s from the dishonour of base actions and the praise
of good ones. His proposal was put in practice. He made nine thousand
lots for the territory of Sparta, which he distributed among so many
citizens, and thirty thousand for the inhabitants of the rest of
Laconia. But some say he made only six thousand shares for the city, and
that Polydorus added three thousand afterwards; others, that Polydorus
doubled the number appointed by Lycurgus, which were only four thousand
five hundred. Each lot was capable of producing (one year with another)
seventy bushels of grain for each man, and twelve for each woman,
besides a quantity of wine and oil in proportion. Such a provision they
thought sufficient for health and a good habit of body, and they wanted
nothing more. A story goes of our legislator, that some time after
returning from a journey through the fields just reaped, and seeing the
shocks standing parallel and equal, he smiled, and said to some that
were by, "How like is Laconia to an estate newly divided among many
brothers!"

After this, he attempted to divide also the movables, in order to take
away all appearance of inequality; but he soon perceived that they could
not bear to have their goods directly taken from them, and therefore
took another method, counterworking their avarice by a stratagem. First
he stopped the currency of the gold and silver coin, and ordered that
they should make use of iron money only, then to a great quantity and
weight of this he assigned but a small value; so that to lay up ten
_minae_, a whole room was required, and to remove it, nothing less than a
yoke of oxen. When this became current, many kinds of injustice ceased
in Lacedaemon. Who would steal or take a bribe, who would defraud or rob,
when he could not conceal the booty; when he could neither be dignified
by the possession of it, nor if cut in pieces be served by its use? For
we are told that when hot, they quenched it in vinegar, to make it
brittle and unmalleable, and consequently unfit for any other service.
In the next place, he excluded unprofitable and superfluous arts:
indeed, if he had not done this, most of them would have fallen of
themselves, when the new money took place, as the manufactures could not
be disposed of. Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece,
but was ridiculed and despised; so that the Spartans had no means of
purchasing any foreign or curious wares; nor did any merchant-ship
unlade in their