The people then being thus assembled in the open
air, it was not allowed to any one of their order to give his
advice, but only either to ratify or reject what should be
propounded to them by the king or senate.
After the creation of the thirty senators, his next task, and,
indeed, the most hazardous he ever undertook, was the making of a
new division of their lands. For there was an extreme inequality
amongst them, and their state was overloaded with a multitude of
indigent and necessitous persons, while its whole wealth had
centred upon a very few. To the end, therefore, that he might
expel from the state arrogance and envy, luxury and crime, and
those yet more inveterate diseases of want and superfluity, he
obtained of them to renounce their properties, and to consent to a
new division of the land, and that they should live all together
on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and
the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure
of difference between man and man.
Upon their consent to these proposals, proceeding at once to put
them into execution, he divided the country of Laconia in general
into thirty thousand equal shares, and the part attached to the
city of Sparta into nine thousand; these he distributed among the
Spartans, as he did the others to the country citizens.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93