pleasure of persons so well educated. For he resolved the whole business
of legislation into the bringing up of youth. And this, as we have
observed, was the reason why one of his ordinances forbad them to have
any written laws.

Another ordinance levelled against magnificence and expense, directed
that the ceilings of houses should be wrought with no tool but the axe
and the doors with nothing but the saw. For, as Epaminondas is reported
to have said afterwards, of his table, "Treason lurks not under such a
dinner," so Lycurgus perceived before him, that such a house admits of
no luxury and needless splendour. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as
to bring into a dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver
feet, purple coverlets, golden cups, and a train of expense that follows
these: but all would necessarily have the bed suitable to the room, the
coverlet of the bed and the rest of their utensils and furniture to
that. From this plain sort of dwellings, proceeded the question of
Leotychidas the elder to his host, when he supped at Corinth, and saw
the ceiling of the room very splendid and curiously wrought, "Whether
trees grew square in his country."

A third ordinance of Lycurgus was, that they should not often make war
against the same enemy, lest, by being frequently put upon defending
themselves, they too should become able warriors in their turn. And this
they most blamed king Agesilaus for afterwards, that by frequent and
continued incursions into Boeotia, he taught the Thebans to make head
against the Lacedæmonians. This made Antalcidas say, when he saw him
wounded, "The Thebans pay you well for making them good soldiers who
neither were willing nor able to fight you before." These ordinances he
called _Rhetræ_, as if they had been oracles and decrees of the Deity
himself.