Lycurgus's chief aiders and assistants in his plan. The vacancies
he ordered to be supplied out of the best and most deserving men
past sixty years old. The manner of their election was as follows:
the people being called together, some selected persons were
locked up in a room near the place of election, so contrived that
they could neither see nor be seen, but could only hear the noise
of the assembly without; for they decided this, as most other
affairs of moment, by the shouts of the people. This done, the
competitors were not brought in and presented all together, but
one after another by lot, and passed in order through the assembly
without speaking a word. Those who were locked up had writing-
tables with them, in which they recorded and marked each shout by
its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candidate each of
them was made, but merely that they came first, second, third, and
so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest
acclamations was declared senator duly elected.

When he perceived that his more important institutions had taken
root in the minds of his countrymen, that custom had rendered them
familiar and easy, that his commonwealth was now grown up and able
to go alone, then, as Plato somewhere tells us the Maker of the
world, when first he saw it existing and beginning its motion,
felt joy, even so Lycurgus, viewing with joy and satisfaction the
greatness and beauty of his political structure, now fairly at
work and in motion, conceived the thought to make it immortal too,
and as far as human forecast could reach, to deliver it down
unchangeable to posterity. He called an extraordinary assembly of
all the people, and told them that he now thought everything
reasonably well established, both for the happiness and the virtue
of the state; but that there was one thing still behind, of the