. pp. xlii. and 52); Muller,
"Dorians," iii. 10, 1 (vol. ii. 197, Eng. tr.)

VII

There are yet other customs in Sparta which Lycurgus instituted in
opposition to those of the rest of Hellas, and the following among them.
We all know that in the generality of states every one devotes his full
energy to the business of making money: one man as a tiller of the soil,
another as a mariner, a third as a merchant, whilst others depend
on various arts to earn a living. But at Sparta Lycurgus forbade his
freeborn citizens to have anything whatsoever to do with the concerns
of money-making. As freemen, he enjoined upon them to regard as their
concern exclusively those activities upon which the foundations of civic
liberty are based.

And indeed, one may well ask, for what reason should wealth be regarded
as a matter for serious pursuit (1) in a community where, partly by a
system of equal contributions to the necessaries of life, and partly by
the maintenance of a common standard of living, the lawgiver placed so
effectual a check upon the desire of riches for the sake of luxury? What
inducement, for instance, would there be to make money, even for the
sake of wearing apparel, in a state where personal adornment is held to
lie not in the costliness of the clothes they wear, but in the healthy
condition of the body to be clothed? Nor again could there be much
inducement to amass wealth, in order to be able to expend it on the
members of a common mess, where the legislator had made it seem far more
glorious that a man should help his fellows by the labour of his body
than by costly outlay. The latter being, as he finely phrased it, the
function of wealth, the former an activity of the soul.

(1) See Plut. "Lycurg." 10 (Clough, i. 96).

He went a step further, and set up a strong barrier (even in a society
such as I have described) against the pursuance of money-making by
wrongful means. (2) In the first place, he established a coinage (3) of
so extraordinary a sort, that even a single sum of ten minas (4) could
not come into a house without attracting the notice, either of the
master himself, or of some member of his household. In fact, it would
occupy a considerable space, and need a waggon to carry it. Gold and
silver themselves, moreover, are liable to search, (5) and in case of
detection, the possessor subjected to a penalty. In fact, to repeat
the question asked above, for what reason should money-making become