not bear to have their goods directly taken from them, and therefore
took another method, counterworking their avarice by a stratagem. First
he stopped the currency of the gold and silver coin, and ordered that
they should make use of iron money only, then to a great quantity and
weight of this he assigned but a small value; so that to lay up ten
_minæ_, a whole room was required, and to remove it, nothing less than a
yoke of oxen. When this became current, many kinds of injustice ceased
in Lacedæmon. Who would steal or take a bribe, who would defraud or rob,
when he could not conceal the booty; when he could neither be dignified
by the possession of it, nor if cut in pieces be served by its use? For
we are told that when hot, they quenched it in vinegar, to make it
brittle and unmalleable, and consequently unfit for any other service.
In the next place, he excluded unprofitable and superfluous arts:
indeed, if he had not done this, most of them would have fallen of
themselves, when the new money took place, as the manufactures could not
be disposed of. Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece,
but was ridiculed and despised; so that the Spartans had no means of
purchasing any foreign or curious wares; nor did any merchant-ship
unlade in their harbours. There were not even to be found in all their
country either sophists, wandering fortune-tellers, keepers of infamous
houses, or dealers in gold and silver trinkets, because there was no
money. Thus luxury, losing by degrees the means that cherished and
supported it, died away of itself: even they who had great possessions,
had no advantage from them, since they could not be displayed in public,
but must lie useless, in unregarded repositories. Hence it was, that
excellent workmanship was shown in their useful and necessary furniture,
as beds, chairs, and tables; and the Lacedæmonian cup called _cothon_,
as Critias informs us, was highly valued, particularly in campaigns: for
the water, which must then of necessity be drank, though it would often
otherwise offend the sight, had its muddiness concealed by the colour of