, which thus did say:
That over all within fair Sparta's realm
The royal chiefs in council should bear sway,
The elders next to them, the people last;
If they the holy _rhetra_ would obey."

VII. Though Lykurgus had thus mixed the several powers of the state, yet
his successors, seeing that the powers of the oligarchy were unimpaired,
and that it was, as Plato calls it, full of life and vigour, placed as a
curb to it the power of the Ephors. The first Ephors, of whom Elatus was
one, were elected about a hundred and thirty years after Lykurgus, in
the reign of Theopompus. This king is said to have been blamed by his
wife because he would transmit to his children a less valuable crown
than he had received, to which he answered: "Nay, more valuable, because
more lasting." In truth, by losing the odium of absolute power, the King
of Sparta escaped all danger of being dethroned, as those of Argos and
Messene were by their subjects, because they would abate nothing of
their despotic power. The wisdom of Lykurgus became clearly manifest to
those who witnessed the revolutions and miseries of the Argives and
Messenians, who were neighbouring states and of the same race as the
Spartans, who, originally starting on equal terms with them, and indeed
seeming in the allotment of their territories to have some advantage,
yet did not long live happily, but the insolent pride of the kings and
the unruly temper of the people together resulted in a revolution, which
clearly proved that the checked and balanced constitution established
among the Spartans was a divine blessing for them. But of this more
hereafter.

VIII. The second and the boldest of Lykurgus's reforms was the
redistribution of the land. Great inequalities existed, many poor and
needy people had become a burden to the state, while wealth had got into
a very few hands. Lykurgus abolished all the mass of pride, envy, crime,
and luxury which flowed from those old and more terrible evils of riches
and poverty, by inducing all land-owners to offer their estates for
redistribution, and prevailing upon them to live on equal terms one with
another, and with equal incomes, striving only to surpass each other in
courage and virtue, there being henceforth no social inequalities among
them except such as praise or blame can create.

Putting his proposals immediately into practice, he divided the outlying
lands of the state among the Perioeki, in thirty thousand l