Grand Council venal, and threw the power into the
hands of a very limited oligarchy, complete the parallel.[2] One of the
chief sources of decay both to Venice and to Sparta was that
shortsighted policy which prevented the nobles from recruiting their
ranks by the admission of new families. The system again of secret
justice, the espionage, and the calculated terrorism, by means of which
both the Spartan Ephoralty and the Venetian Council imposed their will
upon the citizens, were stifling to the free life of a republic.[3]
Venice in the end became demoralized in politics and profligate in
private life. Her narrowing oligarchy watched the national degeneration
with approval, knowing that it is easier to control a vitiated populace
than to curb a nation habituated to the manly virtues.

[1] Aristotle terms the Spartan Ephoralty [Greek: _isotyrannos_].
Giannotti (vol-ii. p. 120) compares the Ten to dictators. We might
bring the struggles of the Spartan kings with the Ephoralty into
comparison with the attempts of the Doges Falieri and Foscari to
make themselves the chiefs of the republic in more than name.
Mueller, in his _Dorians_, observes that 'the Ephoralty was the
moving element, the principle of change, in the Spartan
constitution, and, in the end, the cause of its dissolution.'
Sismondi remarks that the precautions which led to the creation of
the Council of Ten 'denaturaient entierement la constitution de
l'etat.'

[2] See what Aristotle in the _Politics_ says about [Greek:
_oliganthropia_], and the unequal distribution of property. As to
the property of the Venetian nobles, see Sanudo, _Vite dei Duchi_,
Murat. xxii. p. 1194, who mentions the benevolences of the richer
families to the poor. They built houses for aristocratic paupers to
live in free of rent.

[3] A curious passage in Plutarch's _Life of Cleomenes_ (Clough's
Translation, vol. iv. p. 474) exactly applies to the Venetian
statecraft:--'They, the Spartans, worship Fear, not as they do
supernatural powers which they dread, esteeming it hurtful, but
thinking their polity is chiefly kept up by fear ... and therefore
the Lacedaemonians placed the temple of Fear by the Syssitium of the
Ephors, having raised that magistracy to almost regal authority.'

Between Athens and Florence the parallel is not so close. These two
republics, however, resemble one another i