ns and probably in the Greek colonies.
And we may reasonably suppose, though without any express proof of the
fact, that many Roman institutions and customs, like Latin literature
and mythology, were partly derived from Hellas and had imperceptibly
drifted from one shore of the Ionian Sea to the other (compare
especially the constitutions of Servius Tullius and of Solon).

It is not proved that the laws of Sparta were in ancient times either
written down in books or engraved on tablets of marble or brass. Nor is
it certain that, if they had been, the Spartans could have read
them. They were ancient customs, some of them older probably than the
settlement in Laconia, of which the origin is unknown; they occasionally
received the sanction of the Delphic oracle, but there was a still
stronger obligation by which they were enforced,--the necessity of
self-defence: the Spartans were always living in the presence of their
enemies. They belonged to an age when written law had not yet taken
the place of custom and tradition. The old constitution was very rarely
affected by new enactments, and these only related to the duties of the
Kings or Ephors, or the new relations of classes which arose as
time went on. Hence there was as great a difference as could well
be conceived between the Laws of Athens and Sparta: the one was the
creation of a civilized state, and did not differ in principle from our
modern legislation, the other of an age in which the people were held
together and also kept down by force of arms, and which afterwards
retained many traces of its barbaric origin 'surviving in culture.'

Nevertheless the Lacedaemonian was the ideal of a primitive Greek state.
According to Thucydides it was the first which emerged out of confusion
and became a regular government. It was also an army devoted to
military exercises, but organized with a view to self-defence and not
to conquest. It was not quick to move or easily excited; but stolid,
cautious, unambitious, procrastinating. For many centuries it retained
the same character which was impressed upon it by the hand of the
legislator. This singular fabric was partly the result of circumstances,
partly the invention of some unknown individual in prehistoric times,
whose ideal of education was military discipline, and who, by the
ascendency of his genius, made a small tribe into a nation which became
famous in the world's history. The other Hellenes wondered at the
strength and