helping hand in his great undertaking: he broke it first to his
particular friends, and then by degrees gained others, and
animated them all to put his design in execution. When things were
ripe for action, he gave order to thirty of the principal men of
Sparta to be ready armed at the market-place at break of day, to
the end that he might strike a terror into the opposite party.
Hermippus hath set down the names of twenty of the most eminent of
them: but the name of him whom Lycurgus most confided in, and who
was of most use to him both in making his laws and putting them in
execution, was Arthmiadas. Things growing to a tumult, king
Charilaus, apprehending that it was a conspiracy against his
person, took sanctuary in the temple of Athena of the Brazen
House; but, being soon after undeceived, and having taken an oath
of them that they had no designs against him, he quitted his
refuge, and himself also entered into the confederacy with them;
of so gentle and flexible a disposition he was, to which
Archelaus, his brother-king, alluded, when, hearing him extolled
for his goodness, he said: "Who can say he is anything but good?
he is so even to the bad."

Amongst the many changes and alterations which Lycurgus made, the
first and of greatest importance was the establishment of the
senate, which, having a power equal to the kings' in matters of
great consequence, and, as Plato expresses it, allaying and
qualifying the fiery genius of the royal office, gave steadiness
and safety to the commonwealth. For the state, which before had no
firm basis to stand upon, but leaned one while towards an absolute
monarchy, when the kings had the upper hand, and another while
towards a pure democracy, when the people had the better, found in
this establishment of the senate a central weight, like ballast in