Lycurgus   

a bit in its mouth, which was the power of the ephori, established
an hundred and thirty years after the death of Lycurgus. Elatus and
his colleagues were the first who had this dignity conferred upon
them in the reign of King Theopompus, who, when his queen upbraided
him one day that he would leave the regal power to his children less
than he had received it from his ancestors, said in answer, "No, greater;
for it will last longer." For, indeed, their prerogative being thus
reduced within reasonable bounds, the Spartan kings were at once freed
from all further jealousies and consequent danger, and never experienced
the calamities of their neighbours at Messene and Argos, who, by maintaining
their prerogative too strictly for want of yielding a little to the
populace, lost it all.
Indeed, whosoever shall look at the sedition and misgovernment which
befell these bordering nations to whom they were as near related in
blood as situation, will find in them the best reason to admire the
wisdom and foresight of Lycurgus. For these three states, in their
first rise, were equal, or, if there were any odds, they lay on the
side of the Messenians and Argives, who, in the first allotment, were
thought to have been luckier than the Spartans; yet was their happiness
of but small continuance, partly the tyrannical temper of their kings
and partly the ungovernableness of the people quickly bringing upon
them such disorders, and so complete an overthrow of all existing
institutions, as clearly to show how truly divine a blessing the Spartans
had had in that wise lawgiver who gave their government its happy
balance and temper. But of this I shall say more in its due place.
After the creation of the thirty senators, his next task, and, indeed,
the most hazardous he ever undertook, was the making a new division
of their lands. For there was an extreme inequality amongst them,
and their state was overloaded with a multitude of indigent and necessitous
persons, while its whole wealth had centred upon a very few. To the
end, therefore, that he might expel from the state arrogance and envy,
luxury and crime, and those yet more inveterate diseases of want and
superfluity, he obtained of them to renounce their properties, and
to consent to a new division of the land, and that they should live
all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence,
and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure
of difference between man and man.
Upon their consent to these proposals, proceeding at once to put them
into execution, he divided the country of Laconia in general into
thirty thousand equal shares, and the part attached to the city of
Sparta into nine thousand; these he distributed among the Spartans,
as he did the others to the country citizens. Some authors say that
he made but six thousand lots for the citizens of Sparta, and that
King Polydorus added three thousand more. Others say that Polydorus
doubled the number Lycurgus had made, which, according to them, was
but four thousand five hundred. A lot was so much as to yield, one
year with another, about seventy bushels of grain for the master of
the family, and twelve for his wife, with a suitable proportion of
oil and wine. And this he thought sufficient to keep their bodies
in good health and strength; superfluities they were better without.
It is reported, that, as he returned from a journey shortly after
the division of the lands, in harvest time, the ground being newly
reaped, seeing the stacks all standing equal and alike, he smiled,
and said to those about him, "Methinks all Laconia looks like one
family estate just divided among a number of brothers."
Not contented with this, he resolved to make a division of their movables
too, that there might be no odious distinction or inequality left
amongst them; but finding that it would be very dangerous to go about
it openly, he took another course, and defeated their avarice by the
following stratagem: he commanded that all gold and silver coin should
be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should be
current, a great weight and quantity of which was very little worth;
so that to lay up twenty or thirty pounds there was required a pretty
large closet, and, to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen.