A second and bolder political enterprise of Lycurgus was a new division
of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality, the city overcharged
with many indigent persons, who had no land, and the wealth centred in
the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of
insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state
still more inveterate and fatal, I mean poverty and riches, he persuaded
them to cancel all former divisions of land, and to make new ones, in
such a manner that they might be perfectly equal in their possessions
and way of living. Hence, if they were ambitious of distinction they
might seek it in virtue, as no other difference was left between them
but that which arises 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