27 he sent home that immense mass of wealth, which the plunder of so many states had put into his possession. The most sensible men amongst the Spartans, dreading the fatal consequences of this capital breach of the institutions of their legislator, protested strongly before the Ephori against the introduction of gold and silver, as pests destructive to the publick. The Ephori referred it to the decision of the senate, who, dazzled with the lustre of that money, to which ’till that time they had been utter strangers, decreed, “That gold and silver money might be admitted for the service of the state; but made it death, if any should ever be found in the possession of a private person.” This decision Plutarch censures as weak and sophistical.a As if Lycurgus was only afraid simply of money, and not of that dangerous love of money which is generally its concomitant; a passion which is so far from being rooted out by the restraint laid upon private persons, that it was rather inflamed by the esteem and value which was set upon money by the publick. Thus, as he justly remarks, whilst [37] they barred up the houses of private citizens against the entrance of Wealth by the
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terror and safeguard of the Law, they left their minds more exposed to the love of money and the influence of corruption, by raising an universal admiration and desire of it, as something great and respectable. The truth of this remark appears by the instance given us by Plutarch, of one Thorax, a great friend of Lysander’s, who was put to death by the Ephori, upon proof that a quantity of silver had been actually found in his possession.29
From that time Sparta became venal, and grew extremely fond of subsidies from foreign powers. Agesilaus, who succeeded Agis, and was one of the greatest of their Kings, behaved in the latter part of his life more like a captain of a band of mercenaries, than a King of Sparta. He received a large subsidy from Tachos, at that time King of Egypt, and entered into his service with a body of troops which he had raised for that purpose. But when Nectanabis, who had rebelled against his uncle Tachos, offered him more advantageous terms, he quitted the unfortunate Monarch and went over to his rebellious nephew, pleading the interest of his country in excuse for so treacherous and infamous an action.a So great a change had [38] the introduction of money already made in the manners of the leading Spartans!
Plutarch dates the first origin of corruption, that disease of the body politick, and consequently the decline of Sparta, from that memorable period, when the Spartans having subverted the domination of Athens, glutted themselves (as he terms it) with gold and silver.b For when once the love of money had crept into their city, and avarice and the most sordid meanness grew up with the possession, as luxury, effeminacy, and dissipation did with the enjoyment of wealth, Sparta was deprived of many of her ancient glories and advantages, and sunk greatly both in power and reputation, till the reign of Agis and Leonidas.c But as
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the original allotments of land were yet preserved (the number of which Lycurgus had fixed and decreed to be kept up by a particular law) and were transmitted down from father to son by hereditary succession, the same constitutional order and equality still remaining, raised up the state again, however, from other political lapses.
Under the reigns of those two Kings happened the mortal blow, which subverted the very foundation of their constitution. Epi-[39]tadeus, one of the Ephori, upon a quarrel with his son, carried his resentment so far as to procure a law which permitted everyone to alienate their hereditary lands, either by gift or sale, during their life-time, or by will at their decease. This law produced a fatal alteration in the landed property. For as Leonidas, one of their Kings, who had lived a long time at the court of Seleucus, and married a lady of that country, had introduced the pomp and luxury of the East at his return to Sparta, the old institutions of Lycurgus, which had fallen into disuse, were by his example soon treated with contempt.a Hence the necessity of the luxurious, and the extortion of the avaricious, threw the whole property into so few hands, that out of seven hundred, the number to which the ancient Spartan families were then reduced, about one hundred only were in possession of their respective hereditary lands allotted by Lycurgus.b The rest, as Plutarch observes, lived an idle life in the city, an indigent abject herd, alike destitute of fortune and employment; in their wars abroad, indolent dispirited dastards;33 at home ever ripe for sedition and insurrections, and greedily catching at every opportunity of embroiling [40] affairs, in hopes of such a change as might enable them to retrieve their fortunes. Evils, which the extremes of wealth and indigence are ever productive of in free countries.
Young Agis, the third of that name, and the most virtuous and accomplished King that ever sat upon the throne of Sparta since the reign of
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the great Agesilaus, undertook the reform of the state, and attempted to re-establish the old Lycurgic constitution, as the only means of extricating his country out of her distresses, and raising her to her former dignity and lustre. An enterprize attended not only with the greatest difficulties, but, as the times were so corrupt, with the greatest danger.a He began with trying the efficacy of example, and though he had been bred in all the pleasures and delicacy which affluence could procure, or the fondness of his mother and grandmother, who were the wealthiest people in Sparta, could indulge him in, yet he at once changed his way of life as well as his dress, and conformed to the strictest discipline of Lycurgus in every particular. This generous36 victory over his passions,b the most difficult and most glorious of all others, had so great an effect [41] amongst the younger Spartans, that they came into his measures with more alacrity and zeal than he could possibly have hoped for. Encouraged by this success, Agis brought over some of the principal Spartans, amongst whom was his uncle Agesilaus, whose influence he made use of to persuade his mother, who was sister to Agesilaus, to join his party.c For her wealth, and the great number of her friends, dependants, and
