t-born
took precedence of the other.

When, however, the children arrived at an age to assume the exercise of
the governmental power, as there was no perceptible difference between
them in age, or strength, or accomplishments, the one who had been
decided to be the younger was little disposed to submit to the other.
Each had his friends and adherents, parties were formed, and a long and
angry civil dissension ensued. In the end the question was compromised,
the command was divided, and the system of having two chief magistrates
became gradually established, the power descending in two lines, from
father to son, through many generations. Of course there was perpetual
jealousy and dissension, and often open and terrible conflicts, between
these two rival lines.

The Spartans were an agricultural people, cultivating the valley in the
southeastern part of the Peloponnesus, the waters of which were
collected and conveyed to the sea by the River Eurotas and its branches.
They lived in the plainest possible manner, and prided themselves on the
stern and stoical resolution with which they rejected all the
refinements and luxuries of society. Courage, hardihood, indifference to
life, and the power to endure without a murmur the most severe and
protracted sufferings, were the qualities which they valued. They
despised wealth just as other nations despise effeminacy and foppery.
Their laws discouraged commerce, lest it should make some of the people
rich. Their clothes were scanty and plain, their houses were
comfortless, their food was a coarse bread, hard and brown, and their
money was of iron. With all this, however, they were the most ferocious
and terrible soldiers in the world.

They were, moreover, with all their plainness of manners and of life, of
a very proud and lofty spirit. All agricultural toil, and every other
species of manual labor in their state, were performed by a servile
peasantry, while the free citizens, whose profession was exclusively
that of arms, were as aristocratic and exalted in soul as any nobles on
earth. People are sometimes, in our day, when money is so much valued,
proud, notwithstanding their poverty. The Spartans were proud of their
poverty itself. They could be rich if they chose, but they despised
riches. They looked down on all the refinements and delicacies of dress
and of living from an elevation far above them. They looked down on
labor, too, with the same contempt. They were yet very