each other. The basin was called caddichus, and the rejected
candidate had a name thence derived. Their most famous dish was
the black broth, which was so much valued that the elderly men fed
only upon that, leaving what flesh there was to the younger.

They say that a certain king of Pontus, having heard much of this
black broth of theirs, sent for a Lacedaemonian cook on purpose to
make him some, but had no sooner tasted it than he found it
extremely bad, which the cook observing, told him, "Sir, to make
this broth relish, you should have bathed yourself first in the
river Eurotas."

After drinking moderately, every man went to his home without
lights, for the use of them was, on all occasions, forbid, to the
end that they might accustom themselves to march boldly in the
dark. Such was the common fashion of their meals.

Lycurgus would never reduce his laws into writing; nay, there is a
Rhetra expressly to forbid it. For he thought that the most
material points, and such as most directly tended to the public
welfare, being imprinted on the hearts of their youth by a good
discipline, would be sure to remain, and would find a stronger
security, than any compulsion would be, in the principles of
action formed in them by their best lawgiver, education.

One, then, of the Rhetras was, that their laws should not be
written; another is particularly leveled against luxury and
expensiveness, for by it it was ordained that the ceilings of
their houses should only be wrought by the axe, and their gates
and doors smoothed only the saw. Epaminondas's famous dictum about