his own table, that "Treason and a dinner like this do not keep
company together," may be said to have been anticipated by
Lycurgus. Luxury and a house of this kind could not well be
companions. For a man must have a less than ordinary share of
sense that would furnish such plain and common rooms with silver-
footed couches and purple coverlets and gold and silver plate.
Doubtless he had good reason to think that they would proportion
their beds to their houses, and their coverlets to their beds, and
the rest of their goods and furniture to these. It is reported
that King Leotychides, the first of that name, was so little used
to the sight of any other kind of work, that, being entertained at
Corinth in a stately room, he was much surprised to see the timber
and ceilings so finely carved and paneled, and asked his host
whether the trees grew so in his country.

A third ordinance or Rhetra was that they should not make war
often, or long, with the same enemy, lest they should train and
instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves.
And this is what Agesilaus was much blamed for a long time after;
it being thought that, by his continual incursions into Boeotia,
he made the Thebans a match for the Lacedaemonians; and therefore
Antalcidas, seeing him wounded one day, said to him that he was
very well paid for taking such pains to make the Thebans good
soldiers, whether they would or no. These laws were called the
Rhetras, to intimate that they were divine sanctions and
revelations.

In order to the good education of their youth (which, as I said
before, he thought the most important and noblest work of a
lawgiver), he took in their case all the care that was possible;