when Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians. He instituted the Spartan
senate, and gave an aristocratic form to the constitution. But the
senate, composed of about thirty old men who acted in conjunction with
the two kings, did not differ materially from the council of chiefs, or
old men, found in other ancient Grecian States; the Spartan chiefs
simply modified or curtailed the power of the kings. In the course of
time the senate, with the kings included in it, became the governing
body of the State, and this oligarchical form of government lasted
several hundred years. We know but little of the especial laws given by
Lycurgus. We know the distinctions of society,--citizens and helots,
and their mutual relations,--the distribution of lands to check luxury,
the public men, the public training of youth, the severe discipline to
which all were subjected, the cruelty exercised towards slaves, the
attention given to gymnastic exercises and athletic sports,--in short,
the habits and customs of the people rather than any regular system of
jurisprudence. Lycurgus was the trainer of a military brotherhood rather
than a law-giver. Under his régime the citizen belonged to the State
rather than to his family, and all the ends of the State were warlike
rather than peaceful,--not looking to the settlement of quarrels on
principles of equity, or a development of industrial interests, which
are the great aims of modern legislation.

The influence of the Athenian Solon on the laws which affected
individuals is more apparent than that of the Spartan Lycurgus, the
earliest of the Grecian legislators. But Solon had a predecessor in
Athens itself,--Draco, who in 624 was appointed to reduce to writing the
arbitrary decisions of the archons, thus giving a form of permanent law
and a basis for a court of appeal. Draco's laws were extraordinarily
severe, punishing small thefts and even laziness with death. The
formulation of any system of justice would have, as Draco's did, a