hat Sparta was preserved by the good administration of its
kings, replied, "Nay, rather by the obedience of their subjects." It is
certain that people will not continue pliant to those who know not how
to command; but it is the part of a good governor to teach obedience. He
who knows how to lead well, is sure to be well followed: and as it is by
the art of horsemanship that a horse is made gentle and tractable, so it
is by the abilities of him that fills the throne that the people become
ductile and submissive. Such was the conduct of the Lacedaemonians, that
people did not only endure, but even desired to be their subjects. They
asked not of them either ships, money or troops, but only a Spartan
general. When they had received him, they treated him with the greatest
honour and respect; so Gylippus was revered by the Sicilians, Brasidas
by the Chalcidians, Lysander, Callicratidas, and Agesilaus by all the
people of Asia. These, and such as these, wherever they came, were
called moderators and reformers, both of the magistrates and people, and
Sparta itself was considered as a school of discipline, where the beauty
of life and political order were taught in the utmost perfection. Hence
Stratonicus seems facetiously enough to have said, that he would order
"the Athenians to have the conduct of mysteries and processions; the
Eleans to preside in games, as their particular province; and the
Lacedaemonians to be beaten, if the other did amiss." This was spoken in
jest: but Antisthenes, one of the scholars of Socrates, said (more
seriously) of the Thebans, when he saw them pluming themselves upon
their success at Leuctra, "They were just like so many school-boys
rejoicing that they had beaten their master."

It was not, however, the principal design of Lycurgus that his city
should govern many others, but he considered its happiness like that of
a private man, as flowing from virtue and self-consistency: he therefore
so ordered and disposed it, that by the freedom and sobriety of its
inhabitants, and their having a sufficiency within themselves, its
continuance might be the more secure. Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and other
writers upon government, have taken Lycurgus for their model: and these
have attained great praise, though they left only an idea of something
excellent. Yet he who, not in idea and in words, but in fact produced a
most inimitable form of government, and by showing a whole city of
philosophers, confounded those