." Absurd.
After the death of Lycurgus, his institutions became corrupted; and four
centuries before the Christian era not a vestige remained of the former
simplicity. Luxury and the thirst for gold were early developed among
the Spartans in a degree as intense as might have been expected from
their enforced poverty and their inexperience in the arts. Historians
have accused Pausanias, Lysander, Agesilaus, and others of having
corrupted the morals of their country by the introduction of wealth
obtained in war. It is a slander. The morals of the Spartans necessarily
grew corrupt as soon as the Lacedaemonian poverty came in contact with
Persian luxury and Athenian elegance. Lycurgus, then, made a fatal
mistake in attempting to inspire generosity and modesty by enforcing
vain and proud simplicity.

"Lycurgus was not frightened at idleness! A Lacedemonian, happening to
be in Athens (where idleness was forbidden) during the punishment of
a citizen who had been found guilty, asked to see the Athenian thus
condemned for having exercised the rights of a free man.... It was one
of the principles of Lycurguss, acted upon for several centuries, that
free men should not follow lucrative professions.... The women disdained
domestic labor; they did not spin their wool themselves, as did the
other Greeks [they did not, then, read Homer!]; they left their slaves
to make their clothing for them."--Pastoret: History of Legislation.

Could any thing be more contradictory? Lycurgus proscribed property
among the citizens, and founded the means of subsistence on the worst
form of property,--on property obtained by force. What wonder, after
that, that a lazy city, where no industry was carried on, became a den
of avarice? The Spartans succumbed the more easily to the allurements of
luxury and Asiatic voluptuousness, being placed entirely at their mercy
by their own coarseness. The same thing happened to the Romans, when
military success took them out of Italy,--a thing which the author
of the prosopopoeia of Fabricius could not explain. It is not the
cultivation of the arts which corrupts morals, but their degradation,
induced by inactive and luxurious opulence. The instinct of property
is to make the industry of Daedalus, as well as the talent of Phidias,
subservient to its own fantastic whims and disgraceful pleasures.
Property, not wealth, ruined the Spartans.

When Solon appeared, the anarchy caused by property was at its height
in